Toward the end of the first episode of Pluribus, Carol (Rhea Seehorn), a woman put in a bizarre and impossible scenario, asks a very straightforward question: “What the fuck is happening?” It’s something you’ll likely be asking yourself a lot while watching. I certainly did. But that ongoing sense of mystery, and the measured pace […]
Let’s just get this out of the way: Liam Hemsworth actually makes for a pretty solid Geralt of Rivia. Hemsworth assumes the mantle in the fourth season of Netflix’s The Witcher, picking up from Henry Cavill. And while it can be distracting at first, especially since Cavill inhabited the role so well, it only took […]
You’ve never had to wait all that long for Hollywood to adapt another one of Stephen King’s tales, but the past couple of years have felt unusually flush with films and series based on the prolific author’s work. Some of the recent projects, like Carrie, Children of the Corn, and ‘Salem’s Lot were duds that […]
When NBC’s adaptation of The Office first debuted in 2005, the series was panned for being a pale and uninspired imitation of its English predecessor. It took an entire season for showrunner Greg Daniels to figure out how to infuse his take on The Office with a quirky, satirical energy calibrated to appeal to American […]
A big reason that BoJack Horseman worked so well was contrast. It took place in a silly world of talking animals, and used that to explore deep human drama in relatable ways. It’s part of what made its oddball jokes work so well, as they helped balance out the darker moments that explored topics like […]
While the monsters in each of the nine Alien movies have been a little bit different, the nefarious corporate forces have remained the same. Ridley Scott’s original Alien didn’t need to mention Weyland-Yutani by name for it to be clear that a singular mega-company had cornered the market on space exploration. But subsequent Alien films […]
Ryan Coogler’s first Black Panther feature set itself apart by pushing audiences to think about how comic book heroes and villains would fit into a world shaped by horrors like the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Black Panther and its 2022 sequel, Wakanda Forever, used their characters to comment on our reality’s complicated and oftentimes ugly history […]
The first season of Twisted Metal was almost like a prologue. Peacock’s adaptation of the long-dormant PlayStation game series spent 10 episodes setting up its car-focused post-apocalyptic world and most of the major characters, all while rattling off a never-ending barrage of jokes. But it never really felt all that much like the games it […]
The third and final season of the industry-defining Squid Game confidently delivers each new round of the deathly games with spectacularly brutal aplomb – but its attempts at worldbuilding are disappointingly tired and uneven. Some of Squid Game’s most interesting dynamics from the first two seasons – the politics among the masked guards, the organ-harvesting […]
Before the multiverse, magic, or any of Marvel’s streaming series were important parts of the studio’s cinematic universe, there was Iron Man. After years of so-so movies, Iron Man reminded everyone that Marvel’s big-screen adaptations could be amazing with the right creative teams and stars attached. Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark was the MCU’s centerpiece […]