Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
Here is the strange thing about Lucky, the seven-episode Apple TV+ thriller that started rolling out on July 15 with Anya Taylor-Joy as a con artist on the run. It is named after luck, and it took the luck out. The show is adapted from Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel, and the book had one … Read more
If you are here for the short answer, the biological father is Emilio Martinez, played by Erik Hayser, a man from a relationship Maca kept buried for twenty years. My Daughter’s Father, the Mexican drama that arrived on Netflix on July 22 under its original title El otro padre, does not hide this for long. … Read more
Yes, it is a true story, and that is the first thing most people want confirmed. The woman at the center of Hulu’s My Grandfather Charles Manson is Sophia Maddox, a real filmmaker and actress, and she really is the granddaughter of the man who orchestrated the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders. The documentary, number one on … Read more
Three Hunger Games movies are sitting in the American Netflix Top 10 this week, and the newest of them is three years old. There is no mystery behind the surge. The whole franchise arrived on Netflix on July 14, its first day ever on the service, and America is doing its homework before a … Read more
In the early hours of December 21, 2024, the palace burned down. A fire swept through a production facility in Yeoncheon County, South Korea, taking the main set buildings and a warehouse of lighting equipment with it. The set was empty and nobody was hurt. What burned was the home of The East Palace, … Read more
Wicked: For Good arrived on Netflix this week, and it comes with a strange scorecard. Audiences adore it, giving it a 97 percent rating that runs even higher than the first film. Critics were noticeably cooler, landing it at 71 percent after the near-universal praise that greeted part one. That is a wide gap … Read more
Backrooms does not end with a rescue. Clark walks into the yellow halls and stops coming back, and the therapist who follows him out again is not the woman who went in. If you came for the short version, that is it. But the ending only lands once you accept what the film has … Read more
Lonnie Hawkins lives in a tour bus. He was the number one golfer in the world in 2004, and then he stood over the kind of putt he had been making his whole life and did not make it, and the twenty-two years since have been a long argument with that afternoon. When we … Read more
Matías takes a job coaching at a swimming club, and his employer offers him a second one on the side. Fernando will pay him to sleep with Fernando’s wife and send back video of it. Matías takes that job too. Desire, the Mexican thriller that landed on Netflix on July 17 and went straight … Read more
Every Scream movie holds up a mirror to the horror of its moment. The 1996 original mocked the rules of the slasher while obeying every one of them. The recent requels went after legacy sequels and the possessive fans who guard them. Scream 7 reaches for the sharpest idea the series has had in … Read more