Film, TV & Streaming

It starts off as the portrait of a troubled child, but expands to become a film about community

Here’s a kiddo’s quest to define a self, in this case the descent of young Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) into a land of the dead inspired by Dia de los Muertos celebrations

Action scenes start and stop and then start again, then go in different directions, and it was a few moments into The Big Climactic Face-Off before I realized we’d arrived at The Big Climactic Face-Off

These days, conventions organizers can never stop planning their next fan gatherings. That’s because more conventions than ever are competing to get bigger celebrity guests to mingle and take photos with the fans. The next Fan Expo Dallas gathering doesn’t start until April, but it’s already scored a huge and revered pop…

… In Three Billboards, where livid, grieving mother Mildred (Frances McDormand) taunts the local police for not solving her daughter’s rape and murder (by being burned to death) from nine months prior, McDonagh has taken on a situation that demands we take it seriously.

“I wish I could live through something,” the title character laments to her mother in the opening scene of writer/director Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. Played with comical intensity by Saoirse Ronan, 17-year-old Lady Bird — nee Christine — is too young to realize that she is inescapably living through something,…

The movie turns on a series of revelations about the characters, whose hushed, intimate narration — split between Laura, Jamie, Ronsel, Hap and Florence — reveals rich inner lives

This is the first time a Marvel TV show has stunned me: Why in the era of binge-able continued-narrative TV series would the producers kill dead their momentum

Set in present-day New York, the film has a classic Hollywood texture and a classic Hollywood conceit: a brilliant old man paired with a beautiful young ingenue

Despite the bright cinematography, there’s something quaint and comforting about this film and its brand of old-fashioned storytelling …

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, BPM (Beats Per Minute), French director Robin Campillo’s stylized, moving drama of AIDS activism and love, sometimes feels like several films at once. It follows the activities of ACT UP Paris in the early 1990s, and for much…

Despite the many troubling trends in our media culture, the movies’ response to the Iraq War has been (gasp) surprisingly admirable. Since the mid-2000s, a steady stream of films have artfully addressed war’s aftermath and the homefront — from Stop-Loss and In the Valley of Elah, to Grace is Gone…

Ruben Ostlund’s The Square, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this past May, probably says more about the times we’re living in than any other film you’re likely to see this year. And yet the beauty of the movie is that everybody will have their own ideas about what,…

One year, back in the early 1990s, an uncle of mine didn’t show up to our family Christmas. I was only 10 and didn’t understand his sudden departure and why nobody would speak of it. A year later, I was at his funeral. He was a playwright and actor in…

Over six episodes crafted with the rich complexity of the novel, “celebrated murderess” Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), tells her own story, Scheherazade-style, to a doctor (Edward Holcroft) with the power to arrange for her pardon

Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of the Dana Carvey Show streams on Hulu Toward the end of the excellent new documentary, Too Funny to Fail: The Life & Death of the Dana Carvey Show, Dana Carvey describes the final installment of a bit that ran throughout his…

Why is Mel Gibson in the holiday family comedy Daddy’s Home 2? When Gibson’s relentlessly bloody, morally incoherent 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge inexplicably became a critical darling, I watched in horror at the love and attention lavished on the director. In what world were we living where, when Gibson’s name…

Yes, it’s hard to imagine wanting to watch 11/8/16 today. The film, a sweeping survey documentary created and produced by Jeff Deutchman, follows 16 Americans from across the country on election day of 2016: a Sikh New York cabdriver, a “Dreamer” in San Jose, a Massachusetts dad in a MAGA…

This fall, mainstream films are subverting expectations all over the place. Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! proved too much for some audiences looking for a moody drama who were then shocked by gory, allegorical narrative. Blade Runner 2049 sloughed off most of its predecessor’s lower-brow populist action for a somber tone and…

It’s not enough that the sitting president will hate Rob Reiner’s LBJ, but that’s not nothing, either. Here’s a portrait of a resolutely unlovable vulgarian who, due to a cruel accident of history, ascends to the Oval Office. But it’s the distinctions that will sting: In the opening moments, a…

It’s November! Which means that we’ve almost survived this year and I think that calls for a little celebration. How should we celebrate? Probably with lots of liquor. It’s been a tough one, but also TV! Nov. 2: Young Sheldon, CBS And on the seventh day, God planted the idea…

Jane arrives in theaters on October 20 On Sept. 11, 2001, renowned primatologist and environmental advocate Jane Goodall was in New York on business. She had planned to catch a flight out to visit a high school to give a talk on how we can find a reason to hope…