THE ORIGINALS:  Wednesday 9PM on CW Season 4 of THE ORIGINALS worked very hard to break up its band of vampires, werewolves, witches and hybrids thereof, which meant that the premiere of the show’s fifth and final season had its hands full trying to bring them back together.  Mikaelson family members Klaus (Joseph Morgan), […]

  FAHRENHEIT 11/9 (Midwestern – opens September 21):  In the course of Fahrenheit 11/9, Michael Moore takes a shot at Jeff Zucker and Les Moonves for admitting that Donald Trump has been good for their businesses, but it’s a weakness of Moore that he lacks the self-knowledge to recognize that the same is true for […]

  RAY DONOVAN:  Sunday 9PM on Showtime On the occasion of its 6th season, Showtime’s RAY DONOVAN has relocated across the country to New York, and the surprise is that although the series has always been very LA-intensive, both in storylines and use of locations, there’s very little difference in the final product.  Ray (Liev […]

  IN THE DARK:  Thursday 9PM on CW The protagonist of CW’s new drama IN THE DARK is blind, but the show wants it to be very clear that Murphy (Perry Mattfeld) isn’t TV’s typical high-functioning disabled role model.  Murphy is disaffected, sarcastic and often downright rude (she’s even dismissive to her adorable guide dog, […]

  WAVES (A24 – November 1):  Trey Edward Shults’ third film (after the micro-budgeted indie Krisha and the horror movie They Come By Night) manages the remarkable feat of feeling both experimental and grounded, as propulsive as an episode of Euphoria without that show’s smug affectations.  There isn’t a lot of plot, and what there […]

  This was a Toronto Film Festival unlike any other, and not just because I “attended” it from the laptop in my house.  Toronto has become an important stop on the road to the Academy Awards, with 9 of the past 10 Best Picture winners premiering or screening there.  (Birdman was the exception.)  But no […]

  THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE (Searchlight/Disney – in release):  The reason for expanding a documentary into a scripted narrative is typically to allow for an exploration of motive and emotional background not available in the existing footage.  A documentary can show what happened, but not necessarily why it happened.  That makes The Eyes of […]

  PAST LIVES (A24):  The playwright Celine Song makes an impressive feature writing/directing debut with the lovely, eloquent Past Lives.  The film is sort of the opposite of Sliding Doors and all of the multiversal entertainment we’re showered with these days.  Rather than allowing Nora (Greta Lee), Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Arthur (John Magaro) […]