Reviews of the Bosch

Doctor Who  was first conceived as an educational programme. During its earliest years, it would always pair historical and futuristic stories against one another, each with the aim of educating the audience somewhat in either of those fields. The first two companions (and still a couple of the best) Ian and Barbara were a science and history teacher respectively. That focus left the show not long after William Hartnell did, the purpose of Doctor Who  being more conventionally tied to entertainment from then on -educational value could still be found, but it was no longer a driving force. Yet in this era of the Thirteenth Doctor it seems to be making a comeback, primarily in its period-set episodes such as “Rosa”, “Demons of the Punjab”, “The Witchfinders”, and now the amusingly named “Nikola Tesla’s Night of Terror”. And I was thinking of that old sensibility while watching this episode in particular, which sought to educate a little in both fields, and was not very su...

At the end of its second act, Just Mercy  sends one of its secondary characters to the electric chair, in the most gruelling and devastating scene of its kind since The Green Mile . It’s a long build, director Destin Daniel Cretton, forcing his audience to confront the reality of this situation, allows the tension to simmer; you wait with baited breath for it to cut away… and it never does. All the while, we look upon both the terrified inmate and our hero, sitting in the audience behind glass, and I couldn’t help being reminded of the history of public executions, the practice of communing to watch someone die. No longer are they public, but they still draw a crowd. As unnerving as it is, this proves to be the most vital moment of Just Mercy , the true life story of attorney Bryan Stevenson’s (Michael B. Jordan) efforts to acquit death row inmate Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx) of a blatantly false murder charge in 1990s Alabama. It emphasizes exactly what is being fought for...

Quentin Tarantino wasn’t the only acclaimed American filmmaker to release his tenth movie in 2019. An older, more meticulous, equally divisive (though for very different reasons) American auteur had his film premiere at Cannes just a couple days before Once Upon a Time in Hollywood  in fact. A Hidden Life is the latest feature from Terrence Malick, his sixth in ten years, something that would’ve seemed unthinkable to fans of his work decades ago when he was notorious for taking his time between movies (his second and third films famously came twenty years apart). But with that increased frequency came less acclaim, with the trio of films produced after The Tree of Life  the least popular of his movies by far. To the Wonder , Knight of Cups , and Song to Song  were experimental art pieces produced without a script, little plot to speak of and even more gratuitous tonal pretensions than most of his prior work. A Hidden Life  however, his first semi-conventional ...

Filming a movie to look like it’s entirely one shot isn’t as unique a structural idea as every filmmaker who’s attempted it seems to think. Hitchcock of course, did it back in 1948 with Rope , and even he likely wasn’t the first. The highest profile example in recent years of this technical gimmick was Alejandro G. Inarritu’s Birdman , which under the eye of master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki was really impressive, though thematically unnecessary. Sam Mendes’ employment of this technique for his war film 1917  certainly has a stronger foundation for its usage: to illustrate the immediacy of war, the swiftness of its chaos and unpredictability, and the gargantuan pressure of a single mission. Putting the audience so vividly into the midst of the situation, forced to follow it along at the rate of its characters can allow for a level of understanding and intimacy few war movies have thoroughly conveyed. And that does come across some of the time during this film, and look...

       This is the hardest movie list I’ve ever had to compose. Condensing a decades’ worth of great movies into a single “Best of” list that’s by no means concrete is a difficult task. According to Letterboxd, I’ve watched 698 films of the 2010s, and even then I’ve failed to catch some critical favourites making the rounds of decade-best compilations like Melancholia , Toni Erdmann , and The Social Network . But I knew I’d have to make this list, I couldn’t help myself. Siskel & Ebert used to do it (this is the first decade without a “Best of” list by Ebert), Cahiers du Cinema did it, as did numerous other critics and movie sites; it’s a popular thing to do and it’s a fun thing to do. But this is a list in flux, as any great movie list should be. Just as I’m constantly discovering and re-evaluating great works of decades’ past I will continue to do so with films of the 2010s. It was a decade full of amazing cinema, as evidenced by my list of twenty honoura...

The history of Earth as presented in the Doctor Who  universe is extremely complicated, with numerous glimpses into its future that often contradict one another. This is fine as Doctor Who  continuity has never been entirely firm and multiverses are always a possibility, as is the suggestion at the end of this episode. But “Orphan 55” presents a vision of our future specifically to make a statement, something I don’t recall with such lack of ambiguity happening before. It makes sense. Doctor Who  it seems began to recognize its responsibility as a major T.V. program in recent years to address relevant issues and pressing concerns, and especially at this point in time a straightforward address is needed. “Orphan 55” certainly stands out for that, blatant cautionary tale and all, if I’m not entirely sure how good it is at doing so. Its’ reference points in its plot and tone are easier to digest. For an episode that begins with the gang taking a spa leave to some re...