A group of revolutionaries has overthrown the fascist FEDRA government — but is the cure worse than the disease? Pretend you don’t know anything about how Hollywood tells stories and find out tonight on The Last of Us!!!

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Last of Us for Decider.

Along the way they play Linda Ronstadt on the piano, they eat delicious meals prepared by Bill, they revel in strawberries grown by Frank (Bill’s high-pitched squeal of delight upon tasting a fruity delicacy he probably hasn’t enjoyed in over a decade is delightful), they fend off an attempted invasion of their property by raiders with a show of booby-trap force that makes Kevin McCallister look like a guy with a banana peel, they befriend Joel and Tess (RIP), they renovate the neighborhood and some nearby shops, and they pretty much act like basically decent people making the absolute best out of the absolute worst situation. Keep in mind the entire main narrative stops short for, I dunno, 50 out of the episode’s 76 minutes to show all this.

I reviewed this week’s The Last of Us for Decider.

The rest of the episode, and this is definitely the cool thing about it, stars a grand total of three characters and three characters only: Joel, Tess, and Ellie, trekking through the overrun ruins of Boston in order to exchange the girl for the battery the adults will need to fire up a truck and take it cross country. That’s right: no resistance fighters, no jackbooted security personnel, no working stiffs, no fellow smugglers, not even extras save for the infected. It’s all Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv, and Bella Ramsey, which sets up the unconscious expectation in the audience that if enough of these three characters die, so too will our story. It’s smart filmmaking.

Smart enough, I think, that it can power through a lot of objections you might have as to the been-there-done-that nature of what they say and do. I’ll state for the record once again that I have not played the Last of Us video games; I’ll state for the record once again that this doesn’t matter, since I’m reviewing a TV show and not the games it’s based on. As such, well, it’s 2023: You’ve seen crumbling cities overrun by vegetation a million times before (Netflix’s Alice in Borderland Season 2 got there just a few weeks ago!). Ditto plant/fungus-based humanoid monsters. Ditto dialogue like “This is your chance, you get her there, you keep her alive, and you set everything right,” which when delivered by an infected and doomed Tess is supposed to come across like a major moment instead of throwaway text from a cutscene. It’s way more the latter than it is the former, I’m afraid.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The Last of Us for Decider.

Provided you don’t mind watching a show without a single original thought in its head, the series premiere of The Last of Us is an okay way to spend an hour and twenty minutes. And honestly, why would you expect this show to blaze new trails for the post-apocalyptic zombie genre? It’s an adaptation of a ten-year-old video game that itself arrived years deep into the zombie renaissance best represented by The Walking Dead, from Chernobyl creator (and labor “dissident”) Craig Mazin. George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead it isn’t. Hell, James Gunn and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead it isn’t, either. For one thing, both those movies were scary.

I reviewed the first episode of the next big thing for Decider.

I hope we get to see more of the Copenhagen underworld, in every sense of that word. I hope we see more hours and hours of Refn (aided and abetted by co-developer Sara Isabella Jønsson and a talented writing staff in tune with their sensibilities). He’s a filmmaker completely confident in his obsessions who, for some reason, has been given more or less free rein to pursue them. You don’t see that on TV very often. Copenhagen Cowboy proves that you should. 

I reviewed the season (fingers crossed!!!!) finale of Copenhagen Cowboy for Decider.

There’s only one hour to go in this series — or season? — and Miu still has a lot of business to attend to: Chiang, Miroslav, the gang war, Nicklas and his family, you name it. (Even my pet favorite loose end, André, makes an appearance this episode via his pop song music video.) Given the relative simplicity of the story and subject matter compared to Too Old to Die Young or even The Neon Demon and Only God Forgives, I don’t anticipate world-shaking explosions. But you know what? Fireworks will do just fine.

I reviewed episode five of Copenhagen Cowboy for Decider.

Copenhagen Cowboy is best experienced while profoundly stoned. Perhaps that’s an obvious point, but it’s still one worth making. Nicolas Winding Refn’s work can certainly be enjoyed stone-cold sober; honestly, I think of watching Too Old to Die Young high and get a little frightened. But the lurid colors, the sumptuous naturally lit scenes, the throbbing glowing score, the pregnant pauses, the leisurely-to-the-point-of-indolent camera movements: All of it is tailor-made for weed’s time-stretching, sense-enhancing effects. Don’t say you weren’t told, is all I’m saying.

