loaded question: what’s the hardest or longest you’ve ever cried at a movie or TV show?
I have lots of answers I could give to this, so I’ll offer the most recent one: Station Eleven, the new postapocalyptic miniseries that is beyond wonderful…
HBO
curated: why are movies and TV shows so muddy-looking these days?
Emily VanDerWerff at Vox explores several possible reasons for this, including a deep dive into how digital cameras and, even more importantly, digital postproduction have impacted how movies look.
loaded question: which streaming services do you have regular access to… and watch regularly?
I’m very curious to hear what you all have to say about this, because the streaming environment has gotten a bit out of hand: there are so many services, and it would be absurd — and expensive! — to subscribe to all of them.
The Many Saints of Newark movie review: far from heaven
The performances are terrific, the evocation of the period striking, but it feels redundant, more GoodFellas-lite than The Sopranos, and with several TV seasons’ worth of story crammed in.
In the Heights movie review: hot in the city
Pure joy. It is singing and dancing, life and love, food and family, heritage and community in all its complexity. Harnesses Golden Age Hollywood verve and style in breathtaking, enrapturing ways.
Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer and A Crime on the Bayou documentaries review: Black history matters
Two new documentaries — one a shrewdly incisive work of journalism, the other a delicately elegant tale of injustice and friendship — tell all-but-forgotten histories of Black America. Of America.
Locked Down movie review: criminally awful
Ejiofor and Hathaway are game, but they’re grasping for something solid, and don’t find it. A deeply unsatisfying novelty artifact of the pandemic that fails to create a necessary sense of transgression.
The Binge: Years and Years
I’m obsessed with this British miniseries following one family through a dystopian 2020s. It’s completely harrowing, very nearly soul-crushing. Yet I cling to its tenuous optimism and profound beauty.
Bad Education movie review: school for scandal
A laugh-until-you-cry dramedy burlesque, brilliantly structured and horrifically compelling, about the endless grift that passes for an economy in America. Hugh Jackman is at the peak of his powers.
Official Secrets movie review: blow all the whistles
Not a spy thriller but a story of emotional and intellectual suspense wrangling with matters of patriotism and of conscience, and of just how far journalism’s watchdog role can and should take it.
