CABLE | Anya Taylor-Joy Runs Out of 'Lucky' on Apple TV

"I don't have time for your cowboy haikus right now."

Apple Studios / Hello Sunshine

The talented and wide-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy stars capably in the entertaining crime thriller miniseries Lucky, based on bestselling author Marissa Stapley's novel of the same name. Created by screenwriter Jonathan Tropper and showrun by Cassie Pappas, audiences are dropped into the eponymous con woman's exciting identity-swapping dealings on the run when she wakes up alone in Las Vegas with no memory of what was supposed to be a getaway after one last big score.

CABLE | Javier Bardem and Amy Adams Strike 'Cape Fear' x Fantasia 2026

"I see something eating at you."

Universal Content Productions / Amblin Television

Cape Fear, the revenge miniseries adaptation of the 1957 potboiler novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald and both its classic 1962 and 1991 film adaptations, stretches the Southern gothic psychological thriller material across ten episodes. Created and showrun by screenwriter/producer Nick Antosca and executive produced by the duo of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, the eventual and originally attached director of the film remake, this contemporary television interpretation still maintains its strong Hitchcockian overtones.

CABLE | Matthew Rhys Welcomes You to 'Widow's Bay' on Apple TV

"The only way out is through."

Apple Studios

Widow's Bay, comedy screenwriter Katie Dippold's superb new original series, stars the wonderful Welsh actor Matthew Rhys as the exasperated, initially skeptical mayor of the seemingly cursed, titular New England island town desperate for tourism. As a welcoming but weird folk horror-comedy mashup clearly inspired by the many works of Stephen King, its supernaturally mythic small-town elements only heighten its dryly deadpan humour.

CABLE | Nicolas Cage Investigates 'Spider-Noir' on Prime Video

"Maybe we can be alone together."

Sony Pictures Television / Amazon MGM Studios

Spider-Noir, the live-action television adaptation of Spider-Man Noir, the 2009 alternate-universe Marvel Comics spin-off webslinger character most widely seen in the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and famously voiced by Nicolas Cage, who reprises his role in the flesh this time, is an amusing throwback to the hard-boiled detective film genre. Showrun by screenwriters Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot and executive produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the television series overtly but lovingly leans heavily into its classic film noir influences.

REEL | 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' Forges Another 'Star Wars' Way

"We'll take out every bad guy in your deck of cards."

Lucasfilm / Fairview Entertainment

The Mandalorian creator, actor/director Jon Favreau, takes his flagship Star Wars series to the big screen in The Mandalorian and Grogu. Pedro Pascal's titular veteran bounty hunter, named Din Djarin, alongside his adorable puppet sidekick orphan alien (aka "Baby Yoda"), is tasked with another basic but extended intergalactic side mission very much in the vein of the popular, heavily Western-influenced television show set after Return of the Jedi.

CABLE | 'Margo's Got Money Troubles' Makes Fans x SXSW 2026

"You ruined my life so pretty."

A24 / Lewellen Pictures

Margo's Got Money Troubles, prolific television writer/producer David E. Kelley's new family dramedy series based on author Rufi Thorpe's bestselling 2024 novel of the same name, stars Elle Fanning (also an executive producer) as the titular college dropout who turns to online sex work after getting pregnant due to an illicit affair with a married literature professor (Michael Angarano) and desperately needing funds to raise her newborn baby on her own.

CABLE | Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan Age Their 'Beef' – Netflix Season 2

"She has appalling taste in interior design."

A24 Television

Back for another melodramatic spin at tormented domestic rivalries, season two of Beef's anthology series, created by Korean-American writer/producer Lee Sung Jin, takes a turn towards the affluent country club crowd in a personal feud between members of its staff, management, and new ownership.

CABLE | Betraying 'Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord' in Animation

"Empires can be shattered."

Lucasfilm Animation

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, created by Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni, brings the iconic but tragic former Sith apprentice from The Phantom Menace, who was famously halved yet managed to survive nonetheless, back in the form of an exciting, all-new animated series. Actor Sam Witwer reprises his title voice role from The Clone Wars and Rebels to further flesh out the memorable villain's complex legacy, focused on betrayal, set shortly after the events of Revenge of the Sith during the reign of the Galactic Empire.

REEL | 'Miami Vice' at 20 – Revisiting the Misunderstood Neo-Noir

"Let's take it to the limit one more time."

Universal Pictures

Ahead of the upcoming twentieth anniversary of its theatrical release, another reappraisal of methodical filmmaker Michael Mann's initially critically misunderstood but now reappreciated action neo-noir, Miami Vice, is clearly warranted. Based on the iconic 1984-89 NBC undercover cop drama series that he produced but was created by veteran television writer Anthony Yerkovich, the 2006 blockbuster film adaptation flopped hard at the global box office.

CABLE | 'Wonder Man' Casts Yahya Abdul-Mateen II As the Hero

"Let your misery drive the bus."

Marvel Television

Wonder Man, Marvel's self-referential comedy series adaptation of the Hollywood-themed superhero, created for television by Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton and television writer Andrew Guest, stars the imposing but affable Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as a struggling, fame-seeking actor hoping to reboot the eponymous role—think The Studio set in the MCU—while coincidentally being imbued with pure "ionic" superhuman strength and energy powers in a fresh, meta take on the genre.

