Like catching a roadrunner without getting an anvil dropped on your head, adapting animated stories into live action is a high-risk endeavor. There are so many things you can do with relative ease in the former medium that create enormous difficulties in the latter. It’s not just about spectacle and …
Read More »
“If I could live any place, at any time,” the wide-eyed young woman says, dreamily, “I’d live in London in the 1960s. It must have been the center of the universe!” Her name is Eloise — call her Ellie — and she’s just moved from Cornwall to good ol’ Blighty …
Read More »
Ji-Yoon Kim’s young daughter Ju-Ju has an important question: Why does her mother, who runs the English department at a prestigious New England liberal arts college, use the title of “Doctor.” Ji-Yoon tries explaining how her love of literature led to a Ph.D. and a career in academia, but Ju-Ju …
Read More »
Sometimes, a show gets to lead the zeitgeist, and sometimes it’s just part of a trend. The new Hulu miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers falls into the latter category — though, actually, it’s an example of multiple recent prestige-TV trends. The series represents the third collaboration between star Nicole Kidman and …
Read More »
Blindspotting isn’t the most obvious candidate for a film-to-TV spinoff. The 2018 movie, co-written by Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs, who star as best friends in Oakland, made less than $5 million at the box office. It was well-reviewed but not a major awards player. And its stories — Diggs’ …
Read More »
“Tell me a story.” This is the command that Roman (Bakary Koné), a new arrival at La Maca penitentiary — a forest-borne fortress just outside of the Ivory Coast’s capital, Abidjan — is given almost as soon as he arrives. It’s quite a welcome. Dismissed by the prison’s guards for …
Read More »
The confused, frightened, complying face of a young black boy as two Metropolitan police stop, search, and humiliate him on the street: This is one of the first things we see in Red, White, and Blue, the third in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe pentalogy, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. …
Read More »
Oliver Laxe’s brilliant Fire Will Come (currently streaming online in virtual cinemas) opens with an unease that lingers long after the images that inspired it — crowded, quiet, as natural as they are unearthly — have passed us by. A sublime harbinger of the subtle violences to come. Without preface …
Read More »
A tale of alien abduction, Proxmity serves as an in-and-out impressive calling card for debuting feature writer and director Eric Demeusy. His training in animation and visual effects helped Demeusy create the Emmy-winning title sequences for Stranger Things and Game of Thrones. So it’s a given that this L.A.-based filmmaker …
Read More »
It’s been nearly 15 years since The Office gave us “The Injury.” You remember “The Injury,” right? It’s the one where Michael cooks his foot on a George Foreman grill, Dwight gets concussed and starts acting nice to Pam, and the gas station in Carbondale does not have fresh yams. …
Read More »