Reviews
SXSW Review: Halo Feels Like A Reskinned Version of Sci-Fi Shows Past
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: In the mid-26th century, a sprawling human empire comes under attack from the mysterious Covenant, an alliance of alien races dedicated to a fanatical religion surrounding a race of ancient extraterrestrials and the artifacts they leave behind. To combat them (and, not coincidentally, the rough-and-tumble insurrectionists who resist humanity’s militaristic government, the UNSC), Dr. Catherine Halsey (Natascha McElhone) has created the Spartans — armored supersoldiers trained and tortured from birth to be the ultimate, emotionless killing machine. The biggest and most badass of them all is John-117, aka the Master Chief (Orange Is the New Black‘s Pablo Schreiber), who can dispatch a Covenant Elite and a colo...
Fly Anakin Carves His Own Lane on Frank
Emerging as one of 11 members of a hip-hop collective in his native Richmond, Virginia, collaboration has always been central to rapper-producer Fly Anakin’s work. Now, with the release of his solo debut album, he showcases the talents that brought the spotlight on him and his local scene. Like Danny Brown’s Bruiser Brigade, Mutant Academy is a scrappy, underground outfit that takes its name from an X-Men video game. Both groups are also intensely local, and committed to nurturing a unique sound for their city. The collective battles for success in a state that, despite claiming legendary hitmakers like Timbaland, Pusha T, Missy Elliot, and Pharrell Williams, has remained generally overlooked as a bed of talent between Washington, D.C. and Atlanta. A producer-heavy unit, Mutant Academy has...
SXSW Review: X Is Ti West’s Raucous TeXXXas Chain Saw Massacre By Way of Shyamalan’s Old
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: X has a lot on its mind, and the line between exploitation and empowerment is just one of many rich themes mined by Ti West in his first feature film since the 2016 John Travolta and Ethan Hawke-starring Western In A Valley of Violence. “So the camera changes things,” Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) says midway through the film, just before RJ, Lorraine’s boyfriend and the young starry-eyed director of the porno at the center of the film, storms out of the shoot, furious and uncomfortable with her sudden interest in appearing on-screen in their dirty picture. Lorraine, quiet as a church mouse, is the innocent boom mic operator, not like these other girls willing to debase themselves on-camera, or at least that’s how RJ ...
SXSW Review: Dolly Parton Doc Still Working 9 to 5 Chokes on Its Own Ambition
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: More than 40 years ago, 9 to 5 burst onto movie screens with a deceptively winning formula for 1980: Take three women at the top of their game — actress/producer/activist Jane Fonda, top-tier comedienne Lily Tomlin, and country music superstar Dolly Parton — and throw them together in the dreary workplaces of Carter-era America with a chauvinistic boss (Dabney Coleman) you’d just love to see tied up and tortured. It may have played like a lark, thanks in no small part to a whip-smart script from Patricia Resnick (3 Women) and fanciful direction from Colin Higgins (Harold and Maude), but it had feminist teeth underneath the laughs, which led it to box-office success and decades of appreciation. Decades ...
SXSW Review: DMZ Creates a Compelling New World, But Only Feels Like the Beginning of the Story
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. The Pitch: The timing of DMZ is maybe not the greatest, depending on whether or not you’re up for engaging with a story about urban warfare at a time when that sort of literal real-life horror is headline news. But the new HBO Max original series, based on the DC comics series and executive produced by Ava DuVernay, still stands out for its compelling premise and dynamic cast, despite a few issues largely stemming from its format. New World Order: When we first meet Alma Ortega (Rosario Dawson) in the not-too-distant future, she’s working as a medic in an intake facility for those who have tried illegally to enter the United States of America — not to be confused with the Free States of America, because seven years ago, a ...
SXSW Review: WeCrashed Is Too Long, But Nails the Daffy Rhythms of the WeWork Scandal
The Pitch: How far can a startup run on vibes alone? Turns out, it’s however far $47 billion gets you, at least in the smoke-and-mirrors valuations of VC culture. After all, that’s the magic number WeWork CEO Adam Neumann (Jared Leto) and his kooky wife/chief branding officer Rebekah Neumann (nee Paltrow; yes, she’s Gwyneth’s cousin, played by Anne Hathaway) used to fool Wall Street for nearly a decade into thinking they were the next great world-changing startup. But within a year’s time, WeWork’s value plummeted, the Neumanns left in disgrace — though not without a $2 billion golden parachute — and the buzziest company in America became a punchline. What led to such a precipitous fall? That’s the question WeCrashed, Apple TV+’s latest push for the startup-grifter boom (after Netflix...
