Review: Season 1 of 'Pachinko'

by Lynn Lee

from 'Pachinko's opening credits. © Apple TV+

Can a country truly be your home if it never fully accepts you?  Can a country still be your homeland if you left behind your life there and have never gone back?  

These questions haunt the lush, sweeping AppleTV+ period drama series Pachinko, which recently concluded its first season.  So far, so universal: the yearning for roots, for a sense of belonging, should resonate with anyone who’s ever been displaced or separated from their family or place of origin.  At the same time, the show – based on the best-selling novel by Min Jin Lee – focuses on a very specific chapter of history that isn’t well known outside of Korea and Japan, yet in many ways echoes the frictions, tensions, and injustices underpinning the history of race and immigration in other countries...

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Almost There: Cher in "Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean"

by Cláudio Alves

What are you doing for Mother’s Day? The Criterion Channel marks the occasion with a collection inspired by Michael Koresky's Films of Endearment. In his book, the film critic details how he and his mother revisited the 1980s movies that she introduced to him, igniting a passion for cinema. The resulting selection comprises a varied offering of that decade's prestige cinema starring an array of acclaimed actresses, from Ellen Burstyn to Meryl Streep. One of the collection's most exciting titles is Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, an underrated Robert Altman effort that gave Cher her first serious big-screen role. If not for this flick, her ascendance to movie stardom might have never happened, much less a Best Actress Oscar victory.

As one looks back at the 1982 play adaptation, the beginning of Cher's path towards acting gold is evident. Indeed, she almost got an Academy Award nomination right then and there…

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What did you see over the weekend?

by Nathaniel R

Family movies The Bad Guys and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 continued to do well this past weekend but Liam Neeson's latest revenge thriller (it's called Memory but deja vu would be more accurate since he makes so many of these programmers) struggled to generate any interest. The big box office story (until Doctor Strange next weekend) remains the Daniels hilarious action-comedy-sci-fi-oddity Everything Everywhere All At Once. It was actually up 2% from last weekend; You're not supposed to go up on subsequent weeks, only down! That's the power of true Word of Mouth hits and they're few and far between in the current era since mainstream moviegoing is almost exclusively led by brand awareness rather than a combo of that and word of mouth as in ye olden times of, oh, 10-15 years ago... 

Weekend Box Office April 29th-May 1st 🔺 = new or expanding /  ★ = Recommended links if we've written about it
WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS)	PLATFORM RELEASES
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE	HATCHING

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Streaming Roulette, May 2022

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming movies and an occasional TV series by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

So when you stopped going to Church is that about the time you stopped seeing your family and your brothers?

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022) on Hulu
A very discomfiting watch just two episodes in, being an Ex-Mormon. Can't imagine how still practicing Mormons are feeling. Always happy to see Andrew Garfield and Gil Birmingham who are paired here as detectives on a double-homicide case that is rapidly growing in danger and disorienting implications...

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Support Original Filmmaking - See 'Everything Everywhere All At Once' on the Big Screen

by Eurocheese

If you haven’t already experienced the cinematic joy of seeing Everything Everywhere All at Once with an audience yet, you’re missing out. This creative powerhouse is adding back IMAX theaters this week and may become A24’s biggest box office hit to date. Anyone who believes Hollywood doesn’t bring original content to our screens anymore owes it to themselves to see this as soon as possible. Just in case you weren’t convinced by the critical raves and audience support, here are a few reasons this film needs to be seen on the big screen.

Daniels’ (writer/director duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) latest film is a visual feast, incredibly made for just $25 million and a tiny vfx team. As it pairs elements of action with comedy and family drama, the action sequences dazzle with varying tones, ranging from images you might see in a Scott Pilgrim vs. the World battle to scenes that the cast of Jackass would applaud...

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