InRO’s Best Films of 2021 train keeps chugging, today checking in with #16-20. All films, even if we previously covered them, have been revisited with new words and new writers. Check back tomorrow for #11-15, and keep up with our full Best Films coverage (including our Honorable Mentions) all…
Thus begins InRO’s Best Films of 2021 countdown proper. Below are films that ranked #21-25 in our year-end writer’s poll. All films, even if we previously covered them, have been revisited with new words and new writers. Check back tomorrow for #16-20, and keep up with our full…
It’s been a particularly horny year for films. Perhaps not unnaturally; having been cooped up indoors while the viral blizzard howls outside, stoked by political and moral sterility, people more than ever yearn for the communal experience of theater-going, visiting the contemporaries and revisiting the classics of cinema,…
ABBA’s return with Voyage proves the iconic pop quartet still has more to say. Since their split in 1982, it’s possible that not even the most optimistic of ABBA’s fans could think that one day they’d be able to see the Swedish superstar, pop-disco foursome — legendarily comprised of Anni-Frid…
Converge and Chelsea Wolfe Converge has always been an outfit that has prided itself on not having much of a gameplan, choosing to, instead, wing it at any given moment and proceed accordingly from there. Even now, a remarkable three decades since their formation, the hardcore punk act…
TWICE’s latest offers easy enough pop listening, but is unambitious on the whole and too littered with throwaway tracks to present a compelling whole. Nine-member girl group Twice is one of the most successful K-pop ensembles working today. Managed by JYP Entertainment, they hit it big with the…
Adele Adele exists in a peculiar space, an undeniably massive superstar with a global audience, and yet she appears isolated from the broader culture, her stylings and proclivities placing her outside what’s considered cool in contemporary music for well over a decade now. This was perhaps less true…
Cyrano is a mess, a shambles, a misfire, and also one of the most enjoyable films of the year. The glut of awards bait that gets released by studios as the end of each film year draws near can be a deadening experience for the average film critic,…
The Tender Bar is a bland, clueless film that finds Clooney the director at this most narcotized. While his career in front of the camera has shown an increased playfulness and willingness to poke fun at his movie star persona, George Clooney’s career as a director has been in…
The Hand of God is a softer but no more subdued effort from Sorrentino, still rife with flourish but with a more personal core than ever before. The figure of Diego Maradona looms larger than life in Paolo Sorrentino’s latest and arguably most personal film, signifying not just the…
Taylor Swift Red is the Taylor Swift album most precariously balanced between different identities. Caught in between country and pop, it’s a fan favorite project that has some of the best songs of her career but also a wildly inconsistent tracklist. The album tends to be remembered for…
Predictably, Red (Taylor’s Version) isn’t entirely convincing, but it’s another welcome assertion of autonomy from the ever-evolving artist. Red is the Taylor Swift album most precariously balanced between different identities. Caught in between country and pop, it’s a fan favorite project that has some of the best songs…
Anyone showing up to The Housewives of the North Pole for some bad behavior shenanigans is going to be sorely disappointed. The Housewives of the North Pole, a new holiday flick streaming exclusively on Peacock, was originally titled The Real Housewives of the North Pole, in what is an obvious…
Nightmare Alley suffers from some tonal imbalance and isn’t always suited to its epic style, but the strength of craft and del Toro’s familiar heart-on-sleeve emotionalism keep things from ever feeling like a mere con job. It’s hard to believe staring through the time-warp of the pandemic that…
Spielberg’s authorship is distinctly felt in this version of West Side Story, and more than in the original, it here truly feels as if life exists beyond the music. The New York City of Robert Wise’s 1961 West Side Story — rendered as line-drawings in the overture and…
Music of the Spheres represents a mostly successful reconfiguration for Coldplay, but one that suggests the band’s character might be too pure to register in the unforgiving present moment. Despite — and arguably, because of — their ambition to make music that will be listened to by large numbers…
Coldplay Despite — and arguably, because of — their ambition to make music that will be listened to by large numbers of people, British pop-rock quartet Coldplay is a long-standing, often irresistible target of derision. It’s not hard to speculate as to other reasons why: the weepy piano…
Single All the Way is as delightful and infectious as Hallmark-styled holiday films should be, and marks Netflix’s first such success in his arena. Netflix’s new holiday-themed gay romance Single All the Way — how has this not been a rom-com Christmas movie title before? — opens with an…
Blue Bannisters is first Lana album in a while that isn’t exactly doing its own thing but it still presents occasional pleasures, even if it pales in comparison to previous similar albums. As much as there’s an aesthetic and thematic throughline to Lana Del Rey’s discography, it’s also true…
In These Silent Days breaks the COVID-19 album mold, with Carlile toward introspection and intense emotionalism without giving in to insularity. Brandi Carlile wrote the material for In These Silent Days while tucked away at home, at the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown — and like so many artists…