Posts

Acclaimed documentarians Cynthia Wade and Sharon Liese have run the merit of short films up the flagpole — Wade even won an Oscar for one, “Freeheld,” in 2007 — and discovered that shorts are superior to feature-length documentaries for one reason above all: People lose interest fast. “We both made feature docs and series, and feature docs are just too long,” Wade said in an interview with her co-director. “Docs are the best thing in the world, but it’s a lot to ask of people....

HBO’s official synopsis for “The Gilded Age” reads: “The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of great conflict between the old ways and brand new systems, and of huge fortunes made and lost. Against the backdrop of this transformation, the series begins in 1882 with young Marian Brook (Jacobson) moving from rural Pennsylvania to New York City after the death of her father to live with her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn (Baranski) and Ada Brook (Nixon)....

When Lawson Deming and an assembled crew returned to Quixote Studios in Los Angeles to film the show’s latest round of exploding objects, they arrived to find there was still proof of their last visit, lodged in a spot high above them. “When we walked onto the stage, we hadn’t been there in two years. We still saw bits of debris embedded in the ceiling from the last time we’d been there....

On the contrary, “The Harder They Fall” seems determined to correct the record. Manifest Destiny may have been a uniquely Anglo-Saxon concept, but white people weren’t alone in the westward expansion that followed the Civil War — no matter what the vast majority of movies about that time period would have you believe. In fact, many historians estimate that more than a quarter of the era’s cowboys were Black, and so the idea of making a straightforward Western about two rival factions of African-American outlaws shouldn’t require any stretch of the imagination....

After more than two hours and plenty of R-rated gags, James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” ends on a high note, with some caveats. The so-called Suicide Squad, while somewhat fractured, has emerged victorious against most of its foes (a crazy coup in the fictional country of Corto Maltese, and also a large starfish-shaped alien named Starro), has cemented its relationships (particularly that of Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Idris Elba’s Bloodsport), and gotten a little bit wiser about the very people who control their fates....

The two venture into the wild, beautiful, yet daunting region “unmarked by human hand,” where the simple act of waiting is explored as a cure for the hysteria of modern society. A requiem for the call of the wild, if it’s philosophizing paints a cynical picture of humanity’s plight, its breathtaking images overpower it. While the film’s synopsis suggests that the snow leopard features prominently, only a brief portion of the work captures the animal....

Superhero films have a long, fraught history with the depiction of disability. Often, these films’ disabled characters are portrayed as villains, like Dr. Poison in “Wonder Woman” or Samuel L. Jackson’s Elijah Price in “Unbreakable.” Most, like DC’s Doctor Mid-Nite, haven’t yet been considered worthy of bringing into the cinematic world. And when these characters do appear in sprawling movie and TV franchises, they are often played by non-disabled actors (such is the case with “Daredevil” or Professor X in “X-Men....