The Stop Button Posted by on April 7, 2020

So, actually, no, “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” apparently hasn’t hit the darkest hour or the point of no return yet because this episode just sort of shrugs at all the disastrous things gone wrong for Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) and her family. Cousin Ambrose (Chance Perdomo—who’s great this episo   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 7, 2020

Is it really so hard to make a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon? It’s somewhat unfair to just crap on the writing (by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant), the acting (June Foray’s back as Bullwinkle but barely in it), the editing (it’s hard to say if Mark Deimel’s timing is...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 7, 2020

This episode picks up right after the previous one, which you’d think have been a no-no in the syndication chasing days of sitcoms. But, no, the first scene is not at all morning person Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) getting up late and groggily confused about what Jane Leeves is doing...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 6, 2020

When it comes to the multi-cam sitcom, I can’t imagine a more efficient, effective pilot than “Frasier”’s The Good Son. David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee’s script is perfectly constructed, showcasing the cast while maintaining the focus on lead Kelsey Grammer. Since it’s a spin-off of a long   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 6, 2020

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is an absurd but arty comedy short. Director Scorsese mixes full motion video with stills, which sometimes do stand-ins for scenes—like protagonist Zeph Michaelis marrying Nice Girl Mimi Stark—sometimes just for expository stuff. See, Mich   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 6, 2020

Back when they were writing Alien, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon and producer Gordon Carroll disagreed where the end of the second act falls. Gordon said it was “the darkest hour,” whereas O’Bannon countered with “the point of no return.” The idea being a point of no return is less subjective. This...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 5, 2020

For the first forty-five minutes or so, The Raid is able to keep going on the idea lead Iko Uwais is going to be the most kick ass fighter in the movie. There a handful of short expository scenes throughout the film, plus a prologue, where Uwais prays, does some...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 5, 2020

I was ready to love this episode. I wanted to love this episode. Ross Maxwell’s one of the names I like seeing on the writing credit. But this episode is a big whiff. Alex Garcia Lopez’s direction not being good is one of the problems. The other one is concept...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 5, 2020

Earl Pomerantz did not write any “Becker” episodes previous to this one, which surprised me. His name seemed familiar—he worked on sitcoms for forty years, so no doubt I’ve seen it before—and the way he wrote “Becker” felt, sadly, familiar too. He does the “Becker whines” approach. So t   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 4, 2020

Elite Squad is about how hard it is to be a fascist stormtrooper in Rio de Janeiro, because not only do you have to deal with militarized criminals, corrupt cops, smooth-talking (and sexy) liberals, you also might have a wife who doesn’t like you being a fascist stormtrooper or some...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 4, 2020

I’m not sure if I’ve ever known the word “fecund,” but thanks to this episode of “Sabrina,” I do now and beware. I’m always looking for a good adjective. It comes up when Richard Coyle is sweet-talking Miranda Otto and, although Coyle is one of the least dynamic casting choices,...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 4, 2020

There’s a disconnect during the opening titles; it says, “Written by David Isaacs and Ken Levine” (or however they do it), but it’s not a particularly good scene. Jonathan Nichols is a patient who stiffs Becker (Ted Danson) on his bills so Danson is mean to him. Beating up on...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 3, 2020

Based on his interviews this episode, it appears Jeff Lowe spent years getting Joe Exotic more and more enraged over Carole Baskin so at some point Lowe would be able to convince Exotic to hire someone to kill her. Possibly even just Allen Glover. Both “Doc” Antle and Joshua Dial...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 3, 2020

Big development this episode… Satan, Lucifer, the Dark Lord, et cetera, is an active character. He appears as a goat-headed demon and whoever does the voice isn’t credited (whoever’s doing it isn’t the right casting) and He wants to get Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) to do his bidding. Not because He...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 3, 2020

Little Women has two parallel timelines. There’s the present, starting in post-Civil War New York City with teacher and pulp writer Saoirse Ronan living in boarding house (where she also teaches). Then it flashes back to Ronan’s life seven years earlier, at home in rural Massachusetts; she’s the se   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 2, 2020

It’s a new year for “Chilling Adventures,” literally, with the episode picking up after winter break as Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) has decided she’ll no longer be attending Baxter High and going to witch academy full-time. New Baxter High principal and actual Biblical figure (albeit unbeknownst to Sh   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 2, 2020

So now we’ve got the downfall of Joe Exotic, promised in the first episode, the pieces not aligned until now. Businesses undefined businessman Jeff Lowe has returned to Oklahoma after basically getting run out of Las Vegas to discover Joe has been forging his name on multiple documents in addition   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 2, 2020

There are two profoundly well-directed scenes in the third act of The Daytrippers, including the last one, so you really want to give what you can of it a pass. Daytrippers is very straightforward, even through the various complexities of the third act, but just because Mottola (who wrote as...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 1, 2020

The disconcerting part of The Irishman’s actually never-ending CGI isn’t the aging and de-aging, it’s star Robert De Niro’s creepy blue eyes. For the first half hour of the (three and a half hour runtime), I was trying to get used to De Niro’s CGI… makeup, but kept having problems...   read more

The Stop Button Posted by on April 1, 2020

So, luckily, businessman Jeff Lowe beating tigers at the end of last episode was just a horrifying teaser not the actual content of this episode. In fact, Lowe doesn’t hit a single animal in this episode. They don’t even use the footage again. And the ominous “Jeff Lowe takeover” of...   read more