Reviews of the Bosch

This review of Tenet is coming from a place of privilege. Thanks to Christopher Nolan, his fans, and the media, this movie has been so touted as the saviour of cinema in the time of plague that it is both exhausting and impossible to leave that weight it carries unaddressed. I went to see Tenet , because I am lucky. I live in Canada and in an area that has done relatively well at keeping down the rate of COVID-19. But just because I did this does not mean people in more tenuous situations or in hubs of high infection should risk their health for a movie, any movie. I did not see this movie for Christopher Nolan, but for an exhibition model I love; and I understand and support any critic who has refused to see it and put their lives in danger in the process, just for a well-intentioned but misguided bit of egotism and studio greed. And having watched Tenet , which has crafted this narrative that there's more riding on it than any other Nolan movie to date, I can assuredly say...

It says a lot about the time we're living in when I can watch a movie like  Serpico  and feel it doesn't go far enough.  Serpico  is one of the most anti-police mainstream movies of its era, the true story of former cop Frank Serpico's decade of work to expose the corruption within the New York Police Department. In these momentous times of unprecedented strife and worldwide calls to revolution, I find it important to look to movies that have illustrated the unrest to remind or reveal to myself that this is nothing new, that the anger and misery has been embedded for decades and is once more bursting forth with passion. It comes perhaps with being obsessed with movies and media, and feeling obligated to educate myself through looking at films by Oscar Micheaux , documentaries on the Black Panthers , French social films that feel eerily relevant , etc. I think it's not too hyperbolic to say that we (or at least we in the west) are at a threshold that we can eithe...

Tesla  is the second time this year I've seen an ostensible biopic explicitly break the rules of and re-contextualize the form of the biopic. Michael Almereyda's film on the career of Nikola Tesla is adapted from a script he wrote over twenty years ago for Jerzy Skolimowski that never came to fruition; and in his return to it, he takes an unusually avant-garde approach to the subject of addressing the life of this crucial but mysterious figure in the history of electrical engineering and modern technology. Within the film, there is the history and a thesis on Tesla himself, though it is presented through relentlessly curious narrative, structural, and visual choices. It is perhaps less successful than Josephine Decker's Shirley  in this regard, and may not wholly work for all its' ambition, but it is terrifically fascinating nonetheless. Almereyda's cited influences on the film include Derek Jarman, Henry James, and Drunk History  of all things. I haven't...

We’re living in an interesting time for Star Trek . After more than a decade where it seemed unlikely, for the first time since the ‘90s multiple series are in production at the same time -but they’re Star Trek  as we’ve never seen it before. Star Trek  shows distinctly tailored to a new era of television that is quite different from the one that saw The Next Generation  through to Enterprise . Everything from number of episodes to visual effects budgets to mode of accessibility itself has evolved drastically.   And for dramatic genre T.V. especially, there are new requirements to be met in a post- Game of Thrones  age. Non-serialization is out for one, the standalone episode is a thing of the past -meaning shows have to be started from the beginning and episodes can’t be missed. Subject matter must not be self-censored, formerly off-limits things such as sex, swearing, certain levels of violence, and that which is called “moral complexity” should instead...

There's a certain schlocky appeal to Unhinged , the new thriller from director Derrick Borte and one of the first new films coming back to cinemas, of the same variety as last years' Crawl . It's a cable TV B-movie dressed in the apparel of a real film. It even takes a lot of direct inspiration from one of the most famous of these, Steven Spielberg's feature-length debut Duel . The premise is almost insultingly simple: a young woman having a frustrating morning just happens to piss off the wrong guy in a moment of road rage, and he proceeds to violently stalk her down and terrorize her and her family. Russell Crowe plays this part, introduced to us as he chokes back pills before breaking into his partners' house, murdering her and her lover, and setting the place on fire. He's big and broad, unkempt and menacing, even as he's behind the wheel of his pick-up truck for much of the movie. "The Man" as he's credited, though he also uses the ...

“Among all the people you know, how many do you really understand?” Sometimes you can watch a movie wholeheartedly in expectation of something great, only for it not to meet that threshold to the point its’ true value doesn’t register with you. And sometimes you can watch a movie just to occupy your attention out of boredom or depression (or a sense of obligation to have something to write about), and it unexpectedly engrosses you out of nowhere to a level too innately personal and passionate for a Friday afternoon on a television set. I didn’t know I needed to see Kim Bora’s House of Hummingbird  until I was watching it and in the throes of its beautiful and intimate portrait of a young girls’ emotionally turbulent life. It premiered at the Busan Film Festival nearly two years ago and has enjoyed a gradual festival run all over the world since then, picking up numerous awards in the process -before hitting VOD in North America sometime last month. The film lives in the of...

There seems to be an unwritten rule of comedy that requires a comedian of a certain clout to eventually play a dual role for a movie, regardless of whether it is a good idea or not. Often it is not.  Look no further than to Mike Myers, Tyler Perry, and the many many dual performances of Eddie Murphy. It took nearly a decade for Adam Sandler to bounce back from the travesty that was Jack & Jill , and An American Pickle  (though not nearly as outdated a joke) had every chance of failing in the same ways. Seth Rogen though, is perhaps savvier than those prior examples in how he chooses to proceed with the gimmick; teaming up with New Yorker  writer and Man Seeking Woman  creator Simon Rich to adapt his novella Sell Out  (originally published in the New Yorker  in fact) into this uniquely absurd movie about a Jewish immigrant who fled his former Russian state from the Cossacks and was frozen in a vat of pickle brine for a century going to war with...