Hail, Caesar! (2015), the Coen Bros.’s sly lampoon of 1950s Hollywood, is an affectionate and satirical tribute to studio filmmaking and a wittily skewed comedy of cultural politics in early 1950s America, the beginning of the end of the studio era. Set at the fictional Capitol Pictures, an MGM-like studio, and centered on Eddie Mannix […]
The all-star cast of Big Little Lies adds another powerhouse to the screen: Meryl Streep arrives to take on Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, and Shailene Woodley and Andrea Arnold directs all seven episodes of the second season of series. It debuts in June along with the new original series Euphoria starring Zendaya and Years and […]
Just weeks after the series finale of Game of Thrones debuts, HBO brings another beloved series to a conclusion when the Deadwood movie brings the story to an end more than a decade after the series was cancelled. Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Kim Dickens, Molly Parker, John Hawkes, Robin Weigert, and the rest of the […]
The Academy Awards will be handed out on Sunday, February 24. Are you caught up on the major nominees? Eight films made the cut in the category of best picture and a few of them are still in theaters, notably the offbeat royal drama The Favourite (2018, R), which came away with ten nominations, political […]
Can a comic book superhero movie tell a human story? Logan (2017) makes the case that the genre is not limited to spectacle (though this film does offer some accomplished—and violent—action scenes), end of the world stakes, or world-building chapters in a massive franchise. Set in the near future of 2029, which is a lot […]
The Sopranos debuted on HBO in January of 1999 and changed the television landscape forever. More than simply “The Godfather Sees a Shrink,” the brilliant made-for-cable drama gave “family crisis” a whole new meaning and television drama a new sophistication. Emmy winner James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano, a blue collar guy in an upper-middle class neighborhood, […]
Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One and Wes Anderson’s animated Isle of Dogs come to HBO cable and streaming services in December, along with the comedies Blockers and Life of the Party and giant creature spectacle Rampage. HBO Originals include the feature Icebox, about a boy trapped in the U.S. Immigration system, and the documentaries Momentum […]
The family comedy Paddington 2 and the high school coming-of-age/coming out romantic comedy Love, Simon come to HBO cable and streaming services in November. Also making respective HBO debuts are Tomb Raider with Alicia Vikander, the giant robot sequel Pacific Rim: Uprising, and an extended version of Fifty Shades Freed, the final film in the […]
Curiosity is a killer in The Midnight Meat Train (2008), adapted from the short story by Clive Barker (one of the first he wrote) and directed by Japanese style-bomber Ryuhei Kitamura in his American feature debut. Leon (Bradley Cooper), a street photographer who chases police calls for a living but prefers to document the underbelly […]
Sharp Objects, the new HBO miniseries starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson and based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, and the HBO Original documentary Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind debut on all HBO platforms in July. Also arriving in July: the superhero blockbuster Justice League, Battle of the Sexes with Emma Stone and […]
