PALM TREES AND POWER LINES (no distrib):  Jamie Dack’s first feature film (from a script written with Audrey Findlay) means to unsettle, and it does.  17-year old Lea (Lily McInerny) is stuck in a dead-end Southern California beach town at the end of summer with a distracted single mom (Gretchen Mol) and friends whose […]

  FARGO:  Tuesday 10PM on FX – DVR Alert Previously… on FARGO:  It’s chance that puts mild-mannered, beaten-down Bemidji, Minnesota insurance salesman Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman) beside sociopath Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton) shortly after Lester had a run-in with the bully who made his high school years a living hell.  But when asked directly […]

> See A Word About Busted Pilots The pilot for HOMEGROWN, produced for CBS by Warner Bros Television, seems determined to hit as many dysfunctional-but-loving-family cliches as it can.  We have one grouchy alpha male in a household of women (here played by Gerald McRaney), the multiple generations living in one sitcom (huge living room!) […]

  STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS:  Worth A Ticket – Another Satisfying Trip On the Enterprise J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot cohorts, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, did a bang-up job rejuvenating the Star Trek franchise in 2009, and their first next journey where many, many have gone before, the new STAR TREK: INTO […]

  THE TOMORROW PEOPLE:  Wednesday 9PM on CW Previously… on THE TOMORROW PEOPLE:  Stephen Jameson (Robbie Amell) is a teenager who also happens to be “homo superior,” aka one of The Tomorrow People.  Their powers include telekinesis, teleportation and telepathy, but because Stephen is The Chosen One–his long-vanished father was the mysterious Obi-Wan Kenobi of […]

  BLACK SAILS:  Saturday 9PM on Starz – Worth A Look The pirate action-adventure BLACK SAILS is Starz’s latest attempt to swing for the fences with ambitious original programming and finally be taken as seriously as its pay cable brethren HBO and Showtime.  This project seems intended to split the difference between Starz’s successful, but […]

  AFTER EARTH:  Not Even For Free – The Smith Family In Outer Space In AFTER EARTH, Will Smith plays Cypher Raige, an emotionally austere father who withholds affection from his son because of his doubt that the boy is capable of walking in his own celebrated footsteps.  It’s such a bizarre decision for a […]

  There were so many ads for summer blockbuster movies during tonight’s Season 4 finale of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD, it was almost like watching the Super Bowl.  One by one, the latest installments of Planet of the Apes, X-Men, Spider-Man, Transformers–pictures not opening for months, sometimes two or even three in a single commercial […]