Reviews of the Bosch

There is a sequence in At the Place of Ghosts that feels notably disconnected from the personal trauma that is driving the journey of two siblings through the dense woods of Nova Scotia. They run into what appear to be British redcoats from somewhere in the eighteenth century who assault them and debate how best to kill them -only to be rescued by a couple Mikmaq women, who kill the soldiers, and direct them further along their path. Time means nothing in these deep parts of the woods -the pair had earlier seen denizens of an ancient Mikmaq settlement on the shores of a river- but this was a much more concerted, physical interaction. Perhaps it symbolizes the link that colonialism has to even the struggle they face independent of a tangible white presence -it is something rooted in their heritage and thus has a realness and relevance to their current  situation in this territory of spirits. These are real ghosts that they encounter, but the important ghosts represented in this mov...

A talking animals movie from the director of The Minions does not sound like something that would be much good. A talking animals movie from the writer of Chernobyl and The Last of Us though sounds intriguing in an extremely bizarre kind of way. And yes, Craig Mazin has more than enough bad comedies to his name from before he made a wild tonal shift in his career, but there’s a weight he carries now and a maturity as a writer that means something. Even for as seemingly strange and trivial a project as this. The Sheep Detectives , the live-action directing debut for Illumination’s Kyle Balda, is based on the popular German novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann -a mild murder mystery distinguished by the gimmick of its protagonists being a flock of sheep. A silly, one-note premise perhaps, but Mazin apparently found something soulful there amidst the goofy animal detective work. And against the odds he actually manages to translate that in his adaptation, which looks on the surface lik...

If a studio is going to make a lega-sequel, it should make the case for not only its own existence on its own terms but why it must exist at this point in time. Often these sequels are separated from the original by decades -they don’t exist in the same world, it would be meaningless to pretend otherwise. What does the movie have to say that is relevant now beyond its nods to the nostalgia of the past? Ideally it should go beyond simply lip service to new references or technologies. There are really just a few of these types of sequels that are genuinely in conversation with the world that they are made in. Top Gun: Maverick was one. The Matrix Resurrections was another. And of all things, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a third. Perhaps that is an unreasonable tone. The Devil Wears Prada was very in-tune with the zeitgeist in 2006 as far as the world of high-end fashion magazines was concerned. It is a particular backdrop and one that has changed in monumental ways since that cannot be...

Nobody puts any real effort into making action movies look cool anymore. They still can, but incidentally so. John Woo, whatever else you might say about him, certainly cared. Are half the things that the characters in this movie do while gunning each other down practical or even all that effective? No. But the imagery is really exciting to watch regardless. Hard Boiled was Woo’s last film in Hong Kong before he formally made the transition to Hollywood and it is popularly regarded as one of his best movies (alongside his original The Killer a few years before). It is one of the defining films of the Hong Kong action genre and for good reason -its filmmaking and stunt choreography is highly inventive and extremely kinetic in a way that is palpably influential across the action film spectrum. It may be one of the earliest “gun-fu” movies and had a major role in solidifying the global star power of its two highly charismatic leads. An adequate trade-off for what is not a particularly st...

Nine times out of ten when a biopic is made with the participation of the subject’s estate or family, it is not worth very much. It is virtually guaranteed to be a hagiographic puff piece that whitewashes the less flattering, more controversial aspects of the subject’s biography. And arguably no biopic has been as blatant in this as Michael , directed by Antoine Fuqua, which bleaches its story as thoroughly as Michael Jackson did his pigment. The Jackson family power is on display so starkly and shamelessly that it is Michael’s own nephew stepping into the titular moonwalking shoes, and the structure of the film is so haphazard in order to avoid difficult topics that it becomes almost a parody. You can feel the scrapped third act very starkly, the search for some kind of conflict that doesn’t taint the image of Michael Jackson, the once-in-a-generation pop genius. Michael Jackson very much was this, but he was also something else far more complicated and it is disingenuous not to inter...

Live-action sitcoms about kids tend to not be very good. I grew up in arguably the golden age of this genre on the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon (and their awkward Canadian cousin, The Family Channel), and I certainly enjoyed my fair share of them - Drake & Josh , Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide , and even That’s So Raven being particular favourites. But their appeal was in their pre-teen to teenage representation and the sense of fun they extolled while still being somewhat relatable to the ordinary kid’s life and patterns. They were never of high mark when it came to the writing, directing, humour, and acting, and you would have to be very generous to argue that point as an adult bereft of nostalgia or cherry-picked examples to the contrary.  I feel like I was somewhat aware of this at the time, but didn’t care. Kids need to see these kind of stories from their perspective on-screen. That alone matters. These shows were sequestered away on TV networks designed for a...