There’s a saying which roughly states that the beginning of a story represents endless possibilities, while the rest of the narrative represents the closing off…
Yummy is exclusively the domain of 12-year-old boys, and a hard pass for everyone else. It’s hard to imagine anyone clamoring for more zombie content these…
Johnnie To’s Chasing Dream is a return in more ways than one. An earnest romance between an MMA fighter, Tiger (Jacky Heung), and an aspiring…
Chasing Dream Johnnie To’s Chasing Dream is a return in more ways than one. An earnest romance between an MMA fighter, Tiger (Jacky Heung), and…
It’s a bad sign that the only person attempting anything in The Tax Collector is also delivering a racist caricature as performance. David Ayer isn’t…
Ciro Guerra opts for transcription over translation, and in doing so, loses the allegorical power of Coetzee’s novel. Ciro Guerra’s Waiting for the Barbarians is…
Despite winning the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore was controversial enough to be dismissed at…
Beyonce’s instincts for visual panache are undermined by the studio’s clear attempt to expropriate and Disneyfy Black is King. As an act of synergy, the…
An American Pickle doesn’t aspire to much more than delivering two Rogens for the price of one. “Sweet” and “gentle” are two unlikely descriptors with which…
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is a masterpiece. The inception…
Steve Albini boasts a legacy that is at once massive and, at the same time, pretty fucking stupid. The albums he worked on as a…
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately finds Perfume Genius making both his body and heart vulnerable, creating a profound intimacy from his preoccupations with fragility. Michael…
Waxahatchee’s latest succeeds according to her familiar attention to emotional precision and in pivoting to a more Americana-leaning sound. After 2017’s dark and brooding Out…
Tame Impala’s latest does nothing to change the narrative that Parker’s emulation of other bands borders on unintentional parody. Kevin Parker is often praised for…
NO DREAM represents a thinning of Rosenstock’s post-2016 ethos. Jeff Rosenstock has spent the past decade or so getting flustered and yelling at a lot of…
Tame Impala Kevin Parker is often praised for his ability to take a sound that audiences are familiar with and contort it into something that’s…
“I love you / you pay my rent.” These words, sung in a chorus on the 1987 classic Actually, are probably the sharpest distillation of…
Pedro Costa has long been celebrated for his loose Fontainhas trilogy, a series of docu-fiction hybrids made in collaboration with residents of the former Lisbon…
Yes, God, Yes doesn’t say anything new about oppressive evangelical traditions but is elevated thanks to Dyer’s wonderful comic performance. Yes, God, Yes will be particularly…
“It has been quite a journey / From my driveway to my front door / It has been quite a journey.” Lil Wayne floats this…
What is there to say about DaBaby that hasn’t been articulated since he took the world by storm in 2019? He is a rapper of…