THE AMERICANS:  Wednesday 10PM on FX – DVR Alert The renaissance of pop culture spies–good and bad, ours and theirs, real-life and fictional–continues with FX’s new series THE AMERICANS.  Joe Weisberg’s drama is set in 1981, at the start at the Reagan administration, when Cold War rhetoric ramped up for one last frightening gasp […]

  DO NO HARM: Thursday 10PM on NBC – If Nothing Else Is On… What is it with NBC and dual personalities?  Is the network trying to tell us something?  A couple of years ago it gave us My Own Worst Enemy, with Christian Slater as an ordinary family man who periodically transformed into a […]

  Toy’s House wasn’t the only movie at this year’s Sundance about boys fending for themselves.  THE INEVITABLE DEFEAT OF MISTER AND PETE depicts a less voluntary version of the effort to keep going without adults, set in a much more hostile environment.  George Tillman Jr’s film, written by Michael Starrbury, is set in a […]

  It just wouldn’t be a film festival without something from Michael Winterbottom.  Winterbottom isn’t at the very top of the film director pantheon, but he’s respected enough that his projects have been in near-constant festival demand for most of his two decade-long career, and one way or another they tend to be included in […]

  TOUCHY FEELY offers the gifted writer/director Lynn Shelton taking herself very, very seriously for the most part.  It turns out to be a less effective mode for her than those of her recent small-scale comedies Humpday and Your Sister’s Sister, which had marvelously well-judged tones.  (In her more mainstream work, she recently directed a […]

  Maybe it’s time for a filmmaker who doesn’t give a damn about the Beat Generation to make the next movie about them.  Michael Polish’s BIG SUR joins last year’s On the Road as a Jack Kerouac adaptation that’s gorgeously filmed, performed with seriousness and commitment, and dramatically paralyzed.  (I missed this year’s other Sundance […]

  MAGIC MAGIC never really makes clear what it intends to be, but it’s awfully fascinating to watch. Written and directed by the prolific Sebastian Silva, who had two films at Sundance this year (the other was the well-received Crystal Fairy), and who is best known for his art-house success The Maid, Magic is set […]

  If you go to too many Sundances, or see too many indie films, there are certain templates you come to recognize all too quickly.  THE LIFEGUARD, written and directed by Liz W. Garcia, a TV writer (Memphis Beat, Cold Case) making her directing debut, follows so many of these conventions that it could have […]