FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

There is a specific kind of low-stakes joy in picking up a physical media release, putting the disc in, and getting straight down to business. Paramount put out the first season of Mobland on DVD recently, and while it does not contain a single special feature, the show itself delivers a noisy, bloody, stubborn piece of crime television that knows exactly what it wants to be and doesn't waste a single frame trying to apologize for it. The overall narrative setup is about as old as the crime genre itself, but it works because the show understands the fundamental engine of mafia storytelling: power creates paranoia, and paranoia makes people stupid. You have two rival crime syndicates operating across London: the Harrigan family, who are established, wealthy, and decaying from the inside, and the Stevenson gang, who are reckless, violent, and desperate to carve out a bigger piece of the city for themselves. Sitting right in the middle of this escalating disaster is Harry Da Souza, p...

A caravan of crazy roams the desert, leaving in its wake a chaotic free-for-all of frantic neuroses. There’s no way to soft sell this review, so let’s just get to it. The latest “Mad Max” is an assortment of cockamamie pandemonium that leaps from one lurid explosion to the next in a momentum-less rush to keep viewers from noticing a script spread thin on character development or anything else of valuable dimension. The plot is straightforward and difficult to explain at the same time. This is mostly because it is so heavily mired in a barrage of convoluted eccentricity that hinders any chance to decipher a coherent explanation for any of its on-screen happenings. The gist is this: Max (Tom Hardy), a near mute, is captured by a group of crazy people who are chasing after Furiosa (Charlize Theron), the commander of a war rig who’s taken off with their leader’s enslaved harem. Max winds up helping them and in the gang’s ensuing escape across the desert, they must face off agains...