The Envelope

Awards season is around the corner and highly anticipated movies are on full blast at film festivals across the world. Mark Olsen (@IndieFocus) talks with Amy Kaufman (@AmyKinLA), Glenn Whipp (@GlennWhipp) and Jen Yamato (@jenyamato) about what to expect from the onslaught of movies premiering across festivals as we head into awards season. The Venice and Telluride Film Festivals kicked off this f...

Set during World War II and the internment of Japanese Americans, AMC’s “The Terror” weds that real-life horror story with a tale of the supernatural. But showrunner Alex Woo says the second season of the anthology series, titled “Infamy,” is not just a period piece. Instead, it uses the horror genre to bring a story from the past into the present to represent the fear and terror of American citiz...

While Netflix’s “Mindhunter” is based in a time when serial killers were shocking and terrifying Americans, the second season of David Fincher’s true-crime drama feels especially topical and relevant for our time. With a primary focus on the Atlanta child murders — a series of killings, mostly of black children in and around the city between 1979 and 1981 — the show examines disturbingly contempor...

From the very first line of dialogue, Craig Mazin makes clear that “Chernobyl” is far more than a dramatization of the 1986 nuclear meltdown in the USSR. Mazin, the creator and writer of the HBO miniseries, tells a story of the “cost of lies” and the real-life dangers that result from a culture disconnected from the truth. The Soviet system was built on propaganda and misinformation, and the heroe...

HBO’s “Succession” wears its contempt for the billionaire class on its sleeve. Back for its second season, heroes are in short supply while an ensemble of entertainingly loathsome and amoral characters backstab and sabotage each other as they battle for power and control within a global media empire. The scheming family serve as stand-ins for the Murdochs or the Redstones. But the siblings’ anglin...

"The Fast and the Furious" franchise had a humble beginning with muscle cars and sweat, and two guys in Los Angeles who found common ground. But the series long ago added an espionage element that took it to another level of wild storytelling and even wilder action. Now in its first spin-off, “Hobbs and Shaw,” the multi-billion dollar franchise has also added science fiction and a heavy dose of co...

*** SPOILER ALERT*** Spoilers start at 15:08. With a title that suggests the opening of a child’s storybook, Quentin Tarantino revisits the Hollywood of 1969 and that summer night 50 years ago when members of the Manson family set out for Benedict Canyon with murder in their hearts. The grisly slayings on Cielo Drive — including that of a very pregnant Sharon Tate — cast a long shadow over the rom...

‘The Farewell,’ a film about a Chinese American woman with an all-Asian cast and dialogue that is largely in Mandarin, has surpassed ‘Avengers: Endgame’ with the largest per-theater box office average this year. Starring Awkwafina — the scene-stealer from ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ — the heartfelt dramedy provides the latest evidence of the power of a key underserved audience. But ‘The Farewell’ also tel...

In a world of instant clicks and information on demand, director Nicolas Winding Refn took his time to tell the tale of 'Too Old to Die Young,' his new series on Amazon Prime. The Danish filmmaker — best known for the film 'Drive,' starring Ryan Gosling — has fully embraced the streaming revolution to experiment with pacing, narrative and character development. The 10-episode neon-lit noir feature...

Michael Mann’s 1995 'Heat' has become the definitive LA crime film, but probably no one has done more lately to celebrate the epic tale of cops and robbers than a movie critic in Sydney, Australia. Since the summer of 2017, Blake Howard (@BlakeisBatman) has been subjecting the film — starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro — to a minute-by-minute analysis on his podcast, One Heat Minute . He and his...

Once upon a time in America, reality TV used to be about the rich and the famous. But THE HILLS changed the rules of the game in 2006 — merely being rich or appearing to be — was good enough to get you famous. The MTV docu-soap spawned a thousand copycats — including the Housewives and the Kardashian franchises — and turned the US into a country obsessed with reality TV, the genre that launched a...

HBO is pushing the envelope with its new teen-centered drama, EUPHORIA. Sex influenced by pornography, wanton drug use, aimless youth: It’s a horror movie for parents. But is it a fair representation of the 9/11 generation — the first set of kids to come of age with smartphones perpetually in tow? Host Mark Olsen (@IndieFocus) talks with Times TV reporter @villarrealy. On a lighter note, Olsen als...

