Reviews of the Bosch

For many years now I’ve had an appreciation for a little-seen, little-talked about early Kenneth Branagh movie from 1992 called  Peter’s Friends . It’s a charming comedy-drama about a group of university friends who were in a comedy troupe together reuniting for the first time in over a decade when one of them inherits their father’s estate. Mostly I’ll admit I was drawn to it because it features the only ever movie reunion of Cambridge Footlights stalwarts Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie. Eventually I became aware however that it is essentially a British version of an American movie that already existed and was far more acclaimed. And watching The Big Chill  for the first time, I couldn’t help notice all the ways that Peter’s Friends rips it off, and that it is honestly the better movie. Co-written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan hot off of writing Return of the Jedi  it very much feels apiece with an early film of his compatriot George Lucas. Where in Americ...

He was a comic strip character. Created by cartoonist David Low, Colonel Blimp appeared in the London Evening Standard  from 1934 as a satire of elite foppish military brass -the "donkey leading the lions" concept that had taken root with the First World War. An antiquated, pigheaded military commander offering little in terms of sound military strategy or intelligence, and only arrogant jingoistic nonsense. A ludicrous relic of an empire in decline and perhaps a perfect symbol of Britishness as it was stereotyped around the world. And as happens with every popular intellectual property, in 1943 he got his own movie. Though The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp didn't begin as an adaptation of the character, its themes just happened to line up perfectly with what Colonel Blimp represented -though not as a caricature ...as a man. Inspired by the idea of an elderly soldier failing to relate to a young one, the great British filmmakers of that era Michael Powell and Emeric Pr...

The charisma of tenured Hollywood stars can go a long ways in mediocre movies. Whether it’s Anne Hathaway elevating the material of The Idea of You  or George Clooney and Julia Roberts carrying something like Ticket to Paradise  -which would completely sink without them, there’s value in that kind of charm that seems a rarity in Hollywood these days. Sure you’ve got folks like Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney bringing it back in Anyone But You , another movie that coasts on its lead stars’ chemistry, but they are for now still an exception. However, a movie needs to know how to use that charisma, especially if it has little else going for it. And Wolfs , the first non - Spider-Man  studio movie from Jon Watts, really doesn’t have the substance to make up for a lack of star energy. It is a George Clooney-Brad Pitt team-up movie -their first pairing on-screen together since Clooney shot Pitt in a closet in Burn After Reading  in 2008. They are two celebrities known for t...

When you get right down to it, aren’t feminine beauty standards really gross and absurd? That is the point that Coralie Fargeat jack-hammers into the audience with her film The Substance , a movie that is thematically as broad and as blunt as it is stylistically graphic and repulsive. And it is very much meant to be this overt in a way that few satires dare to be for fear of bogging down the point. But every so often, someone like Leos Carax or Boots Riley can just go nuts with their brazen commentary, by casting it against a world so extravagant or an emotion so raw, and Fargeat is honestly more excessive in her proclivities. The Substance  is a sharp, vividly pointed movie, deeply uncomfortable and bizarre -and not just in the freakish body horror elements. It is a firm movie in its vicious conviction and by the end certainly not anything you’ve likely experienced in the cinema before. The movie stars Demi Moore -a very calculated casting choice given her tabloid history t...

The function of Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story  is to justify its own myth-making. That this is cynical is unsurprising, that it is mostly successful, is. I think part of that comes from the fact that twenty years after his death there is still an enormous amount of affection for Christopher Reeve. Like Jim Henson, John Candy, or indeed his best friend Robin Williams, his early death -and some would argue his tragic accident years before- left a crater in the public cultural heart that has never been remedied. It’s something about these figures of intense joy and warmth that makes it harder to take. But for Christopher Reeve, directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui make the case that these qualities in tandem with the struggle of his later years against arduous, seemingly insurmountable odds and passionate public activism made him genuinely the hero he became a household name for playing. The movie is produced by DC Studios, which does have the rather sickening effect of t...

There’s a trauma in the anticipation of losing a loved one that is different than the loss itself. It is a grieving process that begins before there is a death to grieve defined by complicated feelings and anxiety over the inevitable. The period before a major but expected death is full of the kinds of preparations and grim realities that you would never want to face, but with the morbid fact of the loved one still being present and tangible. Yet most would agree it is better to know the loss is coming, because with all this stress also comes opportunity for reflection, catharsis, and closure. Even healing. Vincent’s three daughters are especially in need of that, as they converge on New York City to care for their father in the final days of his battle with cancer. Each of them approaches the situation with what maturity they can muster while also aware of the need to repair their estranged relationship with each other in order to get through the imminent loss of their beloved dad. Wr...

And we have another Futurama anthology episode before we close out the season. As I stated last year, the Futurama  anthology episodes have had diminishing returns since the Comedy Central run and “The Prince and the Product” is the worst they’ve yet done. On some level I appreciate the writers’ interest in branching into something completely different, but often these are just shallow concepts struggling to find the joke, and especially with the low episode count already give the appearance of the show running out of ideas in their own universe. But while “The Futurama Mystery Liberry” is not particularly great, it does at least break the downward spiral and might be the best version of this episode since “Reincarnation” at the end of season six. Being hosted by LeVar Burton probably helps, as he brings his Reading Rainbow earnestness to a framing device about children’s mystery books, and what follows are a triptych of parodies in that genre. The first turns to the classics. Lee...