Friday, July 28, 2023
The Fatal Blow: notes on Dark Winds, Black Snow and Blue Lights
Friday, July 7, 2023
The 25 Best Film Noirs
Freshman year of college, I took a film course, and as an example of noir — a term that was only then making the rounds of academic circles — the professor screened The Big Sleep. The title proved prophetic; I nodded off halfway through. Was this, I wondered, a style of film that did nothing for me?
Monday, March 27, 2023
So Help Me Todd
Tuesday, February 28, 2023
I Love Lucy season 6
There’s only one remark of his that struck me as so odd that — as kids today are wont to say — it continues to live rent-free in my head.
Saturday, February 11, 2023
The 10 Best Screwball Comedies
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Living Dangerously: The Best of 2022
2022 marks a decade since my first entry here. I’ve gotten so tired writing this blog. Not tired of writing it, but tired of swimming against the tide.
Friday, December 23, 2022
Acts of Love: notes on Let the Right One In and The Devil’s Hour
Let the Right One In is based on a best-selling Swedish novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It’s been adapted into a Swedish film, an American film by Matt Reeves, and even a stage production. So this new Showtime series comes with a lot of baggage — and has a lot to live up to — but what I watched on the screen over the last ten weeks was damn near perfect.
Friday, December 16, 2022
One Day at a Time season 7
Sunday, October 23, 2022
Negotiations: notes on Minx, Ipcress File and Inside Man
Minx has flown under the radar; it’s a comedy about a woman determined not to fly under the radar, so there’s some sort of poetic injustice to that. I heard very few people discussing it while it was airing, and when it was ultimately picked up for a second season by HBO Max, there was hardly a murmur. And now that HBO Max is being absorbed into Discovery Plus, and a lot of its scripted shows — even ones that have been renewed — may fall by the wayside, I still don’t hear anyone talking about it, or fretting about its future. But it’s the best new comedy I saw in 2022: not just a vivid evocation of life in America in the early ‘70s, but a resolutely apt analogy for life in America in 2022.
Saturday, October 15, 2022
Rating Richard Armitage