Blindspots: The Night Of ‘The Call of the Wild’ (Recap)
“For supposed ‘prestige TV,’ ‘The Night Of’ is simply lazy.”
Extraneous Evidence: The Night Of ‘Ordinary Death’ (Recap)
“Chandra goes from being a charming ingénue to a woeful bastion of ignorance even more secluded from society than the eczema-plagued Jack.”
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: Game of Thrones ‘Blood of My Blood’ (Recap)
“After the twin climaxes of last week’s Hodor reveal and Daenerys’ enflamed emergence in the preceding episode, it was only natural for HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ to need a bit of a breather.”
The Unburnt: Game of Thrones ‘Book of the Stranger’ (Recap)
“And just like that, things are looking up for Season Six.”
Post-Resurrection: Game of Thrones ‘Oathbreaker’ (Recap)
“Will the execution weigh on Jon as he experiences life beyond the Night’s Watch?”
Rebirth: Game of Thrones ‘Home’ (Recap)
“As good as Game of Thrones can be at revealing shades of grey in ostensibly irredeemable characters, the show is equally adept (if not more so) at making its villains as detestable as can be.”
Exposition Is Coming: Game of Thrones ‘The Red Woman’ (Recap)
“There’s a lot of expository detail, and little development in the singular arcs beyond the exposition.”
Belief in Justice: American Crime Story ‘The Verdict’ (Recap)
“It’s hard to tell from the show what exactly Alexander and Karaszewski believe about Simpson’s guilt, but that doesn’t keep them from being any less interested in him as a human being.”
Tempering Irony: American Crime Story ‘Manna from Heaven’ (Recap)
“However much we’ve laughed at the characters in the preceding episodes, ‘Manna from Heaven’ focuses on understanding why they act as they do.”
Sequestered: American Crime Story ‘A Jury in Jail’ (Recap)
“Even if the focus on the jurors in ‘A Jury in Jail’ misfires, there’s more than enough territory left to explore as The People v. O.J. Simpson comes to a close.”
Realism and Subjectivity in Luis Buñuel’s ‘Los Olvidados’
“The realism of Los Olvidados is balanced by striking moments of subjectivity, and they’re crucial to the film’s particular representation of urban poverty.”
You Better Well Be the Ringmaster: American Crime Story ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (Recap)
“American Crime Story has done an impressive job of imbuing well-known facts with enough intrigue to make them play like gripping fiction, and ‘Conspiracy Theories’ is no exception.”
The Ugliness of Hatred: American Crime Story ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia’ (Recap)
“As tempting as it’d be to focus solely on the sexism in the trial, ‘Marcia, Marcia, Marcia’ ultimately works best as an episode due to its unwillingness to forget about race.”
Fair and Balanced: American Crime Story ‘The Race Card’ (Recap)
“‘The Race Card’ succeeds, perhaps better than any other episode in the strong season, by refusing to shy away from the hypocrisy prevalent on both sides of the O.J. case.”
The Plea’s the Thing: American Crime Story ‘100% Not Guilty’ (Recap)
“Racism is, of course, the defining issue of discrimination in the O.J. case, but the show never lets us forget the misogyny which also haunts its characters.”
We Are Kardashians: American Crime Story ‘The Dream Team’ (Recap)
“Throughout the first three episodes, the writers appear to be struggling with the question of how funny it is to riff on the Kardashians’ eventual reality fame, and the opening of “The Dream Team” finds American Crime Story deciding, dubiously, that it’s hilarious.”
Chase the Bronco: American Crime Story ‘From the Ashes of Tragedy’ and ‘The Run of His Life’ (Recap)
“Amidst the personal turmoil, the racial context of American Crime Story comes through even stronger in “The Run of His Life,” building on the insinuation of the Rodney King opening of the premiere.”
A Serious Investigation: The Coen Brothers’ ‘Barton Fink’ (1991)
Leading up to the release of Hail, Caesar!, Vague Visages explores the work of Joel and Ethan Coen.
The Dueling Cavalier: The Horror of Maternal Sexuality in ‘The Boy’ and ‘The Babadook’
“Both films deal with maternal sexuality: The Boy punishes it and rebukes mothers for caring about anything other than their children, and The Babadook acknowledges it as difficult to balance with childcare, but an inescapable part of motherhood nonetheless.”
The Dueling Cavalier: Truth and Cinéma Vérité in ‘Serial’ and ‘Making a Murderer’
“In forgoing vérité techniques, Ricciardi and Demos make their show more compelling as entertainment and less convincing as a thorough and honest investigation of a criminal case.”