post

‘GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE’ Goes Full Amblin But Remains Haunted by Mediocrity 

For some inexplicable reason, Ghostbusters just won’t stay dead. The original was a major hit at the summer ’84 box office and earned both critical and fan affection but in the nearly-four decades years since its release, there has been a not-as-well-received sequel, one season of a kids animated series, a failed video game, and two attempts at a reboot/sequel. None of them really connected with the rapidly aging fan base and all have been seen as a disappointing addendum to the popular supernatural comedy that your dad loved so much. Read More

post

A Family Plagued by Ambition Suffers Silently In Brooding Drama ’THE NEST’

It wasn’t until about halfway through The Nest that I started to question what the latest film from Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene) was really about. Best described as an uncomfortable familial drama, Durkin’s feature is set in the high-stakes world of status chasing. Perched in the periphery of a patriarch’s quest for large sums of money from his Trans-Contential business dealings, The Nest’s emotional center is a family suffering the ambitions of a father and his vacuous pursuit of wealth and status.  Read More

post

Out in Theaters: ‘THE POST’ 

The Post, a Steven Spielberg-directed drama about the Washington Post’s critical role in discriminating the notorious Pentagon Papers, has Very Important Movie Streep written all over it. A newspaper procedural starring awards giants Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, lit to resemble an Oscar winner by Janusz Kaminski and following a script from first-timer Liz Hannah and Josh Singer (The Fifth Estate, Spotlight) that touts the importance of its subject at every turn (sometimes in painfully obvious soliloquy), The Post is part important meditation on the unimpeachable import of the First Amendment, part desperate plea for Award’s attention and part Spielberg doing his Dramatic Spielberg thing.  Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Finale “I Live Here Now” Review

Was Meg’s (Liv Tyler) plan as spectacular as she probably imagines? The absence of a bomb wasn’t the aggressive release we were expecting … But was it effective? As much of a symbolic target as the bridge is, the action wouldn’t have been aligned with the Guilty Remnant’s ethos. Why destroy a symbol when you could destroy the entire belief system? The Guilty Remnants gained access, so the whole thing was staged as a diversion. Nihilism incarnate has infiltrated a gated spiritual enclave manifested by burning tires, a drunk chick in stocks quaffing cheap Mexican beer, and a lonely dude in the tower of Jarden overlooking the general anarchy. Not to mention, Meg and Evie snidely singing Miracle’s anthem in front of Kevin (Justin Theroux) and the bloody hole in his stomach. Symbolically, Megan has attained her intended martyrdom, and a new antithesis has moved in. Yet the finale fades out to promise. But what does Kevin’s reintegration with his family speak to what The Leftover’s is trying to say? Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Episode 7 “A Most Powerful Adversary” Review

The leftovers are departing. Laurie’s (Amy Brenneman) analysis of Kevin’s (Justin Theroux) Patti (Ann Dowd) manifestations summarizes the premise of the show. Everyone’s in Miracle, but all that’s really left is “us.” Scientific and religious theories compete for answers, but people prefer to believe in divine speculations versus more down to earth truths because it’s easier. Kevin chooses Virgil’s back door over Laurie’s more empirical advice to seek psychiatric help. Before he slugs the Patti antidote, he frames up Garvey Sr.’s advice to listen to the voices. But Garvey Sr. meant that the answers aren’t in what the voices instructed but rather that they initiated the journey to healing, permitting him to face himself. Overt symbolism aside, Kevin frees himself from the cuffs because Patti wasn’t in the way. Laurie, a woman of science, admits she chose a faith-based alternative, all of which have been commoditized like a resource in a boom town—or like a Comic Con for L. Ron Hubbard’s. Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Episode 6 “Lens” Review

The Leftover’s episodes are structured like a novel composed of chapters devoted to certain character’s POV. It’s a more intimate and thorough experience of perception, the only thing we have to understand but the only thing we need to experience the mystery of The Leftovers. In season one, the audience viewed from a distance, in the shadows, but in two, it’s being pulled closer to the whisper, as more analyses are offered and random acts are answered—none of which will ultimately and directly piece the grand departure together. If definitive answers are eventually offered, I don’t want to hear them. That’s the beauty of The Leftovers, a complex ecosystem of coping. Science and rationality are being stripped of its empirical confidence, and the only thing society is left with is the power and moreover, fortitude, of perception.   Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Episode 5 “No Room at the Inn”

Matt (Christopher Eccleston) is one of, if not the most, nuanced character in the series because he struggles more than any other character in holding onto a conviction, and in the context of The Leftover’s absurdist carnival, he has the most to lose. For this, I could watch the entire drama unfold from his perspective. Two of the most satisfying pieces of schadenfreude in the franchise have involved the doubting minister because he’s a whipping boy that hasn’t kneeled despite his moral assassinations at times. Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Episode 4 “Orange Sticker” Review

Are the leftovers looking for departure? Michael (Jovan Adepo) aggressively scrapes the “verified” sticker off his house because nothing is really verified in Miracle. Michael removes it like a formerly held belief system, but other homes still wear the label if only just to be verified of something. Miracle’s inhabitants are starting to catch up to the foreshadowing in earlier episodes. Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Episode 3 “Off Ramp” Review

Laurie Garvey (Amy Brenneman) tries to lead others off ramp when she’s still on the turnpike. She tries to wipe the residue off her current life through the drumming in her head. The drumming of improvised jazz layered over the opening scene is Laurie, presently in a state of ordered chaos coping with what’s leftover. In the third tableaux opening of this season, nobody has moved on. The departed never left. Read More

post

THE LEFTOVERS Season 2 Episode 2 “A Matter of Geography” Review

Kevin Sr. (Scott Glenn) and Patti (Ann Dowd) return, in a sense, from a departure—Kevin Sr. from the psych ward, and Patti, though retrospectively, from the dead. Does this suggest that the departed will someday return? Did they even really leave to begin with? As Season 2 begins to explore the reason of the departure, we know at this point that Jarden isn’t a miracle after all. Perhaps this alludes to the thought that miracles don’t really exist, at least in the way we conceive of their divination. I’m enjoying the game The Leftovers is playing, and maybe I’m onto something. Read More