Tallulah Directed and written by Sian Heder USA, 2016 Sian Heder (writer and producer on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black) fleshes out the intersecting lives of three different women in her intricate debut feature. Tallulah follows a rambling young woman (Ellen Page of Juno, Inception, and The East) who bucks tradition and lives in …
Feig is at the top of his game in this riotous crowd-pleaser.
The DUFF takes the geek-gets-a-makeover high school formula and tweaks it mostly muddled results. A few naturalistic romance scenes and the efforts of its very able leads, buoy this into watchable territory. However overall this is a film plagued by confusion and several nonsensical plot twists.
For the second year running and for its final season, Breaking Bad won Outstanding Drama Series at the 66th Annual Emmy Awards. It virtually swept the awards in an especially stacked year, also picking up awards for Best Actor Bryan Cranston, Best Supporting Actress Anna Gunn, Best Supporting Actor Aaron Paul, and Best Writing for …
Although it’s easy to think of comedies and dramas as separate entities, the best series are often able to execute both styles of storytelling in establishing their identities. Mom is one of those series, and to call it a sitcom is almost misleading.
Bad Words Written by Andrew Dodge Directed by Jason Bateman USA, 2014 One of the mainstays of the holiday season is Chuck Jones’ masterful animated short adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which manages to both be a clever embrace of everything that Christmas embodies in its secular form and to be …
The Way, Way Back belongs, in no small way, to the same subgenre of low-key indie dramedies like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno, small-town stories populated with well-known actors and an almost sitcom-esque quality to the dialogue. Where this film, written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, breaks free from such familiar shackles is in its impressive ensemble cast, specifically the teen actor Liam James and the raffish character actor Sam Rockwell. The Way, Way Back is maybe a touch formulaic, but it’s an assured, enjoyable, and bittersweet coming-of-age story.
With Selina’s growing political issues in the second season of Veep, from the CIA operative hostage situation, to the scandals involving her ex-husband, a rough meeting between the Vice president and the press seemed inevitable. While Meyer was able to avoid the press in Finland, despite Dan’s bumbling efforts, such reprieve could not go on for long. This episode sees Meyer face the press, in an episode that illustrates how Meyer’s recent political actions are being viewed by those in the public eye, while still managing to be comedically top-notch.
From the first shot of Trust Me, Clark Gregg makes it obvious that his satirical picture owes a huge debt to Sunset Boulevard. Both are film noirs set in Hollywood that concern themselves with female actors clawing desperately at fame, but each is told from an opposite end of the spectrum. Billy Wilder’s classic memorably depicts an aging has-been desperate to reclaim her former glory, and Trust Me follows an up-and-coming starlet willing to go to any lengths to obtain celebrity. And the allusions just pile on after that.