Reviews of the Bosch

It was never really about the country music. I suppose that is why I, a general country music hater, still enjoys it so immensely. The music is the colour, its industry is the texture, but it is not the fabric. That is something far bigger and more definitive, something bolder and revealing still several decades removed. Robert Altman's Nashville , which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this summer (one of several great movies of that year, I may touch on another), is perhaps the most American movie ever made. It's very intentional on the surface -the film is draped all over in the American flag and obvious symbols and motifs of American national and cultural identity (Uncle Sam and the like); a strain of jingoism was already present in the industry it represents, and Altman was of course very conscious of the impending bicentennial the very next year -doubtless the country itself was in something of a fever for it. The movie is brazen with its American city title, the stars...

Spike Lee talked me into it. Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song  is a difficult film. Difficult to watch and difficult to approach. And that was certainly the intention of Melvin Van Peebles, the man who just about single-handedly made the film -directing, writing, producing, editing, and composing it, all while playing the title role for good measure. It originated in his desire to break from the system he had been working in and to create a true black power movie that Hollywood would not allow; it was designed to piss off the man and make white audiences uncomfortable and alienated. Indeed that is still its effect more than fifty years on. Sweet Sweetback  was inarguably a vital film for the black community. It is of course often credited with spearheading the blacksploitation genre of the 1970s, though crucially unlike many of its imitators its chief creators were all black themselves. As such it can’t help feeling more raw, its fury and emotional themes more authentic....

I was very surprised to learn that Andrew DeYoung has never written or directed for I Think You Should Leave , Tim Robinson’s brilliantly surreal and deranged sketch comedy show on Netflix. Because his movie, Friendship  -which stars Robinson, feels cut from the same cloth. Perhaps some of that came from Robinson’s presence and the film’s script being reoriented to his sensibilities, as has been the case for comedy stars in the past. But it’s tone too just feels perfectly in-line with many of those baffling sketches of awkward guys who just can’t let go of their hang-ups and foibles. It’s also fitting that the film co-stars Paul Rudd, as its premise is something of a dark mirror to  I Love You, Man , one of the better Judd Apatow knock-offs of the 2000s that also featured Rudd as a charming and likeable idyllic best friend. In both cases he is the straight man of the pair, but Friendship  applies a filter warped in male loneliness, insecurity, co-dependency, and obsession...

Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning  is a movie about the excruciating but not impossible goal of defeating A.I. -in a large-scale sense but in the film industry particularly. The Mission: Impossible  movies have been for at least about a decade now metaphors for the filmmaking process and the movie industry itself; and in the spectre of at long last ending this series, Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie consciously chose to go out by devoting their two-part finale to addressing and taking down the biggest threat to movies of the modern era. A proud and hopeful statement in defiance of a dangerous technology that would butcher art and stunt creativity. Cruise, who has always valued authenticity and human spontaneity in making cinema and has become one of its most outspoken champions as a result, is very aware of what A.I. would take from the experience of both making and watching movies. The point was made abundantly in Mission: Impossible -Dead Reckoning , but...

Doctor Who  does Pleasantville . That is essentially what the initial conceit of “Wish World” boils down to as it conjures up a conservative paradise of a reality where the nuclear family dominates, women are near universally subservient to men, disability and marginalized identity are unacceptable in public life, and any doubt in the system is an egregious taboo that must be punished. And of course there is a ‘friendly’ white male overseer to keep everyone in their place. Doctor Who  has done a few dystopias in its time, but it is rare that one is so concise as this, that seems equal parts ludicrous hyperbole and exhaustingly authentic. If it weren’t for the fact both this Doctor and companion were people of colour, I’m sure they would be excised from this perfect world as well (and I’m honestly surprised Belinda’s grandmother was still allowed to wear a sarong in a white Christian country). It is of course a leapfrog off of “Lucky Day” , where Russell T. Davies really dived ...