Reviews of the Bosch

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Avatar Aang Out of Balance

I’m a late millennial, so of course I have a connection to Avatar: The Last Airbender . Though while I was there when the pilot first aired on February 21 st , 2005, I didn’t actually properly give the series a shot until early adulthood, where I was able to appreciate the show on a richer level than if I had encountered it first as a kid. Like everyone though I loved it for its breadth of creativity, distinct and appealing animation, archetypal though strongly defined characters, immense scope, and surprisingly nuanced thematic architecture for a hero’s journey narrative. I also loved its admittedly discombobulated sequel series The Legend of Korra , much more awkward than its predecessor in its weakest moments but more thrilling in its boldest. The resurgence of the Avatar franchise in recent years as a signature artefact of 2000s nostalgia has felt rather shallow and not very interesting -mostly due to the cynical prominence of the live-action Netflix show I have no interest in watc...

At Long Last, a Heady and Heartbreaking Tour Way Down Hadestown

It seems like pro-shot films of popular stage musicals are starting to have a comeback with movie audiences. Quite a few people turned out last year when Merrily We Roll Along , the multi Tony-winning 2023 revival of a previously underrated and unsuccessful Stephen Sondheim show came to a theatre nearby. When I attended Hadestown last weekend, it was very nearly a sold-out show, which rarely happens for even the most popular movies. There’s an appetite and I hope it continues to grow. Because it means that those of us not privileged to live in London or New York can catch these extremely popular shows in their full context rather than piecing them together from soundtrack albums, low-quality bootlegs, or often lower-quality amateur performances. Waiting for them to come to you on stage can be impractical or inconceivable -and even then it would likely be a very different experience than the one everyone raves about. Much as musicals are ideally meant to be produced and performed by a...

Her Private Hell is a Self-Satisfied, Stunning Slog

It’s difficult to say exactly what is going on at any given point in Nicholas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell except that it is quite intoxicating to look at but also quite slow and obtuse. It is Refn’s first movie in ten years, his last being the equally strange arthouse horror film The Neon Demon , yet this film seems even less attached to narrative, character, or context, motivated almost entirely by mood, vibes, messy themes and messier sexuality. As a result it feels to me like a less coherent, less entertaining Lost Highway -which is not a favourite David Lynch of mine but I do have a respect for its metaphors and how it comes together. Her Private Hell does not really -I wonder how much Refn himself can make of its fragments of unfiltered psychology. But it can be called a unique and fascinating film -the preferable form of disappointing movie, for its conceptions and pretentious eccentricities. The title in any case is quite accurate, as Sophie Thatcher’s Elle seems relative...

Back to the Feature: Dead Calm (1989)

Dead Calm is remembered as the movie that really launched the careers of both Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane. Yet my reason for finally watching the film has to do with its third star who, despite the movie’s fairly memorable premise and execution (enough so that it has been parodied a handful of times), is often forgotten was even a part of it. But as in just about every movie he appeared in, Sam Neill is compelling and singular here, and quietly excellent in a role that demands just as much as his younger co-stars if its not as involved or sexually provocative. Neill’s recent unexpected passing is a tough pill to swallow, and I felt a compulsion to engage with some work of this internationally beloved Kiwi who may well have been one of my favourite actors. And Dead Calm , which is a great and popular story, felt like the right piece. Director Philip Noyce and screenwriter Terry Hayes came to the material after an earlier version famously failed to manifest. The book Dead Calm by Ch...

Nobody Actually Cares about Black Helen of Troy

Nobody is more certain of anything than conservatives are that the whole world thinks exactly as them. We’ve seen it on so many fronts of political issues and idiotic culture wars over this last decade -conservatives, or those of a like reactive mindset, declaring with confidence any outcome that suits their prejudices. The rise of Trumpism taught them that fringe positions and complaints were a lot more popular than the mainstream expected -which was true but clearly not to the extent that they believe. There are so many other factors and nuances that have little to do with broader conservative grievances and the picture painted isn’t actually as accurate as they like to claim either (remembering that Trump only won a popular vote once and by the slimmest of margins). It is exhausting, yet it is an exhaustion that has long spread to my space of interest, the movie space -an area where conservatives, for as much as they decry Hollywood’s ‘liberal elites’ at every opportunity, are despe...

A Monumental Modern Odyssey

“A new dawn will break over the darkened world, when our mistakes will once again be forgotten.” In promoting his new book Son of Nobody at my local literary festival, author Yann Martel noted how the works of the anonymous Greek poet(s) identified as Homer - The Iliad and especially The Odyssey - are foundational texts of western culture; works of curious fiction that carry immense weight on how the literature of western society developed. Martel observed that perhaps a part of that comes from an apparent timelessness in the themes of these stories in which the patterns of the world as we know it three thousand years later can still be found. The personalities, conflicts, and anxieties of such works are apparent in both life and fiction -they speak as much to the present as they ever did. Thus, like every custodian of the material before him, Christopher Nolan very intentionally speaks to the present, in his new adaptation of The Odyssey , in which the Homeric epic is cast as a person...