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1 week ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Graham Hillard
Like most Marvel offerings, Thunderbolts* requires so much background knowledge that fine print seems appropriate, which may explain the asterisk at the end of the official name of the film. That typographical addendum, much discussed by Marvel fanboys during the promotional lead-up, turns out not to mean anything at all, unless one counts an in-joke “reveal” during the closing credits. To the critic, however, it is irresistible.
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3 weeks ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Graham Hillard
Thirty years ago this month, I sat in a suburban movie house and watched America’s sweetheart stumble backward into love. No, the picture wasn’t Pretty Woman, Sleepless in Seattle, or You’ve Got Mail, though those 1990s classics deserve columns of their own. Rather, it was a film that nearly fell apart before it could be made — an arch-reactionary romance whose politics, incredibly, feel newly relevant today.
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1 month ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Graham Hillard
The Handmaid’s Tale burst onto the TV scene eight years ago and launched its sixth and final season earlier this month. From the start, it is an exercise in blunt-force storytelling, eschewing moral subtlety in favor of a didacticism intended to remind progressives of their inherent goodness. The Sons of Jacob, rulers of the Christian-nationalist dystopia called Gilead, are evil. They have replaced America with a slave state dedicated to systematic sexual assault.
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1 month ago | 
denvergazette.com | Graham Hillard
It is old hat to say that Steven Soderbergh’s movies are stylish, but a look through the auteur’s catalog inspires few descriptors that are more fitting. The director of 35 feature films since 1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Soderbergh knows when to begin and end a scene. He understands what characters should wear and how production design can alter the mood of entire setpieces. Most importantly, he grasps how to pace a movie, a dying art in an age of bloated comic-book extravaganzas.
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1 month ago | 
nationalreview.com | Graham Hillard
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1 month ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Graham Hillard
Yes, I watched it after 13 hours on the interstate. And yes, the kids were making a racket in the next room. But the new Netflix movie by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, of Avengers: Endgame fame, would have been a disaster in even the most tranquil of circumstances. Screen it in a one-man space pod after an excellent night’s sleep. Nothing will alter The Electric State’s disorienting, tone-deaf incompetence.
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2 months ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Graham Hillard
A good political thriller is more precious than jewels, the Good Book says. Or it should, anyway, given that bad ones, like the poor, will always be with us. Who today would sit willingly through 2006’s The Sentinel, in which a there-for-the-paycheck Michael Douglas conducts a steamless affair with first lady Kim Basinger? Or Charlie Sheen’s blindingly awful Shadow Conspiracy (1997), mocked by the Washington Post for channeling “a greasy, tubby George Stephanopoulos”?
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2 months ago | 
denvergazette.com | Graham Hillard
A good political thriller is more precious than jewels, the Good Book says. Or it should, anyway, given that bad ones, like the poor, will always be with us. Who today would sit willingly through 2006’s The Sentinel, in which a there-for-the-paycheck Michael Douglas conducts a steamless affair with first lady Kim Basinger? Or Charlie Sheen’s blindingly awful Shadow Conspiracy (1997), mocked by the Washington Post for channeling “a greasy, tubby George Stephanopoulos”?
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2 months ago | 
washingtonexaminer.com | Graham Hillard
Like a lovers’ quarrel, Apple TV+’s Valentine’s Day release, The Gorge, is likely to split audiences into two mutually uncomprehending camps. For some, a hugely entertaining first hour will prove worth the price of admission, never mind the film’s outright disaster of a second half. Others, not without justice, will skip the climax and denouement altogether, so obviously and suddenly does the production betray its early triumphs. Who’s right? Everyone. Come for the opening act’s star power and style.
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2 months ago | 
denvergazette.com | Graham Hillard
Must every screen endeavor be an eight-episode limited series? The question has become a cliché, but let the record nevertheless show that Apple's newest production would have been a perfectly forgettable Tuesday afternoon matinée not so long ago. Or, better still, a CBS special for the home-on-Saturday-night crowd. Instead, Prime Target limps along for the better part of a full-time shift, trailing increasingly unlikely flotsam as it goes.
