'Hacks' Is Not a Hack…It's Comedic Perfection
Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) are a delight to watch evolve, sometimes devolve, then evolve again.

France, 1890. Inventor Louis Le Prince vanishes under mysterious circumstances right after he created a device that, five years later, the Lumière Brothers will call The Cinematographer. What if they had stolen Le Prince’s idea and wacked him afterwards? The mystery remains for more than a century, until Luigi Cozzi picks up a strange book called “The Roaming Universe” in the horror museum of his pal Dario Argento. The origin of this enigmatic book troubles him. This particular science-fiction novel would have materialized during a spiritual session in modern day Rome. At the session, an old woman revealed that the key to all these mysteries comes from 1895, a time during which the Lumière Brothers had denied lending their camera to Georges Méliès for an obscure movie called "A Trip to the moon". Not only does this film actually exist, but it raises a more intriguing question. Is our world the only one, or are there parallel universes ?
Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) are a delight to watch evolve, sometimes devolve, then evolve again.
'Blue Beetle' is another solid addition to the superhero film canon.
As this critic continues to look back at some of this Summer's films I have taken in, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most overall unsettling trends in Hollywood over the last several years.....sequels, reboots, and remakes. Look, I am all for seeing more than one film for certain originals that made a splash, ie: "Jurassic Park", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Transformers", etc.
Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.
Hours before their line-up of screenings for Trans Awareness Week began, the filmmakers of 'When Men Were Men' chatted with me about the film's personal exploration of masculinity.