It’s an odd war that Serena Joy and June wage in “First Blood,” an often excellent but ultimately baffling hour of The Handmaid’s Tale. It begins when Serena Joy, scared and guilty, literally removes the wall that separates her from the woman carrying “her” baby, giving her a chance to see it on an ultrasound monitor.…
This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episode “Seeds.”
Dandelions, or Taraxacum officinale, spread their seeds after they flower. Once the bright yellow florets have dried and fallen away, a “parachute ball” opens up, covering the head of the flower in puffy white parachutes. The seeds mature, and when they do, the tiny white parachutes fly away on the wind, ready to land…
“My darling,” said he, “I beg of you, for my sake and for our child’s sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when…
Ever since the surprise success (and excellence) of last year’s Get Out transformed him from “well-liked sketch comedian” into “bold new film-making talent,” we’ve been eagerly waiting to hear what Jordan Peele’s got cooking up for horror-loving moviegoers next. And while he’s dropped a few hints about some projects…
This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episode “Baggage.”
There are works of art that ask you to read between the lines, to intuit and evaluate and search your mind and thoughts and assumptions, to ask that you experience it without hand-holding. Bruce Miller’s The Handmaid’s Tale is not such a work of art. The performances are often subtle, because these actors are, almost…
This post discusses plot points of The Handmaid’s Tale episodes “June” and “Unwomen.”
In the second episode of its second season, The Handmaid’s Tale goes somewhere that the novel on which its based never did: the Colonies (and also the Boston Globe.) More significantly, however, it continues down a path on which it started last year, and one which the novel never even approached. With an hour split…
And you shall obey his word, and the word of his servants here on earth.
The first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s adaptation of the eponymous Margaret Atwood novel, made for some of the best TV in 2017. Every bit as harrowing as its source material—in which the few fertile women left in the world are reduced to incubators by an oppressive, theocratic regime—Bruce Miller’s series was…
Describing the full trailer for The Handmaid’s Tale season two as “bleak” would be a huge understatement. Look, we weren’t expecting things to really turn around for Offred (Elisabeth Moss), who was shuttled off to some unknown destination at the end of season one. But, as the clip shows, the leaders of Gilead have…
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Elisabeth Moss has joined Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish in New Line’s comic book adaptation The Kitchen. As we previously reported, the movie is about the Mafia-controlled underworld of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood in the ‘70s, focusing on three women who take over…
As we prepare to head back to Gilead, The Handmaid’s Tale wants to make sure we haven’t forgotten any of the oppressive regime’s rules.
The Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss has lined up a new film project, once again exploring a world seemingly designed to disenfranchise and dehumanize women (i.e., this one). According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moss has signed on to star in the upcoming biopic A Letter From Rosemary Kennedy, where she’d play the…
The Broadcast Television Journalists Association and the Broadcast Film Critics Association got together to let their hair down tonight, handing out their picks for the top artistic contributions of 2017 (i.e., the Critics’ Choice Awards). Guillermo Del Toro turned out to be the night’s big winner on the film side of…
Ruben Östlund is a maestro of discomfort, and The Square, which won the Palme D’Or at Cannes earlier this year, might just be his magnum opus: a two-and-a-half-hour cringe comedy about the foibles of supposed high society, unfolding as a daisy chain of exquisitely awkward episodes. Östlund’s last movie, the bleakly…
Comedies almost never win Cannes; the rationale, one must assume, is they aren’t “serious” enough for the most prestigious film prize in the world. That makes this year’s Palme D’Or winner, The Square, a welcome anomaly. Like writer-director Ruben Östlund’s last movie, Force Majeure, it’s a hilarious savaging of male…
Though she just won an Emmy for her work on The Handmaid’s Tale, it doesn’t sound like Elisabeth Moss has any intention of kicking back and taking on something lighter for her next role. According to Variety, Moss is set to star in the feature film Call Jane, a drama about a group of women who organized an underground…
The A.V. Club is counting down the days leading up to the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, Sunday, September 17, with an examination of this year’s major categories. Each day, TV editor Erik Adams breaks down a category and gives us his picks for who should win, and who will win. Today we’re looking at the nominees for…
