Reviews
Orphan: First Kill Is the Most Bonkers Horror Prequel In Years: Review
The Pitch: Remember Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman), the precocious tot who turned out to be a thirtysomething psychopath from Estonia with hypopituitarism? The one who terrified Vera Farmiga and her well-to-do New England family in 2009’s surprisingly chilling Orphan? In the grand tradition of Annabelle: Creation and Ouija: O-ouija-n of Evil, The Boy director William Brent Bell takes us back to Esther’s beginnings, thirteen years later and with a fraction of the budget. Perhaps “beginnings” is a bit of a stretch, to be fair: a more accurate title would be Orphan: Second (or Maybe Third?) Kill, as we’re introduced to little Leena in 2007 Estonia, two years prior to the first film’s events. She’s not Esther yet, but she has already offed her first host family, the one Ver...
Archer Season 13 Retains the Show’s Signature Amusement and Absurdity: Review
The Pitch: Typically, the longer a hit program goes on, the harder it is for it to maintain its quality and relevance. Thus, Archer’s ability to mostly preserve its trademark wittiness, ridiculousness, and audaciousness across 12 seasons (and 12 years) is commendable. Admittedly, some fans and reviewers feel that it’s fallen from grace in some ways — and maybe it has — but it’s hard to deny that the show remains immensely clever, fun, and (at times) moving. The Season 12 finale “Mission: Difficult” cemented all of that very well. For one thing, it found its lovable band of dysfunctional spies dishing out plenty of biting quips and explosive action before ultimately being acquired by a rival company called the International Intelligence Agency, or IIA, run by British mogul Fabian Kingsworth...
Tales of the Walking Dead Somewhat Succeeds at Putting Fresh Paint on a Fading Franchise: Review
The Pitch: The Walking Dead, the flagship show of the long-running zombie apocalypse franchise, is finally coming to an end later this year after 11 seasons. But the Walking Dead universe is showing no signs of slowing down, with multiple spin-offs on the horizon, including ones for fan-favorite Daryl as well as Maggie and Negan, but the first to premiere is the anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. The series, created by Walking Dead honcho Scott M. Gimple and franchise stalwart Channing Powell, gives a level of freedom never seen before in the Walking Dead universe, allowing new writers, directors, and stars to tell stand-alone tales of the zombie outbreak. As with any anthology, quality can vary wildly between entries, but the three episodes provided for review are more good than ...
Review: Aubrey Plaza Breaks Bad in the Tense Thriller Emily the Criminal
This review was part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: Emily (Aubrey Plaza) just can’t catch a break. She’s a college dropout, reeling from a felony aggravated assault conviction that follows her to every job interview, tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt weighing her down like a ball and chain. It’s calcified her to the world, approaching each new interview just waiting for the next reason she’ll be rejected. All she’s got to her name are her wits and a can of pepper spray. But a rare opportunity appears when a coworker at her degrading catering gig turns her onto a way to make some extra money: show up at a warehouse at the proper hour, perform a small-scale credit card scam with boosted flatscreens, and you earn $200 in an hour. You ...
Day Shift Review: Jamie Foxx’s Vampire Hunter Movie Boasts Great Fight Scenes and Formulaic Comedic Beats
The Pitch: Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) is a San Fernando Valley pool cleaner, but his mundane job is a cover for other, more exciting work. Casing the house next door while skimming a pool, he puts on a ski mask, loads up on weapons, and storms inside. The resident, a frightened old woman, asks “Who are you? What are you doing in my room?” Without answering, Bud blasts away at her with a shotgun. The woman, revealing herself as a vampire and baring her fangs, stands up with a gaping hole in her torso, and begins fighting back. Day Shift is the directorial debut of J.J. Perry, a veteran stuntman who played Scorpion and other masked fighters in 1997’s Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and choreographed the intense fight scenes in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire. And the scene that opens the vampire hu...
Matt Stone and Trey Parker Celebrate 25 Years of South Park with RUSH, Primus, and Ween
A small girl sarcastically sang “JOE BIDEN TOOK OUR JOBS!” into a microphone while South Park co-creator Matt Stone laughed uproariously, Dean and Gene Ween provided backup vocals, Primus’ Les Claypool played bass and Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush sat silently smiling. The plumes of smoke emanating from the 9,545 fans jammed into Red Rocks Amphitheatre were especially thick at this moment on Wednesday night (August 10th). It was the second of two sold-out South Park 25th-anniversary shows, starring Stone and his partner, Trey Parker, as ringleaders of a circus in which Ween performed on stage left, Primus manned stage right and “Blame Canada,” “Uncle Fucka,” “What Would Brian Boitano Do?” and other profane “South Park” classics wafted from the middle. If the satire didn’t always come ...
