With his first HBO special, the writer-comedian disarmingly balances satire, straight comedy, and old-fashioned pathos.
The film appears to be torn between honoring the personal ambitions of its creators and playing by the rules of formula.
The question of whether art and artist can possibly be detached from one another looms heavily over the film.
By going to uneasy extremes in I Love You, Daddy, Louis C.K. aims to reorient our moral compasses.
Its messy pile-up of comic diversions can be exhilarating in the moment—the chaos of an id given free rein.
It feels like a catharsis for Louis C.K., an announcement of some yet-to-be-defined transition in his art-making.
By keeping Dalton Trumbo on the straight and narrow, the film saps his story of much of its power.
Season five of Louie refocuses on Louis C.K. as a lonely, divorced, ostensibly well-off New Yorker.
If "Elevator" proved a sweet treatise on being with someone to stave off loneliness, "Pamela" at last lets Louie ease his way into a real relationship.
For the most part, however, the episode unspools as a dreary, clichéd story about Louie’s first exposure to pot.
It takes the aesthetic premise of Louie, in which the world around its protagonist matches his passive, fatalistic outlook, to its logical extreme.
Parts four and five of “Elevator” devote nearly half their running times to extended digressions.
“Elevator Part 3” finds Louie displaying darker facets of his personality.
Louie offers a chance to reconnect with Louis C.K.’s roots as a more modest performer.
The title of the season-four premiere is possibly a wry acknowledgment of Louie’s return after a year-and-a-half hiatus.
Louie is akin to Seinfeld in its view of a privileged life constantly swayed by the particulars of Manhattan geography.
The film manages to implicitly convey the overdriven, coked-up confusion that many ’70s period pieces make painfully overt.
TV better than movies? Not really, but at least television will let you see Michael Douglas stroking Matt Damon’s leg hair.
Whether intentional or not, the lives of the secondary characters are underdeveloped, often siphoned away by Jasmine’s all-encompassing presence.
Do I think you’ll want to join Adam, Blake, and ‘Ders for another season of Workaholics? I’m not just sure, I’m HIV positive.