Just two episodes into what amounts to a four-hour premiere — Season 3’s first four installments are all being released simultaneously — The Rings of Power has clearly leveled up from its already much-improved second season. Its unique blend of shades-of-grey espionage, scary sword and sorcery, and familiar Tolkien ideas and beats cleverly recontextualized makes it stand out in a crowded epic SFF field. You just have to leave your Silmarillion at the door. But if you’ve ever read The Children of Húrin you know Tolkien could do dark with the best of them, too.

I reviewed the second episode of The Rings of Power Season 3 for Decider.

Needless to say, The Rings of Power is a very, very loose adaptation of the source material. Like, “introducing a love story between Dracula and Mina” loose. But I emphatically do not think it’s “doing a version of Carrie where Carrie doesn’t kill anyone with her mind” loose. Rings is working with material that wouldn’t be particularly adaptable if it weren’t handled with a lot of creativity and invention. All the rebellious orcs, the Dwarf stuff, the Galadriel/Sauron will-they-or-won’t-they business, wizards making power plays, compressing centuries of events into a few years — it’s all brand new. 

But novelty in an adaptation, change in an adaptation, is value neutral, neither automatically good nor automatically bad. Payne and McKay have chosen to change The Lord of the Rings‘ Second Age into a sword and sorcery saga, a frankly insane idea I can’t help but admire, and one which at the very least delivers one gonzo moment after another. Your mileage may vary, as trite as that is to say. For me, this brand of go-for-broke fantasy filmmaking is a road that goes ever on and on. 

I reviewed the season premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Decider. Good show imo!

To me, the seriousness of this episode is its star attraction. The scenes that linger with me (well, other than Paul butchering a corpse in his underwear) are the quiet, sadder ones. It’s Harry and Jan talking about murder and how to get over it as the beams of the late afternoon sunlight their beautiful, forlorn faces. It’s Frankie telling Harry with surprising sincerity that for once he likes his phone’s sappy slideshow feature, because it’s showing him memories of himself and his son. Its bladework is flashy and fun, but MobLand can cut surprisingly deep.

I reviewed this week’s MobLand for Decider.

Nocturne’s pleasures, so far, are fairly modest. The characters are pretty stock, and even these talented performers can only do so much with it. I kind of admire Liev Schreiber and Stephen Graham’s commitment to both being as stoic as possible in completely different ways, however. With veteran directors Tim Van Patten and Allen Coulter behind the camera you’re certainly never going to feel insulted by the visuals, although as always lately I could use some more interesting nighttime cinematography than what we’re getting. And there’s always the visceral sense of things clicking into place that makes finding clues and solving mysteries so satisfying. I’m curious to see if the search for the Sandman takes the show someplace I didn’t expect it to go by the end.

I reviewed this week’s Nocturne for Decider.

That’s the primary fault of Nocturne, really: It’s very by the book (I won’t say by the numbers) for this kind of story. The ever-mounting tragic backstories, the dust-covered daughter’s room untouched since her death, the Joker-like mastermind, at least four different cops with hearts of gold…Nocturne is very much a creature of its genre.

But it’s a genre I kind of enjoy, and as such I’m enjoying this particular iteration of it. If we’re headed for a head-to-head between Stephen Graham and Zazie Beetz, as it seems we are, that’s a rich vein of acting talent to be tapped. Meanwhile, there’s the intriguing riddle of how Saga’s stepmother remains alive and involved to unravel. All this and a detective literally not seeing the forest for the trees. In a world shorn of metaphor, that’s one I like a lot.

I reviewed the second episode of Nocturne for Decider.

Nordic noir has found its American equivalent, and it has a Delco accent. The state of Pennsylvania has become a hotbed for prestige TV about American neglect and those tasked with making up for it. The most famous of these dramas is the Pittsburgh-set medical procedural The Pitt, but Brad Ingelsby’s Philadelphia-area crime dramas Mare of Easttown and Task, the latter of which has been renewed for a second season, step outside the confines of a single location. They use the state’s lush forests and declining suburbs the way Scandinavians use cold little towns and oceans of snow. The environment is made to look as tough as the cases.

This is the approach taken by Nocturne. Created by writer Rowan Joffé and developed by showrunner John Hlavin, the Apple TV series is based on the book The Sandman by Lars Kepler, the pseudonym for the Swedish husband-and-wife writing team of Alexander Ahndoril and Aelxandra Coehlo Ahndoril. As such, it’s a direct transplant from Northern Europe to the mid-Atlantic. The result may not be breaking new ground, but the changeover still works like a charm.

I reviewed the series premiere of Nocturne for Decider.

