THE HATE U GIVE (20th – October 19): YA radicalization. George Tillman Jr’s film, from a sprawling script by Audrey Wells (based on the novel by Angie Thomas) centers on Starr (Amandla Stenberg), an Afric...
In a generally depressed indie film market, Netflix shelled out a reported $20M at Sundance for Chloe Domont’s feature writing/directing debut FAIR PLAY. The splurge made sense: Fair Play has that combination o...
There is tumult in the movie business, we’re told. Reports warn that several studios as we know them are about to undergo seismic change for years to come. And why? Because Legendary Entertainment may shift i...
BILLIONS: Sunday 10PM on Showtime (pilot available via VOD and streaming) – Potential DVR Alert There’s a gag in The Big Short where an esoteric piece of financial information, crucial for understanding the...
THE BOY AND THE HERON (GKids – Dec. 8): Hiyao Miyazaki, a legend of animation (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke), had announced his retirement as a feature film director a decade ago, upon the...
We’ve all had reason to remember over the past few months that the experience of watching a TV show or movie doesn’t necessarily reflect the experiences of those behind the scenes. Still, it’s nice to...
BLACK MONDAY: Sunday 10PM on Showtime Showtime and Don Cheadle didn’t look far afield for their follow-up after 5 seasons of the network’s House of Lies. In that series, Cheadle played a fast-talking, rul...
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET: Buy A Ticket – Scorsese’s Boisterous Epic of Bottomless Greed The key sequence in Martin Scorsese’s THE WOLF OF WALL STREET arrives about 2 hours into its 3-hour length. (No...
BILLIONS: Sunday 9PM on Showtime The fourth season of a successful series can be an inflection point. By the time Season 4 begins, the show’s makers know what works, but it’s still early enough that the t...
Showtime’s BILLIONS has cultivated one of the most recognizable signatures on television, from its rudely epigrammatic dialogue, to its love/hate relationship with its ruthless, narcissistic characters, to its very...
MARGIN CALL: Worth A Ticket – The Real Sequel to”Wall Street” MARGIN CALL is smarter and more gripping than Moneyball and The Ides of March combined–and those are two smart, grippi...