Michael Nordine: Last News

Michael Nordine author While it’s hardly news that most of us are under some form of surveillance any time we’re in public, the extent of Big Brother’s activities still has the capacity to astound. That’s nowhere truer than in the People’s Republic of China, whose efforts to monitor its citizens’ every action (public or otherwise) would make Orwell blush.

Michael Nordine Every American soldier has left Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean Afghanistan has left them. Jon Shenk and Bonni Cohen’s heartfelt documentary gives new meaning to the term “forever war” by showing the lasting impact that multiple deployments have had on a trio of Navy SEALs still struggling to truly come home years after retiring from the military.

Michael Nordine “All happy families are alike,” claims the immortal first sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”; “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And while jaded viewers may opine that all indie dramedies about dysfunctional families in the “Little Miss Sunshine” or “The Squid and the Whale” mold are alike, writer-director Haroula Rose’s “All Happy Families” suggests the genre has moved in a more grounded direction. Whether that’s ultimately a better direction remains to be seen.

Michael Nordine “What if there were a shark in the Seine?” is, one can only assume, a question that Parisians ponder on a daily basis. It’s also brilliant in its simplicity, if not quite as appealingly silly a high-concept premise as “what if there were snakes on a plane?” and “what if the moon … fell?” Look no further than “Under Paris” for an answer to the hypothetical that surely keeps Emmanuel Macron up at night, as Netflix’s new thriller swims rather than sinks as it adds life to a genre that’s been bloodless for far too long.

Michael Nordine “I’m a director,” Sam Clifford (Chelsea Peretti) says in front of the mirror after landing her first gig directing a play she’s written. “I’m a director.

Valerie Wu Intern A film adaptation of R.L. Stine’s 1992 “Fear Street” novel “The Prom Queen” is in development at Netflix, the author himself reports.

Michael Nordine author A case study in the downside of timeliness, “Lift” is a caper predicated on a truly ludicrous concept: an NFT increasing in value. That might have seemed plausible two years ago, when Netflix first acquired Daniel Kunka’s spec script, but F. Gary Gray’s followup to “Men in Black: International” has the misfortune of arriving shortly after the vast majority of non-fungible tokens were deemed officially worthless.

Michael Nordine author Greed may not be good, but it is universal. And while America would appear to have a monopoly on movies about the pursuit of wealth for wealth’s sake, plenty of other nations have exported their version of the rags-to-riches tale — of which Saudi Arabia’s Oscar submission, “Alhamour H.A.,” is just the latest.

Michael Nordine author Over the last couple years, Please Don’t Destroy has gone from little-known comedy troupe to “Saturday Night Live” mainstays. Their pre-recorded sketches, most of which involve that week’s celebrity host, are routinely a highlight of the show — bits like “Three Sad Virgins,” “Molly Shannon 2K23” and “Hard Seltzer” are as off-the-wall as they are hilarious.

Michael Nordine author Time is the slasher genre’s ultimate villain. As final girls like Laurie Strode and Sidney Prescott slow down with age, the masked killers who relentlessly pursue them never lose a step. Rather than heal all wounds, time’s inexorable passage wears down the surviving heroes of “Halloween,” “Scream” and other enduring franchises while their injuries (not all of them visible) continue to fester.

Michael Nordine author Serial-killer movies are a dime a dozen these days, with the true-crime industrial complex exploiting the ill-deeds sprees of increasingly obscure murderers to keep up with audience demand. Anyone wary of the genre might balk at the idea of “Strange Darling,” a cat-and-mouse drama about the tail end of a murder spree, but to do so would be to miss out on an exemplar of the form. Writer-director JT Mollner flips the script on this tired genre, crafting the cleverest thriller of its kind in a while with a mighty assist from a pair of killer performances by co-leads Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner.

Michael Nordine author Evil, as conceived by Stephen King, is an inexorable force as old as the world itself. It exists in countless forms, some of which can be staved off for a time but none of which can be extinguished permanently. It’s as much a part of the earth as it is a part of us, and it persists in a way none of us can or will.

