If you’re familiar with the animated sitcom Bob’s Burgers, you know that the weekly song parodies, like the recipes for the restaurant’s Burger of the Day, are both expected and surprising. We always know something strange is coming, but never exactly what form it will take. The songs can be …
Read More »
Midway through HBO’s new mystery/horror hybrid The Outsider, a character buys a half-dozen lamps at a hardware store, takes them out to the woods, and dumps them in a field. The series doesn’t make room for humor, but this is a very funny moment, albeit an unintentional one. It’s as …
Read More »
It takes a little while to meet the main character of French animator Jérémy Clapin’s extraordinary, dreamlike I Lost My Body; first, we get to know our protagonist’s previous owner. That would be Naoufel (voiced by Hakim Faris — or Dev Patel if you opt for the dubbed alternative, though …
Read More »
Late in the new Netflix miniseries Unbelievable, an attorney laments one of the many unfortunate ways that rape is treated differently by law enforcement than other significant crimes. “Nobody ever accuses a robbery victim of lying,” he notes. “But when it comes to sexual assault?” Marie (Booksmart‘s Kaitlyn Dever) is …
Read More »
“Do you want me to tell you a story?” It could be any father, asking their kid if they need to hear a yarn before they drift off to sleep. In this case, we’re looking down at a dad (writer-director Casey Affleck) — we never find out his name, he’s …
Read More »
Early in Hulu’s revival of Veronica Mars, the title character (Kristen Bell) visits one of the many men she put behind bars as a teenager. Realizing that she’s still working as a private investigator, he snipes, “That was your job in high school, right?” Television shows are a product of …
Read More »
What we have here is an action-comedy about an Uber driver named Stu. Hence the title, Stuber. These are the jokes, folks. Also not funny — besides the title and the script — is the fact that Stuber traps two talented dudes — Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista — in …
Read More »
A lot happens in each episode of Game of Thrones. So every week, we’re drilling down on one memorable scene in particular. Full spoilers for this week’s episode, “The Bells,” coming up. Two weeks ago, Arya Stark singlehandedly saved the world. This week, she nearly became one of thousands of …
Read More »
Alternately smarmy and achingly familiar, Little squeezes Big for one more run through the Hollywood grinder. (For starters, Shazam! does it better.) This time it’s the Tom Hanks movie in reverse: Instead of a kid turning into a grown-up, it’s an adult (Regina Hall) who gets zapped into her bullied, …
Read More »
It’s the closest thing to witnessing a miracle — just some cameras, a crowd and a voice touched by God. Over two days in January of 1972, Aretha Franklin got up to sing out her gospel at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts, backed by the Southern California …
Read More »