SXSW Review: Hulu’s The Girl From Plainville Is an Introspective Drama Uninterested in Excuses
The Pitch: Series co-creators Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus keep the true-crime story wave going with The Girl From Plainville, an eight-part limited series based on the “texting suicide case.” In 2014, Conrad Roy III died by suicide in Mattapoisett, Massachussets — this tragedy eventually garnered national attention as investigators learned of the role that the teen’s girlfriend, Michelle Carter, played in his death. Roy’s and Carter’s motivations were previously explored in Erin Lee Carr’s 2019 documentary, I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter – and, of course, in all the preceding media coverage of the groundbreaking case. But The Girl From Plainville uses artistic license to venture deeper into the minds of these adolescents, and track how a chance meeting in Flor...
Greta Van Fleet Kick Off 2022 Tour in Michigan: Recap + Setlist
Greta Van Fleet opened their “Dreams in Gold” tour in Kalamazoo on Thursday (March 10th), kicking off the run in their homeland of Michigan with the first of five dates in the state. With support from the Rival Sons and Velveteers, Greta Van Fleet left the Wings Event Center with a distinct taste of rock and a night to remember. First, The Velveteers took to the stage, opening with “Motel #27.” The Colorado trio, led by singer Demi Demitro, set the mood for an energetic evening; Demitro thrashed appropriately as she sang about a hazy and uneasy world of loving. Next was Long Beach, California’s Rival Sons, who also held their own in a competition of which opener could wow fans the quickest. For those unfamiliar with the five-piece, they are old enough to have a few grays, and cool enough t...
Human Resources Review: An Overly Raunchy, Occasionally Thoughtful Big Mouth Spin-Off
The Pitch: Five seasons into the Netflix animated comedy Big Mouth comes Human Resources, a spin-off dedicated to exploring the workplace antics of Big Mouth’s hormone monsters. Not only does the show feature familiar Big Mouth hormone monsters Maury (voiced by Nick Kroll) and Connie (voiced by Maya Rudolph), as well as The Shame Wizard (voiced by David Thewlis), Love Bugs, and Anxiety Mosquitos, Human Resources also introduces dozens of new characters, including a “Logic Rock” named Pete (voiced by Randall Park), Petra the Ambition Gremlin (voiced by Rosie Perez), and many other fantastical creatures that represent the complex emotions of human beings. Rather than dwell on the pubescent confusion of adolescence, the creatures of Human Resources serve humans of all ages, and throughout the...
Ryan Reynolds Is Really, Really Reynolds-y In Netflix’s The Adam Project: Review
The Pitch: The Adam Project is centered on the kind of question asked during job interviews and looming existential crises: “What would you say to your younger self, should you have the chance?” But in the case of Adam Reed (Ryan Reynolds), that’s not why he’s traveled back from the year 2050 to the present. Adult Adam’s on a quest to find his wife Laura (Zoe Saldana), a fellow time traveler in the program controlled by the duplicitous Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener). Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite hit the time period he was looking for, instead blundering across his pre-teen present-day self (Walker Scobell), a plucky but troubled kid coping with the recent death of his scientist father Louis (Mark Ruffalo), school bullies, and other indignities of growing up. While initially reluctant to...
The Boys Presents: Diabolical Offers Wild Superpowered Raunch As We Wait for Season 3 — Review
The Pitch: Animated spinoff anthologies for popular nerd properties are all the rage, it seems; hot off the back of Star Wars Visions a mere few months ago, Prime Video’s hit superhero satire The Boys gets one in the form of The Boys Presents: Diabolical. Taking inspiration, presumably, from their other blood-soaked comic book adaptation Invincible, here we’ve got eight distinct stories, with eight distinct animation styles, telling stories in and around the show’s world of corporate-sponsored (and created) superheroes, and the intestine-strewn trails they leave in their wake. Across eight Adult Swim-sized stories, the anthology peeks into the following tales of superpowered mayhem: Advertisement • A Tex Avery-style silent caper with a Vought scientist chasing down...
Euphoria’s Season 2 Finale Was a Mess, and Not Even the Fun Kind
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 2 finale of Euphoria, “All My Life, My Heart Has Yearned for a Thing I Cannot Name.”] Euphoria hive, this is a dark time. Today, we truly have no other choice but to put our eye gems away and ask ourselves — what was that?! The Euphoria Season 2 finale, which aired February 27th on HBO, finally brought this chaotic, discourse-filled era to a nearly disastrous close. The episode was a dumpster fire of pacing issues and lacked the signature style that makes the show fun to watch in the face of absurdity. It’s almost impressive that the hour managed to both be overstuffed and completely devoid of any cohesion at the same time. It was the epitome of, “Go girl, give us nothing.” Advertisement Related Video Since its return on Ja...
