List of All Articles with Tag 'review'

There's a difference between "long" and "epic," although in movie terms the two frequently get confused. Martin Scorsese delivers the former but not the latter with "Killers of the Flower Moon," his second consecutive three-and-a-half-hour movie derived from a true story and underwritten by a prestige-hungry streaming service.

Anyone with an interest in history should be quite familiar with the Ken Burns playbook, which he puts to characteristically impressive use in "American Buffalo," a documentary weaving together the near-extinction of these majestic beasts, dispossession of Native-Americans and exploitation of the American West under one sweeping umbrella filled with heartbreak but also hope.

Alexandra Pelosi has built a rich resume of personal documentaries in which she seeks to build bridges, or simply hangs out with, people with whom she doesn't agree politically. That approach reaches its logical if somewhat limited conclusion in "The Insurrectionist Next Door," in which the filmmaker spends time with those who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

Those who fell victim to the over-the-top animosity directed at Amber Heard during the Johnny Depp trial -- as chronicled in the docuseries "Depp v. Heard" -- will alas have fresh ammunition thanks to "In the Fire," a pretty awful starring vehicle for the actor that she also produced, a film unlikely to produce many sparks beyond those set off by the morbidly curious.

After limited series featuring Chris Evans and Tom Holland, "Lessons in Chemistry" serves up another faulty experiment in combining serious Apple TV+ dramas and Marvel stars. Brie Larson takes center stage in this adaptation of Bonnie Garmus' novel, but its depiction of a female scientist turned cooking-show host navigating the patriarchal 1950s yields a souffle that sounds tasty but never rises.

Ambitious, intriguing and ultimately a trifle confounding, "The Fall of the House of Usher" represents Mike Flanagan's latest macabre series for Netflix, this time taking a page from Roger Corman by adapting (even more loosely) the works of Edgar Allan Poe. English majors should get a kick from the names and titles, but the emphasis on excess detracts from a limited series worth watching upon a midnight dreary but that doesn't deserve to be loved.

Between "Cheers" and "Frasier," Kelsey Grammer spent more than two decades playing the erudite if pompous character, with the latter representing one of the rare spinoff series that matches the original, during happier times for network TV. He's back in a show that engineers such an obvious trick one needn't be a psychologist to recognize it, or conclude Frasier should have been left happily retired.

Frontline provides a longform examination with "Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover," an evenhanded account of the impetuous billionaire's misguided foray into another business frontier.

Mounted as the filmed version of a stage play, "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" has more in common with "A Few Good Men" than the 1954 movie starring Humphrey Bogart, and might be as notable for its credit list as this sturdy but unspectacular production -- marking, as it does, the final film from director William Friedkin as well as co-star Lance Reddick, both of whom died earlier this year.

"Pet Sematary" ranks among Stephen King's most terrifying books, which hasn't been reflected particularly well in movie versions of it. Yet the novel proved fertile enough that a small portion of it yields a decent little Paramount+ movie in "Pet Sematary: Bloodlines," a crisp and efficient reminder of King's line "Sometimes, dead is better," and that occasionally, sometimes prequels are too.

The unexpected success of "Squid Game" gave a green light to bringing more South Korean dramas to the US, with Paramount establishing a partnership with Seoul-based CJ ENM to do so. The latest fruit of that relationship, "Bargain," isn't as compulsively watchable as "Squid Game" but echoes it in one key respect, darkly reflecting a society where life is cheap, and the class divide can be fatal.

Is Twin Flames this year's Fyre Festival or NXIVM cult in terms of media coverage and dueling docuseries? It sure feels that way, with competing (or really, complementary) streaming projects kicking off with Amazon's "Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe," to be followed in November by Netflix's more economical "Escaping Twin Flames."