Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner doesn’t like TV critics, and while most show runners probably have the same perspective, I don’t know why Weiner in particular has such a bee in his bonnet.  Mad Men does get criticized and unravelled, and has for the last seven years, but it’s with genuine love and a desire to understand a complicated show.  TV criticism is often, to me at least (and I’m biased, of course), a great form of flattery: if your show is worth talking about and dissecting, it’s because it’s a great show.  That doesn’t mean it’s infallible, though.  But back to my original point, I’m pretty sure that “The Crash” was created just to get TV critics weeping softly at having to review this episode so quickly, because it was so deep and layered.  On the other hand, maybe it was created just to mess with all of us.  Hit the jump to see which.

Game of Thrones is juggling a lot of stories, as it always has, but this year it feels different because for the first time I think that viewers are really clearly feeling the stakes.  We know the major characters, we know the major trajectory.  There are zombies to the north and dragons to the east, and a lot of political intrigue in between.  What’s been nice about this season too is that we’ve gotten lots of great character moments, even in the midst of so many stories.  The storytelling has often been fractured though, but what “Second Sons” did a great job with was actually giving us time to pause and really embrace the plots and characters this week — no Jon, no Robb, no Bran, no Jaime and Brienne and no Theon meant lots of time to spend with the others, especially because so many of them for once shared the same screen.  Hit the jump for more on why your brother is now your father-in-law (it is known).

Another excellent episode of Hannibal, which continues to be so gorgeously and hauntingly shot.  From Will outside of his house in the snow, gazing across the dormant winter landscape, to Tobias in his violin shop with its rich wood and old world feel.  I was actually in a violin shop like that recently, and the show captured exactly the feeling of being surrounded by so many beautiful instruments, hand crafted with such expertise and beauty.  Though Hannibal‘s violence is much, much more overt than two other recent, excellent series, Top of the Lake and Rectify, they share an intensity and immersive storytelling that wraps up the darkest of horrors in the most stunningly rendered visual blanket.  How could such terrors occur in a place that’s full of such beauty and richness?  Hit the jump for more on why “life is like a musical performance. We are finite events, unique arrangements.”

Creating the perfect mix of drama, comedy, romance, and powerful acting is often a theatrical recipe that stands just out of reach of most productions. Sometimes the drama and romance is there, but the comedic moments fall flat, or the actors give their all to a script that jumps from place to place, fostering few laughs and even fewer tears. Silver Linings Playbook, an Academy nominated film with an award-winning cast, gives audiences a full helping of laughs, tears, and embraces in amazing, yet equal measure, brought to the table by a stellar group of actors who not only made their characters lovable, but astonishingly believable.

Star Trek is not iconography.  There are plenty of iconic moments, inside jokes, winks, nods, and more, but it all stems from an original story starring fleshed-out characters who answered the call of duty and the call of adventure in equal and enthusiastic measure.  Director J.J. Abrams only sees iconography, but it was enough to get him through 2009′s reboot.  The story was barely patched together, still filled with holes, and wrapped in coincidences, but Abrams’ talent as a director managed to bring the story and characters to life in a way that felt fresh and exciting.  Much like his take on Captain Kirk, it was slapdash, occasionally clever, frantic, and charming.  Unfortunately, a flashy smile and big set pieces can’t save Abrams a second time as his follow-up, Star Trek Into Darkness, amplifies the shortcomings of his original effort, and removes the joy as the picture stumbles around looking for character arcs, themes, and a compelling, well-constructed plot.  But its greatest embarrassment is in trying to steal classic Star Trek moments without having a clue as to why those moments had meaning.

“Underwater” was an interesting but fragmented penultimate episode for Bates Motel‘s first season, especially after that shocker last week.  This may have been my least favorite episode of the season, because though it set up a final showdown really well, I don’t feel all that invested with the Abernathy situation yet.  We know he’s an uber villain who was Shelby and Keith Summers boss, but his vague threats to Norma seemed to reflect more of her own craziness than his.  Norman hardly had anything to do this week, and Bradley continues to successfully manipulate everyone in town.  Hit the jump for why crazy people keep gravitating towards Norma (hint: she’s crazy!)

Considering that the film was bumped around from September to January due to a national tragedy, it would be nice to feel a little sorry for Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad.  The period film, which casts Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling as cops going against Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) for control of Los Angeles, has a great cast and period setting.  On top of that, The Untouchables is a great film and it wouldn’t be the worst thing to see more films like it.  And yet, Gangster Squad is a total miss.  My review of the Blu-ray follows after the jump.

Oh, Don.  What the heck?  After a shaky start, Mad Men really received rave reviews last week for an episode that felt like old times, even though I just can’t really trust Matthew Weiner at this point to really give us what we want.  There must be a catch about this merger.  Before that shoe drops though, we got a thoroughly Don-centric episode that was, even outside of Don’s plot, all about power plays.  Don’s question of likability and watchability is still an issue for me, but the way things ended up tonight did leave me wondering what is coming next for him.  Hit the jump for why you are not to pick up the phone.

