Reviews of the Bosch

Against the passage of time, heroes are not static figures. They are shaped by myth, by reputation, by politics; they are moulded to suit new purposes and agendas as their real moral and mortal character is reduced to the mere legend, what they stood for obscured. Across history countless souls have died in the name of a man who preached love and empathy. A single phrase from a single speech by a revolutionary has been misappropriated by agents of bigotry, intentionally clouding his most radical philosophies. And the worlds these figures aim to bring about don’t come to the utopias they envision. When War for the Planet of the Apes ended on the serene death of Caesar, the great liberator and saviour of ape-kind, there didn’t appear to be much left to tell. All the pieces were in place to connect this story to that of the original 1968 film to take place centuries later. The origin of the Planet of the Apes was effectively complete. But drawing that line is a very easy thing to do, and

I think The Idea of You  manages to bypass the usual toxic age-discrepancy discourse by the simple fact that Anne Hathaway does not look her age. Or if she does, she certainly dispels any notion that 40 cannot still be young and sexy. In a sense it works a little against the perceived message of the film -this is not Ali: Fear Eats the Soul levels of social convention-challenging; and yet for 2024 it sort of is, which is how the movie manages to get away with its theme. There has been a lot said about age gaps in relationships in recent years, about power dynamics and control, and aspects of it have certainly been pertinent. It’s not hard to look suspiciously on particularly male celebrities who have much younger wives or girlfriends -the Leonardo DiCaprio joke always coming around. But it has also seriously been overblown to the level of criticism directed at relatively harmless celebrity age gaps of just a few years or the outright infantilization of young women in the industry. In a

It’s been a while since I watched a real experimental film. And  La Jet é e is one that stretches even the definition of a film. Directed by leftist French New Wave artist Chris Marker, who mostly made documentaries and early film essays (in addition to other visual media experiments), it is a twenty-eight minute short film made up entirely of cross-fading still images depicting a science-fiction narrative of nuclear annihilation and time travel. It is also perhaps the most beautiful and haunting short film I have ever seen. Accompanied by voiceover narration, the film opens on the childhood memory of an unidentified Man (Davos Hanich) seeing a beautiful woman at the Orly Airport before the traumatizing incident of witnessing a man die -though the circumstances of it are fuzzy. In the present he is one of the few survivors of the apocalyptic World War III, and in an underground catacomb is selected for experiments by scientists looking to time travel as a means of saving the human race

Welcome to a new series of Doctor Who , back after five months and with a double-header to boot. Two episodes on the same day to give an impression of what this new era of the show may be. They are very different episodes, with their own sets of strengths and weaknesses, but their signature commonality is an overriding philosophy towards big conceptual swings -both are unsurprisingly written by showrunner Russell T. Davies. Whether it is populating an episode with talking babies or wringing literal instrumental chords out of people’s bodies and going out on a musical number, there’s every indication this series aims to be more broad than Doctor Who  has been in a while, to break the formal rules of the universe and experiment. I guess after that ‘cardinal sin’ of the bi-generation , all bets are off. And to be fair, Davies did warn the audience. I find it intriguing though and the possibilities are vast in either direction of quality. For good or bad, Doctor Who  perhaps has the real p

The Cronenberg family is pretty intense, and I can’t imagine what it’s like in that household. Clearly David, the Canadian filmmaking legend, passed down his artistic instincts to his children -but with it that disturbing sense of processing it that made him such an influential figure of the horror genre since the 1970s. Son Brandon has clearly proven to be his father’s child by running with it, and now daughter Caitlin, a photographer making her directing debut, has decided to join in on the family occupation as well. Her movie Humane  is not so pronounced or extreme as her brother’s and some of her father’s, but she too sees horror as the primary medium of expression, especially for political themes. There are marks for her as a potentially great director down the road, though with this first movie she definitely reveals some stumbling blocks. Humane  is set in a future of ecological catastrophe that has yet not impacted the everyday lives of the most privileged. And government effor

In the opening pre-show to The Fall Guy , a standard now for any blockbuster movie playing in theatres it seems, director David Leitch characterized the movie as a tribute to stunt performers, among the most under-appreciated artists working in Hollywood. In the bit, Ryan Gosling even made the now fairly common appeal for a Stunts category at the Oscars -also brought up in the movie itself. And if nothing else, the movie is dead-set on making that case, on emphasizing just how important stunt performers are to the movie industry and how thankless the job can seem -given the pain involved and lack of recognition. Leitch knows it first-hand, which is why though he didn’t write the movie, he was absolutely right to direct it. And indeed The Fall Guy  is the best movie in a while from the man who got his filmmaking start co-directing John Wick -probably owing to the palpable affection he has for the subject matter. The film is loosely based on a TV show from the 1980s your dad will rememb