Author: Graham Hillard

If Apple TV+’s new series Stick were any more affirming of left-coded mental-health assumptions, we’d have to watch it on the American Psychiatric Association’s TV channel. Stick is for therapy bros, for trauma-mongers, for chicks who need trigger warnings on their trigger warnings. The show stars a breathy Owen Wilson as Pryce Cahill, a former…

“Artificial intelligence” is a tech fantasist’s dream bubble, but let’s play along. Suppose tomorrow’s robots have human intelligence, self-directedness, and skill. Won’t they have our laziness, as well? Murderbot, the latest science-fiction series from Apple TV+, attempts to answer precisely that question. The popular fear is of machines that slay us in our beds. Apple’s…

Between 2009 and the beginning of last week, dramatist and author David Mamet released 16 new plays and books, some of them exceptional. During the same span, filmmaker David Mamet directed either one or zero feature-length pictures, depending on whether one counts the 2013 made-for-TV movie Phil Spector. To say merely that this imbalance saddened…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

One is tempted to describe the latest film by Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies) as a simple antifeminist parable. Called Babygirl, the new movie stars Nicole Kidman as a tech CEO married to a successful stage director in Manhattan. Unhappy in love, Kidman’s Romy Mathis begins an affair with an intern named Samuel (Harris Dickinson)…

Let it not be said that Conclave, the new film about the selection of a new pope from director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), is dishonest. I found it fascinating, unsentimental, and exceptionally keen in its understanding of human nature. Nevertheless, there is, at…