TV Reviews
Hunters Season 2 Review: An Uneven, But Never Boring, Conclusion to the Prime Video Series
The Pitch: If there’s one thing most of us can agree on, it’s that Nazis are bad. But what kind of justice does a Nazi deserve? That’s the ethical question underlying the second and final season of Hunters, the Jordan Peele-produced and very peculiar Prime Video thriller series about a ’70s-era vigilante force formed around one goal: track down all the Nazis who evaded persecution after World War II, and use the efficiency of bullets to stop them for good. Created by David Weil, Hunters is coming to a close after only 18 episodes, which somehow seems simultaneously like too many episodes and too few. But while suffering from writing issues and a lack of consistency in tone, there are moments of dialogue, performances, and in one case an entire episode which reveal the underlying potential ...
The Last of Us Review: HBO’s Video Game Adaptation Is Too Loyal to Its Source Material
The Pitch: The video game adaptation remains an albatross around the neck of many a film and TV producer. For every Silent Hill, there’s a dozen or so Wing Commanders; TV’s no different, even as recently as last year’s weaksauce Halo series for Paramount+. But HBO hopes to break the mold with The Last of Us, their prestige-drama take on the acclaimed Naughty Dog game of the same name. If you’ve played that game, or its divisive sequel (or watched The Walking Dead or any other zombie media over the past few decades), the premise is pretty familiar: The world has been ravaged by a deadly plague that kills millions and turns them into flesh-eating monsters (covered in mutated Cordyceps fungus), and the desperate survivors scramble to stay alive and maintain their huma...
Paul T. Goldman Is Hard to Describe, Impossible to Forget, and One Wild Ride: Review
The Pitch: “In 2012, a man named Paul T. Goldman tweeted at me,” is how director Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Nathan for You) begins a note to the press about his new Peacock series. “He said that he had an incredible story to tell and had written a book – and a screenplay – about it. He asked for my help bringing it to the screen.” Ten years later, Woliner has done exactly that — though the form this story has taken probably wasn’t what Paul T. Goldman anticipated. Instead, the series is less a shocking tale of sex and crime and more a fascinating portrait of a man and his ambitions: his desire for fame, for revenge, or maybe just being seen. And seen he is, through a lens that is alternately dark, strange, bizarre, and, more often than not, very funny. Pieces of a Man: In t...
The Recruit Review: Netflix’s Spy Thriller Asks Too Much of Noah Centineo
The Pitch: Owen Hendricks (Noah Centineo) is a fresh-faced, 24-year-old lawyer at the CIA’s Office of the General Counsel, and though he’s only been there for a couple of weeks, he finds himself way in over his head, beginning with an investigation into an already chaotic “graymail” attempt on the CIA. by Maxine Meladze (Laura Haddock). A former asset and CIA spy who was stationed in her native Belarus, Meladze is imprisoned in Arizona when Hendricks takes her case, and she threatens to reveal incriminating evidence against the CIA unless Hendricks can get her out of prison and back home to Europe. It’s a lot to ask for the relatively inexperienced Hendricks, who claims to have a passion for law but frequently finds himself jumping straight into the deep end, navigating murderous mobsters,...
Willow Review: Fantasy Television That’s Here For a Good Time
The Pitch: It’s been quite a time for super-serious sci-fi and fantasy epics, as anyone who’s attempted to keep up with House of the Dragon, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Sandman, and many, many other shows will tell you. But here comes Disney+’s Willow, with a modern rock song in its heart, a young hot ensemble ready to jump into action, and its own take on swords and sorcery to share. Willow? You Mean Three-Time MTV Video Music Award Nominee Willow, Don’t You? Okay, as a longtime fan of the 1988 film Willow, a person who has spent a lifetime yelling “What do you mean, you haven’t seen Willow?” at people… I know that there’s a good chance that most people are not familiar with the original Ron Howard-directed fantasy adventure. So here’s the deal: In the original movie (w...
Little America’s Second Season Offers a Much-Needed Dose of Optimism: Review
The Pitch: It’s often very difficult to feel optimistic about the general state of things in this country. For people who have grown up and lived through crisis after crisis, the many who were thrust into unsteady job markets and a Sisyphean uphill battle of debt and financial instability, the elusive American Dream sounds like just that — a dream. For the particularly vulnerable, like people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community who face a rapid increase in life-threatening rhetoric, there’s an intersectionality to the frustration and fear that can accompany everyday life in the US. While film and television aren’t an immediate salve for wide-reaching systemic issues, stories do matter, as does representation. Little America, the Apple TV+ anthology series developed by Le...
