Film & TV Reviews

TCR talks with Albert Kim, showrunner for Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender

Film & TV Interview TCR Daily TV & Film February 22, 2024

By Sean Belfina  Water, earth, fire, air. Fans of Nickelodeon’s beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender know the rest. Its element-bending action, humor, and heart glued many to their television sets during its original run from 2005-2008. Heavily influenced by Asian culture, the show broke westernized fantasy stereotypes and spotlighted representation. Now, Netflix has adapted the show into a live action series starring an all-Asian and Indigenous cast. The series looks to remix the animated series and bring new viewers to this vast fantastical world. At the helm of this flying bison is Albert Kim, notable for his work…

Interview: Spiral screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger talk to The Coachella Review

Interview Summer 21 Issue TV & Film June 5, 2021

By Katie Gilligan   I was lucky enough to sit down (via Zoom) with writing team Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger to talk about their new movie, Spiral, the ninth installment of Saw, one of the most successful horror franchises of all time. The latest piece of the puzzle (pun intended) follows police veteran Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), brash Detective Ezekiel “Zeke” Banks (Chris Rock), and rookie detective William (Max Minghella) as they fall into a grisly investigation of murders eerily reminiscent of the city’s violent past. We talked about the challenges of satisfying die-hard fans, the effects of COVID…

Stream this Sunday: How to Watch Tenet by Joe Sullivan

Film Review Stream This Sunday TCR Daily March 7, 2021

Welcome to Stream this Sunday, a column built to talk about what is easily available to stream. We’ve all seen the social media posts—“Need something to binge.” Especially during the pandemic, it seems, even with the plethora of choice, we still just don’t know what to watch. Since there is no longer your handy, weekly TV Guide, we hope this column will help you make an informed decision on your streaming habit. You might be thinking, But there are multitudes of platforms used to stream films; how will you narrow it down? The answer is we probably won’t. We will…

Film Review: 1917

Film Review TCR Daily December 25, 2019

By Becky Lauer Full disclosure – I have a very limited knowledge of the events of World War I. Personally, I like to do my research before watching historical dramas, otherwise I feel like the kid who didn’t do the reading before class discussion. So, as I waited in the theater for an early screening of the film 1917 by Sam Mendes, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was walking into.  I knew Andrew Scott, Colin Firth, Richard Madden and Benedict Cumberbatch were involved so I trusted the time spent in the theater would be worth it. I expected to…

Summer Blockbusters of Yore: The Twentieth Anniversary of an Overshadowed Trilogy

Film & TV Film Review TCR Daily August 7, 2019

By Pallavi Yetur Early this year, New York magazine published a feature entitled “We Are Living in the Matrix.” The February 4, 2019 issue included several pieces about the lasting impressions left by The Matrix on everything from the way we think about and engage with the internet, to how it inspired fashion houses to send tiny-lensed sunglasses and billowing leather coats down the runways, to the film’s role in the propulsion of Keanu Reeves to the top of the A-list. The whole editorial undertaking was meant to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the launch of the iconic sci-fi trilogy.…

The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots: Putting the Period in a Period Piece

Film Review TCR Daily February 20, 2019

By: Pallavi Yetur As the Oscars approach, the clear message is that among 2018’s films about lady English monarchs, The Favourite was the favorite. With ten nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, the film was director Yorgos Lanthimos applying his signature darkly comedic treatment to the story of a crumbling Queen Anne and the two women eager to pick up her pieces. By comparison, The Favourite’s royal counterpart, Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots, was snubbed, handed the obligatory, though undoubtedly well-deserved, nominations in the hair, makeup, and costume categories. Filmgoers immediately wanted to compare these…

TCR Talks with Elizabeth Crane

Fiction Film & TV Interview Screenwriting TCR Daily February 13, 2019

BY: Jaime Parker Stickle Elizabeth Crane is the author of such novels as We Only Know So Much and The History of Great Things. She has a unique, honest, and quirky voice, and you’ll relate to her characters, even those at odds with each other, recognizing them as friends or family. Crane’s writing is addictive in all the best ways. When film director/writer/producer Donald Lardner Ward suggested Crane adapt her novel We Only Know So Much into a screenplay, she did. The result is an award-winning film.   The Coachella Review had the great pleasure of sitting down with Elizabeth Crane…

TCR Talks with Mart Kivastik

Fiction Film & TV Interview Plays TCR Daily January 4, 2019

BY: Kaia GALLAGHER For a small country of 1.3 million people, Estonia has a rich and long-standing literary tradition based on centuries of folklore and lyric poems. The country is located on the Baltic Sea to the south of Finland and shares its eastern border with Russia. At the end of World War II, Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union, forcing many of the country’s authors and playwrights into exile. A select few remained in Estonia but found themselves constrained by Soviet censorship.  This period lasted nearly fifty years, between 1944 through 1991, during which a generation knew nothing…

Film Review: Frank Vitale and Cris Mazza’s “Anorgasmia: Faking It in a Sexualized World”

Film Review Nonfiction TCR Daily September 22, 2017

  By: Ashley perez A few years ago, I wrote one of the most terrifying pieces of writing in my life. I wrote about how sex was painful for me, how in eight years of sleeping with one partner, I had never achieved orgasm, how sex felt like a duty instead of a pleasure. I was sure that I was alone and that there was something wrong with me. Shortly after, I was introduced to Cris Mazza via email, where I spoke with her for The Nervous Breakdown about her memoir, Something Wrong With Her. We talked about the repeated…