With all the hype and brouhaha surrounding the release of The Master, it’s easy to overlook one important consideration: Whether the movie is good. So let’s get that out of the way. The Master is good. Grand photography, lush production design, and big, appropriately showy performances make it somewhat captivating. At a certain point, though, […]
With all the hype and brouhaha surrounding the release of The Master, it’s easy to overlook one important consideration: Whether the movie is good. So let’s get that out of the way. The Master is good. Grand photography, lush production design, and big, appropriately showy performances make it somewhat captivating. At a certain point, though, […]
Friday 10pm, TLC The televised dating show arguably peaked with “Joe Millionaire.” In case you forgot, that glorious 2003 Fox show featured an “everyday dude” (he was an aspiring model/actor) who acted as though he was wealthy in order to woo a bevy of would-be spouses. And at the end he told his chosen girl he […]
The 3D re-release of Pixar’s 2003 undersea saga may or may not be a bid from director Andrew Stanton to make back some of the cash his John Carter lost at the box office. Or it may just be de rigueur for controlling partner and distributor Disney to slap a 3D stamp on its most […]
Life in a big city is taxing in ways you don’t even notice, and sometimes the only sensible thing to do is disappear mysteriously into the woods. New York City’s avant-noise duo Blues Control traded the outer borough sprawl of Queens for Pennsylvania mining country. The result is a healthy smattering of tape loops with […]
With more precision and presence of mind, Lawless might have pitched itself as an origin story of the whole gangster-movie genre. But like the transparent moonshine its backwoods brooders guzzle down in just such a way as to remind us it’s fake, the movie itself seems conspicuously diluted, more water than fire. Sourced from Matt […]
Half a decade of global cold war left us with no lack of dramatic subjects for documentaries. To wit, on September 11, 1973, a U.S.-backed counter-revolution and coup in Chile resulted in the assassination of the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Chilean director Patricio Guzman chronicles the political tensions and outright violence of the events […]
“Robot Chicken DC Comics Special” Sunday midnight, Adult Swim Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice, a bunch of nerds and geek-loving Hollywood stars teamed up to bring us the dorkiest TV show this side of “Who Wants to be a Super Hero?” The permanent teenagers behind stop-motion pop-culture comedy show “Robot Chicken” have gotten official license […]
When you’re young and in love, “forever” is a word you dare to carve in tree trunks or wedding cakes. Getting older, if you’re not careful, that same word could mean a purgatory of codependence. Such is the wry wisdom of Celeste and Jesse Forever, a romantic comedy whose main characters spend the duration figuring […]
Race to the bottom “Abby & Brittany” Tuesday 10pm, TLC There is a growing sentiment that TLC—which originally stood for The Learning Channel—has now become the modern-day equivalent to the circus freak show. An endless parade of extreme human behaviors are put on the airwaves—families with 19 children, teenage gypsy brides, extreme couponers and hoarders. While […]
“Face Off” Tuesday 9pm, SyFy SyFy’s cinematic make-up competition returns for Season 3, just a scant five months after it wrapped its solid second outing. Ratings grew dramatically from its premiere season, and continued to increase throughout the second run—you have to strike while the prosthetic is hot. A new crop of make-up artists will […]