Author: Graham Hillard, Washington Examiner

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…

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…

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…

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…

“Pitch perfect.” “Fresh.” “Really good.” So say the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican of Netflix’s new docuseries, The Comeback, a three-episode look at the Boston Red Sox’s historic 2004 playoff victory over the New York Yankees. Are New York critics as effusive? Hard to say. Word out of Gracie Mansion…

To watch Apple TV+’s new limited series Disclaimer is to observe the streaming era at its most ambitious and maddening. The show’s creator, Alfonso Cuarón, is the famed cinematic visionary behind such masterworks as Children of Men (2006) and Gravity (2013). Its leading performers, Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, are the long-beloved winners of basically…

Watching Mr. McMahon, Netflix’s glossy new “sports entertainment” docuseries, the lapsed fan recalls all manner of wrastlin’ minutiae. Fresh off her best new artist win at the 1985 Grammys, Cyndi Lauper launched a brief second career as a World Wrestling Federation “manager” and mascot. WrestleMania II, a strange and unlovely affair, felt disjointed because it…

Here is what passes for metanarrative on CBS. The new Matlock “reimagining” of the classic 1984-1995 show, resuming Oct. 17 after its Sept. 22 “sneak peek,” takes place in a world in which the Andy Griffith original still aired. Booyah! Take that, Gramps and Gran! But wait, there’s more. The new series looks at the…

Twenty-five years ago, Aaron Sorkin and a cast and writers room of true-believing Clinton-era Democrats set out to create a technocratic fairy tale in which progressive values win the day by sheer virtue of their irresistibility. What happened next is enough to defy belief. Despite themselves, they made a masterpiece. Whatever its ratings success, there…

When was the last time Nicole Kidman played a poor person? A glance through the actress’s oeuvre reveals enough titled ladies, posh executives, and moneyed suburbanites to keep an army of financial advisers in Rolexes. One has to go back to the gay-conversion drama Boy Erased (2018) to find the Australian laboring among the plebs,…