NOW YOU SEE ME:  Watch It At Home – Don’t Look Too Closely A summer action movie, like a magic act, is only as good as its final trick, and the one in the relatively low-budget NOW YOU SEE ME (which this season means something under $100M) is fairly entertaining–not impossible to foresee, if […]

  TRUE BLOOD:  Sunday 9PM on HBO Although TRUE BLOOD shares with its HBO cousin Game of Thrones a predilection for high body count, sexual content and ratings, the two shows are very different.  Where Game is, in many ways, an exercise in elegant restraint, with climaxes carefully spaced out over years of storytelling, True […]

  SIBERIA:  Monday 10PM on NBC Previously… on SIBERIA:  What’s worse than being on yet another reality TV competition show?  Being on one where unknown creatures are trying to kill you.  The contestants on SIBERIA have been flown out to a remote outpost in guess-where, with the idea that whoever makes it to the end […]

  THE 100:  Wednesday 9PM on CW – Worth A Look THE 100 has promise, although it needs some work.  Based on a series of YA novels by Kass Morgan, the premise borrows liberally from Lord of the Flies, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, The Hunger Games, and any number of post-apocalyptic dystopian tales.  In the future, […]

  The renovations on Season 3 of NECESSARY ROUGHNESS worked out quite well.  The series jettisoned its original setting and much of its supporting cast, moving Dr. Dani Santino (Callie Thorne) from her job as in-house therapist to the NY Hawks football team to the high-powered V3 talent agency run by new regular (for this […]

  In recent years, the… let’s call it mature audience has been a profitable one, making moderate hits of films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Quartet.  This holiday season, the title of choice for this niche is likely to be PHILOMENA, a literate tearjerker that Harvey Weinstein unveiled at the Venice and Toronto film festivals. Based on a true […]

  REVENGE:  Sunday 9PM on ABC REVENGE went off the rails last season, both creatively and in the ratings (its Season 2 finale managed just a 1.7).  When it was over, series creator Mike Kelley found himself bumped off his own show, replaced by new showrunner Sunil Nayar, who wrote tonight’s Season 3 premiere (directed […]

  AMERICAN HORROR STORY – COVEN:  Wednesday 10PM on FX Caged and tortured slaves, mid-coitus spontaneous brain aneurisms and gang rape aside, the COVEN season of AMERICAN HORROR STORY was relatively restrained in its start, at least compared to other AHS seasons.  There appears to be one basic story being told, and all the mythology […]