Reviews of the Bosch

Many Wes Anderson movies are about the troubled relationships between father figures and their children. It is a potent well that he continues to find new depths in. Usually there is a moment of some earnestness on the patriarch’s part that bridges the divide and makes room for reconciliation. But I can’t identify that moment in The Phoenician Scheme  -and I believe it is a part of why the movie feels underwhelming against Anderson’s wider oeuvre. Certainly it feels like his first throwback movie in a while, far more similar to Rushmore  or The Life Aquati c than his more recent efforts. Like those movies and The Royal Tenenbaums  it is centred on a particularly thorny protagonist, a 1950s industrial tycoon in the arms dealing business called Anatole Zsa-Zsa Korda, played by Benicio del Toro -who has survived many an assassination attempt through his plan to set in motion a radical and deeply unethical new business enterprise in Phoenicia. To secure the confidence and sup...

It was a surprise to see relatively early into Ballerina  (officially From the World of John Wick: Ballerina , an utterly atrocious title) the appearance of Lance Reddick as Charon. Reddick tragically passed away shortly before the release of John Wick: Chapter 4  in early 2023. And while on the one hand it is welcome to see him one more time, his presence is also a stark reflection of how long ago this movie was shot and the protracted post-production it has undergone. That is not strictly a problematic sign, but it can often serve as an explanation for a film’s deficiencies of cohesion, as is the case in several places in Ballerina . You can spot for instance where series architect Chad Stahelski took over in re-shoots from director Les Wiseman. You can perhaps even pinpoint where the studio decided after initial filming to give Keanu Reeves a more prominent role than he really ought to have. As a result of these, it is a very odd movie -though not one that dramatically stic...

One would think that the TV series Cobra Kai was enough of a lega-sequelizing for the Karate Kid  franchise. From what I know that show already followed up on all of the still-living major characters from the 1984 classic and whatever plot threads were left from the initial run of films. But of course Columbia Pictures had yet to reach the peak of brand consolidation open for them by the fact of the existence of the 2010  Karate Kid remake that had not been folded into the series’ wider continuity (though it is certainly arguable it still hasn’t been). And so fifteen years after a Karate Kid movie has hit theatres, Karate Kid: Legends  comes sold on bridging that gap with a premise wherein a new kid is taught martial arts by both Jackie Chan’s Mr. Han of the remake and of course the original Karate Kid Daniel LaRusso, played once again by a now middle-aged Ralph Macchio. But what is there for the movie to be beyond that gimmick? Not much as it happens. It sticks fairly cl...

Gregg Araki’s Nowhere  has a cast of dozens and not one of them isn’t in some way queer or queer-coded. Following up on his token “Heterosexual Movie” The Doom Generation , perhaps this was the fair exchange for one of the New Queer Cinema movement’s most prominent directors. It is a thematic follow-up to The Doom Generation , as well as Araki’s 1993 Totally Fucked Up  -which together formed his “Teenage Apocalypse trilogy” (though his later film Kaboom  could probably be grouped in with them as well). It is also perhaps one of the most 90s movies ever made, its fashions, music, indie punk aesthetics, and filmmaking techniques pretty much definitive of that era and that era only. The film as a whole is like a queer Dazed and Confused  with touches of Reality Bites  and Trainspotting  -all of which I’m sure influenced Araki that he then coloured with his own brand of surreal camp madness. There are aliens in this film, and a trio of minor characters referred...

Just two movies into their career, YouTubers turned horror directors Danny and Michael Philippou have set a stable framework of what makes their movies distinct. Essentially it can be boiled down to a combination of emotionally rich characterization peppered in trauma and tragedy with a visceral  brutality to its violence  and intensity. The latter isn’t so uncommon or shocking a quality of horror anymore (though the Philippous still do their best to make you recoil), it’s the former that makes for a more investing experience. They want to make sure you care about their characters and their relationships through the harrowing circumstances they are put through both physically and psychologically. Talk to Me and their new sophomore film Bring Her Back , accomplish this quite effectively, while also representing well the Philippous’ home of Adelaide, Australia -an unexpected hub for freakish supernatural horror it seems. Bring Her Back  delves again into themes of possessi...

Those Fear Street movies back in 2021 were a neat little experiment on Netflix’s part and strongly suited for the mid-pandemic environment they came out in. A trilogy of nostalgia-minded slasher movies, each interconnected but set in a different era of R.L. Stine’s Shadyside, a cursed New England town. Written and directed by Leigh Janiak, there was some decent characterization, a playful sensibility in the atmosphere, and some good scares throughout the trilogy -even as the films themselves diminished in quality as they went along. It really was the model that made the thing interesting, and now Netflix has produced a standalone movie outside of that model without any real narrative connection to the others. And it is certainly the blandest these movies have gotten. Fear Street: Prom Queen  is as bare bones a prom-themed slasher film as you can get, with every archetype and cliché honed in the likes of Carrie  and (obviously) Prom Night , recycled with nothing to say an...

Lilo & Stitch  holds a special place in the heart for a lot of Disney fans around my age. Likely a little too young to catch the classics of the Disney Renaissance like Beauty and the Beast  or The Lion King on initial release, this story of the relationship between a manic alien experiment and a troublemaker of a Hawaiian girl, was the first (and really only) great Disney movie to come to theatres and hit at a formative age -none of the other films they released in the 2000s come anywhere close. Disney themselves knew this when they put this latest horrendous retread into production, perhaps figuring they had one last shot through their live-action remake machine to really capitalize on the nostalgia of my generation, and assessing (very accurately it appears) that we are still very easily manipulated by such things. As a result, the 2025 Lilo & Stitch  is everything the animated movie was not -blisteringly derivative where that one was starkly original, hollow ...

Just last week, I criticized the somewhat repetitive nature of “Wish World” to the previous series’s penultimate episode “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” , and from there thought I could guess the major points of the series finale. The joke is on me though. I did not expect at all what would ultimately happen. I’ll go into it in more depth, but by far the biggest thing is that “The Reality War” turned out to be the stealth final episode for Ncuti Gatwa and the Fifteenth Doctor. This has never happened in the modern era of Doctor Who  -every Doctor’s exit from the show has been presaged by some announcement in the press that the lead actor is leaving. As true of Jodie Whittaker as it was of Peter Capaldi as it was of Matt Smith as it certainly was of David Tennant as it even was of Christopher Eccleston. It’s just not something you surprise the audience with. But Russell T. Davies and Ncuti Gatwa did just that, and the fifteenth series finale winds up being our premature goodbye to this...