On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver offered a disturbing portrait of the sad realities of prison labor, examining the low wages, institutional corruption, inhumane practices and exorbitant fees that stand between inmates and their attempts to rebuild behind bars. Sixty-one percent of people in prison have jobs, including common …
Read More »
Whatever this is, it’s not a movie — it’s a product more deserving of a road test than a review. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw is the ninth chapter in the Fast & Furious series (the gross is over $5 billion across the previous eight films) and its …
Read More »
Netflix premiered the first teaser for The Witcher, an adaptation of the fantasy book series-turned-popular video game, during San Diego Comic Con Friday. The series stars former Superman Henry Cavill in the main role of Geralt of Rivia, a “famed monster hunter” in “the world of The Continent, where humans, …
Read More »
“It’s not about me at all,” says Rick Rubin — renowned record producer, hip-hop pioneer, possessor of one of the world’s truly magnificent celebrity beards — at the very beginning of Shangri-La, Showtime’s four-part docuseries that premieres tonight and is … well, ostensibly about him. He’s talking to the project’s …
Read More »
The late Ross Perot will be remembered for a great many things, from running for president in 1992 as a third-party candidate and scoring 19% of the vote, arguably handing the White House to Bill Clinton, to founding the billion dollar company Electronic Data Systems and organizing a daring 1979 …
Read More »
Brian Tyree Henry’s armpits are still a little damp as he breezes into a Burbank diner on an overcast L.A. afternoon. “Sorry I’m sweaty,” he says. “I was feeling a little anxiety earlier, so I decided to hit the gym and run it out.” What did he feel anxious about? …
Read More »
The trailer for the new documentary,Power, Influence and Hip-Hop, highlights the hip-hop and R&B revolution fostered by Jermaine Dupri and his record label So So Def. The film arrivesJuly 18th on We TV. Founded in Atlanta in the early Nineties, So So Def provided a crucial southern counterpoint to what …
Read More »
One week after one of the show’s grittiest deep-dives, an exhaustive segment on the Muller report, Last Week Tonight released the YouTube clip of some “high-end nonsense”: a hilarious and weirdly poignant report on the saga of Japanese otter mascot Chiitan. Host John Oliver served up the ridiculously tangled backstory …
Read More »
Killing Eve is back for Season Two. A review of the premiere, “Do You Know How to Dispose of a Body?”, coming up just as soon as I can bring myself to put on these Crocs… “Normal is boring. I’m not normal, you know.” -Villanelle As with Barry, there were …
Read More »
Among the more fascinating legends in the short but memorable life of Bruce Lee is the TV show the martial-arts icon pitched in the early Seventies about a Chinese immigrant traveling through America in the late-19th Century. The studio politely declined, the Lee family story goes, then stole key elements …
Read More »