Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
There is a specific pleasure that Korean romantic comedies do better than almost anyone else: the slow, reluctant fall. Two people who should despise each other, trapped in circumstances that keep forcing them together, discovering — against their better judgment and everyone’s best interests — that they cannot stop thinking about the other person. My … Read more
There is a particular kind of dread that Cape Fear has always been about — not the fear of violence exactly, but the fear of someone who understands the system well enough to use it against you. The 1962 film had it. Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake had it. Apple TV+’s new ten-episode limited series … Read more
There is a version of this story that gets made as a procedural. The 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common — a young mother stabbed to death in daylight while walking with her two-year-old son — has most of the ingredients that true crime productions reach for: a shocking crime, a botched … Read more
House of the Dragon has spent two seasons doing something that takes considerable discipline: making you wait. The civil war at the heart of the story — the Targaryen succession crisis that will eventually tear the dynasty apart — has been building through political maneuvering, private grief, and the slow accumulation of grievances since … Read more
The Michael Jackson biopic that dominated box offices earlier this year made a choice that everyone noticed: it told the story of the music, the performances, the rise, and mostly stepped around the trial. That choice was a commercial calculation as much as a creative one, and it worked. But it left something unresolved, … Read more
The premise of Remarkably Bright Creatures sounds like a pitch that got through on charm: an elderly widow bonds with a giant Pacific octopus and a wayward young man. On paper, the octopus is the hook. On screen, you forget about the octopus for long stretches, and that turns out to be both the … Read more
he most disciplined thing The Four Seasons Season 2 does is refuse to let Nick haunt it. Steve Carell’s character was, in the first season, the kind of person a group of friends organizes itself around without quite realizing it — the one whose choices set the terms, whose appetites defined the social weather. … Read more
The teaser dropped today, and I’ve already watched it twice. Netflix released the first footage of Notes from the Last Row this morning, and it does exactly what a good teaser should do — it gives you just enough to understand what this show is going to be, and then it stops. What I … Read more
Sam Cooper helps the captive creature Mother die because he recognizes what keeping her alive has cost her. In the Netflix series The Boroughs, a widower who wants more time with his wife ends up defending another being’s wish for her time to end. His loss gives him a reason to understand that wish, even … Read more
There’s a moment near the end of The WONDERfools where everyone is gathered for Eun Chae-ni’s memorial. She teleported away with a blimp full of dangerous chemicals to save the city, and no one has seen her since. The people who love her have accepted that she’s gone. And then she walks in. I’ve … Read more