For 3 seasons, Noah Hawley’s FX anthology series FARGO displayed an uncanny ability to channel the unique sensibilities of Joel and Ethan Coen, even while telling original stories with their own idiosyncratic characters.  In Season 4, Hawley seemed to tire of exercising that muscle, and while the season was clearly intended as his nod […]

  ENDLESS LOVE:  Not Even For Free – Hopeless Wreck Truly:  why does this new ENDLESS LOVE exist?  Even on the crassest commercial level, it makes very little sense.  The 1981 Franco Zeffirelli/Brooke Shields/Martin Hewitt version is remembered as neither good nor particularly successful (it made only half as much as Shields’ Blue Lagoon had […]

  EXHIBITING FORGIVENESS (no distrib):  The noted painter Titus Kaphar has made an impressive shift into scripted feature films.  Although Exhibiting Forgiveness isn’t strictly speaking autobiographical, Kaphar’s protagonist Tarrell (Andre Holland) is a successful painter whose canvases resemble the filmmaker’s.  Tarrell travels with his wife (Andra Day, playing a recording star) and young son to […]

  COLETTE (no distrib):  These days, the early 20th Century French writer known as Colette is remembered mostly if at all for having written the story that became the musical Gigi, but her own life proves to be remarkably timely in Wash Westmoreland’s film.  Westmoreland developed the project for a dozen years (originally with his […]

  Season 5 of WHITE COLLAR rebounded nicely from its more lachrymose previous season, which asked us to care far too much about the backstory issues of con man/forger/FBI consultant Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and his sidekick Mozzie (Willie Garson).  This year, the show was back to doing what it does best, providing breezy capers […]

As soon as Robert Redford had enough clout to start generating his own movies, he began starring in and often producing some of the best politically-themed films of the 1970s, including The Candidate, Three Days of the Condor and All the President’s Men.  Laudably, in this latter portion of his career, he’s continued to be one of the […]

  GRIMM:  Fridays 9PM on NBC NBC took a risk in placing GRIMM, one of its few successful shows, onto its microscopic bench for months of midseason hiatus, but at least it broke off with a solid cliffhanger.  Without overdoing the backstory:  our hero, homicide detective and erstwhile monster-hunter (aka “Grimm”) Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli) […]

  THE FOLLOWING:  Monday 9PM on FOX (starting Jan 27) The blood-drenched, increasingly grandiose literary pretensions of THE FOLLOWING grew tiresome by the end of last season’s run.  It seemed like very good news that in the season finale, Edgar Allen Poe scholar, brutal serial killer and unaccountably irresistible cult leader Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) […]