|
Dylan RothObserver |
If you want to make a cinephile cringe, “digital face replacement” is the phrase that pays. “Digital de-aging” and “deepfake” will do the...
Stephanie Hsu shines as a party planner who discovers everyone she goes to bed with is dying in seemingly unrelated freak accidents in this...
This Lord of the Rings anime feature film is mostly rote medieval fantasy that lacks the widespread appeal of Peter Jackson’s trilogy.
Margo Martindale has been one of Hollywood’s most reliable character actors since the late 1980s. She’s featured in Oscar-winning dramas and...
Any review of a work from television producer Michael Schur is going to include the word “warm.” A writer and producer on the outrageously popular...
There’s never been a series quite like Arcane , and there might never be again. Based on League of Legends , a wildly successful video game...
The Venom film series is one of the weirder phenomena to emerge from the superhero movie boom. Based on the popular Spider-Man...
As the outlandish vampire comedy returns for one last season, the magic is waning.
Director Sean Baker has made a name for himself telling unvarnished stories of poverty in America. His films, like Tangerine and The Florida...
Two years ago, Smile was a pleasant surprise: a solid supernatural horror movie that lived up to its ubiquitous marketing. ( Planting actors...
Most sitcoms are driven by their characters’ unwillingness to confront their flaws. In 'Shrinking' the characters are all actively working on...
Joker , a Todd Phillips film very, very loosely based on a handful of pages from Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland,...
The tagline for Mr. McMahon —the new documentary series from Netflix, Tiger King producer Chris Smith and 30 for 30 creator Bill...
Colin Farrell is excellent reprising his role from 'The Batman,' but this HBO series belongs to Cristin Milioti as the terrifying yet sympathetic...
The Front Room , the new horror-comedy from filmmakers Max & Sam Eggers and A24, boasts a strong premise and a game cast, but it’s not particularly...
Last year, writer and actor Brian Jordan Alvarez went from cult comedian to social media sensation. Alvarez made some waves back in 2016 with The...
The proliferation of digital assistants, advanced chatbots, smart home devices, and other so-called AI products has led to a new wave of sci-fi...
James Cameron’s original 1984 The Terminator is a perfect synthesis of brainy sci-fi, gruesome horror, nail-biting suspense and clever character...
Like the Terminator , Alien is a franchise in which no new installment stands a chance of being the best. The fight here is for third place,...
I attended my first Bruce Springsteen concert, in utero, in 1989. Raised in New Jersey by a record store owning father who has seen Springsteen live...
American cinephiles of a certain age (namely, millennials) are unlikely to pass up a new M. Night Shyamalan movie. A popcorn auteur and then an...
I went into Deadpool & Wolverine surprisingly optimistic. This is, after all, the only Marvel Studios feature due out this year, a respite from...
Part One of 'Cobra Kai' Season Six has all the hyperbolic teen drama, tightly choreographed action and cringe-inducing comedy that fans have come to...
For decades, artificial intelligence served a lot of narrative purposes: a symbol of humanity’s hubris; a metaphor for God, childhood, or otherness;...
In 2022, A24 and writer-director Ti West delivered the one-two punch of X and Pearl , a pair of horror films about cinema, sex, violence and...
Are Chef Carmy’s outsized expectations worth the chaos they cause? One thing is clear: as the show evolves into more of an ensemble piece, 'The...
Instead of just another high-adrenaline creature feature, this prequel from writer/director Michael Sarnoski delivers something much more refreshing...
It’s become a cliche to goof on that 2003 Newsweek cover that declared M. Night Shyamalan “The Next Spielberg,” just in time for his critical...
If you’re not a die-hard Star Wars fan, it’s likely that LucasFilm’s recent output of Star Wars shows will have totally lost you. With a few...
Several mysteries unravel across this series, which is part thriller, part family drama, and part the story of a dad haunted by a blue furry monster...
After a seven-year hiatus, a new cast and creative team kicks off a new trilogy with one of the strongest films in the Planet of the Apes series.
The Fifteenth Doctor—portrayed by Ncuti Gatwa of Sex Education fame—is the most bubbly and vivacious incarnation to date.
Shot over five days, this very indie movie stars writer-director Vera Drew as Joker the Harlequin and borrows liberally from the Batman universe to...
Sometimes calling a film “challenging” is code for “I don’t like it, but I don’t want to sound stupid or uncool for not liking it.” My...
Though Universal’s attempt at a cinematic universe—a horror equivalent of the MCU—was buried with 2017’s The Mummy , the studio has been...
It’s reductive to refer to every big-budget TV adaptation of a popular video game as “[studio]’s answer to The Last of Us .” But there is...
Star Trek: Discovery occupies an interesting place in the celebrated franchise. It was the first Trek series of the streaming era, the first to...
This past winter, writer/director Takashi Yamazaki and Japanese studio Toho unveiled Godzilla Minus One , a rich, character-driven parable about...
Watch the trailer for Sugar and you’ll see what appears to be a fairly ordinary neo-noir set in present day Los Angeles centered around a...
The Internet at large is very weird about sydney sweeney. For a while, she merely attracted the typical scrutiny and fixation of a magnetic young...
There’s an episode of 30 Rock in which comedy writer Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) decides to play hardball when negotiating a talk show development deal...
Back in January, Road House director Doug Liman announced that he would be boycotting his own film’s SXSW premiere to protest Amazon’s...
Five years after their goal-line fumble of the massively popular HBO series Game of Thrones , writer-producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are...
In 2009, producers Robert and Michelle King brought us The Good Wife , one of the last great broadcast network dramas. Launching under the guise of...
In some ways, Lisa Frankenstein feels like it arrived on a time machine from the year 1989. To begin with, it seems like a movie that began as a...
Early in Christopher Nolan’s sci-fi thriller Tenet , a scientist (Clémence Poésy) demonstrates the film’s bizarre time travel gimmick for...
What does it mean for an episode of The Sopranos to be “underrated?” David Chase’s generation-defining drama is one of the most immaculate...
There’s something exciting about deliberately small science fiction stories. Sci-fi, after all, can be as much an intellectual exercise as an...
True Detective , the anthology mystery series that captivated HBO viewers back in 2014, returns this weekend for its first new season in five years....
Are there still casual Marvel Studios fans? If you believe the doomsayers in the press ( I’m one of them ), the superhero movie boom has finally...