Reviews
Wolf Like Me Review: Josh Gad and Isla Fisher’s Quirky Genre Romance Feels a Little Too Forgettable
The Pitch: The new Peacock series Wolf Like Me is a sweet and quirky dramedy that makes great use of the talents of Isla Fisher and Josh Gad. It also, however, happens to fall into too many of the traps which doom the original series being made today for streaming. Again, the show itself is fine. But it can’t escape the category of being just forgettable enough to potentially doom it to obscurity; lingering forever in the corners of streaming services, joining its spiritual sisters Gypsy, Homecoming, Maniac, and countless others. The Reason Why This Review Isn’t Very Long: The central twist of Wolf Like Me is one that Peacock would prefer not get spoiled prior to premiere — in fact, the screeners were sent out with this note from creator Abe Forsythe: “I’d love for audiences to go into wat...
A Remarkable Zendaya Anchors Euphoria Season 2: Review
The Pitch: HBO’s provocative teen drama returns on Sunday, January 9th, and while plenty of things have changed for the characters in this neon-soaked, nightmarish dreamscape of Southern California, so much is still the same. That’s the thing about addiction, isn’t it? It’s a cycle that’s very, very hard to break. But we as the audience are once again in the hands of young addict Rue as our omniscient narrator, who continues to be lovingly brought to life by Zendaya, the youngest person ever to win an Emmy for Best Actress for a Drama Series. Still Don’t Know Her Name: “I don’t think I’m a good person.” Repeated like a refrain, delivered like a prayer, this sentence is a concise summary of many of the central struggles in Season 2 of Euphoria. To that end, things pick up in fairly familiar...
The 355 Review: Predictable Twists Bog Down This Lady Spy Thriller
The Pitch: There is a certain sub-genre of films, largely action films, that belong to a very specific time and place — an idyllic lazy Saturday afternoon, that post-lunch or brunch drowsiness kicking in as you nestle into your couch at home, searching for something to watch that won’t require too much effort to engage with on your part. The kind of movie you might watch with your dad over the holidays, just because it’s on cable. What The 355 offers up is a perfect Saturday afternoon dad movie, but instead of starring Stallone or Eastwood or Bronson, it stars five women with six Oscar nominations and two wins between them. (And was written by the creator of NBC’s Smash!) Approached with those sorts of low expectations, the new action drama starring Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélo...
The Weeknd Unleashes Purgatory Dance Fantasy on Dawn FM
You are sitting in a car. The car is stuck in a tunnel; gridlock traffic. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. You are waiting your turn. All you can hear is the car radio. The smooth-talking DJ is guiding you forward, to “accept your fate with open arms.” Sounds like purgatory, huh? That’s the idea. And that deathly DJ? It’s Jim Carrey. Oh, Canada. As The Weeknd descends further into conceptual madness, his fifth album Dawn FM, out Friday (and announced only earlier this week), unfurls a vaguely existential playlist — songs welcoming listeners to the “painless transition” of the great beyond. While the metaphor is somewhat trite, the execution is sharp; a seamless, afternoon-drive radio airplay, with scene-setting jingles and a quippy, psychedelic ad for “Afterlife,” billed as an abs...
Peacemaker Review: The Suicide Squad Spin-Off Series Soars Like a CGI Eagle Thanks to Its Ensemble
The Pitch: If you watched The Suicide Squad last year and got told that one of the characters would be getting a spinoff TV show, would Peacemaker (John Cena) have been your first guess? Even with the post-credits scene setting up the series, probably not. Nonetheless, James Gunn‘s first major TV project takes this blunt instrument of an anti-hero and uses him as the base for an at times strange, at times pretty fun action-horror adventure. (The term “superhero”… does not feel particularly applicable, in this case.) “Previously, in The Suicide Squad…” That’s not a bit — that’s literally how the first episode of Peacemaker opens, treating the film like the true pilot episode of the series. (Which, it could be argued, it was.) What’s important to remember from that movie, if August 2021 is u...
A New Adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days Has Exactly the New Year’s Energy We Need: Review
The Pitch: In terms of literary adaptations, Around the World in 80 Days hits right in the sweet spot established by decades of Masterpiece programming in general and the BBC adaptation of Sherlock in particular. But there’s one huge exception to this: Unlike Sherlock, which is a series that worships the concept of genius, 80 Days features a protagonist who’s far more often in over his head. Set in 1872 (the same year that the original Jules Verne novel was published), 80 Days is an adventure inspired by a bet: specifically, the bet made by eccentric gentleman Phileas Fogg (David Tennant) that he can circumnavigate the globe in the time period allotted. Eighty days might sound like a lot of time, but when one’s primary means of transportation are ship, train, or camel, it’s a frightfully s...
