Reviews of the Bosch

Luca Guadagnino had a fantastic 2024. It doesn't often happen anymore that a director releases two movies in a single year to the quality of both Challengers  and Queer , but he did it. And that two-punch appears to be just the start of a momentum he is riding high. His name has been prospectively attached to a new version of Lord of the Flies  and a remake of American Psycho , his next project is going to be the Sam Altman movie -he is one of the busiest filmmakers in Hollywood right now. But the pedigree his name has carried may be in jeopardy and his run of triumph ended if After the Hunt  is any indication. Maybe his successes have gotten to him, maybe this movie is just demonstrative of contentious proclivities that were always there but have gone unnoticed, or maybe he just needed writer Justin Kuritzkes -who penned both of last years’ films- more than we realized (this script is credited to one Nora Garrett), but for the first time it really feels like th...

Manuel Puig's  Kiss of the Spider Woman  makes for an awkward musical, let alone a movie musical. It is a depressing story about two men incarcerated and abused by an authoritarian regime set entirely in a prison -most of it in one prison cell. Sure there are recurring flights of escapist fancy through a storytelling device of one recounting to the other a favourite movie -but it is a Nazi propaganda film. Several ingredients primes for a dour, tasteless musical almost in the vein of "Springtime for Hitler". Regardless, it was in fact produced in 1992, by luminaries Kander and Ebb and Terrence McNally no less, and was a relative success. And now, perhaps to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the acclaimed  film version that inspired the show to begin with, comes a movie adaptation that lays clear the musical's flaws while adding a few of its own -yet being appealingly garish in other regards. After the 1985 movie transferred context to the military dictatorshi...

We all know the common parable. A person suffering and at the end of their ropes suddenly receives a supernatural visitor to convey to them that their life has meaning and value if they’ll only stop and recognize it, punctuating the point by showing what their life would be like had it turned out another way -had they had somebody else’s life instead of their own perhaps. They realize their value and move forward with a new lease on the life they live. It’s a cozy narrative. Unfortunately for a lot of people it is completely wrong. It’s a nice sentiment to say that money won’t solve all your problems, but in such a money-dependent horribly lopsided society as ours, for a lot of folks money will indeed solve all their problems. That is the central joke at the heart of Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune  -his directing debut, a movie that is not only a subversion of popular morality tale, but in doing so is a biting indictment on the effects of the wealth gap in the modern era. Principa...

For a Blumhouse horror movie sequel, perhaps the best thing that can be said about  Black Phone 2  is that it is interesting -where so few movies like it are. Not every aspect of that is a success, and there are some real stretches where it does to try and justify itself, but its focus and presentation are distinct from that first movie -something that is important in any attempt to build a horror franchise. The first movie was based on a story by Joe Hill, very much in that mode of supernatural mixed with tangible horror that his father Stephen King is so known for. There is no source for director Scott Derrickson and his co-writer C. Robert Cargill on this film, and yet they still lean into that kind of a tone, but in their own way -such as bringing a much greater influence of slasher films into what was formerly a largely grounded piece. Case in point, Ethan Hawke’s serial killer villain The Grabber was killed at the end of the prior movie -but leaping off of the...

If any episode should feature an appearance from Dr. Bongo! Wasted opportunity. Especially since "Wicked Human" is kind of a sequel to "A Clockwork Origin" once again pitting Professor Farnsworth and his resolute adherence to science against religious faith. In the earlier episode it was around the idea of creationism, here it is much more specifically focused on the end-times, the rapture.  And Futurama  feels a little bit late to that topic, if only because several of its adult animation peers, including American Dad!  and The Simpsons , have done takes on that theme years ago. But this show's unique context opens the potential for a unique interpretation ; and to some degree that is what  eventually  happens here, if it unfolds in a fairly mediocre way. That starts with the episode opening on the Professor attempting to fine-tune his oft-seen smelloscope by inventing a Naser (nasal laser), and needing crystals to power it he goes to get them from a fair ...

It’s hard not to be predisposed towards a celebration of the life of John Candy, one of the most effortlessly lovable entertainers of the past fifty years taken far too soon back in 1994. I was barely alive at the same time that he was, but I miss him every time I see one of his movies or TV shows like few other actors who have passed. Because John Candy is one of those actors I always feel cognizant of how much was lost in terms of exciting performances and movies by his death. I even paid my own tribute to him years ago. So going into John Candy: I Like Me , the documentary directed by Colin Hanks (who first met Candy as a kid on the set of Splash ), and that appropriately opened this year’s Toronto Film Festival, I was prepared to enjoy some highlights from his career, memories shared by his family and friends, and even be emotionally moved by the story of his tragedy. And the movie does all that fairly well without venturing outside the normal parameters of a showbiz doc. Much lik...

Revisiting the  Tron  franchise in the era of A.I. and virtual reality is actually not a bad idea. Tron  is one of the best examples of a movie that envisioned a future which in many ways came to pass. Sure, we can’t be digitized into a computer program where we race around in light cycles, but virtual realities have become a thing and artificial intelligence -though not of nearly the same variety- is top of mind. Disney, which produced the original movie in 1982, already tried to bring it back in 2010 with Tron: Legacy  -which did about as poorly in that time as the original film had in its (and it appears that the pattern is continuing). But a key problem with Tron: Legacy  that is also present through much of Tron: Ares  is that the fantastical world of this series’ universe is no longer rendered with novelty. Digital effects, the very thing that made Tron  groundbreaking in 1982, are what makes it a touch stale today. For as revolutionary as those ...

A fair bit of what Scarlett Johansson got wrong with Eleanor the Great , James Sweeney gets right with Twinless  -specifically as far as having manipulative, dishonest protagonists who are still meant to be likable. Sweeney perhaps has more riding on it, given he plays this character as well as writing and directing the film, but for a filmmaker of his youth he demonstrates a really firm grasp on how to articulate someone’s humanity through inhumane choices. He also never loses sight of the consequences and harm done by this figure, or who the tragedy of the story ultimately belongs to. And he does so while making the situation wickedly funny too. Twinless  is a fairly warped comedy-drama -and only Sweeney’s second feature-film- about the lengths people will go to for a missing connection, centred on two men sorely in need of it from very different avenues. We’re introduced to Dylan O’Brien’s Roman -in deep and difficult mourning after the sudden death of his twin brother Rock...