The original ‘The Matrix’ has become such a touchstone of American pop culture—referenced, copied, parodied, and parroted)—that it’s hard to remember just how new and different and distinctive it was when it debuted in 1999.
Tag: Jada Pinkett Smith
Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx collide in ‘Collateral’ on HBO Max
Tom Cruise is well cast as a coldly efficient professional assassin and Jamie Foxx is excellent as the cabbie who picks unwittingly drives him to his targets in Michael Mann’s coolly attenuated thriller Collateral (2004). Mann is the king of crime movie professionalism and his characters are the best at what they do, consummate professionals […]
‘Princess Mononoke’ – Miyazaki’s mythic masterpiece on HBO Max
“Something’s wrong. The birds are all gone. The animals too.” Hayao Miyazaki recasts the mythic tale of man’s dominion over the Earth with an animist mythology and a conservationist message in Princess Mononoke (Japan, 1997), his rich fantasy of the battle between the forest spirits and the industrial revolution. Set in the era of Japan’s […]
‘Gotham: Season 1’ on Netflix
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 […]