Michael Nordine author Much like its protagonist — a ghastly superhero who gains his powers after falling into a vat of chemical waste — “The Toxic Avenger” refuses to die. Made for a paltry $500,000 in 1984, Troma’s cult classic spawned three direct sequels, a rock musical, two video games, a short-lived animated series and now a remake starring Peter Dinklage. Given the eco-friendly, anti-pollution message at the improbable franchise’s core, perhaps its reemergence shouldn’t be surprising.

Michael Nordine author Say this for “Vacation Friends 2”: It isn’t a drastic drop-off from the original. That has less to do with it being a better-than-usual sequel than it does with the first film being just okay. Still, one supposes there’s something to be said for consistency.

Sophia Scorziello editor The Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina-led sci-fi thriller “I.S.S” has been picked up by Bleecker Street. Helmed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite, the film follows a research trip on the International Space Station gone awry.

Michael Nordine author Few cinematic traditions are more enduring than thinking up new and inventive ways to beat up Nazis. From “Inglourious Basterds” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” to “Dead Snow” and “Sisu,” such projects run the gamut: prestige pictures, blockbusters, low-rent genre fare and everything in between.

Michael Nordine author There’s more than one way to be a passenger in life, not all of which involve vehicles. That’s certainly the case when it comes to the protagonist in Carter Smith’s propulsive new thriller, which functions like a therapy session on wheels between a murderous shrink and an unwilling patient.

Michael Nordine author There’s no shortage of great movies about baseball, but there is a severe lack of films about the Negro leagues. The fifth inning of Ken Burns’ expansive “Baseball” covers them with admirable reverence, but feature-length projects — whether narrative or documentary — are vanishingly rare. “The League” is therefore something close to required viewing for devotees of our national pastime just by virtue of its existence, so it comes as a relief that Sam Pollard’s documentary (exec produced by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson) is also quite good on the merits. Given his résumé, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Pollard’s prior work as director includes “MLK/FBI” and “Citizen Ashe,” and he’s also edited several Spike Lee joints; in addition to a Peabody Award and career achievement prize from the International Documentary Association, he shared an Oscar nomination with Lee for 1997’s “4 Little Girls” about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

Michael Nordine author If you’d like to see the world’s saddest math equation, just watch “World’s Best.” After being given a lighthearted “equation of me” homework assignment on the first day of school, 12-year-old Prem Patel (Manny Magnus) formulates the following: Prem = (mom + dad) x math + Jerome – dad.” A math whiz still reeling from the loss of his father, Prem (it rhymes with “name,” not that anyone ever pronounces it correctly) proves easy to root for as he navigates adolescence in “7 Days” director Roshan Sethi’s coming-of-age dramedy. But while the Disney+ original ultimately receives a passing grade, it doesn’t exactly ace the assignment the way its protagonist so often does.

Michael Nordine author “Indie sci-fi thriller” aren’t words we get to say often enough, even if the reason why is obvious: Making aliens, rocket ships, and the cold vacuum of space look real is expensive. Tribeca Film Festival offering “I.S.S.” avoids that issue by taking place entirely aboard the International Space Station, which becomes the staging ground for a proxy war when a nuclear conflict breaks out between America and Russia. That premise wouldn’t have been out of place in a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury, and “Our Friend” director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, working from a Black List script by Nick Shafir, comes close to maximizing its potential with help from a stellar ensemble led by Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina.

Michael Nordine author If his post-“Mad Men” career has taught us anything, it’s that Jon Hamm is a natural comic actor who happens to be great in dramatic roles rather than the other way around. At the risk of downplaying his exemplary work as Don Draper, the 52-year-old has seemed most in his element in the likes of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and especially last year’s criminally underseen “Confess, Fletch.” “Maggie Moore(s)” finds him somewhere in the middle of the comedy/drama spectrum as a small-town police chief investigating the murders of two women with the same name — an intriguing premise to be sure, but one that Hamm’s “Mad Men” co-star John Slattery, in his sophomore directorial effort, struggles to bring to a satisfying conclusion.