CABLE | Wong Kar-wai Colours 'Blossoms Shanghai'

"Neon signs glowed like a sea of flowers."

Jet Tone Films / Tencent Pictures

Blossoms Shanghai, Chinese auteur Wong Kar-wai's first television drama series, broadly romanticizes 1990s Shanghai in the lushly complementary vein of what his cinematic masterpiece, In the Mood for Love, did for 1960s Hong Kong, but only on the small screen. Created and directed by Wong, scripted by Qin Wen, and based on author Jin Yucheng's award-winning 2013 novel, Blossoms, it tells a vaguely historical yarn of late twentieth-century Eastern capitalism wrapped in melodramatic intrigue.

VIFF 2025 | 'Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie' Orbits the Past

"This is gonna be a copyright nightmare!"

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2025—BlackBerry director Matt Johnson revisits his well-loved but little-seen Toronto mockumentary television comedy, first a web series and then a short-lived cult Viceland sitcom, in the hilarious and aptly named Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. Essentially an out-and-out ripoff and possible copyright violation of Back to the Future, Johnson and his real-life friend and longtime collaborator, film composer Jay McCarrol, play fictionalized, unsuccessful musician versions of themselves, desperate to play a gig at the historic Rivoli nightclub with no real plan.

CABLE | Philly 'Heat' – Mark Ruffalo Takes HBO to 'Task'

"When things go terribly wrong, people want to know why God let it happen."

Low Dweller Productions / Public Record

HBO and Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby are back together for another compelling procedural crime series, once again set in the outskirts of Philadelphia. Here we follow a Heat-style cat-and-mouse chase between a birdwatching but haggard FBI field agent (Mark Ruffalo) investigating a string of targeted robberies of biker gang-controlled stash houses spearheaded by an otherwise mild-mannered garbage collector (Tom Pelphrey) and his Philly crew. That's the straightforwardly titled Task's initial setup as we witness a tense back-and-forth pursuit of deliberate escalation.

CABLE | 'Alien: Earth' Arrives in the Future Past on FX

"It’s like a zoo, but the animals got out."

FX Productions / Scott Free Productions

FX and Fargo show creator Noah Hawley reteam for their engrossing new science-fiction horror prequel television series, Alien: Earth. Set two years before the classic 1979 Ridley Scott (also an executive producer) directed original Alien film, the dense show takes its colonial deep space mythology to new depths, but this time on our home planet (a first for the franchise), as you might have guessed from its subtitle.

REEL | Liam Neeson Strips Down to 'The Naked Gun'

"Once you kill a man for revange, there's no going back."

Paramount Pictures / Fuzzy Door Productions

Directed by The Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer and produced by comedian Seth MacFarlane, aging star Liam Neeson hysterically parodies his own late-career, hard-boiled action filmography in both a reboot and legacy sequel to The Naked Gun slapstick police comedy trilogy that was in turn based on the 1982 Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker-created Police Squad! television series.

REEL | Accomplishing 'Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning'

"Our lives are the sum of our choices."

Paramount Pictures / Skydance

Our IMF team of star/producer Tom Cruise and now four-time co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie reteam for the retitled and reworked second half of the originally planned two-part Dead Reckoning films and eighth, supposedly last entry in the current iteration of the TV-to-film action franchise. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (formerly Dead Reckoning Part Two) takes a Spectre-type approach but with better stunts to retcon the mythology of all the previous seven movies across nearly three decades in a more cohesive but also overly complicated finale.

SCREEN | Catching the Real 'Predators' x DOXA 2025

"I see To Catch a Predator as trying to make a public service entertaining."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Director David Osit, a survivor of child sexual abuse by an adult himself, investigates the lasting impact of the hit 2004-07 Dateline NBC news magazine program To Catch a Predator, famously hosted by journalist Chris Hansen. His documentary, aptly named Predators, revisits the television phenomenon that turned true-crime into popular entertainment as it lured otherwise mild-mannered potential sex offenders with no previous criminal records into a trap where they were confronted and arrested on camera.

GATHER | Baiting Ziwe x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I rarely get asked to do [racism] p*rn."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(March 13, 2025) Talented mononymous Nigerian-American late night comedian/interviewer and Black Friend author Ziwe (Fumudoh) brought her stylishly hilarious insights to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's accidentally hyper topical ongoing speaker series on the politics of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.

CABLE | Netflix Throws Back to 'Everybody's Live with John Mulaney'

"Like the measels, he's back in a big way!"

Sunset Gower Studios

Clipboard-carrying stand-up comedian John Mulaney's highly chaotic but wildly entertaining late night show is back. Everybody's Live with John Mulaney, his follow-up to the bizarrely amusing Everybody's in L.A. streaming experiment, originally a tie-in to the 2024 Netflix is a Joke Festival, started its twelve-week run live on Wednesday nights. Mulaney promised more of the same discomforting type of offbeat fun and, so far, has delivered.

GATHER | Ramy Youssef x 'What It Means to Be American' x UBC

"I wasn't gonna mention the whole fifty-first state thing."

Photo credit | Si Ming Zheng

UBC—(February 27, 2025) Award-winning Egyptian-American stand-up comedian, actor, screenwriter, and director Ramy Youssef casually captivated a full audience inside the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts as part of the 2025 Phil Lind Initiative's second-year speaker series, discussing the topic of What It Means to Be "American": Navigating Identity in a Changing Nation.