Eiza González
Ambulance Review: Some Deranged Grandeur, Courtesy of Michael Bay
The Pitch: In his 2019 Netflix film 6 Underground, Michael Bay stages an opening car chase where his heroes smash through the streets of Italy, goring bad guys and yelling nonsense at each other. “I’m conducting surgery!” one character screams while, essentially, just tending to a wound. But maybe that moment stuck in Bay’s head. Maybe he regretted not making that set-piece more surgical, to the point where he built an entire movie called Ambulance around the premise: What if you were performing life-saving surgery during a car chase? Technically, Bay did not come up with this premise. Ambulance is a remake of a 2005 Dutch film, and Bay is not a credited screenwriter. But his penchant for breaking tension with over-explained jokes, or breaking jokes with melodramatic bombast, transcend any...
Netflix’s I Care a Lot Is a Brutal Indictment of the American HealthCare System: Review
The Pitch: Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) cares a lot. She’s the legal guardian of dozens of elderly people who desperately need her help. This “care” comes in the form of decision making powers regarding her client’s finances and medical treatment. With a simple doctor’s recommendation and signature from a judge, she essentially has the legal right to decimate the lives and accumulated wealth of anyone who falls into her trap. But Marla’s newest client, Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), is more than she seems and may end up causing the conniving entrepreneur’s downfall. Writer/director J Blakeson’s new Netflix film is a black comedy that feels infuriatingly familiar given the rampant authoritarian greed and hypocrisy we see daily. Dressed up as a stylish thriller, I Care a Lot is a brutal ...
