Why Lanterns Gives Its Space Cops a Small-Town Murder Case

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A power ring is an impressive credential to bring to a crime scene. It still leaves the question of who should be in charge. HBO’s Lanterns puts veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan and trainee John Stewart into a murder investigation in Rushville, Nebraska, where their authority meets a local sheriff’s. Creator interviews suggest a useful … Read more

Camp Rock 3 — The Jonas Brothers Return to Pass the Mic

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  Camp Rock 3 opens on a problem most bands would kill for. Connect 3, the Jonas Brothers back in character as Shane, Nate, and Jason Gray, are about to launch a reunion tour, and they have no one to open for them. So they do the only sensible thing three pop stars would do: … Read more

Normal — Bob Odenkirk’s Sheriff Was Written Before Nobody Made Him a Star

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  A worn-out sheriff takes a quiet posting in a small Minnesota town called Normal, hoping to put some distance between himself and his own wreckage. The place is prosperous, polite, and far too calm. Then a bank robbery goes wrong, his own deputies open fire on civilians, and Sheriff Ulysses, played by Bob Odenkirk, … Read more

The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story — What’s Real, and Where the Killer Is Now

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  Yes, The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story is based on real events, and the woman in the title lived through them. Monica White is a real person. In late 2020 she matched with a man named Anthony Robinson on a dating app, dated him for a few months, and ended it in … Read more

Don’t Say Good Luck — Sunny Sandler and the Borrowed Song That Carries It All

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  Near the end of Don’t Say Good Luck, Sophie Birenbaum walks to the front of her school stage and sings “She Used to Be Mine.” She is sixteen, cast almost by accident in the lead of a student production of Waitress. In the musical, that song belongs to a grown woman looking back at … Read more

The Strangers: Chapter 2 Feels Unfinished, and the Reason Is How It Was Made

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  Somewhere in the last stretch of The Strangers: Chapter 2, you start to notice the movie is not going to end. Not really. It just stops, mid-chase, with the door left open for another film. If that feels like a pause instead of an ending, there is a concrete reason, and it has nothing … Read more

Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes — the One Subject Who Never Did the Killing

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  Joe Berlinger has spent years pointing a microphone at America’s most infamous killers and letting them talk. The Ted Bundy Tapes, The John Wayne Gacy Tapes, The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, The Son of Sam Tapes. Each one hands you the voice of a man who did the killing with his own hands, and the … Read more

Best Medicine: Why Fox’s Doc Martin Remake Only Became a Hit After It Left Fox

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  Something odd happened to Best Medicine on its way from Fox to Netflix. Earlier this year it aired on network television as a gentle medical show that runs, does fine, and slips out of the conversation by the next morning. Then Netflix added the complete first season on August 4, and it walked straight … Read more

Is Arthur the King a True Story? The Real Dog, and What the Movie Changed

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  Somewhere on day four of a 435-mile race through the jungle, an exhausted adventure racer tossed a meatball to a stray dog. That dog then followed his team for the rest of the course and eventually flew home with him to Sweden. So yes, Arthur the King is based on a true story, and … Read more

Our Sticky Love — Jung Hae-in, a Taffy Shop, and the Pun Hiding in the Korean Title

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  Our Sticky Love is the number two show in the world on Netflix right now, part of a steady run of Korean series climbing the global charts. It is the kind of title that ranking tends to reward: a warm, low-stakes romance you can sink into after a long day. A prosecutor, Go Eun-sae, … Read more