Strawberry Mansion is a vision still worth experiencing, even as its muddled with an ill-considered screenplay rife with tired twee tropes. In 2017, Kentucker Audley and…
The Sky is Everywhere’s YA origins generate too many cringey twee moments here, but there’s no denying Decker’s visual power to elevate the material. Her…
The distance between Cam’ron’s debut album Confessions of Fire and his fourth one, canonical 2000s NYC rap opus Purple Haze, isn’t so great, a matter…
Jackass Forever manages to once again up the ante, delivering not just the series’ best entry, but one of the most truly cinematic films in…
Sundown finds Franco up to his usual tricks, offering some appeal in his refusal of convention, but little more. Sort of the self-styled bad boy of…
Ross might be richer than he’s ever been, but he’s also as uninspired as he’s ever been on his latest. It’s unclear what exactly drives…
A Hero is Farhadi’s best work in a minute, still hampered by the director’s anonymous formal style, but otherwise delivering another masterful work of drama. Few…
#2. Though few may have expected it, Porter Robinson emerged, quite triumphantly, as one of 2021’s most significant pop artists, reasserting himself as the ultimate…
#10. Though prolific and trendy, Bladee remains a figure seemingly detached, his career thus far skirting up against, and indebted to, the western pop music…
#16. 2021 saw Club Harlecore open its doors to the Internet, a 24-hour web-based rave spot featuring a quartet of mystical DJs brought into our reality…
Honorable Mention: As is the case with many of today’s most exciting new artists, Sematary is an Internet cult favorite, a mysterious bandcamp auteur who…
#13. “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.” Emblazoned on trademark,…
#8. Perhaps the most memed film of the year (give or take Annette), M. Night Shyamalan’s Old challenged and beguiled audiences in equal measure, becoming…
The Lost Daughter doesn’t quite manage its own distinct cinematic voice, but still proves Gyllenhaal to be a director worth keeping up with going forward. While…
Frailty is a repurposing of pop music of the very recent past into something legible and thrilling. The buzz surrounding electronic pop producer dltzk (or, Zeke)…
30 is a well-constructed and emotionally insightful album, but also one often undermined by its classical roteness and confused attempts at persona reshaping. Adele exists in…
Sympathy for Life represents a new tangent for Parquet Courts, but one that could stand to be attended to more. Remarkably dynamic and continually inventive, Parquet…
Illusory Walls is a unification of The World is a Beautiful Place’s mythic ethos and philosophical ruminations, a bit of a rehash in content but an…
Don’t Look Up is Adam McKay’s latest po-faced, celebrity-stuffed foray into unfunny finger-wagging and condescension. There’s a curious combativeness to the recent works of Adam McKay,…
Red Rocket is an intentionally bad vibes experience, and while the film’s messaging is resolutely simplistic, it’s all kept afloat by Simon Rex’s year’s-best performance. It’s…