– By Sam Hendrian – “You happy now?” These words are spoken by the perceptive writer Paddy Chayefsky (Norbert Leo Butz) to his troubled best friend Bob Fosse (Sam Rockwell) as he sits with a lap-full of awards in the backseat of a limo, and they brilliantly summarize the thematic core of FX’s biographical mini-series Fosse/Verdon. The story of legendary …
Hulu’s ‘Ramy’ Is an Important Show – But Not Quite a Good One
– By James Powers – A strange little scene in Hulu’s new show Ramy tragicomically highlights the average American’s tortured relationship with traditional religion. The setting is New Jersey, in the midst of Islam’s penitential season of Ramadan, outside a halal restaurant. A loutish construction worker, having just witnessed a group of Muslim men praying fajr together in the parking …
Putting the Lion Before the Horse: Screenwriting Lessons From “The Long Night”
– By Matthew Sawczyn – Spoilers Below for Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 3 The battle is over. Melisandre sheds her necklace. Drained, worn, haggered, she walks out into the bitter snow… and dies. CUT TO BLACK. First, extreme gratitude to the cast and crew of Game of Thrones. They probably felt like Melisandre after all was said and …
Seven Traumatized Children Under One Umbrella Academy
– By Carly Twehous – [Spoilers Ahead] At a time when the superhero origin story consumes nearly every available screen, so often audiences get caught up in the bright colors, over-the-top special effects, and elaborate villains intent on world domination, that people begin forget the one thing that makes superheroes so compelling: the hero’s relentless quest to fight not only …
‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ – A Timely Exploration of Human Dignity and the Futility of Violence
–By Sam Hendrian– This article contains Spoilers “We all have it coming, kid.” These legendary words from Clint Eastwood’s classic film Unforgiven also form the thematic core of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, a feature-length anthology of Western short films from directors Joel and Ethan Coen. Recently released to Netflix, it masterfully employs both dark humor and haunting imagery to …
Its Own Trojan Horse: A Review of ‘Troy: Fall of a City’
– By Tyler Carlos – Contains Spoilers Storytelling has been a part of the world for thousands of years, and some of the first stories have lived on to become classics that are still told to this day. And with today’s technology, we are able to experience these stories in new and exciting ways. So it’s always a disappointment when …
Just Another Day in Paradise: ‘The Good Place’ Review
– By Carly Twehous – Some spoilers below Welcome! Everything is fine! This is the Good Place: A generalized, metaphysical “paradise” run exclusively on the arbitrary negative and positive energy put out into the universe. (Very Woodstock, I know.) Every action you do has a pre-assigned negative or positive value to it and your ultimate score determines if you spend …
A Fortunate Review for an Unfortunate Show
Review of ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’, Season 2 – By Tyler Carlos – Spoilers Below Last year, Netflix blessed humanity with a live action series adaptation of the popular children’s books “A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket. This gloomy story follows the highly intelligent Baudelaire children and the unfortunate events following the death of their parents in …
Trauma Begets Trauma: A Review of ‘Jessica Jones’ Season 2
– By Carly Twehous – Spoilers below for Seasons 1 and 2 In the wake of the general disaster that was Marvel’s Defenders—a knock-off Avengers attempt that even the DCEU can out-perform—Marvel’s Netflix heroes were left to the wolves, to prove that they could, at the very least, still hold their own. Jessica Jones, after that fan-favorite, girl-power first season, …
Netflix’s ‘Wild Wild Country’: A Fascinating Piece of American History
– By Tyler Carlos – Spoilers Below Growing up, we all study American history at some point during our education. We learn about things like George Washington, the Boston Tea Party, and World War II. But throughout history, there are also those events that seem to shake the very foundation of what this country is all about, and somehow, we …