Top Movies

I have to confess that documentaries aren’t my favorite genre of film, despite the fact that documentaries manage to be some of my overall favorites. Generally, the ones made by people too close to, or in fact part of, the subject have the least chance of winning me over. At best they tend to be stylistically odd, and mostly they misunderstand what’s actually interesting about the story.

Thus, My Old School has everything going against it. It’s made by Jono McLeod, who has a few other documentaries under his belt, so at least this isn’t his only reason for becoming a documentarian, and he is indeed very close to the story. It’s also a rather simple mix of animated “recreations” and interview footage, with a hint of archival footage. Topping things off, Alan Cumming stands in as the subject for interview clips in which he lip syncs to interview

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken the last few years to try out new spins, new characters, and most importantly, new thematic moods and styles. Such wheels have been spinning at least since the introduction of the Guardians of the Galaxy, which took a leap with characters few knew and leaned heavily into comedy. But, the last few films and series efforts like WandaVision, have tried to widely expand the kind of storytelling available. Normally a recipe for disaster, the juggernaut that is the MCU feels confident to attempt to widen its reach further, even at the expense of occasionally alienating fans. WandaVision, for one, shows just how well this can work out.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is a bit of a different beast, mixing and updating television sensibilities from a variety of genres (and decades) and trying to get to a result that establishes a strong female

It’s an uphill battle to find a strong hook when you’re a prequel to a prequel that already has no tangible connection to an original, and Andor doesn’t actually spend any time trying to establish one. You’re in or you’re out simply by knowing this is “a thing that takes place in the Star Wars universe,” and if you need anything else… you aren’t a real fan, or whatever.

The lack of a real attempt at establishment is all the worse because there’s an interesting story in here somewhere that will clearly eventually get us to some worthy additions to the canon of the early days of the Rebel Alliance, but it’s buried in shlock and a laughable and unnecessary backstory to the backstory that clubs you over the head with its emotional constructs. Stellan Skarsgård is on his way to pull back the curtain leading to secrets of “A

There’s a tongue-in-cheek, meta drive to Reboot that is both a brilliant opening to comedy and a purposeful alienation of a lot of viewers, which is itself a doorway to a lot of potential. The result, at best, is to put yourself, as a series, in the position of predicting an exact audience, and you better be good at it.

Reboot is a behind-the-scenes look at an attempt to reboot an early 2000’s sitcom “Step Right Up” with the original cast, none of whom really went on to anything bigger and better. It’s a theory that is already equal parts flies and ointment, but the big roadblock is that the up-and-coming writer behind the idea, Hannah (Rachel Bloom), turns out to be the daughter of the original’s creator, Gordon (Paul Reiser). Though Hannah had the greenlight to modernize the comedic stylings of the largely goofball original, Gordon shows

Based on the book of the same name (by William Gibson – pioneer of the cyberpunk genre), The Peripheral boasts that it’s “from the creators of Westworld,” and there is little that would give audiences a better idea of the style and character interplay. From the perspective of simply the viewing experience, this might as well be a spinoff focusing on one of the other worlds.

As we are introduced to this world, Flynne (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her brother Burton (Jack Reynor), are living in rural America in the near future. Burton is a veteran of a Haptic Recon unit, which implants soldiers with complex tech that, in a somewhat nebulous way, connects their brains. Burton has a job hiring himself out to assist rich gamers in a virtual world, but it turns out Flynne is even better at getting through such sims. When Burton is contacted about beta-testing