The current cinema

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• jbryant says:

  February 24, 2013 at 1:42 pm

  I haven’t seen this, and since my girl­friend swore off hor­ror films a few years ago, I’m not likely to catch it any­time soon. But maybe this is a good place to stump for Keri Russell’s excel­lent new TV series on the FX net­work, THE AMERICANS. It star­ted strong and has got­ten bet­ter with each epis­ode. It’s set in 1981 and fol­lows the lives and adven­tures of a pair of Soviet spies pos­ing as aver­age American sub­urb­an­ites. The dir­ect­ing has been par­tic­u­larly strong (Gavin O’Connor, Adam Arkin, Thomas Schlamme and Jean de Segonzac, thus far), with sus­pense sequences that make one pine for 70s thrillers of yore. Smartly writ­ten, too. And Russell is a rev­el­a­tion, if you know her mostly from FELICITY and/or WAITRESS. I’ve always like her, but was­n’t sure she had this kind of hard-edged char­ac­ter in her. The show just got renewed for a second sea­son, so I guess the rat­ings are decent. Matt Zoller Seitz is a fan and writes weekly recaps for New York magazine’s web­site. Worth a look!

• george says:

  March 1, 2013 at 4:43 pm

  “Shamelessly deriv­at­ive” is a pretty good descrip­tion of “Dark Skies.” Saw it yes­ter­day, found it watch­able but noth­ing spe­cial. The script bor­rows bits from “Poltergeist,” bits from “Paranormal Activity,” and so on.
  The story would have made a decent “Twilight Zone” or “Outer Limits” epis­ode, but pad­ded to fea­ture length … well, the pad­ding shows.