Reviews of the Bosch

In the 1993 Nora Ephron movie Sleepless in Seattle , there is a rather cheeky scene in which Meg Ryan cries while watching An Affair to Remember -the film which Sleepless in Seattle is a loose remake of. Likewise in Leah McKendrick’s Voicemails for Isabelle there are a handful of conscious references made towards Meg Ryan by a protagonist comparing herself to one of Ryan’s rom-com characters -Tom Hanks is also name-dropped.   This thematic quote is not accidental. McKendrick’s movie very much endeavours to be a modern take on a Nora Ephron rom-com. In the vein of Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail it incorporates a modern messaging plot device as a means of bringing together its romantic leads, one taking the initiative from a place of anonymity only for the truth to inevitably come out, yet their romantic connection withstanding the situation regardless. One of those classic rom-com premises that only happen in the movies. Of course, for several reasons, McKendric...

The Death of Robin Hood is one of those chapters of the Robin Hood mythos I remember most prominently. An older Robin arrives at a priory, injured or frail, an accident with bloodletting results in him slowly dying -in his last action, perhaps with the help of a loyal Little John, he fires an arrow out a window requesting to be buried where it lands and succumbing the moment it leaves his bow. The tale, which originates in a ballad from the 17 th  century, doesn’t often show up in Robin Hood movies for its bleakness (an exception being Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian from 1976), but Michael Sarnoski is very much attracted to that bleakness. In fact, he builds it out. His movie, straightly called The Death of Robin Hood , subverts heavily the romanticism of the Robin Hood legend about as far as it has yet been taken. We’ve seen dark takes on Robin Hood, but none so grim as this in which the righteous reputation of the classical outlaw is suggested to have been a complete fiction,...

What even is a toy in 2026? It used to be that there was a very clear distinction between toys and other kinds of entertainments for kids, but that has gotten much more blurred in the last couple decades, especially in the era of widespread digital technology. Toys still have their function of course and the toy industry still flourishes, but it seems kids are being introduced to devices like smartphones and tablets earlier and earlier, competing for their attention and entertainment with the more traditional “child’s playthings” as one cowboy once described them. Honestly, it is a very interesting theme to tackle with a Toy Story movie in this modern age -really the only theme to tackle that would be compelling for the franchise at this point, which has a pattern of exploring themes of adolescence, growing up, and even existentialism through the vantage point of plastic dolls and their relationships to the children who play with them. Every Toy Story movie after the first has to so...

On a gut level, there is something very satisfying in seeing an elaborately choreographed action sequence executed with style and creativity. And The Furious has several of these. Watching the movie, the lineage of Hong Kong action blockbusters is apparent, as director Kenji Tanigaki combines the often outrageous techniques of those films with a more grounded and gruesome violence -fighters still appear at times indestructible, but they show more visceral blood and bruising until they do arbitrarily succumb. And you are in no hurry for that as an audience given the consistently entertaining new ways these figures get back up after a walloping to continue the beef. The Furious doesn’t let up on this easily, and perhaps thankfully so, as outside of the action there is very little distinct or compelling to the film. It is a movie that has a charmingly pan-Asian character to it. It is produced by Hong Kong, but directed by a Japanese filmmaker and shot entirely in Thailand. Its cast is c...

For a director who has often been associated with extra-terrestrials (to the point one of his most famous movies is named after the subject), Steven Spielberg hasn’t actually made many movies about aliens -really just four out of thirty-five. But he is a filmmaker known for spectacle and the alien movies he has made are each very interesting, reflecting his own intense curiosity with the subject of UFOs. In 1977, he related that compulsion very brazenly for the first time in Close Encounters of the Third Kind .  Nearly fifty years later, he does so again in Disclosure Day , which in some respect feels like a spiritual follow-up -the 2020s equivalent one might say. His last alien movie before this, 2005’s War of the Worlds , is also the last time he has made a movie set in and about contemporary times -having preferred historical settings for the bulk of his work in the last two decades. And like that film, Disclosure Day has the opportunity to be a commentary on the world it is ma...

Power Ballad is one of those movies where you really know what you are getting and are happy to get it. It is the latest film from John Carney, a filmmaker who specializes in his own niche of movies about people who make music, who love music, or both -and there are few people better at it than him. Maybe his films can be cheesy or saccharine but they can also be tremendously warm and earnest. They will generally follow everyday characters  -amateur musicians or music admirers- who find something personally enriching in musical expression. And of course they will feature or perhaps even centre around a standout song, like the Oscar-winning “Falling Slowly” from Once , “Lost Stars” from Begin Again , and “Drive it Like You Stole It” from Sing Street (I was personally also quite fond of the less-celebrated “Meet in the Middle” from Flora and Son ). As much as those other films, these qualities are true of Power Ballad , which attaches them to a premise that is deceptively simple in ...