Between the musical montage of the Harrigan chieftains’ patrol of their territory and the white-knuckle tension of Frankie’s capture of Paul and Harry, this episode breezes by. But it’s also a fine one in which to stop and smell the roses, from the complimentary brown color schemes of Seraphina and Bella’s expensive clothes to the softly psychedelic glow of the casino lights. There’s plenty of nasty gangster business, if that’s what you’re here for — a guy gets his hand dipped in a deep fryer, with his feet to follow — but there’s also the lingering sense that Harry is nearing his breaking point. 

Was he really that confident about his chances with Frankie, or was he wiling to commit suicide by gangster? Or was it neither, and this was simply a Hail Mary, a last desperate ploy with no guarantee of success that just happened to work out in his favor? 

I like having these kinds of questions about the protagonist of my rock’em sock’em gangster TV show. If you’ve ever watched Paramount+’s own Tulsa King, for example, you’ve seen how abysmally stupid this genre can get. MobLand is always several degrees smarter and crueler than it needs to be, while remaining a riot to watch.

I reviewed this week’s MobLand for Decider.

It’s time to have the Maeve discussion. Are you as tired of this miserable person as I am? Always with the unfunny insults, overflowing with vulgarity that thuds to the floor rather than ringing in your ears. Loyal to no one, out to get everyone, and never honest for a moment, a characteristic that over time proves very boring indeed. A constant threat to everything from the lives of characters who are a whole lot more interesting than she is to simple peace and quiet around a goddamn dinner table. 

I reviewed this week’s fine MobLand for Decider.

As much as I enjoy the camp (no pun intended) value of the Dragnet hippies, the horny teens, and the Mayberry RFD yokels, it’s undoubtedly a good thing to have an episode’s tone determined by the acting of Linda Cardellini, William Catlett, and Hamish Linklater. As Briana, Devin Kessler also performs in this serious register. When comic relief characters like Dorfman, Rita, and Enos are used here, they’re used in a way that feels consistent both with their own humorous track records and with how normal people would behave. That neatly ties both halves of the show together.

But the real dramatic energy here is from the demented nuclear (again, no pun intended) Whittering/Voorhees family: patronizing, patriarchal, sociopathic Elias; ferocious, loyal, chemically imbalanced Pamela; and…Jason, or whatever’s left of him.

I reviewed the season finale of the fantastic Crystal Lake for Decider.

There’s nothing surprising about the secret origin of Pamela and Jason Voorhees. Should there be? It might be nice, I suppose, but then there was never anything all that surprising about Friday the 13th to begin with. You’re not here to watch Crystal Lake reinvent the wheel, you’re hear to see it stud that thing with spikes and run people over with it. In that sense, this episode delivers. You may have seen this kind of super-child origin story done before, but rarely with the gusto you get here by the end.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Crystal Lake Season 1 for Decider.

If you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger. This maxim was a favorite of United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. It seems to be the approach favored by the increasingly unhinged Pamela Voorhees as well, and with similarly grisly results. 

I reviewed episode 6 of Crystal Lake for Decider.

I am now fully on board with the cartoon hippies of Crystal Lake. I’m smoking their grass, I’m dropping their acid, I’m rockin’ their van till no one comes a-knockin’. They’re simply too funny to resist anymore.

Funny on purpose, I mean. To me, that’s obvious, because the show is funny on purpose all the time. Claudette droning on about how the power of prayer can spiritually replace her hymen because “Jesus has a hard-on” for her, Barry teaching the kids how to row with a paddle by saying “cup the tip, guide the shaft, in and out, in and out” over and over, the dark dark comedy reveal that Claudette’s pastor is a pervert — this episode alone has ample evidence of the show’s comedic chops. But you can also think back to the brilliant splatstick comedy of Pamela’s fight with the Bellflower thugs, or the bawdy read-along that introduced us to Rita and the rest of the townsfolk. 

In other words, when this show wants to be sharp, it is. And not just in the comedy department, either: The gap between how seriously Pamela, Lee, and Grace are taken versus the rest of the cast remains pretty vast, which by now seems deliberate. The point is that if Crystal Lake is ever stupid, it’s stupid like a fox.

I mean, for crying out loud, they’re giving Harmony, the lead hippie, dialogue like this:

“The straight world’s no place for our kind.”

“Our souls are vibrating at the same frequency.”

“Everyone’s waiting for us. We’re building a new society.”

“I get the suffocating hypocrisy of our male-dominated society.” (“Right on, sister,” her friend chimes in.)

Everyone making this is aware they’re just doing the Dragnet hippie episode on the shores of Crystal Lake, and everyone’s having a whale of a time with it. So am I.

