“I think, as an audience, it’s best to just surrender to it and enjoy the trip.” So says actor Jeffrey Wright about Westworld’s second season, foolishly trying to plug the flood of theories spilling across message boards and comments sections throughout the internet. But, since nobody will listen to him on that count,…
Welcome to Trailer Happy Hour, the semi-regular feature where we grab some of the hot trailers and promos from the day, toss ‘em into a blender with some other stuff we found in the fridge, and then dare our friends to drink whatever comes out. Today, we’ve got another look at Constance Wu’s Crazy Rich Asians, Nicolas…
Opening credits are a curious thing in this era of modern TV. Some, like FX’s Atlanta or HBO’s Here And Now, focus primarily on the title card, with the weight of its appearance informed by the context of the previous scene. Others, like, say, Mad Men, stick to their template and don’t deviate. HBO’s Westworld, then,…
Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s Westworld adaptation has come a long way from early reports of its fitful production, including calls for extras to perform some “genital-on-genital touching.” Now in its second season, the sci-fi/western thriller series has offered engrossing mystery after mystery, and several great…
When Lady Macbeth somnambulantly monologues about the imaginary bloodstains that cover her hands in Act V Scene 1 of Macbeth (“Out, damned spot! out, I say!”; “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”; “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”; yada, yada, yada…), her soul can no longer be saved.…
HBO’s 2015 documentary series The Jinx famously ended with subject—and murder suspect—Robert Durst walking into a bathroom while still wearing a mic and seemingly confessing to the murders he had been accused of by saying, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” It was a shocking twist, even though the…
Although we’re right on the cusp of HBO releasing the second season of its hit sci-fi drama Westworld, some of the most exciting news about the series’ third season has already been announced. It’s not a new, batshit crazy murder park being built right next to Samurai World, though (even if we’re still holding out…
A few things were made clear in the debut of Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas last week. First, the dryly funny Cenac, a former Daily Show correspondent, is well-suited to host his own topical series. Second, despite the fact that Trump is a walking, talking disaster, his administration isn’t one of the problem areas that…
In addition to dominating the water-cooler conversation, Westworld will continue to follow in Game Of Thrones’ footsteps by beefing up the runtimes of several upcoming episodes. Showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy tell Entertainment Weekly that the season-two premiere, which airs Sunday, April 22, is “a little…
As part of their final promotional push for the new season of Westworld, British broadcasting company Now TV decided to scare the ever-loving shit out of some poor Londoners who were just trying to get a drink. They did this by placing “Fred”—a humanoid robot that’s about as close as you can get to a real-life…
For the past three episodes, Barry has tried to run from his past, but, predictably, his past keeps catching up to him. He tried to wiggle his way out of killing Ryan Madison only to end up in a position where he kills a car full of Chechens. He tried to leave the hitman business behind only to be forced to kill Paco,…
By now, we’re far along enough into Trump’s first term that some equilibrium has returned to late-night programming. We’re no longer guaranteed to see multiple (still mostly male) hand-wringing takes on the latest attempt at a constitutional violation—often made during the president’s morning constitutional—as we…
Fresh off two of the most intriguing new TV shows of the last few years—“melancholy comedy” Fleabag and BBC America’s murderous new drama Killing Eve—Phoebe Waller-Bridge is making her way to HBO. Variety reports that Waller-Bridge has just sold a new pilot to the premium network, a “romantic-comedic-thriller” about a…
In news that prompted mixed reactions here at A.V. Club HQ, Variety has confirmed reports that HBO has renewed Bill Hader’s melancholy hitman dramedy Barry for a second season, and Mike Judge’s long-running, newly T.J. Miller-free tech-world satire Silicon Valley for a sixth. The reactions weren’t completely split…
HBO’s André The Giant documentary is a poignant and moving tribute to a man whose physical size was matched by his spirit and generosity. This clip, however, is just two minutes of people being completely in awe of the man’s singular ability to drink an inhuman amount of alcohol and get extremely fucked up.
In March, former Deadwood star Timothy Olyphant suggested that “there’s no fucking way” the long-in-the-works Deadwood movie will ever happen, crushing the hopes of everyone who wants to see some foul-mouthed cowboys on HBO who aren’t robots. Despite what Olyphant thinks, though, Deadline believes the Deadwood movie…
The big battle scenes in Game Of Thrones have had to get increasingly elaborate, going from beachfront sieges at night to midday massacres with a dragon, but it sounds like a battle for the show’s final season will be significantly larger than anything it has done before. According to a report on fan site Watchers On…
The first season of HBO’s Westworld was all about mazes within mazes, with a twisty plot that partly relied on the audience not figuring out solutions too far ahead of the characters on the show. Of course, the internet being what it is, a lot of fans figured out those solutions anyway, with some theories eventually…
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases or premieres, or occasionally our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Ready Player One still flying the flag for beloved touchstones of the Reagan years, we’re looking back on some unsung gems from the 1980s—the movies from that decade that deserve…
Barry moves between many different modes—existential hitman profile, showbiz comedy, whimsical mafia farce, low-key cop procedural etc.—but they all serve as vehicles for Bill Hader to interrogate the idea of success. For Hader, success doesn’t beget happiness; if anything, it only emphasizes the hollow nature of the…
