Reviews of the Bosch

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 ...

The primary objective of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe has always been to sell toys. That should be fairly obvious, the brand was after all invented by Mattel to capitalize on the resurgence of the sword and sorcery genre in the early 1980s, but it is also seemingly forgotten about when brought up in the context of nostalgic 80s franchises -especially given the nature of its lore and universe, intended to appear vast and multi-faceted. But it was all a fairly blatant marketing ploy the whole time -and this intrinsic shallowness is something of a key part of the legacy of this series, remembered primarily for its toy line and its cheesy Filmation cartoon show that has permeated the culture much more for its camp appeal than anything genuinely narratively or artistically compelling. Which is not to entirely discredit the thing -indeed the silliness of that cartoon’s various clichés and impressions of masculinity, not to mention the queer aspects of its characters and the villai...

There is an ethical question hanging over  Portrait of Jason , especially towards the end of the documentary. Is it justifiable to capture a man deteriorating under the influence on camera and provoking with some cruel words certain reactions out of him? It’s a level of manipulation, arguably exploitation that is especially wrong when trying to produce a work of authenticity, like documentary filmmaking is meant to be. And yet, there’s not a whole lot here that can definitively be called authentic. It might just be 105 minutes of bullshitting -we’re not meant to know. In any case, both director Shirley Clarke and subject Jason Holliday have been dead for quite some time and the 1967 movie exists as perhaps the central testament to both figures, whatever the issues and qualms about its making there may be. It is a minimalist and avant garde but still shrewd piece of filmmaking that does allow Clarke to construct a narrative out of a performance very broad and charismatic. It is esse...