This year, the original Las Vegas-set CSI, about to begin its 12th season on the air, faced not one but two crossroads.  A couple of years earlier, the show’s original star William L. Petersen had decided a decade was enough, and decided not to renew his contract.  Conventional wisdom has it that an […]

  NOW YOU SEE ME:  Watch It At Home – Don’t Look Too Closely A summer action movie, like a magic act, is only as good as its final trick, and the one in the relatively low-budget NOW YOU SEE ME (which this season means something under $100M) is fairly entertaining–not impossible to foresee, if […]

  SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  Saturday 9PM on Starz Previously… on SURVIVOR’S REMORSE:  When basketball phenom Cam Calloway (Jessie T. Usher) signs his first giant free agency contract and moves to Atlanta, he takes his family entourage with him:  cousin Reggie (RonReaco Lee), sister M-Chuck (Erica Ash), mother Cassie (Tichina Arnold), and uncle Julius (Mike Epps), along […]

  House of Cards Season 2 Eps 1-3 Review Here. Eps 4-7 Review Here. Eps 8-10 Review Here. It’s a paradox of the Netflix version of HOUSE OF CARDS that in many ways, its least interesting character is the one at its center.  Pick the wildlife metaphor of choice:  Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) is 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 […]

  The third season of DEFIANCE may have been its most assured and cohesive to date.  However, as the most expensive of Syfy’s low-rated trio of Friday scripted summer shows, its fate has been far from certain.  In fact, tonight’s season finale, written by series co-creator Kevin Murphy and directed by Michael Nankin, felt overwhelmingly […]

  HERETIC (A24 – Nov. 15):  A nifty piece of philosophical horror from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the writers of the original A Quiet Place.  The set-up is almost fairy tale in its simplicity.  A pair of young women who are Mormon missionaries, Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Baxter (Chloe East), are at the […]

  WORKING THE ENGELS:  Thursday 9:30PM on NBC – Change the Channel As summer sitcoms go, WORKING THE ENGELS makes Undateable look like the return of Seinfeld. It’s an inert pile of unfunny cliches, dysfunctional family division. The contrivance (calling it a “premise” would give it too much dignity) is that Papa Engel, a lawyer, […]