A League of Their Own Review: The Series Adaptation Remixes the Classic Film From Overlooked Points-of-View
The Pitch: You might think you know this story… but you don’t. The Penny Marshall film A League of Their Own, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, was a landmark production as well as a damn great sports movie, chronicling the inaugural season of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, despite the 1943-era sexism that had men chanting from the stands, “Girls can’t play ball!” As groundbreaking as the original film was, 1992 was a long time ago. So in creating a new take on A League of Their Own as a TV show, co-creators Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) and Will Graham (Mozart In the Jungle) have effectively made a remix of the original film, fully centered in the underrepresented voices that, in the movie, only lurked at the edges of the frame. The story is still focused on h...
Rage Against the Machine Kick Off Five-Night Stand at Madison Square Garden: Recap + Photos
Rage Against the Machine have embarked on their “Public Service Announcement Tour,” which the quartet launched last month at the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin. Marking the band’s first live shows in 11 years, the ongoing trek was originally scheduled to ignite in 2020, but was postponed twice due to the global pandemic. The first leg is winding down with a five-night stand at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden, which began with a show on Monday night (August 8th). A UK/European run begins later this month, plus a second leg of US and Canadian shows is set for early 2023, with tickets available here. Monday night’s show at MSG saw Rage Against the Machine playing to a completely sold-out crowd. Still healing from a leg injury sustained during the band’s Chicag...
Better Call Saul Review: The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Better Call Saul, Season 6 Episode 12, “Waterworks.”] As we reach the finish line on Better Call Saul, a theme has emerged from these final episodes: How tragic it is, and the tragedies that can result, when someone lives in fear. That at least seems to be Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn)’s takeaway from the last several years of her life, as we see how making contact with her ex-husband Jimmy/Saul/Gene (Bob Odenkirk) caused her to return to the scene of her crimes — even if she may not end up actually having to pay the price for them. Written and directed by Vince Gilligan, “Waterworks” is a masterclass in making the mundane seem both important and suspenseful. The action begins with a tour through Kim’s black-and-white state of existence — a n...
Lady Gaga Finally Kicks Off North American Tour After Years of Delays: “This Bitch Has Been to the Grave and Back!”
Seated at a piano made of thorns in the middle of a rapt sold-out audience at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Lady Gaga confessed that there was a point in her life when she wasn’t sure if she’d ever make it back to a stage like this again. Indeed, a lot has happened to both Gaga and the world since she was last able to tour. “Severe physical pain” due to fibromyalgia forced her to postpone and eventually cancel the final leg of her Joanne World Tour in 2018. The “Chromatica Ball” stadium tour (grab tickets here), originally slated for 2020, was postponed twice for COVID concerns. The release date for the album she was planning to tour in support of, Chromatica, was briefly pushed back due to the pandemic, too. Or as the singer/actress/performance artist herself put it with a mix of humor, r...
They/Them Review: Kevin Bacon-Starring Slasher Proves Hollow
The Pitch: Conversion therapy is the pseudo-scientific process of trying to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity through manipulation, abuse and torture. Generally operated by religious groups who claim to be doing their victims a favour, this practice is generally carried out in isolated retreats on groups of young people. The new horror film They/Them attempts to frame this specific real-world evil through a likely more familiar horror movie iconography. After all, the idyllic American summer camp has been a home for terror for decades, in the form of brutal murders and/or adolescent awkwardness. A nice trip to the woods offers young people a place of freedom, disconnected from who you’ve been before — while the offer to serial killers is simply a place, disconnected. Most famo...
The Sandman Review: Netflix Brings Neil Gaiman’s Dream to Life
The Pitch: What if amorphous concepts like Desire, Despair, and Death had anthropomorphic representations, and had realms over which they ruled? What if, amongst them, one of the most powerful was Dream (Tom Sturridge), who oversaw the land to which all living creatures come when their eyes slip shut and their minds take flight? That’s perhaps the simplest place to start when describing the premise for The Sandman, Netflix’s highly anticipated adaptation of the graphic novel series written by Neil Gaiman, with artists including Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Jill Thompson, Shawn McManus, Marc Hempel, Bryan Talbot, and Michael Zulli. Perhaps one of the most iconic examples of “sequential art” ever created, the ten-volume graphic novel series, despite many attempts over the decades by Hollywoo...
