TV amp; Movies Reviews

Stranger Things is one of Netflix’s defining series. But as the Eighties horror pastiche returns this week after a nearly three-year absence, the show and the streamer seem to be going in opposite directions. Netflix is contracting; Stranger Things is expanding. It’s been a rough spring for Netflix. Subscriber growth …

Perhaps you’ve heard the news: The big-screen sex scene is dead. Finished. Kaput. Or, if it’s not completely shuffling off this mortal coil, you could say that it’s on life support and being prepped for last rites. This death certificate has been issued before, of course, but given that recent …

Growing up, I’m not sure the idea behind any comic-book series excited me more than Marvel’s What If…? Each issue used the titular question to examine a version of Marvel history that went very differently, like, “What if… Spider-Man Had Never Become a Crimefighter?” or, conversely, “What If… Doctor Doom …

The first two seasons of Master of None were defined by unpredictability. While the larger arc of each season tended to involve the love life of Dev, a modestly successful actor played by Aziz Ansari — who co-created Master of None with fellow Parks and Rec alum Alan Yang — …

Welcome back, Weird-as-fuck Ben Wheatley. We’ve missed you. Since Down Terrace, the 2009 blend of Sopranos-style gangster saga and kitchen-sink drama that remains one of the strongest debut films in a decade, the British director has fashioned himself as a purveyor of oddball genre mash-ups, combining elements that go together …

Supernova, written and directed by Harry Macqueen, is a moving film about two men, Sam (Colin Firth) and Tusker (Stanley Tucci), who’ve been together for 20 years. They are a compatibly tempered pair whose differences only feel like points of affiliation. Sam is American; Tusker is English. Both are artists: …

Before a single line of dialogue is uttered in Charm City Kings — before the title credits have barely begun rolling — you hear the sound of motorbikes: a whirring, revving, sputtering cacophony that sounds like the occupants of a hornet’s nest switching to savage mode. In Baltimore, Maryland, the …

Disney’s long-awaited, live-action remake of Mulan is full of legends. There’s the historic warrior Hua Mulan herself, of course, the hero of Chinese folklore immortalized in the 6th-century poem “The Ballad of Mulan,” who disguised herself as a man to go into battle in her father’s stead. Her story was …

Atticus “Tic” Freeman, the young Korean War veteran hero of HBO’s fantastic —in every sense of the word —new drama Lovecraft Country, has a weakness for pulp stories. As he puts it, “I love that the heroes get to go on adventures in other worlds, defy insurmountable odds, defeat the …

You’re Joseph Gordon-Levitt and you’re playing the co-pilot on a hijacked flight from Berlin to Paris. The wounded pilot is barely conscious. There’s an Islamist terrorist inside the cockpit with you, and his weapon is a shard of glass wrapped in duct tape. Another two are outside, banging on the …