INHUMANS:  Friday 9PM on ABC (starting Sept 29) – Change the Channel In this world of Peak TV, it’s harder for a new series to break through the clutter than it’s ever been, and that thicket will be a veritable forest during the fourth week of September, when the major broadcast networks will follow […]

  BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR:  Buy A Ticket – A 3-Hour Deep Dive Into A Character’s Soul BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is relentlessly, sometimes suffocatingly intimate.  By that I don’t mean its celebrated, lengthy (although simulated) sex scenes between lead characters Adele (Adele Exarchopolous) and Emma (Lea Seydoux), which have earned it an […]

>Two Australian couples vacation together on the beaches of Cambodia, but only 3 people return. That’s the set-up for Kieran Darcy-Smith’s skilled debut WISH YOU WERE HERE, which premiered as part of Sundance’s World Cinema competition.The focal point of the story is the more settled, middle-class couple on the trip: Dave (Joel Edgerton) and Alice […]

  The writer Peter Morgan is a whiz at boring into little-remembered (and in the US, sometimes little-known) crannies of recent history and scooping out the rich drama inside, with scripts like The Deal, Frost/Nixon and The Damned United to his credit, along with the more celebrated The Queen.  (His occasional forays into pure fiction […]

  PACIFIC RIM:  Watch It At Home – Even Michael Bay Might Say “Too Much” Why isn’t PACIFIC RIM a better movie?  It’s a passion project for the tremendously talented co-writer (with Travis Beacham) and director Guillermo del Toro, who’s made both the enjoyably junky Hellboy adventures and the transcendent Pan’s Labyrinth.  Del Toro is […]

  CAPTAIN PHILLIPS:  Order Tickets Now – Exceptionally Taut, Intelligent Real-Life Thriller Paul Greenglass is a master of capturing pulse-pounding immediacy on film, and for most directors that would be enough.  Hollywood would be more than happy to back a money truck up to his door and have him churn out nothing but additional Bourne […]

  THE GREATEST BEER RUN EVER (Apple – September 30):  Peter Farrelly’s Green Book was one of the clearest beneficiaries of winning Toronto’s People Choice Award, vaulting from being entirely under the awards radar to a (somewhat divisive) Oscar for Best Picture a few months later.  No doubt the premiere of his follow-up The Greatest […]

  ALEX CROSS – Not At Any Price – A Pilot For A Show You Wouldn’t Watch ALEX CROSS is as generic as a cop movie can be–it’s a few commercial breaks away from airing on CBS or TNT–but there’s been a certain fascination about it since it was announced that the lead role would […]