Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Complete Series (2008-2010), the TV spin-off of the Terminator films, turned out to be both smart science fiction and gritty, spectacular action for the small screen. That already makes it more compelling and rewarding than the last few films in the series. Set in the aftermath of Terminator 2: Judgment […]
No Country for Old Men (2007), adapted from Corman McCarthy’s novel by directors/screenwriters/auteurs-of-our-age Ethan and Joel Coen, is a perfect match of story and storyteller. Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss, a cowboy in modern Texas who returns from poaching trip with a fortune in drug money, is just smart enough to outrun trouble, but he’s a […]
Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010), set in the crime and poverty of the Ozark Mountains, is a coming-of-age survival story in an outlaw culture where meth labs have replaced moonshine stills and the code of silence is enforced with pitiless finality. Jennifer Lawrence was revelation as the 17-year-old Ree, who has grown up fast to […]
Justified: Complete Series (2010-2015) – Timothy Olyphant is U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens, a cowboy of a lawman whose brand as cowboy justice gets him demoted from his Miami posting and sent back to Kentucky, the home he thought he’d escaped once and for all. His new boss (Nick Searcy, a sharp leader with a laid-back […]
Any Day Now (2012) is the kind of American drama that Hollywood used to specialize in: character based, issue-focused, emotionally-grounded, and an actor’s showcase. It’s 1979 and two gay men–Alan Cumming as a flamboyant female impersonator and Garret Dillahunt as a newly-out and still uncomfortable gay man working for a conservative legal firm–take on the […]
Justified, based on a short story by Elmore Leonard and developed by Graham Yost (in collaboration with Leonard) into a riveting rural crime drama, was one of the best shows on TV for its six-season run on FX, thanks to the way it preserves Leonard’s distinctive pulp fiction sensibility. The sixth and final season is […]
Hand of God, starring Ron Perlman as a corrupt judge who starts to believe he’s receiving instructions from God as he searches for the man who raped his daughter, joins the growing slate of Amazon Original Series. The series co-stars Dana Delany as his wife and Garret Dillahunt as an ex-con eager for redemption who […]