I reviewed episode five of Crystal Lake for Decider.

Crystal Lake’s problems remain consistent: Pamela, Lee, and Grace’s material remains much stronger than everyone else’s, and man do I wish the nighttime cinematography made real use of darkness and light. But so do its strengths: Linda Cardellini and William Catlett are fantastic, the gore is gross and right in your face, and perhaps most importantly, it’s suggesting that Jason Voorhees and Captain America have similar origin stories. Now all we need is a little mass murder and we’ll really be cooking.

I reviewed episode 4 of Crystal Lake for Decider.

Is Harry Da Souza too good for the Harrigans? I don’t mean too good a person; we’ve seen him execute way too many people in blood way too cold to have any illusions about the kind of person Harry is. But is he too good at his job, too good at being a fixer and fixing things, for a family as thoroughly broken as the Harrigans?

I reviewed this week’s MobLand for Decider.

Crystal Lake isn’t a perfect show. The yokels are drawn a little too broadly to be effective as characters, especially up against characters as serious Pamela and Lee and performances as strong as Linda Cardellini’s and William Catlett’s. The nighttime photography is flat and lifeless, an especial shame given the original films’ oceans of black illuminated by flashlights and porch lights. 

But there’s just so much fun stuff here! In the opening flashback, young Jason blows off a nasty series of jagged cuts in his arm he got from a branch, feeling no pain at all; “I’m pretty tough,” he says, in the understatement of the year. The discovery of the cabin is another piece of the “how did Jason survive out there” puzzle. There’s a creepy shot that reveals Jason has been in Pam’s garage without her knowing it, going through his old box of toys. The opening credits are striking and unlike anything else on TV right now.

On a more serious note, Grace remains a refreshingly imperfect and complicated child character; watching her try to figure out how to parent these terrible adults is heartbreaking, as is the scene in which it’s revealed her cigarette burn was self-inflicted. Pam and Lee’s chemistry is as incendiary as her need to mother Grace is stifling. “I couldn’t save my son,” she growls at one point, “but I can save her.” From whom?

Bottom line: Pamela Voorhees knocks a woman’s face off with a bigass meat hammer. That’s entertainment, if you’re a sicko. If you’re not a sicko, what are you doing here?

I reviewed episode three of Crystal Lake for Decider.

The thing I love most about Crystal Lake so far — and I do love it, make no mistake, I’m a real sucker for what this show is doing — is its hidden depths, no pun intended. You don’t have to make a character like Rita both a classic ’70s floozy and a woman who suffered a stillbirth and thus sees Pamela’s strength and love for her child more clearly than anyone else on the show, but isn’t it better if you do? You don’t have to burrow into the original series’, how shall I put this, fraught relationship with teenage female sexuality so deep that you’ve got Grace mimicking older kids gossiping about “sluts” in the bathroom mirror, or staring intently at the sexual graffiti all over the stall door, or putting on lipstick and clogs to hang with the very kids she watched have sex while Jason drowned — but again, doesn’t it make this a more interesting show when you go there?

I reviewed the second episode of Crystal Lake for Decider.

As a slasher series, Friday the 13th is like a chainsaw that took three tugs on the cord to fully fire up. 

Like Scream famously points out, Jason Voorhees, the unstoppable killing machine that the franchise turned into a horror icon, isn’t even the killer in original 1980 film. It’s his mother, Pamela Voorhees. Even though Victor Miller’s unevenly written script doesn’t bother introducing this character before the big reveal, the gleefully deranged performance of actor Betsy Palmer ensures Pamela’s place in horror history.

After we watch a gaggle of camp counselors engage in fairly wholesome sexual activity (strip Monopoly! oh no!) and get slaughtered one by one by an unseen assailant, we learn that Pamela has gone insane and is out to avenge her son’s death from drowning at Camp Crystal Lake decades earlier. The culprits were a couple of neglectful, sexually active teenage camp counselors whom she killed a year after the incident; now, to Pamela, the only good camp counselor is a dead one. No lumbering behemoth in a hockey mask here, just a middle-aged lady with a haircut and sweater that scream “church bake sale,” slaughtering teenagers for “making love while that boy drowned!”

Only in Part 2 does Jason himself, who survived his apparent drowning and has lived in the woods as a feral scavenger ever since, begin his own killing spree. Taking the same zero-tolerance approach to camp counselors as his mother, whose death he’s now out to avenge, he is defeated by yet another sexually active camp counselor, who smartly uses his fixation on his mother to escape certain death.

