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Chris Packham

Chris Packham is a regular film contributor at Voice Media Group. VMG publications include Denver Westword, Miami New Times, Phoenix New Times, Dallas Observer, Houston Press and New Times Broward-Palm Beach.

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Latest Articles

BoJack Horseman: the Smartest TV Show About Major Depression

By Chris Packham
Sep 25, 2017

BoJack Horseman streams on Netflix It’s not a huge surprise that my sensitive and kind-hearted spouse could be left sobbing by an episode of a popular TV show. She’d say herself that she’s an easy mark, TV showrunners. But it’s definitely a surprise when any show even tries. TV writers...
Whatever a Dog's Purpose Is, It Isn't to Be in Movies Like A Dog's Purpose

By Chris Packham
Jan 24, 2017

A Dog’s Purpose, based on the novel by W. Bruce Cameron, combines the philosophical belief that living beings are reborn into a different physical body after biological death with the voiceover narrative technique of Look Who’s Talking. The main character, Dog, dies in multiple wrenching scenes and is subsequently reborn;...
In Netflix's Mascots, Christopher Guest Ribs Another Subculture You're Totally Better Than

By Chris Packham
Oct 12, 2016

Christopher Guest’s films mostly deal with passionate but ordinary people who aspire to positions of status within strange little subcultures: mid-century folk music, dog shows, community theater or, in the case of his new mockumentary, Mascots, the world of sports-mascot competitions. In the alternate universe of Guest’s first film in...
With Miss Peregrine, Tim Burton Shows He's Still Got Wonder in Him

By Chris Packham
Sep 27, 2016

The conventional wisdom about early-career Tim Burton is that he was an imaginative visual stylist but not a great storyteller. That sounds smart, right? It’s still something that a certain kind of ratty-beard-stroking film critic keeps tucked in his sweater vest in case he needs to say something that sounds...
Command and Control Exposes the 1980 Nuke Accident that Could Have Leveled Arkansas

By Chris Packham
Sep 20, 2016

Command and Control is frightening for a whole pants-shitting list of reasons, but perhaps the scariest is that the near-detonation of a nuclear warhead in 1980 was sparked by the tiniest imaginable accident. A technician working on a Titan missile in a Damascus, Arkansas, silo dropped a wrench socket from...