“a nice meal”
Warning: Reviews of Barry season 4 will include spoilers
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “a nice meal” – TV Review“the wizard”
Warning: Reviews of Barry season 4 will include spoilers
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “the wizard” – TV Review“tricky legacies”
Warning: Reviews of Barry season 4 will include spoilers
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “tricky legacies” – TV Review“it takes a psycho”
Warning: Reviews of Barry season 4 will include spoilers
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “it takes a psycho” – TV Review“you’re charming”
Here’s why Bill Hader is a great director, and why he’s such a perfect fit for the tone of Barry: he’s great at the showier bits of action like in the motorcycle chase in last season’s 710N or in last week’s spinning table sequence, but he’s also great at mining comedy out of the material. Sometime’s in comedy, it can be just as effective to not show a joke as it can be to do so. Consider the sequence early on in you’re charming when Gene and Tom (Fred Melamed) are discussing how drastic it would be if Gene were to talk to the press. Rather than show the moment when Gene breaks the news, Hader cuts away to show the hilariously dramatic aftermath.
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “you’re charming” – TV Review“bestest place on earth”
In the aftermath of Barry’s arrest, everybody has to pick a side: are you with the cold-blooded killer, or are you against him? Bestest place on earth is all about drawing the battle lines and seeing who belongs where. Of course, as is often the case, those lines get awfully blurry, even within the episode.
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “bestest place on earth” – TV Review“yikes”
The third season finale of Barry last year was truly a game-changer, and that’s not a light statement for a show that churns through plot from week to week. Indeed, it raised a fascinating question: where does the show go from here, now that Barry (Bill Hader) has been caught? He’s wormed his way out of more slippery situations before, but once his best friend and mentor betrayed him, he finally realized there was no use in running anymore. Now he finds himself in prison but still clinging to hope that his friends will find it in them to forgive him.
Continue reading Barry: Season 4, “yikes” – TV Review
“Crazytimesh*tshow”
There’s a brief, but important, moment in this week’s episode that sums up the themes neatly without hammering it home too hard. Barry, dejected after Sally broke up with him last week, aimlessly pushes a shopping cart in the grocery store and stops at the craft section, while Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch” is playing over the speakers.
Continue reading Barry: Season 3, Episode 5 – TV Review“All the Sauces”
Let’s take a moment to give some praise to Sarah Goldberg for her work as Sally. She’s produced plenty of awards-worthy moments throughout her run in Barry – even receiving a Supporting Actress nomination at the Emmys after season 2 – but “all the sauces” contains one of her finest moments to date. She spends most of the episode fretting about her speech at the premiere of Joplin, worrying if she’ll come across as inauthentic and poring over every last detail. But when Natalie giddily drops the news that the show has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, she quickly drops her prepared remarks and vacillates between being too choked up to speak and trying to get the words out. She wants so badly to stay on topic and promote the show, but after everything she’s been through, professionally and personally, she can’t help but contain her excitement. It’s a remarkable moment, and Goldberg makes sure we feel every bit of it.
Continue reading Barry: Season 3, Episode 4 – TV Review“Ben Mendelsohn”
Even in an episode where the plot doesn’t progress significantly, Alec Berg and Bill Hader still manage to find room for some really great character development. Such is the case with “Ben Mendelsohn”, where the status quo largely remains unchanged from the beginning of the episode to the end. And that’s ok! For as exciting as it can be, not every episode needs to seismically shake up the world to feel like an authentic version of Barry.
Continue reading Barry: Season 3, Episode 3 – TV Review
The Movie State 