Tag Archives: 2022

Mythic Quest Season Three – TV Review

Mythic Quest

  • Creators: Charlie Day, Megan Gan, Rob McElhenney
  • Starring: Rob McElhenney, Charlotte Nicdao, David Hornsby, Danny Pudi, Jessie Enis, Imani Hakim, Ashly Burch, Naomi Ekperigin
  • Entire season watched for review

Grade: A-

Mythic Quest is but one of three TV shows that co-creator and star Rob McElhenney has running currently (not to be diminished, one of those shows involves his real-life co-ownership of a Welsh football club). With so much output to keep track of, you’d be forgiven for being apprehensive about being stretched too thin. But the show displays a level of confidence and humor in its third season – which premieres with two episodes today – that we’ve come to expect by now from McElhenney in his still-evolving career.

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Aftersun – Movie Review

Aftersun

  • Director: Charlotte Wells
  • Writers: Charlotte Wells
  • Starring: Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio, Celia Rowlson-Hall, Brooklyn Toulson, Sally Messham

Grade: A-

Take yourself back to a treasured memory from when you were younger. Better yet, take yourself back to a memory from a pivotal time in your life. What comes flooding back to mind first probably aren’t the bigger moments like the actual events that happened, but how those moments made you feel. How they impacted you and changed your worldview, even though you may not have fully realized it at the time.

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Seasons of Seasons: Community Season 2, “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking” & “Intro to Political Science”

Time and time again this season, we’ve seen that the best way to bring the Greendale study group together is to pit them against each other. It’s essentially Sitcom Writing 101, but the ways the show would continue to generate conflict without alienating its characters or making them unlikeable is its secret weapon. This is at the heart of Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking, and it’s no coincidence that it’s a great episode of the show. Community’s legacy may be tied to its ability to deftly break from the traditional sitcom format – and it certainly deserves that distinction – but the magic trick of this episode is in how it breaks down its characters.

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The White Lotus: Season 2, “Italian Dream” – TV Review

“Italian Dream”

  • Creator: Mike White
  • Starring: Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, F. Murray Abraham, Haley Lu Richardson, Meghann Fahy, Theo James, Will Sharpe, Beatrice Grannò, Tom Hollander, Simona Tabasco

Grade: B

Warning: Reviews of The White Lotus season 2 will contain spoilers.

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Seasons of Seasons: Community Season 2, “Celebrity Pharmacology” & “Early 21st Century Romanticism”

First, a note: one of these spots would go to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons but, because of a plot point involving blackface, Netflix and Hulu removed the episode in 2020, and I had no other way to view it.

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Causeway – Movie Review

Causeway

  • Director: Lila Neugebauer
  • Writers: Elizabeth Sanders, Luke Goebel, and Ottessa Moshfegh
  • Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Brian Tyree Henry, Linda Emond, Jayne Houdyshell, Stephen McKinley Henderson

Grade: B-

The recovering soldier genre is one that’s produced plenty of memorable films, and likely just as many – if not more – flops. It’s hard to say exactly where Causeway will ultimately land; much as it strays from the genre’s formula, it doesn’t contain enough drama to make it an instant classic. 

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The White Lotus: Season 2, “Ciao” – TV Review

“Ciao”

  • Creator: Mike White
  • Starring: Jennifer Coolidge, Aubrey Plaza, Michael Imperioli, F. Murray Abraham, Haley Lu Richardson, Meghann Fahy, Theo James, Will Sharpe, Beatrice Grannò, Tom Hollander, Simona Tabasco

Grade: B

Warning: Reviews of The White Lotus season 2 will contain spoilers.

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Wendell & Wild – Movie Review

Wendell & Wild

  • Director: Henry Selick
  • Writer: Henry Selick, Clay McLeod Chapman, Jordan Peele
  • Starring: Lyric Ross, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Angela Bassett, James Hong, Ving Rhames

Grade: B

Henry Selick may not be a household name in the same way that Hayao Miyazaki or Pete Docter or Brad Bird are, but his contributions to animated films can’t be denied. I still remember a room full of shocked faces when the answer to a trivia question announced that Tim Burton did not direct The Nightmare Before Christmas. Whenever Disney gets too cutesy with a few too many animal sidekicks, Selick manages to come back with something of a polar opposite. That he does so by pushing the stop-motion animation medium forward each time just goes to show how different the animation world would be without him.

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Seasons of Seasons: Community Season 2, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” & “Asian Population Studies”

Unlike previous entries in this series, I’m going to kick things off with the second chronological episode this time, Asian Population Studies. Not because I believe it’s superior to Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas, but more close to the contrary. Whereas Christmas is one of the show’s best episodes ever, Asian Population Studies doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. It’s a perfectly fine (and funny!) episode that comes at the midpoint of the season; it just so happens to be amongst a sea of knockout episodes that would go on to be much more memorable.

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All Quiet on the Western Front – Movie Review

All Quiet on the Western Front

  • Director: Edward Berger
  • Writer: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, and Ian Stokell
  • Starring: Felix Kammerer, Daniel Brühl, Albrecht Schuch, Moritz Klaus, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic

Grade: A-

War is hell. It always has been, and it always will be. Whether you’re a Spartan fighting against the Trojans, or a colonialist seeking your independence from the British, or a German slumming through the trenches in France, one thing remains constant in war: those that fight always lose. You don’t need a multi-million dollar Netflix production to tell you that. You don’t necessarily need to remake Erich Maria Remarque’s novel – a version of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 – either. Indeed, it’s the biggest question for director and co-writer Edward Berger: why did All Quiet on the Western Front need to be made?

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