I know that I’ve been promising action every week on Game of Thrones for the last few (like Winter, it is coming!), and while “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” delivered some towards the end, the rest of the episode was fraught with rich character building and small payoffs that are certainly propelling us into some interesting situations for the final three episodes (I swear!).  “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” had a lot to do with hard truths, and studied the pairing off of characters for good or ill.  Hit the jump for why “if you waste your time getting people to love you, you’ll be the best liked dead man in town.”

HBO has put a lot of stock in British-based comedy over the years, particularly in their partnership with The Office‘s Ricky Gervais, his writing partner Stephen Merchant and their brilliantly bizarre friend Karl Pilkington.  There’s also the current series Veep, which although it is based entirely in American politics, is written wholly by Britons.  Their latest comedy offering, Family Tree, which is paired with Veep in a Sunday comedy block, has its roots in Britain, but does reach out across the pond as well, reflecting the dual-citizenship sensibilities of its creator, Christopher Guest.

Fans of Guest (who created seminal works This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, and served as a big influence on Ricky Gervais in creating The Office‘s style) have been waiting for something new since 2006′s For Your Consideration, which was fun, though not his best effort.  Family Tree, like his other work, takes on a mockumentary style (with varying success) and a minimalistic atmosphere, where most of the humor is found in subtle phrasing and background content, such as a poster at a theater in Hove for “Avatar: The Musical.”  Hit the jump for more on Family Tree and why it’s definitely worth tuning in for. 

[This is a re-post of my review from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival.  Sightseers opens today in limited release.]

With his third film, Sightseers, director Ben Wheatley has clearly defined his wheelhouse. He makes surreal, darkly comic, horrifically violent tales about ugly people doing terrible things. The humor slightly faded in his last film, the twisted thriller Kill List, but Sightseers returns him to the pitch-black comedy of his debut feature, Down Terrace. This time, instead of giving an emotional bubonic plague to the platonic family, Wheatley fiercely savages the banality of relationships growing out of the puppy-love stages and into something serious. For the two lead characters in Sightseers, the relationship grows into something seriously demented and ruthlessly perverse.

20 years after its release, it’s impossible to overestimate the impact of Jurassic Park.  It ushered in a new era of cinema technology that melded the greatest aspects of stop-motion and animatronics with CGI breakthroughs in their infant stages.  But more than that, it blew the pants off of audiences around the world.  It’s safe to bet that everyone who saw the film during its initial release remembers what it was like walking out of the theater.  It knocked us all on our asses while also spawning a 1,000 junior archaeologists.  Kids replaced their Bart Simpson posters with ones of T-rexes and raptors, everyday coming in filthy from digging in the backyard all day.

All these years later and Universal did the obvious: they released Jurassic Park 3D.  Shortly after it hit theaters, it was dropped on Blu-ray.  How does it fare in comparison to the mighty 2011 Blu-ray release?  Hit the jump for all of our details on the Jurassic Park 3D combo pack. 

Filmmakers who adapt a novel are not beholden to the major themes of that novel.  They’re free to take away what they want to see and leave the richer aspects of the material behind.  Such is the case with Baz Luhrmann‘s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s The Great Gatsby.  Where Fitzgerald saw the relationship between Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan as a laughable excuse to escape into the past, Luhrmann sees a doomed romance because Baz Luhrmann likes stories about doomed romances*.  And like his previous movies—Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!, and Australia—Luhrmann is too afraid of actual intimacy, and covers it up in glitter and other shiny objects while laboring under the delusion that it makes the story operatic.  With The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann isn’t adapting Fitzgerald as much as he’s remaking Baz Luhrmann.

At first glance, the stand-alone release of Star Trek: TNG - The Best of Both Worlds on Blu-ray looks like typical double dipping. The Season Three Blu-ray includes the first half of the two-part episode, but not the second, forcing Trekkies the world over to either pick this set up or wait until later this summer for Season Four to arrive. Why not get a few extra bucks out of the folks who can’t wait? The set certainly doesn’t justify any extra expense… but it does make an easy option for more casual fans who don’t want to invest in two expensive season collections. Hit the jump for the full review.

First of all: AHHHHH!  Second of all, for anyone who thought Bates Motel would just be a pale imitator to Psycho, as we finish up this first season its been very apparent that there are plenty of places and ways for it to develop that both establish a background to the canon naturally (Norman’s “episodes,” Norma’s control, the taxidermy, the hotel itself), while flourishing in its own new plots.  As I mentioned last week, the wrapping up of the Shelby storyline felt final, but one of the main tenents of the series is that nothing is ever really dead.  How they bring back these stories and incorporate them with new ones (like the Man in Number 9), has been spellbinding to watch unfold.  Hit the jump for more on why you should never handle anything, Norma.