Mayor of Kingstown
SimilarA Model Family, Baywatch Nights, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens, Miss Marple: The Body in the Library, The Singing Detective,
StudioMTV Entertainment Studios,
It is, perhaps, unseemly to admit. Still, the fact that Jeremy Renner, who plays morally conflicted series protagonist Mike McLusky, survived a near-death experience does give Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 a draw that the crime show might not otherwise have.
What’s immediately apparent in the series opener—and more than a little surprising—is how good Renner looks onscreen. While Mike, the character, is burdened with the weight of Kingstown’s concerns and his sin, Renner, the actor, seems lighter somehow. It doesn’t undermine the performance, though. Instead, it adds a dimension. For the first time, Mike seems like he’s rushing. It gives him—and season 3—a stronger sense of immediacy. It’s as though he’s seeing a different crisis, one bigger but not as immediate, coming down the road, and he’s rushing to set his house in order before it arrives.
If anything, Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 would do well to better match its star’s energy and anxiety. The series has plenty of activity but no real sense of forward momentum. In real life, bringing change to a place like Kingstown would be a miserable challenge. So it is realistic when things barely change or do change only to be threatened by figures from the past, like Merle Callahan (Richard Brake), darkening Kingstown’s doorstep. Continue Reading →
Fargo
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Planet of the Apes Sentimental Journey,
Sherlock Holmes Star and Sky: Star in My Mind, Tales from the Crypt, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Dead Zone, The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, The Shining, The Singing Detective, The Twilight Zone, The Woods, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Wycliffe,
StudioFX Productions,
The crime drama returns to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and rediscovers its best storytelling self.
Throughout the six episodes of Fargo Season 5 screened for critics, the series isn’t exactly subtle. From opening the season with an on-screen graphic defining “Minnesota Nice” as neighbor attacks neighbor during a school board meeting to Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm) staring up at a campaign billboard of himself, the show loudly states its theses at the viewer over and over.
However, it never feels like creator Noah Hawley has lost control of the storytelling. It’s methodically over-the-top. The audience is on a roller coaster, but they can feel the quality of the engineering keeping them on the tracks. In other hands, this approach can feel alienating or blunting. Fargo Season 5 benefits from meeting Hawley’s signature energy with a game cast and impressively insightful art direction. As a result, the series turns in its best offering since Season 2’s near-perfect effort. Continue Reading →
Queer As Folk
KinoKultur is a thematic exploration of the queer, camp, weird, and radical releases Kino Lorber has to offer.
There are two documentaries available on KinoNow, filmed five decades apart, that bookend a period of queer masculinity marked by both visible changes and invisible wounds that remain all too familiar. The Queen (1968) and When the Beat Drops (2018), present queer masculine cultures -- the drag pageant and bucking dance competitions, respectively, as related to and inspired by feminine spheres of culture, but decidedly separate from them.
Putting these two films side-by-side makes plain how much queer visibility has changed from the early days of liberation to the more recent days of America during the Trump administration, but there are chilling moments where we can also recognize that some harmful ideologies have yet to be rooted out. Continue Reading →