The rhythmic dialogue is just as playful, sprinkled with spiffy word choices that the actors devour. It is impeccably plotted, creating its mystery with clever deceptions, clues dropped so quickly you won’t see them, and ultimately satisfying denouncements. The sequel to Rian Johnson’s Knives Out (2019), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) already feels like a classic. (L to R) Kate Hudson, Leslie Odom Jr., and Kathryn Hahn are guests at a billionaire’s “murder party” in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. James Franco is very funny in a beautifully constructed episode about winding up at the wrong end of a rope, Brendan Gleeson plays a rider on a stagecoach whose destination is uncertain, Zoe Kazan stars as a troubled woman on a wagon train, and Tom Waits appears in a wonderful episode, “All Gold Canyon,” faithfully adapted from a Jack London story, although Waits’s gravelly warbling of the song “Mother Macree” as he works is probably not something London envisioned. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) is as expansively beautiful as the Coens’ other Westerns True Grit and No Country for Old Men, but it’s also as dark and as mysterious as Barton Fink. Liam Neeson and Harry Melling in “Meal Ticket,” about an armless, legless actor. The amazing Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, offer up this anthology Western with six strange stories, ranging from the hilarious-Tim Blake Nelson as the verbose sharpshooter in the title story-to the disquieting i.e. Singing gunslinger Buster (Tim Blake Nelson) is the subject of one of six weird Western tales in Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. (Be sure and set the language to the original German and turn on English subtitles.) Daniel Brühl ( Captain America: Civil War) co-stars as anti-war activist Matthias Erzberger. The devastating ending is the epitome of irony itself. ![]() He must remain there with the dead man, and the reality of what has happened. The most famous scene has Paul trapped with an enemy soldier in a pit in the middle of No Man’s Land Paul stabs him to death, but is unable to escape back to safety. What he finds instead is trenches filled with horror and inhumanity enough to deaden the soul.ĭirector Edward Berger uses a fluid, wide-eyed, epic style that might otherwise be called “beautiful,” but it captures shocks and cold astonishments, including the involved process of stripping uniforms and boots from dead soldiers, and repurposing them for newcomers. (It’s generally considered one of the few genuinely anti-war war stories.) It focuses on Paul (Felix Kammerer) who excitedly enlists in the German Army in 1917, expecting adventure and the honor of serving his country. The new All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) is the first time it has been made in its original German, and it’s just as much a powerhouse as it was nearly a century ago. Paul (Felix Kammerer) finds horror rather than honor in the trenches of the First World War in All Quiet on the Western Front.Įrich Maria Remarque’s landmark 1929 novel was first adapted into a masterful 1930 Hollywood film, and then a 1979 television production. Perhaps worse: neither Murphy nor Hill get to be very funny they’re both just kind of obnoxious. ![]() Hill wrote the screenplay along with “Black-Ish” creator Kenya Barris (who also makes his feature directing debut), and it simultaneously skitters close to the edge while forever playing it safe. ![]() The pressure drives the couple apart, and we wait for them to make up at the end. The white folks try too hard and say the wrong things, and the Black folks get indignant, and-other than some dumb slapstick (Louis-Dreyfuss accidentally set’s Murphy’s kufi on fire)-that’s about it. ![]() This leads them to the meeting of the parents, Ezra’s clueless, white, Jewish folks (Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny) and Amira’s proud Black parents (Eddie Murphy and Nia Long). He meets and falls in love with Amira (Lauren London), and they decide to get married. Ezra (Jonah Hill) does a podcast with his best friend Mo (Sam Jay), a Black woman. Ezra (Jonah Hill, right) dreams of making a living doing a podcast with his best friend Mo (Sam Jay) in the romantic comedy You People.įeaturing a great cast and a strong idea, You People (2023) nonetheless fumbles it, awkwardly wobbling between rom-com clichés and half-thought-out racial discourse.
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