Reviews of the Bosch

When Cicely Tyson died last month I realized how little of her work I’d actually seen. It’s not too surprising, she was mostly renowned for theatre which elicits little mainstream exposure, and TV performances in the 70s and 80s which are rare to find (at some point I will watch  Roots ). But Tyson does stand tall among African-American actresses, even in the limited experience I’ve had with her performances in her elder years, so I figured I ought to make the effort to at least see one of the parts that garnered her such acclaim: her sole Academy Award nomination for the 1972 film  Sounder  (a first in Academy history of two black actresses being nominated the same year -her and Diana Ross- who were also only the second and third black women to be nominated in that category ever). In spite of her leading nomination though, Tyson isn’t really the main character of Sounder , based on a book by William H. Armstrong I understand has some popularity in American schools. It’s ...

I thought seriously about covering Disenchantment  when it first hit in 2018. I mean it was a new Matt Groening show and I love Matt Groening shows, even if it was coming nearly twenty years after the last, to not a substantial fanfare, and on a streaming service where though it had greater freedom, it was liable to be lost in the shuffle of dozens of other series. Futurama  was, as I have discussed , one of the most important shows of my youth, and The Simpsons when I eventually came to it in college quickly became a favourite as well. I liked the set-up for Disenchantment , felt it was coming at a good time, with the fantasy genre more popular than ever. The characters looked promising too, especially the lead. And of course I appreciated that this show was basically a way to keep most of the production crew and voice cast of Futurama  employed after their second cancellation in 2013. And then it dropped and I watched the first episode …I thought it was fine. Watched a ...

I was really rooting for Earwig and the Witch. I mean it is the return of Studio Ghibli, their first feature in seven years and the first sign they are looking to a future without Hayao Miyazaki, the studios’ visionary founder and genius director. And I thought that this being a CG-animated movie was an interesting and bold choice. Plus, I just wanted a win for the director, Goro Miyazaki, whose previous films  Tales from Earthsea  and  From Up on Poppy Hill  though good are often seen as lesser entries in the companys’ catalogue next to all the classics -and his dad is just real mean to him about his efforts too. It would be a great validation if he successfully brought Studio Ghibli into the CG animation sphere. Sadly, what Earwig and the Witch  does instead is tarnish a legacy. In thirty-five years and twenty-one features, many of which rank among the greatest animated films, Studio Ghibli has not made a bad movie… until now. Earwig and the Witch  is the...

Land  is a movie all about being alone. For so much of the screen-time there is none but Robin Wright’s Edee to attract your attention as she attempts to survive  off the land in an old cabin in the remote mountain wilderness of Wyoming (though actually shot in the Albertan Rockies). She is choosing to live like this as some means of coping with the trauma of a largely mysterious tragedy that resulted in the deaths of her husband and son. Out there she doesn’t have to see people, doesn’t have to know what’s going on or participate in society at all. The film is Wright’s directing debut, and I wonder if she would have made it had she known the idyllic, pastoral solitude of Edee’s isolation would lose any romanticism in the minds of most viewers by the time it came out. For as much as the plot depicts the severe hardships of living alone in the barren wilderness and the need for human contact, the films’ language  also allows that very isolation a tranquil, peaceful atmosph...

It’s usually not a good thing when a comedy movie can be accurately described as being from another era. And especially when that era is the 90s and the brand is what appears to be ill-advised Saturday Night Live adaptations like Coneheads  and A Night at the Roxbury . Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is not based on an SNL  sketch, as much as it may seem like it due to the presence of Kristen Wiig, the outrageous caricatures of lead characters who enter the film fully formed, and a plot that has a lot of the staples of a sketch drawn out to feature length. But in actuality, the film has just as much in common with and is perhaps more indebted to, that family of silly comedies of the late 90s/early 2000s often anchored by an SNL  veteran that became the biggest movies on the planet for a while. Movies like Austin Powers , Zoolander , and Anchorman , with an unrelenting enthusiasm, a boundless energy, and big broad choices to match their big broad characters. Barb and Sta...

  For a long time now the cultural reputation of the Black Panther Party has been in need of a reorientation. Since it’s inception it has been labeled as an extremist organization, publicly vilified, and even decades after its’ dissolution has still been considered a controversial political movement for its vocal stances against the police, the military, and capitalism, as well as its’ bold rhetoric and commitment to the American Right to Bear Arms. Early into its’ existence, French New Wave filmmaker Agnes Varda made a great short film documenting the origins, character, and true purpose of the party from the protests in Oakland over the arrest of party founder Huey P. Newton in 1967. Around that same time in Chicago an Illinois chapter was forming and a charismatic young activist was beginning to make a name for himself there. Judas and the Black Messiah  is the story of Fred Hampton, or rather the tragedy of Fred Hampton; and it might be the best cinematic representation o...