THE FAREWELL (A24):  Lulu Wang’s The Farewell is what could be called Sundance Classic, a small, very personal film nurtured by the festival into wide enough attention that A24 paid $6M to release it.  It’s based on Wang’s own life, so much so that it would be a spoiler to reveal the caption to […]

  THE BURIAL (MGM/Amazon – Oct. 13):  A yarn that’s also a true story.  Jeremiah O’Keefe (Tommy Lee Jones) was the owner of a family-run, regional Mississippi business that for decades had offered funeral services and burial insurance to its customers.  When Jeremiah’s finances took a turn, he made a deal with a conglomerate headed […]

  ZERO DARK THIRTY:  Worth A Ticket – The Year’s Most Gripping Thriller Is True You already know how ZERO DARK THIRTY ends.  You knew how All the President’s Men ended, too, and Apollo 13 and Titanic.  Great drama doesn’t require M. Night Shyamalan-esque surprise endings, or twisty, tricky narrative structure.  Sometimes the most satisfying […]

> In 2007, Julie Delpy wrote, directed and co-starred in 2 Days In Paris, a romantic comedy-drama featuring Adam Goldberg and herself as a couple who lived in NY and visited the title city for a tumultuous visit with her character Marie’s family.  Paris was only a moderate art-house success in the US ($4.4M), but […]

  POWERLESS:  Thursday 8:30PM on NBC – If Nothing Else is On… So far, NBC’s POWERLESS is merely a clever idea for a sitcom.  It’s set on the fringes of the DC superhero universe, in Charm City, where Wayne Security (owned by the unseen Bruce, who of course has things to do in Gotham) exists […]

> Previously… on THE FIRM:  Mitch McDeere (Josh Lucas), having relocated with his family to the Canadian part of Washington DC, 10 years after the events in the book and movie, has associated his scrappy small practice with a new but equally evil big firm that’s particularly interested in him because of an accused murderer […]

>   Disclaimer:  Network pilots now in circulation are not necessarily in the form that will air in the Fall.  Pilots are often reedited and rescored, and in some cases even recast or reshot.  So these critiques shouldn’t be taken as full TV pilot reviews, but rather as a guide to the general style and […]

  DOMINION:  Thursday 9PM on Syfy – Change the Channel Was there really a pressing need to make a TV series out of the schlock horror movie Legion?  It’s not as though the film was much of a hit ($40M total box office in the US, $68M worldwide), nor is it well-remembered even 4 years […]