From its generic title to an ending you can see coming from outer space, Blood and Money follows a path rutted with enough clichés to cover the three million acres of Maine forest land where the film is set. Writer-director John Barr lucked out in getting Tom Berenger, a consummate …
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“Movies don’t just show us how the world is — they show us how it can be,” director Raymond Ansley (Darren Criss) argues in the new Netflix miniseries Hollywood. This isn’t just his mission statement, but that of Hollywood’s creators, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. The seven-episode tale is equal …
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When Merritt Wever won a supporting-actress Emmy for Nurse Jackie in 2013 (she later got another for the Netflix Western Godless), she gave an eight-word acceptance speech before practically sprinting off the stage — “Thank you so much! I… gotta go. Bye!” Perhaps it was a moment of foreshadowing to …
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Do you know that romantic-comedy cliché in which the mousy young woman whips off her glasses — and suddenly the brainiac “ugly duckling” blossoms into a beautiful swan that turns heads and gets the guy? That’s not what happens to the title character of Horse Girl, though for the first …
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I’m such a big NASA nerd that when the 1202 alarm went off during an Apollo 11 simulation in For All Mankind, Apple TV+’s new alternate history of the space race, I immediately knew it was the same alert that in real life nearly scuttled the first lunar landing. I’m …
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In what world would stunning Charlize Theron and schlubby Seth Rogen hook up? The loaded-with-laughs Long Shot offers a comically absurd and sweetly touching answer to that rude question. Theron plays Charlotte Field, the Secretary of State who has her eye on the White House. The “dumb fuck” President of …
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The traditional multicamera sitcom, shot on a stage in front of an enthusiastic studio audience, looks much easier to make than it actually is. The format is close to 70 years old, dating back to I Love Lucy, but its roots go back much further than that, to the earliest …
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