For many younger film fans, the name James L. Brooks might not hold much significance.  Probably, this has much to do with the fact that most of his most influential work was at least 25 years ago, and Brooks hasn’t directed a film since 2010. That said, if you’re not familiar with his work, it is important to know that Brooks is one of the most respected and influential filmmakers of the past 30 years.

Continue reading ‘Ella McCay’: Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Woody Harrelson & More Join James L. Brook’s First New Film In Over A Decade at The Playlist.

All good things must come to an end, and after a two-year wait, Netflix‘s “Sex Education” returns for its fourth and final season. It’s always bittersweet when a fan-favorite show wraps up, but in the case of a series as inclusive, intelligent, and big-hearted as this one, it’s an end particularly hard to take. For a certain generation, “Sex Education” wasn’t just another teen show: it was the teen show, a series that updated the high school drama formula with mirth and panache, remaking the familiar adolescent addles into a generous choir that resounds with a call to its audience to be who one is, no matter how messy, silly, imperfect, or strange.

Continue reading ‘Sex Education’ Season 4 Review: The Netflix Teen Show’s Final Season Is Messy, Imperfect, And Heartfelt – Just Like Growing Up at The Playlist.

That “2001: A Space Odyssey” allusion in the teaser trailer for “Barbie” was not just a silly gimmick. Without the full context of the film, casting Margot Robbie’s incarnation of the iconic toy doll in the role of a Kubrickian monolith felt like a wink from filmmaker Greta Gerwig that she had not sold her soul entirely to Mattel. But when the reference plays out in totality during the opening scene, it becomes clear this wasn’t just a bit.

Continue reading ‘Barbie’ Review: An Existential & Electrifying Comedy Cementing Greta Gerwig’s Status As Master Storyteller at The Playlist.

No word on when “Sex Education” Season 4 premieres on Netflix this year, but with production wrapping earlier this month, it’s safe to say the hit show will return soon. So let’s call it late summer/early fall, similar to Season 3’s September 2021 debut. But expect the upcoming season to be the swan song for “Sex Education,” as yet another main cast member alludes to their exit from the series.

Continue reading ‘Sex Education’: Emma Mackey Says She Won’t Be Back For Show’s Potential S5, Jodie Turner-Smith Joins S4 Cast at The Playlist.

We’ll freely admit it. English period-piece films about troubled poets feel kinda played and predictable, and dreary. But from all accounts, the new movie “Emily” about famous poet Emily Brontë and the events that inspired her seminal novel, “Wuthering Heights,” is a big winner. The film is the directorial debut of veteran actor turned filmmaker Frances O’Connor, known for starring in Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence,” which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, and critics raved, including ours.

Continue reading ‘Emily’ Trailer: Emma Mackey Stars As Emily Brontë For Director Frances O’Connor at The Playlist.

Midway through Frances O’Connor’s “Emily,” the title character finds a note. It’s been left for her, discreetly, with the time and place to meet the man she loves. O’Connor holds on a close-up of Emily as she registers her considerable excitement at the invitation, then tries to hide it, then gives up because she simply cannot. It’s like a little clinic in screen acting, in what the camera can pick up but another person often cannot, and O’Connor holds and holds and holds on her and lets her play the moment for all it’s worth. 

It’s the kind of acting moment that perhaps only an actor-turned-director knows to stay with.

Continue reading ‘Emily’ Review: A Dazzling Debut from Actor-Turned-Director Frances O’Connor [TIFF] at The Playlist.

Rebel. Misfit. Genius. Yep, that’s famous author Emily Brontë reimagined. “Emily, how did you write ‘Wuthering Heights?” That’s the first question and line of dialogue in the new trailer for “Emily,” which imagines the transformative, exhilarating, and uplifting journey to womanhood of a rebel and a misfit, Brontë, one of the world’s most famous, enigmatic, and provocative writers who died too soon at the age of 30.

Continue reading ‘Emily’ Trailer’: Emma Mackey Is The Rebel, Misfit, Genius, Emily Brontë at The Playlist.

“Ted Lasso”s rise in the Twitter-era has hit a brick wall in criticism, with folks on one side promoting pop culture’s need for positive, kind “content,” television and films alike, and the other raising eyebrows at the notion that “content” must necessarily mold itself to make audiences feel good. The trouble is that if “content” is expected to accommodate a specific dichotomy, and if “content” then violates that “dichotomy,” fan-writers revolt against it (not to mention the calamitous ill of viewing pop art as sugar-dense sludge to be consumed through a streaming IV).

Continue reading ‘Sex Education’ Season 3: The Kids Of Moordale Continue To Grow [Review] at The Playlist.

When Netflix released “Sex Education” almost a year ago there was little fanfare beforehand.  Sure, critics had gone gaga over Laurie Nunn‘s showrunning debut, but from the outset, it was a bit hard to differentiate from all the other teen programs populating the streaming service. The concept was cute though.  A British teenage boy, Otis (Asa Butterfield), becomes the de facto sex education counselor for his classmates at a rural England secondary school (high school in North America).

Continue reading ‘Sex Education’: The Kids Are Growing Up & Hooking Up In Season 2 [Review] at The Playlist.

Netflix – and its algorithm – knows the value of nostalgia. The streaming service has capitalized on it time and again with programming from the retro-infused “Stranger Things” to full-on reboots like “Fuller House,” understanding that the emotion is one of the easiest ways to get audiences quickly invested in their content. “Sex Education” takes a dual approach, with a slippery setting that’s both now and then, and more references to beloved teen movies than an Ariana Grande video.

Continue reading Netflix’s ‘Sex Education’ Is Hilarious, Raunchy, Sweet & An Utter Joy To Binge [Review] at The Playlist.