The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special Is Sweet, Slight, and (Kevin) Bacon-Flavored: Review
The Pitch: Did you know that in Britain, there’s a long and proud tradition of ongoing series putting out special episodes for the holidays? More often than not, they’re even broadcast on Christmas Day, when it seems that entire nation turns into couch potatoes. In America, though, our more couch potato-y holiday happens to be Thanksgiving, and our biggest ongoing series happens to be the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thus, this week’s release of The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special feels pretty apt. Clocking in at 42 minutes (including post-credits scene), James Gunn’s breezy holiday confection offers a little bit of set-up as to where the titular Guardians, including Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Mantis (Pom Klementieff), Drax (Dave Bautista), Nebula (Karen Gillen), Rocket (Bradley Coop...
Andor Season 1 Told the Star Wars Story We Need for Times Like These
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Andor.] A lot of major plot points are packed into the Season 1 finale of Andor, but really, one of the year’s most powerful episodes of television came down to a speech from a dead woman. Fiona Shaw’s work was the definition of Emmy-worthy in the back half of the season, as Cassian Andor (Diego Luna)’s adoptive mother, fully aware that she was nearing the end of her days, became fully committed to one goal: doing whatever she could to combat the rise of the Empire. Her passing in Episode 11, as seen from the point of view of her loyal droid B2EMO, was already a heartbreaking moment for the show — the childlike sadness of “I want Maarva” jerking tears from anyone who’s ever lost a loved one. But then came her sp...
Murky Truths and Murky Waters Collide in the Compelling 1899: Review
The Pitch: Several years ago, German creative/romantic partners Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar made their mark with Netflix’s sci-fi/thriller series Dark. Centered around “A missing child [who] sets four families on a frantic hunt for answers as they unearth a mind-bending mystery that spans three generations,” it was heavily praised by critics and audiences. Thus, the roughly two-and-a-half-year wait to see what the duo would do next has been tough, to put it mildly. That brings us to their second succinctly-yet-enigmatically-titled show for the streaming service, 1899. This time, “multinational immigrants traveling from the old continent to the new encounter a nightmarish riddle aboard a second ship adrift on the open sea.” Along the way, various truths and connections are discovered ab...
Welcome to Chippendales Is True Crime at Its Most Compelling and Unexpected: Review
The Pitch: If you don’t live under a rock, chances are you’ve heard of Chippendales: the elegant, trailblazing first-ever all-male strip-tease troupe that has been bringing delightfully scandalous thrills to audiences since the 1970s. What you may not know, however, is that the burlesque’s history is brimming with conspiracy, racketeering, arson, and murder. Over the course of 10 episodes, Welcome to Chippendales, Robert Siegel’s limited series based on K. Scot Macdonald and Patrick MontesDeOca’s 2014 literary exposée Deadly Dance: The Chippendales Murders, shrewdly examines and unravels the club’s shocking, harrowing history. The show rigorously dissects the troupe’s inception, rise to fame, and subsequent descent into the deepest, most gruesome bowels of corruption. A Killer Strip Tease:...
The Crown Season 5 Review: Tragedies to Come Hang Heavily Over the Penultimate Installment
The Pitch: In Season 5 of The Crown, one unifying theme stands out — being royalty is not a good time. The stately Netflix drama’s penultimate run of episodes has now clearly reached the beginning of the end, as Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton, succeeding Olivia Colman) faces her age, Prince Charles (Dominic West, succeeding Josh O’Connor) and Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki, succeeding Emma Corrin) face their infamous divorce, and Prince Philip (Jonathan Pryce, succeeding Tobias Menzies) faces… getting really into carriage racing. As grey and somber as ever, the fifth season continues the show’s march towards the one seismic event that will shake Britain to its core. But it takes its time, while continuing to explore both the symbolic power of the royal family — as well as the diffi...
I’m a Former Video Store Clerk and I Think Netflix’s Blockbuster Deserves to Go Bankrupt
It’s not a good sign that Blockbuster, a workplace sitcom set inside a literal metaphor for late-stage capitalism, feels the need to call out the problem with its premise seven minutes into the pilot episode. “Isn’t it ironic that the small business taking a stand against the big corporation in this scenario is actually a franchise of a once-huge corporation, named after the exact type of big corporate movies that killed off smaller movies?” Blockbuster employee Eliza (Melissa Fumero) says, as her boss Tim (Randall Park) tries to rally his underdog staff. I’m admittedly coming to the show with a bias, as a former video store clerk who spent about two and a half years behind the counter of independent stores — stores that always struggled to compete with the Walmart of the industry. But des...
