Reviews of the Bosch

In the last couple years, DC Films has made a greater effort not only to diversify their movies in aesthetic and tone, but to experiment and take more chances -something that’s certainly a mark in their favour given the admitted homogeneity of a lot of the entries in their rival cinematic universe Marvel. Birds of Prey  is definitely one such example, based as it is on a comic run almost no one outside of the comics fan community would ever have heard of. And while this tactic had previously paid off wonderfully for both Guardians of the Galaxy  and DC’s own Suicide Squad  (in spite of its numerous shortcomings), Birds of Prey had the additional obstacles of being a follow-up to that same poorly received film and starring a cast of even more obscure characters barring the lead who were all women. With that in mind I’m glad it made it to the screen, even if the script could use more than a bit of fine-tuning. The story’s mood and structure I can only really describe...

From the opening scenes of Clemency  we are drawn to Bernadine Williams. It begins with an execution seemingly dominated by a man hysterical as he is made to face his fate, and everybody in the moment expresses a fraction of that chaos as they retain him, administer last rights and the lethal injection itself. Everybody except Bernadine, stone-faced, professional, and emotionally detached, only breaking that composure with anger when something goes wrong; the execution is botched. But she can recover -she’s been through this eleven times before. Alfre Woodard has long been one of Hollywood’s greatest and most versatile unsung actresses, magnetic in just about every role she’s had, a frequent elevator of poor material (I should know having first been exposed to her in the  A Wrinkle in Time  T.V. movie, where she was the one part of it that was unequivocally amazing), and a sensational presence regardless of the kind of role she’s playing. However, perhaps owing to ...

When they sat down to write this episode, Chris Chibnall and Charlene James were well aware that a monster preying on nightmares is a rather dulled cliché at this point, and one that Doctor Who has touched on before. They understood that they’d have to throw some kind of wrench in that premise to make it unique or interesting -this couldn’t just be another Nightmare on Elm Street or It  after all. That wrench turned into a compelling idea which itself turned into an elaborate backstory which turned into a convoluted story that never quite lives up to its own ambitions. Even the title, “Can You Hear Me?” is rather poor, coming as it does from a portion of the episode that’s irrelevant by the time the plot really gets in motion. That doesn’t actually come until late in the episode due to a copious amount of set-up and exposition, neither of which is all that bad but for the way they effect the pacing. Indeed a chunk of that set-up, following each of the companions in Sheffield...

When the nominees for the 92 nd  Academy Awards were announced on January 13 th , the conversation was heavily about how poor they were, how various movies, performances, directors, screenplays, and technical achievements were overlooked, as well as how sparse the offerings seemed to be, with Joker , 1917 , The Irishman , and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood  all having at least ten nominations. And the choosing of these films: a war movie, a nostalgic Hollywood movie, a Scorsese movie, and a movie desperately trying to be a Scorsese movie in conjunction with the near-erasure of more dynamic and diverse options, not to mention women-lead and directed films, seemed to prove the Academy was continuing to pursue the regressive well-worn patterns it demonstrated when it gave Green Book  multiple Oscars last year. Only one out of twenty acting nominees was a person of colour and legacy choices seemed preferred over less seasoned talent. Even the ceremony itself didn’t bode w...

So let’s talk about that last season of BoJack Horseman . Perhaps the most remarkable television series of the past ten years ended rather inconspicuously, both in its style and in the fact that not many seem to have acknowledged it. Indeed, Netflix chose a poor time to put it out -on the same day as Brexit finally happened and the platform was working more to push another acclaimed product that just arrived there, Uncut Gems  ( it’s fantastic, watch it! ). And yet, it’s not much a surprise, especially in light of how little respect Netflix seemed to pay BoJack s’ sister show Tuca and Bertie . But in a way, the move makes sense on a metatextual level. There is no big fanfare, the finale is out there now for us to make of it what we will and life moves on, which is the core theme of that finale. That said, it still doesn’t make me happy that such an intrepid, astoundingly good, and genuinely culturally important show has to end this way with little note or appropriate promo...

It’s rare to see a movie so entrancing, compelling, and different that you know it will be with you for weeks. Picnic at Hanging Rock  is one of the best of those kind of movies, a product of the Australian New Wave that arguably began four years prior with Nicolas Roeg’s masterful Walkabout , and perhaps is its’ most acclaimed. Based on the novel by Joan Lindsay and directed by Peter Weir, who would go on to have an eclectic yet impressive career directing movies such as Gallipoli , Witness , Dead Poets’ Society , The Truman Show , and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World , it’s a story concerning the disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic to Hanging Rock in Victoria, Australia in 1900. Like  Fargo , the film misleads you into thinking it’s based on true events, though takes it a step further through incorporating actual dates and specific locations that adds to its seeming authenticity. In the end it doesn’t matter whether o...