Joseph Neff

2 weeks ago | spectrumculture.com | Joseph Neff

As the star of the Netflix sketch comedy program I Think You Should Leave, Tim Robinson excels at wringing laughs from social awkwardness, specializing in discomfort that borders on, and more frequently, tips over into the ridiculous. Furthermore, the character’s predicaments often stem from a dearth of self-awareness and an inability to keep a bad situation from worsening. Occasionally, the carnage gets exacerbated by a twisted sense of self-righteousness. Hostility is common.

1 month ago | gothamist.com | Joseph Neff |Alysia Santo

When New York corrections officers attack prisoners in infirmaries — as has happened dozens of times in the past 15 years — it is nurses who must document and treat the resulting injuries. Their choices can save lives or cover up abuse.

1 month ago | spectrumculture.com | Joseph Neff

That New York City came to the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s isn’t any kind of big secret. A famous front-page story in the New York Daily News inspired the title of Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn’s film, with the headline FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD a terse and harsh summarizing of a speech delivered by then-President Gerald Ford regarding the fiscal woes that form the subject of the film.

1 month ago | gothamist.com | Alysia Santo |Joseph Neff

The guards carried Robert Brooks into the infirmary face down, holding him by his cuffed hands and ankles. Once inside a private exam room at Marcy Correctional Facility, near Syracuse, New York, on Dec. 9, officers beat and choked him while nurses lingered in the hall. Brooks died the next day at a nearby hospital. Lawyers for the Brooks family say the guards intentionally took him to the infirmary because it lacked cameras due to medical privacy concerns.

1 month ago | spectrumculture.com | Joseph Neff

If its title sets off buzzers of recognition, that’s likely because Andrew Ahn’s fourth feature The Wedding Banquet is a remake, or to employ the descriptor favored by the film’s distributor Bleecker Street, a “reimagining” of Ang Lee’s 1993 indie romantic comedy of the same name. That might read as a semantic splitting of hairs, but calling Ahn’s version a reimagining is more than charitable, even though James Schamus is a writer/producer on both films.