By Part III, Jason’s a lumbering behemoth with super-strength, seemingly just killing anyone unlucky enough to be near Crystal Lake, where he, uh, didn’t drown. It’s here he gets his trademark hockey mask, grabs his trusty machete, and becomes the monster the series is famous for. It’s also here where the series gets incredibly dumb: toilet humor, central-casting hippies and “punks” as victims, and the worst 3D effects you’ve ever seen. By the time he literally rises from the dead in the fourth film, infamously subtitled The Final Chapter, he might as well be Godzilla, if Godzilla movies had gratuitous nudity and special gore effects by Tom Savini.

Sleazy, silly, and creatively disjointed as they are, though, there’s an arc formed by these initial Fridays — the story of a disabled and bullied boy, a mother driven mad by grief, and an improbable tale of survival that turned the boy into a monster like his mother before him. The heart of it all is an incredible scene at the end of Part 2, in which the film’s “final girl” (Amy Steel) finds Jason’s macabre shrine to his mother (complete with her severed head), puts on her trademark blue sweater, and pretends to be her, cooing at the crazed killer to “come to mommy.” The scene is such a psychosexual live wire, so brilliantly acted by Steel and Palmer, that it feels like it’s from a different, better series. 

Wisely, it’s on this powerful, ultimately lethal relationship between mother and child that Peacock’s Crystal Lake focuses. This prequel/reboot hybrid from creator-writer Brad Caleb Kane, co-showrunner of the excellent, similar It: Welcome to Derry, launches with an entire episode about a mother losing her vulnerable, beloved son before her eyes. It actually takes the emotional stakes of the films’ premise seriously, even as it plants seeds for some of the franchise’s most outlandish elements — and, arguably, gets even more out-there than they did by the end.

I reviewed the series premiere of Crystal Lake — and the Friday the 13th movies too — for Decider, where I’ll be covering the whole show over the next few days. KI KI KI MA MA MA

Tom Hardy echoes this binary nature in his performance. Harry’s most disarming quality is how casual he seems, how loose and laid-back even though he’s a battlefield commander. He peppers his speech with “yeah”s and “all right”s that deflate the gravitas of what he’s saying, no matter what that is. It’s a trait that can calm the most panicked people…or panic the most calm, because whether he’s saving someone’s life or ending it, it never changes. 

What seems endearing in one circumstance becomes repulsive under another. When you’re forcing a cop you bought off but who is now compromised to hang himself from a tree in the woods in the rain, for instance, that shit is no longer adorable. It’s nightmarish. Harry reminds me of Tommy from GoodFellas or Nicky from Casino: They really are funny guys, until they pop your eye out of your head with a vise. Their charm is poisonous.

I reviewed this week’s MobLand for Decider.

Seriously. Were we supposed to know that eons-old shapehsifting robots could do the virgin-birth thing and make new shapeshifting robots who look, act, and age like humans? Because that feels like new news to me. Seems important! Maybe the Guardians should have mentioned it!

And yet you’re not going to see me complain about the twist any further, because the payoff is one terrific performance after another. Aaron Pierre is so rock solid as sleuthing, morally conflicted John Stewart that it’s as if he carries the weight of the whole show on his shoulders. 

He’s complemented by Kerry Macdonald, rarely more beautiful than when she greets Hal upon his release from jail in a flashback, or more empathetic than when she explains to John that she killed him without thinking to protect her child’s normal life rather than live amongst the stars as fugitives.

Playing two alternate versions of the same character, the wizened and repentant Hal of 2026 and the affable digital backup Hal of 20-odd years earlier, Kyle Chandler perfects the character’s unique chip-on-his-shoulder charm. The real Hal dies trying to save Noah and Kerry, but also not listening to what Kerry is saying — classic Hal. His backup dies telling John Stewart “Love you too, Junior” after tricking him into saying those three little words — a very different Hal altogether.

I reviewed tonight’s Lanterns finale for Decider.

“The word got around that finally, there was a real gangster in town.” — Casino

It only occurs to me now, after this excellent episode of Paramount+’s MobLand, that the show has never had a really interesting villain. Discounting the shifting loyalties of the Harrigans themselves, all of whom are basically co-protagonists of the show, there’s really only been the tough-as-nails cockney crimelord Richie Stevenson and the cold-as-ice American macher Kat McAllister. You’ve seen British gangsters and Yankee black-ops bosses a million times. 

Frankie Cooper, by contrast, stands out in a crowd.

With his mop of hair and tracksuits, he looks like a man they found on a desert island somewhere, clinging to the belief that a 1994 festival with Oasis headlining was still going on. His speech is non-stop patter, non-stop bits, non-stop little jokes that more often than not are so smoothly delivered the target isn’t even given the opportunity to get mad. 

I reviewed this week’s MobLand for Decider.