CRISTELA:  Friday 8:30PM on ABC Previously… on CRISTELA:  Law student Cristela (series co-creator Cristela Alonzo) works as an intern at a firm run by partner Trent Culpepper (Sam McMurray), alongside his bubbleheaded (blonde) daughter Maddie (Justine Lupe) and nice-guy Josh (Andrew Leeds).  Meanwhile, to make ends meet, Cristela lives at home with her meddling […]

  THE WALKING DEAD:  Sunday 9PM on AMC THE WALKING DEAD has never been prized for its subtlety, and it didn’t attempt any with the title of its crossroads Season 9 premiere:  “A New Beginning.”  Which it definitely was, as the first episode under new showrunner Angela Kang (who was promoted up through the writer/producer […]

  MAYDAY:  The fantasy whatzit is a Sundance staple, and Mayday fits into that category.  (Paradise Hills was a recent example from a past festival.)  Ana (Grace Van Patten), short for Anastasia, is an ignored and abused waitress who finds herself swimming through a portal to what turns out to be an otherwise deserted island […]

  BEAUTY & THE BEAST:  Thursday 9PM on CW The opening hour of the fourth and final season of CW’s BEAUTY & THE BEAST was practically meta, what with the characters seeming to spend half the episode complaining about the fact that just when they thought they were finished with it all, here they were […]

  2 BROKE GIRLS:  Monday 8PM on CBS 2 BROKE GIRLS is about as basic as sitcoms come.  Take two mismatched young women–Caroline (Beth Behrs), who’s tall, blonde and unable to believe she’s not rich anymore; and Max (Kat Dennings), a busty brunette with street smarts–turn them into enforced roommates and co-workers at a Brooklyn […]

  AFTER THE WEDDING (no distrib):  The Danish 2006 After the Wedding, which won that year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, was shot by director Suzanne Biers in the then-trendy Dogma style, heavy on pseudo-verite camerawork and lighting that imparted a sense of immediacy to the drama.  Bart Freundlich’s English-language remake dispenses with that style entirely.  […]

  It takes about an hour, but Nicholas McCarthy’s THE PACT, which premiered in the Park City At Midnight section at Sundance, eventually turns out to have a neat twist up its sleeve, one that switches the movie from haunted house horror to an entirely different subgenre of thriller.  And after that, a solid reel […]

>The FOX pilot LOCKE & KEY is a very effective hour of creepiness, but it’s not that hard to understand why the network didn’t put the project on its schedule.  The show screams “cult hit” at best, and the pilot feels more like a shortened feature film than the viable prototype for a continuing weekly […]