Reviews of the Bosch

“Cain rose up against his brother Abel and slew him. And Cain went away, and dwelt in the land of Nod only east of Eden.” When this line is uttered and that Biblical parallel drawn most openly in the last ten minutes of Elia Kazan’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s ubiquitous novel, its intention is one of ill-will -the sheriff comparing a young man to one of the famous early villains in the Bible, encouraging him to step out of the life of his family and community for good. But what this movie does, and was likely the intent of Steinbeck, is make this descendant of Cain the sympathetic figure in this story, at worst an anti-hero unfairly sidelined and stigmatized. Cain is supposed to be the ancestor of mankind, his violence, jealousy, and rage an explanation for humanity’s -the implicit theory of the story that we would have been a better, more virtuous race descended from Abel. But supposing that we’re not, it is even more necessary to find understanding with Cain, and interrogate the ...

If you pay attention to film discourse spaces, among the myriad comments and criticisms you’ve likely heard these last few years  about the modern industry (as it exists in Hollywood at least) is that we don’t have movie stars anymore. It has been bolstered by figures in the industry -Quentin Tarantino and Anthony Mackie are just a few of the names who have brought it up, the latter in spite of being the lead actor in one of the major blockbusters of the year so far. But the average person on the street doesn’t know who Anthony Mackie is by name, even casual moviegoers probably don’t. Few people are making decisions to see a movie he is in based on his presence in it. He is a Hollywood actor but he is not a Movie Star. What is a Movie Star? Well, it is more than just the actor who leads a movie. Since the early years of cinema, movie stars have been public personalities functioning low-key as symbols of the medium, either by their own volition or that of their popularity. In the e...

The Ncuti Gatwa era of Doctor Who  has not yet had a proper horror episode -an undervalued staple of the series that every Doctor (certainly of the twenty-first century) ought to have. After all, as was reiterated last week the most popular favourite episode of Doctor Who  is one of its greatest horror shows. Both “73 Yards” and “Dot and Bubble” had strong horror moments, but don’t really count. “The Well” at long last does. It’s got all the classic traits of a Doctor Who  monster episode -the mysteriously abandoned outpost, a small collection of characters whom the Doctor and companion embed themselves within, and a body count. And it seems to be as much about showcasing Gatwa’s capabilities with this formula as it is with creating its unsettling atmosphere and air of paranoia, which it does quite well -credit to director Amanda Brotchie. What it is less successful at is relaying much substance through its premise or rabble of guest characters, and the concept of its ...

There was something quietly radical about Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet , his first international movie breakthrough. Not just in its openly queer subject matter, which was not something to scoff about even in 1993, but in the way it presented earnestly a comical premise, expanded it in unexpected ways, and came to a very unique resolution that stands out as much now as it did then. It’s no wonder that Lee was able to build his career off of that, up to and including perhaps the most famous LGBTQ film, Brokeback Mountain . Lee co-wrote The Wedding Banquet  with his frequent collaborator James Schamus, who over thirty years later has now also co-written its remake with Andrew Ahn, the new film’s director. There is some fun potential in revisiting the premise of a gay immigrant to the U.S. who has to fake a marriage for the sake of his traditionalist family, but Ahn expands that story significantly, particularly concerning the point-of-view of the bride and making the film a much mor...

The moment where everything went wrong was when the white people showed up to the black party -in real life as much as in the movie  Sinners . At a moment of pure, transcendent black cultural ecstasy, the white folks arrive and they have never been less welcome. It plays out literally in this film, but its meaning stings well beyond the frame of the screen. There is so much truth and a lot of tragedy in the undercurrent to its sensational veneer. A movie about vampires and gangsters that speaks authentically to generations of expression preyed upon, erased, and appropriated. In the guise of broad genre films, Ryan Coogler has strived for such authenticity, and in his first non-franchise project in twelve years, he has perhaps captured it better than ever before. And more than on just its metaphorical depth, Sinners  is presented with such vigor and artful maturity -ironic given it has maybe the least mature precepts of anything he has made. He lives up to those as well though ...

“Lux” is an episode very much intended to be a counterpart to “The Devil’s Chord” from last series. It is structured very similarly, acting as the first time travel adventure for a new companion, involves art in some way as a central tenet, a broad comic villain (and in this case both are brazenly connected), and endeavours to be experimental in form to the point of breaking the show’s conventional reality logic. And I suspect like the former episode, this too will go over contentiously with the fandom. Really though it is an episode that gets by on its technical impressiveness more than its storytelling or themes, both of which are fairly mild and boilerplate for Doctor Who . Nothing terrifically surprising happens in terms of the Doctor and Belinda’s story, even the more serialized components to the episode  connecting with shows from last series don’t carry much severe or lasting drama. Russell T. Davies’ script has its notable blemishes too, as it zeroes in emphatically on a g...