> Watch It At Home:  Morgan Spurlock’s latest doc is more stunt than revelation. If Michael Moore were a movie franchise, Morgan Spurlock would be the direct-to-video entry in the series.  Or maybe the one that adds cheesy 3D effects to squeeze out every last dollar.   Moore is, lord knows, self-aggrandizing and fond of the […]

  And then this happened. With BATMAN & ROBIN, the franchise that had been reclaimed for adults by Tim Burton in 1989 was turned back over to children (and not bright children) by Joel Schumacher in 1997.  Schumacher took everything he’d done in Batman Forever and turned it up, as they say, to 11.  He […]

  ANIMAL PRACTICE: Wednesday 8PM starting 9/26 on NBC – Change The Channel UPDATE:  Tonight NBC aired the recast version of the ANIMAL PRACTICE pilot as a last-gasp grab for the attention of its Olympics audience.  Joanna Garcia Swisher now plays the female lead, the new boss of the show’s animal hospital and ex-girlfriend of […]

  AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL:  Wednesday 10PM on FX Even by the lavish standards of its franchise, the first installment of AMERICAN HORROR STORY: HOTEL is crazily incoherent.  It plays mostly as a collection of extended, bloody music videos–and since subtlety has never been a strength of series co-creator Ryan Murphy and his team, it […]

  DARK SHADOWS:  Watch it At Home – Loving Detail Isn’t Enough   DARK SHADOWS is one of the most confounding big-budget movies of recent years.  When Tim Burton (and his muse, Johnny Depp, one of the film’s producers as well as its star) announced that their next project would be a revisit to the […]

      ACT OF VALOR:  Watch It At Home –  Fast Forward When They’re Not Shooting   If there were a genuine national military crisis, and a small group of expert soldiers were needed to protect the interests of the country, would you want George Clooney or Brad Pitt behind the triggers of those […]

  CHAMPIONS:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel As this season’s NBC comedies go, CHAMPIONS is less rancid than AP Bio, but “harmless” isn’t much of a recommendation for a sitcom.  Despite the fact that the series was created by Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy, its pilot is all set-up, in the traditional […]

  BETTER CALL SAUL reached a milestone in the final scene of its fourth season, as Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) formally assumed the mantle of Saul Goodman, the character he’ll be in Breaking Bad.  As the prequel series journeys toward its destiny, though, this Season 4 turned out to be a ruthless essay on the […]