I wrote about Copenhagen Cowboy‘s fourth episode for Decider.

Now that we’ve reached the halfway point (!!! seriously, this show is only six episodes long!), it seems safe to say that compared to Too Old to Die Young, Copenhagen Cowboy represents a retreat from the transcendent to the merely terrific. That’s nothing for creator/co-developer/director Nicolas Winding Refn to be ashamed of, either. Most shows don’t get anywhere close to terrific! And very few shows indeed (beyond TotDY obviously) have ever looked and felt like this one does.

I reviewed the third episode of Copenhagen Cowboy for Decider.

It’s true: Nicolas Winding Refn is an acquired taste. It’s true also that after Too Old to Die Young, the ferocious Amazon Prime series he co-created with comics writer Ed Brubaker, the acquisition of that taste should be required by law. An experiment in bold colors, long takes, laconic performances, tedium, horror, disorienting bursts of the supernatural, and no-bones-about-it criticism of the police as a fascist vanguard, TOtDY is, without qualification, one of the very best television shows ever made. NWR 1, his critics 0.

So what does the guy responsible for Drive and The Neon Demon do for a small-screen encore? He makes Copenhagen Cowboy, his first effort in his native Danish since before Ryan Gosling was even a glimmer in his eye. He shifts the scene from the dying American empire to the equally moribund European project. He makes his protagonist a nearly mute magical female sex worker instead of a nearly mute pedophile male cop. He cuts the running time way, way down. He moves from Amazon to Netflix. And he still knocks it out of the fucking park.

I’m so excited to be covering Nicolas Winding Refn’s Copenhagen Cowboy for Decider, starting with my review of the series premiere.

More shows should be insanely, insanely violent with people crying about how much they love each other all the time. Maybe all shows should be that way? At least that’s how I feel about watching this season finale. It clocks in at an overlong 75 minutes or so minus the credits, its central conceit is an hallucinatory dream-within-a-dream the solution of which you can see coming from a mile away, it concludes with basically hand-waving away the entire series to date Wizard of Oz style before one last “…or is it?!?” twist, and guess what? I still loved it. Didn’t you?

I reviewed the season finale of Alice in Borderland for Decider.

Let’s get a few things out of the way right up front.

Do people who aren’t gymnasts or trained professional wrestlers fly a dozen feet through the air turning corkscrews all the while after being kicked or thrown by even a very strong person? No, they do not. 

Can someone survive being strafed by an automatic weapon at point blank range, long enough to crawl around and pine for the person they love? No, they cannot. 

Is it feasible for — let me count here — nine major protagonists and antagonists to survive being shot, stabbed, beaten, run over, bashed against concrete, set on fire, blown up, launched through a plate-glass second-story window, or all of the above, and live long enough to tell the tale, or at the very least have poignant last words before they die? No, it is not.

Does any of this make this episode of Alice in Borderland any less badass? No, it does not.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Alice in Borderland Season 2 for Decider.

It would be a mistake to kick off this review of by saying “shit is getting real.” On Alice in Borderland, shit has been real since the very first episode, or certainly since the main-character bloodbath in Season 1 Episode 3. It’s just that the episodes seem to be getting longer — this one clocks in around 70 minutes minus the lengthy closing credits — and more jam-packed with stuff, as the scattered cast continues pursuing their own, uh, pursuits. Some of these end in naked makeout sessions in a hot springs while elephants bathe nearby. Others end with people getting melted by sulfuric acid. Such is life in the Borderland.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Alice in Borderland Season 2.

Rather than start with a plot summary, I just want to point out director Shinsuke Sato’s eye for spectacular imagery and his team’s ability to pull it off. Arisu walking around the outskirts of the city and discovering that entire streets and skyscrapers have been somehow overrun with vegetation. Usagi and Arisu playing a lethal game of tag in a huge open-walled power plant or something, the camera gliding around outside it as we watch players wearing red and blue light-up vests run and climb and dodge like crazed worker ants in an anthill someone’s spraying with a hose. Ann (remember her?) traveling as far as she can away from Tokyo only to discover a mountain range that would give Mordor a run for its money. (It’s a better shot than anything I saw in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, that’s for sure.) This is the kind of shit that keeps you coming back.

