THE COUNSELOR:  Not Even For Free – A Deluxe Pedigree, But Only Cut-Rate Nihilism The first “uh-oh” moment in THE COUNSELOR comes early, perhaps 10 minutes in.  We’ve barely been introduced to Reiner (Javier Bardem, genially dissolute, his hair spiky this time) and his lover Malkina (Cameron Diaz, speaking with an on-again, off-again sultry […]

  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 […]

  DANCING ON THE EDGE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Starz’s latest British import, DANCING ON THE EDGE, seems on the basis of its first double-length episode to be intended for viewers who enjoy the jazzy millieu of Boardwalk Empire but find its pace too rapid and its violence too rude.  It’s a well-produced, intelligent drama […]

  Although Starz was a co-financier of THE WHITE QUEEN, the show was produced by the BBC predominantly for a British audience, so it helped to have a working (or at least a Wikipedia) knowledge of 15th-century English history to get the most out of it.  For example, it would have been difficult to appreciate […]

  CARRIE:  Watch It At Home – Respectable But Uninspired Rebo The talented director Kimberley Peirce plays a losing game with her remake of Brian DePalma’s iconic 1976 CARRIE.  (In fairness to Peirce, it’s not clear how many of the creative shots she was calling; she signed on as a director-for-hire after struggling for years […]

  WHITE COLLAR:  Thursday 9PM on USA Season 5 of WHITE COLLAR couldn’t be in more of a rush to get the hell away from its Season 4 cliffhanger.  When we left intrepid FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay), he was in prison for killing a US Senator, a crime actually committed by the father […]

  ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND:  Thursday 8PM on ABC Previously… on ONCE UPON A TIME IN WONDERLAND:  In this revisionist spin on the classic tale, a Victorian-era young adult Alice (Sophie Lowe) has escaped from the asylum where her father kept her after hearing the wild tales of her childhood, and she’s headed […]

  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 […]