Reviews of the Bosch

Why have I now seen two fondly remembered Christmas movies with uncomfortable scenes of blackface in them? And why is one of them from the goddamn 1980s?? Like most of John Landis’s movies from this era, Trading Places has a handful of scenes and a few thematic threads that are frustrating or have aged poorly -unfortunate marks on a premise that in this case is actually very good and interesting. A satire of class and wealth that feels like a piece by Mark Twain adapted by Preston Sturges based around the singular concept of a rich man and a poor man swapping class status. Some form of it had been seen before but never in this precise manner or with this slickness, and it is perhaps the optimal example in American cinema. I wasn’t aware of how much influence it had on this year’s Good Fortune  for instance -which is basically the same plot but with an Angel and magical intervention thrown in (and maybe more direct consciousness of the reality of wealth disparity). For as interesti...

Given its prominence and popularity it is often forgotten that the genre of high fantasy -as in fantasy predominantly set in a fictitious magical world- has had very little representation on film that has been all that successful. Harry Potter  doesn’t really cut it -that franchise is entirely set across a secretive underworld existing within our ordinary one. Among various attempts, from adaptations to original projects to a long-awaited Dungeons & Dragons  film (that I’m sorry to remind its fans under-performed), Peter Jackson’s  Lord of the Rings  trilogy really stands alone in this respect …almost. Though it is rarely brought up now and appears largely forgotten outside of the fantasy film fandom and younger millennial nostalgia, there was one high fantasy movie to come out in the wake of the  Lord of the Rings to genuinely become a hit in its own right: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  from 2005. Like  Lord of ...

The contextual title card at the beginning of The Secret Agent characterizes 1977 Brazil as a time of ‘mischief’. A mild word perhaps to use for a military dictatorship that monitored everyday lives and disappeared people without trial or explanation. A film like last year’s I’m Still Here -set about the same time- demonstrated that viscerally. But in the way that Kleber Mendoça Filho illustrates the authorities standing in for that regime on a micro level, it does appear to be the appropriate term. This is a movie that begins with officers elaborately investigating a car at a gas station, getting in it and looking through every nook and cranny, but are uninterested in the dead body lying a few feet away, a victim of gun violence earlier in the week, waiting to be disposed of. It is important to emphasize that the adherents to that system weren’t merely vile, but petty, corrupt, and idiotic. Mendoça Filho touched on that theme before through the villains of Bacurau , his wild revision...

It’s impossible to know if any part of the play  Hamlet , first staged around 1599, was in any way inspired by the death of William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet at the age of eleven in 1596. The creative process would not have been considered important enough to be on record for someone of Shakespeare’s relatively low stature. Likewise we don’t know a lot of the details of his marriage to Anne Hathaway or who she was in her life apart from Shakespeare. This historical ambiguity must be understood when attempting to characterize the lives of these people with little impression left behind but a name and an association with the most influential writer and dramatist in the English language. Licence must be taken, and not merely to fill in the gaps, but to relate an expression of these people as perceived by their artist. Chloe Zhao says as much about herself as she does Shakespeare, Anne, Hamnet, and how they are all intertwined by art. Zhao’s interpretation, in concert with Maggie O’Farr...

The Housemaid  is trash. That is its genre, not a judgement: sensationalist wine-mom trash. And as trash it does its job fairly well with the requisite high drama, sexy tension, and visceral twists. Like many a pillar of this new form it is based on a novel, a 2022 bestseller by Freida McFadden, and comes courtesy of director Paul Feig, who has adopted this genre in lieu of comedy since his surprise 2018 hit A Simple Favor . Though I haven’t seen that film myself I don’t expect  its fans will be either too surprised or too upset with what he has done with this material, which similarly weans its drama off a relationship between two women. Set in the wealthy suburbs of Long Island, the film follows Millie, played by Sydney Sweeney, who attains a job as a live-in maid for the Winchester family. Secretly, she is a homeless young woman on parole after ten years in prison, utterly surprised to get the job. Through her interview and first day, her immediate boss Nina (Amanda Seyfrie...

One of the big things that made Avatar: The Way of Water so enjoyable a movie in relation to its predecessor was how new and distinct it was compared to that movie. The thirteen year gap felt a touch earned for this -it explored new corners of its world with a host of brand new characters, priorities, and conflicts. It’s the most interesting way to keep a franchise going, as James Cameron knew well. And I do wish there could have been more of that sensation present in his third film. I wish there were more fire and ash in Avatar: Fire and Ash . Of course, a part of that may not be reasonably expected -a lot of this film was shot back-to-back with The Way of Water  and so it makes sense that it would be on a similar wavelength with similar subjects and spaces at the centre. Still, there are segments and aspects of the movie that not only feel narratively and aesthetically attached to the previous film but repetitive of it, while suggested points of interest are unexplored. It is th...