Even small acts of open silliness are portrayed as inherently helpful in creating a kind of unity and friendship among what are, essentially, strangers.
The term “antihero” is applicable to Lucifer in this case, but not entirely accurate.
Given Portlandia’s flippant depiction of youth, the plots involving middle-aged characters feel considerably more resonant and sincere, and as such more funny.
Baskets quickly devolves into a dreadful, if strange and intermittently fascinating, comedy of bleakness.
Jessica Jones is a far more socially aware series than Netflix’s Daredevil, but it lacks for its predecessor’s consistent, enveloping style.
The show is refreshing for how charmingly and giddily scrappy it feels, in both narrative and aesthetic.
The show’s own mythology, and lack of visual rhythm in the editing and compositions, gives it a kind of fatigue.
The Knick provides a wealth of nuanced history of early 20th-century medicine and social mores.
Like the excellent fourth season of Homeland, season five suggests a politically wise and deeply skeptical update of John le Carré‘s very best spy-centric work.
The series has brought the hedonistic, self-obsessed world of hip-hop braggadocio to vibrant, stylish life.
The series suggests a shallow sense of sophistication in its attention to not-so-well-known history.
In its seventh season, The League suggests little more than a variation of Seinfeld tailored specifically for jocks.
Jules Dassin doesn’t waste much time in expressing exactly what he thinks of the criminals and gangster culture that rule his underworld.
It feels like a nostalgia trip, less for the era in which it’s set than for the original film that spawned it.
It ignores the delights and hardships of becoming an artist in lieu of simply presenting the long-touted liberating effects of art.
In its third season, Masters of Sex continues to exude a feeling of undue self-satisfaction.
The entire world of Ray Donovan feels typified by nothing more than pent-up machismo.
Rectify’s portrait of men and women stuck between their tumultuous inner lives and the public personas is impossible to shake.
The underlying, redundant, and underwhelming theme of the film is the pursuit of family unity at all costs.
It mostly succeeds in conveying a galvanizing sense of what made Winehouse so immediately engaging.
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