I’ll confess something: I clicked on Swapped mostly out of obligation. Netflix animated original, body-swap premise, anthropomorphic animals. I had low expectations and a reasonable amount of skepticism, which is exactly the right mental state for a movie to surprise you. Within ten minutes something in the background of a wide shot stopped me cold. … Read more
There’s a moment about fifteen minutes into Two Pianos when the pianist Mathias steps into an elevator, rides it down from his mentor’s party, and walks into the lobby and the woman he has spent eight years running from is standing right there. Neither of them speaks. She turns and vanishes. He collapses. Not metaphorically. … Read more
Have you ever had a friend who keeps saying “one last one” but means absolutely none of it? That friend who somehow convinces you to stay out two hours longer than you planned, bouncing from place to place with no real destination, just vibes and momentum and the vague sense that something interesting might happen … Read more
So when I heard Harlin was back with another plane-crash-sharks-eating-people movie? Produced by Gene Simmons from Kiss? With six — SIX — screenwriters? I thought: yes. This is either going to be amazing or a beautiful disaster. Turns out it’s neither. It’s just kind of… there. Floating. Like a dead guy in the water. Which, … Read more
Somewhere around episode four, I caught myself doing something I rarely do during a screener. I opened my phone. Not to check anything important. Just because the shootout on screen had stopped asking anything of me, and my brain quietly opted out. That’s not a death sentence for a show, but it tells you something. … Read more
Okay, So ‘The Sheep Detectives’ Is Actually Good? I’m Confused Too. Look, I went into this thing ready to hate it. You have to understand: the director made Minions. Like, the yellow talking tic-tacs. And the premise is literally “sheep solve a murder because their shepherd read them mystery novels.” That sounds like a straight-to-streaming movie … Read more
Here’s the thing about sequels. They don’t have to be great. They don’t even have to be good, necessarily. They just have to exist for a reason. Any reason. “We had an idea” is a reason. “We wanted to check in on these characters twenty years later” is a reason. Even “we all needed a paycheck … Read more