Musicals have a rocky history in modern day cinema. For every Chicago or The Greatest Showman, Hollywood is lined with the corpses of failed musical adaptations such as Into the Woods or this year’s Dear Evan Hansen. They’re not even always bad, but audiences are just finicky with which ones they grasp onto. So, here’s a mostly unknown (outside of theater circles) show being adapted by a first-time director. There is every reason not to be optimistic and yet tick, tick…BOOM! is a blast. Based on the original musical by Jonathan Larson (of Rent fame), BOOM is fairly complicated structurally…
Author: Justin
Read More
The promise of streaming services has always been that they could approach film and television differently. Forget pilots, they could order straight to series more akin to HBO. Episode orders could be as small or as large as needed, as we’ve seen with some animated shows producing seasons in parts to release sooner. Still, Fear Street is one of the more creative experiments—producing an entire film trilogy to release mere weeks apart. Sure, Lord of the Rings did it first, but to my knowledge this is the first time a horror series has done it. Like Rings, the experiment has…
The saying better late than never has applied to many sequels lately, but only in the case of Black Widow does it apply to an entirely new franchise. It’s bewildering that Marvel waited this long to give us a proper non-superpowered (sorry Winter Soldier) spy thriller when characters like Nick Fury, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Maria Hill were just there waiting! Despite that feet dragging, the superhero spy thriller we finally got is good. Black Widow jumps a few years back into the Marvel timeline and picks up after Captain America: Civil War and before Avengers: Infinity War. That won’t…
Growing up I loved Godzilla. I loved all the movies from the slightly serious to the absolutely goofy. I loved all his foes, and I even loved his son. There was a wink to the audience in those films. They knew they weren’t making high art, but they were enjoying what they were doing. American filmmakers have not had the same level of success. Starting with 1998’s Godzilla, the American Godzillas have never seemed to get their tone right—oscillating between stupid but no fun to self-serious. Well, I’m happy to say they finally got one mostly right. Godzilla vs. Kong…
Too Funny to Fail is one of the funniest documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. It’s about the utter commercial failure of The Dana Carvey Show in the mid 90s. At the time, Carvey was one of Saturday Night Live’s biggest stars and was given the coveted time slot behind television’s biggest hit, Home Improvement. It couldn’t fail, right? Carvey assembled a team of writers and actors for his sketch comedy show that included Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Robert Smigel (Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Louis C.K., Robert Carlock (30 Rock), Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind),…
FX/Hulu’s new documentary Framing Britney Spears, part of The New York Times Presents series, is surprisingly well worth your time even if you’re not a fan. I can name maybe three Britney songs, but her cultural impact was massive in the late 90s/early 2000s. A steady stream of starlets followed in her wake—from Mandy Moore to Christina Aguilera. The doc’s most interesting moments focus in on that moment. It looks at the sexualization of young women in the media at that time and the effects it had on performers like Spears through depression, body image, and even a sense of…
Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is one of my favorite stories and the 1961 film adaptation The Innocents is my favorite horror film. So, you can imagine my mixed emotions when Netflix’s second season of their The Haunting franchise was announced as an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. I went in with optimism, but I came away disappointed. Your mileage may vary. The Haunting of Bly Manor tells the story of an English estate where two orphans are cared for by the small staff, including the newly hired au pair. The two children, Miles and Flora,…
What a difficult task it must be to bring an original take on Sherlock Holmes these days. There are the obvious comparisons you’ll draw with Benedict Cumberbatch and Robert Downey Jr., but there’s such a long history of the character that you can’t help but be compared favorably or unfavorably to someone. Enter Henry Cavill, who has tried this feat before with Superman. Only, this time, it isn’t another Sherlock he has to worry about comparisons to, but Sherlock’s little sister. Enola Holmes is the name of Sherlock’s little sister, played here in a truly star-turning performance by Stranger Things’…
Away promises the sort of emotionally driven stories that made Friday Night Lights and Parethood sensations, but with the added fun of outer space! What’s not to love about that combination? If Away proves anything, it’s that some formulas can’t simply be ported from one situation to another. Hilary Swank stars as the commander of the first manned mission to Mars. But before they even reach the moon, an accident causes her crew to lose faith in her. Can you see where this is going? Back on earth, her husband (Josh Charles) is dealing with health issues and their teenage…
Growing up, Mr. Wizard’s World was one of my favorite shows. I was never a big science fan in school, but it made the subject fun and approachable for kids. Over the years it was followed by Beakman’s World and Bill Nye, the Sciene Guy—though those never drew my attention. One thing they share, however, is their male hosts. Is it any wonder so few women go into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields? Enter Emily’s Wonder Lab and its vibrant host Emily Calandrelli. Each episode Emily takes a group of kids through a messy science experiment that is…