"The Last Black Ma In San Francisco" is a film about a friendship, a family, a house, a city, and its community. San Francisco serves as a stand-in for cities across the country undergoing gentrification. The film — which won two prizes at the Sundance Film Festival — captures the deep sense of loss that overcomes families who are pushed from their homes and stripped of their communal experience....

The revolution is being televised after all. On streaming platforms, a rebellion against powerful political, social and cultural forces is growing stronger than ever. THE HANDMAID'S TALE is eerily channeling American women’s fears over the future of reproductive rights. The four-part series WHEN THEY SEE US, is powerfully capturing the racial bias and inequities in the criminal justice system. Net...

"Deadwood" is back, and as Al Swearengen would say, it’s about bleeping time. The show that died too young is now a film, and the return trip in "Deadwood: The Movie" — set some 10 years later — gets down to unfinished business in the once lawless town in South Dakota. On this week’s show, host Mark Olsen (@IndieFocus) talks with Ian McShane, the actor who brought the corrupt, foul-mouthed Al Swea...

Game of Thrones, Jane the Virgin, Veep, The Big Bang Theory, Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: These are only some of the shows signing off this year. The end of so many beloved and long-running series will leave a hole in our hearts and disrupt our viewing patterns — and leave us searching for new and different television companions to fill their place. Why the rush to the exit? And why is it so h...

Richard Kelly’s SOUTHLAND TALES is infamous both for its immense ambition and its disastrous reception. With a cast that includes Dwayne Johnson, Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, Amy Poehler, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sean William Scott, the film is a sprawling saga of crime, identity, and conspiracy in Los Angeles that touches on government surveillance, armed resistance, corporate intrusion, and...

The summer of Manson is upon us. Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the mass murder masterminded by Charles Manson, a wave of content is coming our way. The grisly slayings of eight people — including the very pregnant Sharon Tate — cast a long shadow over the romantic adventure of the 60s counterculture, fascinating and haunting us to this day. Out now in theaters is CHARLIE SAYS, the second of a t...

Women love true crime, but they’re also fed up with maneuvering the male-dominated workplace, being underestimated and checking their emotions at the door. Enter KILLING EVE, the right show for the right time. Featuring a fearless, high-fashion assassin and the astute MI6 agent pursuing her, the psychosexual thriller — made by women and starring women — unapologetically exudes femininity from head...

SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers start at 18:10! Eleven years, 22 films, $18 billion and counting at the global box office: Avengers: Endgame is finally in theaters, bringing to a close a chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s been a big emotional investment for fans, and judging by the reaction of some of its stars, it’s been one for the actors as well. Meanwhile, over the course of the franchise,...

HBO may not have known it had a hit on its hands in 2011, but the premiere of the final season of GAME OF THRONES shattered ratings records for the network. Viewing of the series has reached a fever pitch and blown up Twitter, while fans divine clues over who will live, who will die, and who will win the Iron Throne. LA Times film writer Mark Olsen ( @IndieFocus ) is joined by @ marymacTV , @tracy...

When the movie HEATHERS was shown at the 1989 US Film Festival, now known as Sundance, the Los Angeles Times film critic Sheila Benson wrote: “No amount of production sheen or acting skill seems excuse enough for the film's scabrous morality or its unprincipled viciousness.” In The New Yorker, Pauline Kael wrote the script for the black comedy “promises that the picture will lift off into the juni...

The master himself, Stephen King, has said PET SEMATARY “is a scary movie. Be warned.” It explores grief, emotion, guilt and love. You could say it’s a family film -- in a terrifying, don’t bring your little ones kind of way. LA Times film writer Mark Olsen (@IndieFocus) is joined by one of PET SEMATARY’s stars -- actress and filmmaker Amy Seimetz -- who talks about elevating a horror picture to a...

Six years after SPRING BREAKERS, Harmony Korine is back with a new film, THE BEACH BUM, out now in theaters. The wildly creative filmmaker and fine artist is a teller of modern-day tall tales, something of a cross between a burnout Mark Twain and an Andy Warhol of the Florida Keys. Korine talks with LA Times film writer Mark Olsen (@IndieFocus) about how he’s skirting autobiography in his work, th...

The much anticipated follow-up to Jordan Peele’s GET OUT is out now in theaters. And Peele delivers the film he set out to make- one that scares people's pants off. In the process, he has reclaimed the art of the horror genre. LA Times film writer Mark Olsen ( @IndieFocus ) talks with Justin Chang ( @JustinCChang ) and Jen Yamato ( @jenyamato ) about how US is in some ways a political film about c...