Reviews of the Bosch

The concept of SIX is quite fun for a musical. It is also exactly the kind of concept you would expect from a pair of theatre kids in university -which is indeed when Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss first created the show. Crossing the stories of the wives of Henry VIII with the aesthetics of girl pop and some very blunt themes on patriarchal readings of history and the notion of restoring these women’s own agency to their stories feels like the kind of idea that would originate in the context of learning academic theories of historiography and feminism for the first time and melding that with some familiar nostalgia. That’s not a knock on the show necessarily , it clearly worked -and Marlow and Moss had the talent to compose it all in a competent way and the foresight to understand the structural limitations of the idea. This likely wouldn’t work as a Hamilton -style epic, it needed to be a short and simple yet striking concert. And as a concert it is a pretty good one. SIX is the latest...

In the wake of Jurassic Park and its groundbreaking dinosaur effects, one of the popular imagined ideas for its potential sequels was to take the dinosaurs off the sequestered island and put them in a more recognizable and immediate environment. Spielberg did this briefly at the end of The Lost World where a T-Rex is unleashed on San Diego, but subsequent movies for whatever reason had no interest in going there. Then finally, 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ended on the clear note of dinosaurs off the island and unleashed into civilization. However Jurassic World: Dominion came along next and tossed out that premise for the familiar very promptly. I wonder if David Robert Mitchell saw that and figured he would make his own ersatz sequel to Fallen Kingdom that did in fact take advantage of the concept of dinosaurs infiltrating our everyday lives. Because that is what The End of Oak Street feels like, a movie that really is what any of those Jurassic World films should have ...

It is astonishing to me that Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie has taken off so much as a near-instant cult movie hit. Not because it is a scrappy independent film with no notable stars. Not because it is produced with a seemingly DIY crudeness. Not even because it plays with time travel as a concept and is ensconced in 80s movie throwbacks -particularly Back to the Future . But because of an aspect to the movie that is best crystallized in a moment where Matt (Matt Johnson) confirms he is in the year 2008 by a series of references that culminates in him seeing a billboard advertising Q with Jian Ghomeshi. I’m astonished that Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie has taken off so much because it is so extremely Canadian. The Ghomeshi joke is one of at least a handful in this film that I have to believe goes over every American’s head. Hell, there are even a couple jokes specific to Toronto in the film that I didn’t catch. But I can definitely comprehend the other ways this very stra...

Somehow, I didn’t expect the movie about a dystopia where casual sex is illegal to be particularly anti-casual sex itself. The characters bemoan the status quo of their world every so often and there are anti-mandate proclamations all around, but most people seem to shrug it off as an annoyance  more than a genuine infringement on civil liberties. There is a disillusioned apathy with the government suppression (someone comments “this is what you get when you’re a one-issue voter”), musings about getting around it or bringing it down are not taken seriously, and it is even bestowed a kind of legitimacy by the end. Of course, One Night Only is not a movie very interested in the implications of its premise. Rather the premise is just an excuse for a series of scenarios befitting a generic enemies-to-lovers rom-com. Director Will Gluck and writer Travis Braun perhaps did not think through what they were actually saying by attaching this novel kind of synopsis to a more conventional for...

The persistent motif across the MCU’s Spider-Man movies has been growing up. It began by following the titular hero through his latter years of high school , and reached its peak in Spider-Man: No Way Home , in which by the end Tom Holland’s Peter Parker is thrust into adulthood rather dramatically by the death of his aunt and the choice to have everybody forget he exists -including his beloved MJ (Zendaya). That film concluded with a very humbled Peter deprived of most of his connections and resources, living a solitary existence in a squalid apartment while fighting crime as his alter ego, revealing his true identity to absolutely nobody. An unusually bold choice for a franchise that likes to position its heroes as privileged celebrities. The harsh realities of maturity were on his doorstep, and it promised tremendous development for the series’ future. That promise is delivered on in Spider-Man: Brand New Day , for the most part. While some of the usual Marvel traits in script, ...

Being gay in heavily religious and conservative environments is a difficult experience, doubly so if you are a child. I personally know several people in the LGBTQ community who came from small towns entrenched in those kind of values and have a lot of pain I can’t conceptualize related to that. But I can understand how both a young person’s feelings about their own identity and who they are attracted to can feel like a trap -something that can hurt them, something they have to run from, and something nobody else will understand. This amorphous idea is given material form in Adrian Chiarella’s Leviticus , one of the most honest supernatural horror movies of the last few years. It comes from Australia, which is starting to reveal itself as a fascinating hot-spot for great modern horror (and indeed that heavily metaphorical nature of its monster is reminiscent of the now classic Aussie horror film The Babadook ). But then, Leviticus is just as much a coming-of-age romance -a type of film...

I’m a late millennial, so of course I have a connection to Avatar: The Last Airbender . Though while I was there when the pilot first aired on February 21 st , 2005, I didn’t actually properly give the series a shot until early adulthood, where I was able to appreciate the show on a richer level than if I had encountered it first as a kid. Like everyone though I loved it for its breadth of creativity, distinct and appealing animation, archetypal though strongly defined characters, immense scope, and surprisingly nuanced thematic architecture for a hero’s journey narrative. I also loved its admittedly discombobulated sequel series The Legend of Korra , much more awkward than its predecessor in its weakest moments but more thrilling in its boldest. The resurgence of the Avatar franchise in recent years as a signature artefact of 2000s nostalgia has felt rather shallow and not very interesting -mostly due to the cynical prominence of the live-action Netflix show I have no interest in watc...

It seems like pro-shot films of popular stage musicals are starting to have a comeback with movie audiences. Quite a few people turned out last year when Merrily We Roll Along , the multi Tony-winning 2023 revival of a previously underrated and unsuccessful Stephen Sondheim show came to a theatre nearby. When I attended Hadestown last weekend, it was very nearly a sold-out show, which rarely happens for even the most popular movies. There’s an appetite and I hope it continues to grow. Because it means that those of us not privileged to live in London or New York can catch these extremely popular shows in their full context rather than piecing them together from soundtrack albums, low-quality bootlegs, or often lower-quality amateur performances. Waiting for them to come to you on stage can be impractical or inconceivable -and even then it would likely be a very different experience than the one everyone raves about. Much as musicals are ideally meant to be produced and performed by a...