Poor Things Review – Lanthimos And Stone Nuke Society For Laughs – With Podcast Review
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
2M ago
Yorgos Lanthimos has made a career out of dissecting various aspects of society, and always using the most bizarre extremes as focal points. That changed, sort of, with The Favourite, which took a certain slice of society and gave the existing bizarre extremes their head. With Poor Things, a Frankenstein-esque set of circumstances begins an entire journey of cultural postmortem that somehow manages to become both calculatingly unsettling in its unending mores destruction, and nearly blase about its own effort to do so. Somewhere in a mildly fantastical version of Victorian London, Dr. Godwin B ..read more
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny Review – Plus Podcast
Are You Screening?
by Ad Thrive
6M ago
When Roger Ebert famously defended (and wildly overrated) Crystal Skull, his general claim was that it was the perfect kind of stupidity. It was derring-do from certain glory days of Hollywood that made for an action-adventure treat, logic be damned. Maybe you can’t make your way down a sail with a dagger, or whatever, and maybe cars can’t do some sort of stunt, and maybe nuclear explosions don’t exactly have their effects negated by a fridge, but who cares? This is fun, and popcorn, and losing yourself. This is, very generally speaking, a theory I can get behind. I don’t need, to go back a lo ..read more
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White Noise Review – The Depressing Monotony Of Uncommon Events
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
Noah Baumbach is nothing if not fascinated by conversations, and not merely in the sense of conveying information through language, but the hows, whys, and struggles of having conversations, no matter what the subject. Looked at as a whole, his body of work is very similar to Robert Altman’s in that it seems best described as a massive variety of ways in which not much happens other than people talking to each other. In White Noise things happen… and yet. The events of White Noise are not only somewhat batty, but everything that happens is at once over-studied and apparently random. Despite th ..read more
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Poker Face Review – New Crime Spin Reimagines TV
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
There are few things about the realm of television more true than the fact that there must always be new series focusing on crime, and while there are often new efforts that simply stick to the mold created by classic shows, and ones that won’t die, there are always those that try to tip the genre on its head. Poker Face is not only a show about an utterly wild “investigator,” almost of PSYCH proportions, but it also throws out the seeming necessity of a supporting cast and/or setting. Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne) works in a casino as we enter this adventure and her new boss, her old boss’ so ..read more
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Lopez vs. Lopez Review – George Lopez Injects Reality Into Old School Sit-Com Norms
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
Twenty years after George Lopez took a shot at building a sit-com with Hispanic culture taking center stage, he’s back but this time instead of centering things directly on culture or community, we’re focused on problems, shortcomings, and dropping a lot of salt into the sweet. Starring with his real-life daughter, Mayan, Lopez plays a working-class man who only recently reconnected with his daughter, and the timing isn’t perfect because the pandemic took a real toll on his financial situation. What began as a kitchen renovation project with the daughter he has only been on good terms with for ..read more
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The Peripheral Review – Psychological Sci-Fi Capitalizes On Twists And Characters
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
Based on the book of the same name (by William Gibson – pioneer of the cyberpunk genre), The Peripheral boasts that it’s “from the creators of Westworld,” and there is little that would give audiences a better idea of the style and character interplay. From the perspective of simply the viewing experience, this might as well be a spinoff focusing on one of the other worlds. As we are introduced to this world, Flynne (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her brother Burton (Jack Reynor), are living in rural America in the near future. Burton is a veteran of a Haptic Recon unit, which implants soldiers with ..read more
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Reboot Review – Turning Meta On Its Head Is A Dangerous Game
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
There’s a tongue-in-cheek, meta drive to Reboot that is both a brilliant opening to comedy and a purposeful alienation of a lot of viewers, which is itself a doorway to a lot of potential. The result, at best, is to put yourself, as a series, in the position of predicting an exact audience, and you better be good at it. Reboot is a behind-the-scenes look at an attempt to reboot an early 2000’s sitcom “Step Right Up” with the original cast, none of whom really went on to anything bigger and better. It’s a theory that is already equal parts flies and ointment, but the big roadblock is that the u ..read more
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Andor Review – The Search For Relevance
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
It’s an uphill battle to find a strong hook when you’re a prequel to a prequel that already has no tangible connection to an original, and Andor doesn’t actually spend any time trying to establish one. You’re in or you’re out simply by knowing this is “a thing that takes place in the Star Wars universe,” and if you need anything else… you aren’t a real fan, or whatever. The lack of a real attempt at establishment is all the worse because there’s an interesting story in here somewhere that will clearly eventually get us to some worthy additions to the canon of the early days of the Rebel Allian ..read more
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Quantum Leap Review – Revisiting Early ’90s Goes Meta
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
Considering that the reboot/rehash train has only sped up in recent years, it might be surprising that the mid-’80s to mid-’90s are a mine largely left unvisited. That is, unless you were there, and know that most series of the time were a special brand of cheesy that it’s tricky to say people ever exactly liked in the first place. While not the early-’80s hellfire of The A-Team or Knight Rider, it was still a world where the pure goofball antics of such things as Family Matters or Married… with Children reigned supreme-ish. Quantum Leap was a product of the times as much as anything else, and ..read more
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Three Thousand Years Of Longing Review – Miller Moves To Tell-Showing
Are You Screening?
by Marc Eastman
1y ago
George Miller’s is a strange career as directors go, mostly because despite Mad Max coming out in 1979, he only has a dozen or so credits, and for every effort in the Mad Max universe there’s a Happy Feet, or Babe: Pig in the City. Now he follows up the incredible success of Mad Max: Fury Road with Three Thousand Years of Longing, and there’s something about that transition that makes you feel like he lost a bet and had to try to make the exact opposite movie. MM:FR delivers a new definition of “high octane,” and 3000 Years is a film that is almost entirely just two characters in a hotel room ..read more
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