Reviews of the Bosch

From the moment that critic Robert Daniels’s one-star review of the movie Michael was shared on Twitter, he was harangued by a tidal wave of backlash from both intense fans of Michael Jackson and ordinary users who merely liked the film he panned. His critiques were broadly comparable to other critics: aimed at the conflict-of-interest oversight of the Jackson family on the movie’s production, the bland characterization of the singer’s life and family, and the hagiographic attitude sapping away any dimension from Jackson along with his flaws. “A filmed playlist in search of a story” he characterizes it sharply. Against the furor, he stood his ground and engaged with some comments, most of which were in bad faith. It was blatantly obvious that a lot of them hadn’t actually read the review, assuming Daniels took issue with the movie’s omission of Jackson’s later controversies, legal issues, and pedophilia allegations -things he barely alludes to. Daniels was not alone in this -critics ...

It's mid-May, the heart of the summer, and the weather is beautiful on the French Riviera for the 79th Cannes Film Festival. And once again I can only admire it from afar. One of these days I will see it in person, but for now I can only fawn on what is likely to be a critical preview of the movies to gradually come through the rest of the year. The big headline out of Cannes this year so far seems to be on the lack of Hollywood present. No major American studio films are in competition or premiering there, when typically there are at least a few. In past years, Furiosa and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as well as the last several Mission: Impossible movies have featured in the festival a few weeks ahead of their broad domestic release. But this year and by its own choice, mainstream Hollywood has no presence at all, despite the official poster referencing Hollywood classic Thelma and Louise . But this isn't a bad thing. Cannes is an international festival with inte...

I wonder if Remarkably Bright Creatures would exist without My Octopus Teacher ,  the Oscar-winning documentary that came out two years before Shelby Van Pelt published her bestseller novel. The interest both take in the octopus and specifically anthropomorphizing it as some wise creature benignly interacting with the affairs of everyday people is a link that doesn’t feel entirely incidental. And now with a movie adaptation out directed by Olivia Newman, who was also behind another movie translation of a book club favourite , it’s even easier to see those linking tentacles. In spare moments at least. Because though he is an omniscient figure, narrating the story through cool, dispassionate ruminations provided by Alfred Molina, the octopus Marcellus isn’t so significant a part of the movie here. Yet I suspect Remarkably Bright Creatures would have been much better if he had been. Distributed directly to Netflix, the film stars Sally Field as Tova, an elderly cleaning lady at a sm...

There is a sequence in At the Place of Ghosts that feels notably disconnected from the personal trauma that is driving the journey of two siblings through the dense woods of Nova Scotia. They run into what appear to be British redcoats from somewhere in the eighteenth century who assault them and debate how best to kill them -only to be rescued by a couple Mikmaq women, who kill the soldiers, and direct them further along their path. Time means nothing in these deep parts of the woods -the pair had earlier seen denizens of an ancient Mikmaq settlement on the shores of a river- but this was a much more concerted, physical interaction. Perhaps it symbolizes the link that colonialism has to even the struggle they face independent of a tangible white presence -it is something rooted in their heritage and thus has a realness and relevance to their current  situation in this territory of spirits. These are real ghosts that they encounter, but the important ghosts represented in this mov...

A talking animals movie from the director of The Minions does not sound like something that would be much good. A talking animals movie from the writer of Chernobyl and The Last of Us though sounds intriguing in an extremely bizarre kind of way. And yes, Craig Mazin has more than enough bad comedies to his name from before he made a wild tonal shift in his career, but there’s a weight he carries now and a maturity as a writer that means something. Even for as seemingly strange and trivial a project as this. The Sheep Detectives , the live-action directing debut for Illumination’s Kyle Balda, is based on the popular German novel Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann -a mild murder mystery distinguished by the gimmick of its protagonists being a flock of sheep. A silly, one-note premise perhaps, but Mazin apparently found something soulful there amidst the goofy animal detective work. And against the odds he actually manages to translate that in his adaptation, which looks on the surface lik...

If a studio is going to make a lega-sequel, it should make the case for not only its own existence on its own terms but why it must exist at this point in time. Often these sequels are separated from the original by decades -they don’t exist in the same world, it would be meaningless to pretend otherwise. What does the movie have to say that is relevant now beyond its nods to the nostalgia of the past? Ideally it should go beyond simply lip service to new references or technologies. There are really just a few of these types of sequels that are genuinely in conversation with the world that they are made in. Top Gun: Maverick was one. The Matrix Resurrections was another. And of all things, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a third. Perhaps that is an unreasonable tone. The Devil Wears Prada was very in-tune with the zeitgeist in 2006 as far as the world of high-end fashion magazines was concerned. It is a particular backdrop and one that has changed in monumental ways since that cannot be...

Nobody puts any real effort into making action movies look cool anymore. They still can, but incidentally so. John Woo, whatever else you might say about him, certainly cared. Are half the things that the characters in this movie do while gunning each other down practical or even all that effective? No. But the imagery is really exciting to watch regardless. Hard Boiled was Woo’s last film in Hong Kong before he formally made the transition to Hollywood and it is popularly regarded as one of his best movies (alongside his original The Killer a few years before). It is one of the defining films of the Hong Kong action genre and for good reason -its filmmaking and stunt choreography is highly inventive and extremely kinetic in a way that is palpably influential across the action film spectrum. It may be one of the earliest “gun-fu” movies and had a major role in solidifying the global star power of its two highly charismatic leads. An adequate trade-off for what is not a particularly st...