Film/TV
683 results
Page 32
'Bridge of Spies' and 'Trumbo'
Revisiting the Red Scare
Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and Jay Roach’s Trumbo are reminders, instructive and nostalgic, that what scares us now happened before, and we survived.
Articles
5 minute read
A look back at 2015's best television
Looking at my list of my 2015 favorites, I still see shows featuring tortured men on the moral razor’s edge, torn between the two sides of their nature — but the cracks are beginning to show.
Articles
6 minute read
'A Very Murray Christmas' on Netflix
A snark-free holiday celebration
Bill Murray grew up, as I did, watching holiday specials of the ubiquitous variety shows of the '50s and '60s, and he celebrates them in his Netflix special, A Very Murray Christmas. The title encapsulates the overall vibe of the show, which both recognizes the cheesiness of the genre he’s recreating and sincerely respects it.
Articles
5 minute read
'Jessica Jones' on Netflix
The future of female superheroes (maybe)
The only thing more deadly than superheroine Jessica Jones's strength is her quick, very snide sense of humor.
Articles
3 minute read
Brian Helgeland's 'Legend'
Two for the price of one
Tom Hardy is extraordinary in Legend, Brian Helgeland’s biopic of the East End twins who dominated London’s crime scene in the 1960s. But a more searching film would have had more to say about the connections between high and low society.
Articles
4 minute read
‘The Leftovers’ on HBO
Let the mystery be
The change of scene in season two of The Leftovers jolted the show from a meditation on grief into a crisis of conscience — and gave me hope that it won’t spiral into the incoherent plotting of creator Damon Lindelof’s previous show, Lost.
Articles
5 minute read
'East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem' at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival
Make music, not war
East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem documents an eight-day collaboration between Israeli, Palestinian, and American musicians making an album in an East Jerusalem music studio. The project, led by Israeli singer/songwriter David Broza, shows what can be achieved when human interaction replaces politics.
Articles
4 minute read
Tom McCarthy's 'Spotlight' (first review)
Unlocking omerta
Spotlight shows how a group of reporters uncovered the Catholic Church’s decades-long omerta concerning priests sexually abusing children.
Articles
4 minute read
Ridley Scott's 'The Martian' (second review)
When science gets sentimental
A space castaway epic demonstrates our psychological habit of crystallizing our empathy within individual stories, as if we can’t comprehend a crisis until it has a single human face.
Articles
5 minute read
Danny Boyle's 'Steve Jobs'
The man behind the curtain
Michael Fassbender does a superb job portraying Jobs, but the director Boyle and screenwriter Sorkin go too far in trying to redeem the man's bad behavior.
Articles
2 minute read