The Walking Dead, AMC’s gory, gruesome survival drama set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, is currently the highest-rated show on commercial cable TV, beating the ratings of many successful network TV shows. It’s even spawned a prequel series: Fear the Walking the Dead. The fifth season of The Walking Dead opens with an […]
Michelangelo Frammartino’s contemplative Le Quattro Volte (2010) from Italy is a meditation on the mysterious cycles of life inspired by the “four-fold transmigration” of souls that Pythagoras proposed: the soul passes from human to animal to vegetable to, eventually, the eternal. It’s also a kind of stylized documentary of existence in this little mountain village […]
What’s new for home viewing on video-on-demand and Netflix, Amazon Prime, and other streaming services. Pay-Per-View / Video-On-Demand Pitch Perfect 2, the sequel to the surprise musical smash about a female a cappella group, sends Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, and the gang to an international competition for a new round of romance, goofy antics, and […]
Gotham: Season 1 is TV’s most lavish entry yet on small screen superhero operatics, a kind of “Batman before Batman” comic book noir look at the cesspool that is Gotham City, the dark, corrupt city that spawned the caped crusader. That isn’t necessarily to call it the best—based solely on debut seasons, I would happily […]
Trouble Every Day (2001), Claire Denis’ wigged-out take on the vampire film, is one of the strangest variations on the vampire movie, itself a genre with a history of unusual takes. Béatrice Dalle (Betty Blue) stars as a madwoman who is locked in the basement of a Paris home by a scientist (Alex Descas) because […]
Saint Laurent, Bertrand Bonello’s portrait of one of the most influential fashion designers of the 20th century, focuses on just a few years of the life of Yves Saint Laurent (Gaspard Ulliel): 1967 through 1975, the height of his success and influence in the fashion world. There’s no backstory, no rising through the ranks, no […]
Keith Richards: Under the Influence profiles the Rolling Stones guitarist, songwriter, and rock legend at 71. The film is directed by Morgan Neville, who made the Oscar-nominated 20 Feet from Stardom (about the unsung back-up singers of rock and roll), and is built around footage of Richards in the recording studio (working on his first solo […]
Vincent Price starred in all of Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations but one. Ray Milland took the lead in Premature Burial (1962), playing Guy Carrell, an aristocrat with crippling fear that he will be buried alive due to a family history of catalepsy. Corman brings the fear home in the opening scene: an exhumation of an […]
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), Woody Allen’s biggest success of the eighties and his most popular film since Annie Hall, returns the director / writer to the same general territory of modern life and the challenges of sustaining romantic relationships, but this time within the context of family. Mia Farrow takes the title role of […]
Longmire: Season 4 is the third instance of Netflix coming to the rescue of a TV series. Cancelled last year despite good ratings and a passionate following on A&E, the modern western crime drama set in rural Wyoming and starring Australian actor Robert Taylor as laconic Sheriff Walt Longmire now returns with new episodes. I […]