I reviewed episode five of Alice in Borderland Season 2 for Decider.

The second episode in a row to feature a sort of halftime break between different stories, this installment of Alice in Borderland is, I think, the least relentless ep in the second season so far. Which is fine! Everyone needs a breather now and then, and that extends to the audience as well as the players. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of murder going down, but following the intensity of the three-episode-long King of Clubs arc and the Saw-like start of the Jack of Hearts game, this is relatively — relatively — chill stuff.

I reviewed the fourth episode of Alice in Borderland Season 2 for Decider.

The third episode of Alice in Borderland’s second season is a terrific hour of television that should probably have been two terrific half-hours of television.

I reviewed Alice in Borderland Season 2’s third episode for Decider.

Well, this may be the simplest Alice in Borderland episode of all time. Not the rules of the game that Arisu and company are playing mind you — those are the most convoluted in the history of the series, though you can get the hang of it quickly. (The players do!) The plot, rather, is streamlined and straightforward. There’s a game, they play it, they don’t leave the arena, they don’t even finish the game and move on. The result is an Alice in Borderland that reads as 100% pure and uncut Alice in Borderland. This is what it’s all about.

I reviewed the second episode of Alice in Borderland‘s second season for Decider.

So here’s the pitfall for those of us who want to sound smart while enjoying Alice in Borderland. You know how Squid Game, the similarly themed Korean show about average joes forced to kill or be killed by mystery-shrouded game masters, is sort of about the dehumanizing power of capitalism? Alice in Borderland is pretty much just about the pleasure of watching gorgeous actors run around killing and rescuing each other.

This is not a complaint! That’s cinema, baby!

I’m covering the Japanese thriller Alice in Borderland‘s second season for Decider, starting with my review of the season premiere. Woo!

Well, you’ve certainly got to give it up for Jennifer Coolidge, that’s for one thing. A lot of Coolidge fandom is that weird performative thing that all actor fandoms seem to do at this point where it’s more like you want this person to be your parent or best friend than a dude who happens to be really good at acting, but let’s put that aside, because she really is good at acting! It’s hard to convincingly play a stupid person without it devolving into a million old jokes, and Coolidge has consistently pulled that off as Tanya. This episode in particular is the ne plus ultra of the role, as Coolidge portrays Tanya’s final realization that she’s surrounded by men who intend to murder her for her money like a cocker spaniel figuring out calculus.

I reviewed the season finale of The White Lotus for Decider.

Are there dramatic moments that moved me, or comedic moments that made me laugh? Very much so! Bert’s open distress as he connects his failed family reunion with the fact that he’ll never be romantically or maternally loved again. Quentin telling Tanya that doing coke after a prolonged period of abstinence is like “riding a bike.” Jack semi-drunkenly asserting that we live at the best point in history despite all the signs to the contrary, which have been brought up by Portia primarily to burst his bubble rather than to make any kind of real point. Harper and Ethan’s grueling conversation about whether or not their marriage is dead, the tightest and hardest-hitting discussion of relatable human misery in the show’s history, I think. Ethan’s increasingly insufferable stone-faced fury at it all. The revelation that Isabella and Rocco are engaged. The genuine sexual chemistry between Valentina and Mia.

I reviewed this week’s episode of The White Lotus for Decider.

My emotional journey with Season 2 of The White Lotus continues to take unexpected twists and turns. I’ve been entertained, bored, vaguely disdainful, but as of this week’s episode (“That’s Amore”) I’m disconcerted. Like, what if Mike White is right? What if people really are like this — all of them grasping, self-deluded, hypocritical assholes? What if my friends and loved ones are secretly like this. What if I’m secretly like this? How can I ever have a healthy, trusting relationship of any kind ever again? How can society survive???

I reviewed the fifth episode of The White Lotus Season 2 for Decider.