Crimson Peak, for all director Guillermo del Toro’s earnest embrace of gothic romances and haunted house films, can’t help but avoid the modern meta-age of stories commenting on themselves. As heroine and aspiring novelist Edith Cushing (Mis Wasikowska) tells a prospective publisher about her novel, “It’s not so much a…
The journey of The Walking Dead is, inextricably, the journey of sheriff Rick Grimes. In past seasons, Rick’s character oscillations have been fairly clear from green Rick of Season 1 and 2 to the Ricktatorship of Season 3 to Farmer Rick in Season 4. That was when current showrunner Scott Gimple…
There are three kinds of films prolific and beloved director Ridley Scott, who will turn 78 next month, makes: tense dramas (Thelma & Louise, The Counselor) grandiose epics (Gladiator, Exodus: Gods and Kings), and sci-fi extravaganzas (Blade Runner, Prometheus, its upcoming sequel Alien: Paradise Lost). As the title plainly states,…
Jon Stewart acolyte Stephen Colbert began September by claiming the mantle of CBS’s The Late Show from David Letterman and now, it ends with the man himself replaced by another acolyte – 31 year-old South African stand-up Trevor Noah. As a relative unknown to American audiences (and to show itself…
It’s a pity what M. Night Shyamalan’s been reduced to. But it’s hard to defend a guy that has done all he could in the last decade to sully and degrade himself as a brand with movies like Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender and After Earth.…
Stephen Colbert is my spirit animal. He is a satirist without parallel. Like his mentor and forebear Jon Stewart, he presided over a double-whammy of political comedy for almost a decade at Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report. Both hosts finally ran out of gas in proximity to each other, with…
Welcome back, True Detectives. Just like that, True Detective’s beleaguered second season closes, not with a whimper but with a bang. Several bangs actually and all so deafening as to drown out each other. See, when you have two climatic moments in an episode with a third left to go,…
Welcome back, True Detectives. This was by far the best episode of the season. Dominoes started to fall and actions that actually affect the status quo were taken. But it’s taken far too long and the dominoes were obvious from the start. For seasons as short as True Detective‘s are,…
Welcome back, True Detectives. This show finds balance and subtlety banes rather than boons. Instead of getting to know our characters in any meaningful way, the show cuts between them in really off-putting edits, robbing itself of any momentum. Each episode reinforces how integral Cary Fukunaga was to the first…
FOX’s Wayward Pines A 10-episode “event series” that aired from May 14 to July 23 detailing Secret Service Agent Ethan Burke’s time stranded in the seemingly-idyllic but secretly-insidious town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. Exec produced by M. Night Shyamalan, who also directed the pilot. Head writer and showrunner is Chad…