The ultimate victor in the streaming wars has been the audience, which now enjoys the spoils of a content-starved environment in which death is never final, and any familiar TV franchise has a good shot at being resurrected. For proof, as if any more is needed, look to the motley crew of psychopath hunters from the long-running procedural “Criminal Minds,” …
Read More »TV & Movie
Barry Season 4 Review: Bill Hader’s HBO Comedy Nails Final Season
When “Barry” began, it was the punchline to a simple setup: a hitman walks into an acting class, then kills in every sense of the term. Co-creator and star Bill Hader was best known for his sketch comedy work on “Saturday Night Live,” while his partner Alec Berg had done stints on “Silicon Valley” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” At least …
Read More »‘Jeen-yuhs’ Review: Doc Shows Kanye West’s Rise and Polarizing Plateau
Netflix’s epic Kanye West documentary, “Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy,” will unfold in three feature-length parts, as the subtitle promises. (The first part premiered Sunday in the Sundance Film Festival, and gets a one-night theatrical release Feb. 10; the whole thing will unspool on successive Wednesdays on Netflix, starting Feb. 16.) But however the filmmakers carve up the 277-minute running time, …
Read More »‘Tulsa King’ Review: Taylor Sheridan Show Starring Sylvester Stallone
“Tulsa King,” the new Paramount+ drama created by Taylor Sheridan and Terence Winter, is entirely too conventional and workmanlike to be a remarkable series. And yet it is remarkable – and oddly fascinating – for a couple of reasons. For one thing, “Tulsa King” continues the parabolic rise of Sheridan, a writer-director who has quickly become one of the past …
Read More »‘Ted Lasso’ Season 3 Review: The Final Season Misses the Mark
SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers from the series finale of “Ted Lasso,” now streaming on Apple TV+. Here’s a scoop: There will be a fourth season of “Ted Lasso.” Actually, it has already aired, and it was not great. “Ted Lasso” grew out a character created by Jason Sudekis and friends for NBC Premier League promos, a Kansas City-based football coach …
Read More »Golden Globes 2024 Review: Awards Fail to Rise from the Ashes
The Golden Globes used to involve a predictable kind of chaos. The awards themselves were voted on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a small and notoriously corrupt organization with a clear set of biases. (In short: the more famous, the better.) Perhaps as a result, the televised broadcast has always been looser, drunker, and less self-serious than more prestigious …
Read More »‘One Piece’ Review: Netflix Manga Adaptation Is Too Loyal
As a school of adaptation, the live-action take on anime and manga is only slightly less cursed than the live-action series or film based on a video game. Yet remarkably, 2023 is set to be a banner year for both. In January, HBO premiered “The Last of Us,” the hit drama that takes the same somber, character-driven approach to a …
Read More »The Full Monty TV Series Review: FX Revives Beloved ’90s Movie
The hit British film “The Full Monty” — for a brief period in 1997, the most lucrative release in U.K. history — was, in some ways, the original “Magic Mike.” The comedy chronicled six unemployed ex-steelworkers in post-Thatcher North England as they formed a stripping troupe. (The name referred to the strippers’ willingness to bare all, genitalia included.) By treating sex …
Read More »‘Hazbin Hotel’ Review: YouTube Pilot Struggles as Amazon Show
The animated comedy “Hazbin Hotel” has a feel-good backstory belied by its grim premise: a horde of demons suffer eternal damnation in Hell, their ranks periodically culled in mass exterminations led by armies from Heaven. Creator Vivienne Medrano, founder of YouTube channel VivziePop, independently produced the pilot with money from her Patreon, and posted it to the streaming site in …
Read More »‘The Bear’ Season 2 Review: FX Comedy Keeps Up the Heat
“You can spend all the time in the world in here,” a chef tells his eager protegé as they work in a temple of haute cuisine. “But if you don’t spend enough time out there…” There’s no need for him to finish the sentence. The mentor’s meaning is clear enough: To achieve greatness, you need to expand your horizons. This …
Read More »