Reviews of the Bosch

In 1975, after its enormous success, Steven Spielberg was approached about directing a sequel to  Jaws , and he utterly refused. Various reasons seem to have included the hectic production of the first movie, a genuine belief that there was no more story to tell, and even a little pomposity regarding the very idea of sequels.  Jaws 2 was made without him, as were the subsequent two movies, each progressively worse than the last. In 1982, he firmly put his foot down on a sequel to E.T. as well, feeling it would cheapen the original. And he really only made the two Indiana Jones  follow-ups because he was pressured into them from the beginning by George Lucas. But by the mid-1990’s, his mind appeared to be changed towards the idea, having been announced as director of The Lost World , the sequel to Jurassic Park , based on the equivalent sequel novel by Michael Crichton. It’s also worth noting that The Lost World was Spielberg’s first movie in a four-year hiatus af...

The Third Man is remembered as an Orson Welles movie. But not only was Welles not the director, but his role amounts to little more than a glorified cameo. Yet the movie revolves around the complications and moral character of his Harry Lime, the enigmatic figure at the heart of the mystery of Carol Reed’s classic film noir. And it is a damn good film noir and thrilling mystery at that. Penned by the great Graham Greene and shot in a highly stylized way, it may be more important for its dim atmosphere and unusual politics of post-World War II Vienna, as well as the pessimistic view of human nature embodied by Lime. The plot actually focuses on Holly Martens (Joseph Cotten), an American pulp Western novelist who’s fallen on hard times, visiting Vienna to meet his old friend Lime (Orson Welles) -only to learn upon arrival that Lime has been recently killed in a car accident. After hearing from British Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) that Lime was a racketeer, a disbelieving Martens...

I love movies like Life Itself  that tell stories spanning a range of time and place. I don’t know, giving a story more scope makes it feel more important, makes you invest more in the characters with long-term growth, and when done right it makes you think about the big picture, the nature of the human experience, the world, and yes, life itself. But I don’t like Life Itself . The movie from director and This Is Us  creator Dan Fogelman that shares a name with a fantastic Roger Ebert documentary from 2014 is extremely ambitious in the effect it wants to evoke, but to the point it doesn’t realize it’s not actually saying anything profound with its grand structure. Presented in “chapters” the movie tells four stories of two generations of two families; how a tragedy that hits New York couple Will (Oscar Isaac) and Abby Dempsey (Olivia Wilde) reverberates into the life of their daughter Dylan (Olivia Cooke), while also focussing on the lives of Spanish labourer Javie...

It’s pretty obvious that The House with a Clock in its Walls was made by someone unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the genre of childrens’ fantasy. And that’s no surprise, Eli Roth is best known for splatter films like the  Hostel series and The Green Inferno . He departed from gratuitous gore already this year for the action remake Death Wish , but this movie is his first attempt at a family film. It’s based on the first in a series of young adult novels by John Bellairs, and there is the sense of a mythos and larger world to this story. However it’s handled only about as well as The Dark Tower , heavily explained but little explored. It’s about an eccentric boy called Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro), who after his parents’ death goes to live with his Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in a mysterious old mansion. As it turns out, Jonathan is secretly a warlock and his neighbour Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) an even more experienced witch. While Lewis adjusts to life in the n...

You don’t have to read much of Wallace the Brave  to know it has the makings of one of the great comic strips. Even at just over three years, it’s shown an immense quality of artistry, humour, character, and tone, the likes of which its obvious predecessors had in spades. I opened this series talking about  Cul de Sac , “The Last Great Newspaper Strip” and it seems only fitting to conclude with the strip I think proves that may not be the case. Because following in the footsteps of Cul de Sac , Calvin & Hobbes , and Peanuts , Will Henry’s own delightful take on childhood has a lot of that same magic, as well as its own unique character. It’s about the adventures and day-to-day activities of a boy named Wallace McClellan in the small Eastern American coastal town of Snug Harbor. An imaginative, rambunctious kid, he often hangs out with his friends, the eccentric though simple-minded Spud and over-enthusiastic tomboy Amelia. His dad, a fisherman, has som...

Approaching Schindler’s List  is a heavy task. It’s not just a movie, but the most culturally significant exposé of the Holocaust since Night and Fog ; surpassing it even as the go-to film for discussing the great travesty of the twentieth century as represented in art. It is unlike anything else Steven Spielberg has ever made, by far the darkest subject matter he’s ever tackled, and with the most poignancy. And it was quite a success, at least in its impact. It’s still considered a high point of his career, the film that finally won him both Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, and continues to be held as an example of great serious cinema in movie discussions today. It sometimes even skirts in the conversations of the greatest movies ever made. So it’s an intimidating film to talk about. But Schindler’s List is incredibly important not only for its content and message, but for what it meant to Spielberg, his career, and the public perception of him going forwards. I...

A week ago, the fifth season of BoJack Horseman  came to Netflix, and all over the internet people have been talking about how great it is, how profound, emotional, and sobering it is. But that can be said of any season of BoJack . The animated comedy-drama has since 2014 been challenging our expectations of what can be done in the medium of animation with regards to storytelling, character development, social commentary, and thematic potency. It’s the greatest show on television, and that hasn’t changed. But while I personally prefer its two preceding seasons, it can’t be denied season five does some incredibly interesting things, going places no other season, or other show in general, has had the courage to go to. In addition to everything else it throws at you, these latest episodes are very introspective, using the show-within-a-show of Philbert to address and dissect shows like BoJack Horseman . I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series more self-aware and humble enough ...