Cobra Kai Is Still Nostalgic Fun, But Starts to Pull Its Punches in Season 4: Review
The Pitch: At the end of Season 3, things were changing for the inexplicably-karate-obsessed denizens of Encino, California. Sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove) is now fully in command of Cobra Kai, with Johnny Lawrence’s (William Zabka) troubled son Robby (Taylor Buchanan) now his trusted sempai; the school’s firmly back on its ‘strike hard, strike fast, no mercy’ kick, especially in a softened Lawrence’s absence. But as a new year (and a new karate tournament) dawns, Lawrence has one way of getting Kreese out of town for good: if either he or his former-rival-turned-reluctant-ally Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) can get their dojos to win the All-Valley, Kreese is gone forever. It’s a tall order, considering that a) Johnny and Daniel-san’s decades-long rivalry still simmers below the su...
Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts Is More About the Memories Than the Magic: Review
The Pitch: You’ll spend a lot of time thinking about chairs, while watching Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts. Not just who’s sitting in them, and where, and with who, but the chairs themselves: plush vintage armchairs, high-backed wooden thrones, and the wide spectrum of options in between. The anniversary special dropping on New Year’s Day is a loving look back at the global phenomenon, as told by the stars and directors involved with the journey along the way. It also, despite best efforts made to add some visual flair in the form of wandering about archived film sets, is about 80 percent just footage of people sitting and talking. While tracking the chairs people are sitting in is oftentimes necessary to understand the context of the soundbite you’re hearing, overall th...
In The Book of Boba Fett, the Bounty Hunter’s Not a Regular Crime Lord, He’s a Cool Crime Lord: Review
The Pitch: Do you already think Boba Fett is cool? Your answer to that question is 1000% going to drive your interest in the second Star Wars series (of many) to finally debut on Disney+. Featuring Temuera Morrison in the role he was set up to play by the prequels, The Book of Boba Fett is a love letter to an action figure, with occasional glimpses at a deeper significance lurking in the shadows. Do you not already think Boba Fett is cool? Well, that’s a concept which creator Jon Favreau and pilot director Robert Rodriguez clearly find to be inconceivable. If you don’t even know who Boba Fett is, and/or feel disinclined to learn more — well, sorry, this show has no patience for your kind. This is a true super-fan effort designed to reveal just how much of the core fanbase is still excited ...
The LCD Soundsystem Holiday Special Aims for Nostalgia to Mixed Effect: Recap
Even after COVID forced LCD Soundsystem to cancel the remaining three shows of their 20-night Brooklyn Steel residency, the band hasn’t given up on trying to keep things jolly. On December 22nd, James Murphy and co. brought the holiday cheer to Amazon Prime Video with their part comedy, part concert film Christmas special, appropriately titled The LCD Soundsystem Holiday Special. Directed by Eric Wareheim (of Tim & Eric fame), the hour-long special aims to capture nostalgia twofold. It opens with a parody of a ’90s sitcom titled “All My Friends,” in which Wareheim stands in as Murphy in a fictionalized version of LCD Soundsystem. With Macaulay Culkin portraying drummer Pat Mahoney, the band fumbles through assembling the perfect setlist for the night’s gig. Spanning their 2005 de...
Why Hawkeye Was the Best MCU Adventure of 2021
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the season finale of Hawkeye, “The Boss.”] 2021 was the MCU’s busiest year to date, thanks to films and shows delayed by the pandemic. It was also a period rich with the inclusion of new voices behind the scenes and on-screen, as well as some of the franchise’s most experimental storytelling to date. From WandaVision breaking all the fourth walls to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings incorporating wuxia and mythical wonder to Loki giving us the gift of Richard E. Grant in that costume, Marvel delivered some truly wild moments. Given all of that, it could have been the case that Hawkeye, now having completed its six-episode run on Disney+, would have ended up being a bit of an afterthought. Instead, the complete series may not f...
The Matrix Resurrections Review: A Wild, Meta, Sometimes Muddled, Occasionally Transcendent Love Story
The Pitch: Here’s the problem with reviewing The Matrix Resurrections: At this point, we basically have to accept that the franchise peaked with the first installment. This isn’t meant as an insult, but an honest statement of fact– this is what happens when a film is a masterpiece. If 1999’s The Matrix is a nearly perfect movie, almost transcendent at some points with how it blended genre and technology in service of its storytelling, then yeah, it may be impossible to top it. What makes Resurrections such a fascinating viewing experience, though, is the fact that the movie knows this. And, rather than try to shift the narrative to some different angle on the original, director Lana Wachowski, who co-wrote the script with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, decides to take on that problem...
