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…
Lana Del Rey As much as there’s an aesthetic and thematic throughline to Lana Del Rey’s discography, it’s also true that each new Lana album tends to do a different thing — which is the main reason why Blue Banisters is the lesser of her two releases this…
Silent Night is more holiday punishment than gift. Featuring a floor-to-ceiling stacked cast and a festive setting and title, one might assume that Silent Night, the feature film debut from writer-director Camille Griffin, would be in the same vein as another beloved and meme-able English Christmas staple, Love, Actually…
Bruised is a dumb, derivative riff on Rocky, yet another work of deglamorization that fails to scrape beyond its grimy surface. It seems only appropriate that a film like Bruised would be Halle Berry’s directorial debut. As a performer, Berry has always exhibited fierce commitment, yet authenticity has never been…
A Castle for Christmas is the latest Netflix attempt to ape the Hallmark holiday game, but you’d be better off with a lump of coal. Director Mary Lambert is responsible for some of the most iconic and cutting-edge music videos of the ‘80s, including Madonna’s “Material Girl” and “Like a Prayer,”…
Night at the Eagle Inn is a 2-star destination you’re better off driving right past. Brothers Erik and Carson Bloomquist might just be the hardest working filmmakers in show business right now, and chances are you have never even heard of them. Their latest feature, the thriller Night at…
OK, so things don’t really vanish anymore: even the most limited film release will (most likely, eventually) find its way onto some streaming service or into some DVD bargain bin assuming that those still exist by the time this sentence finishes. In other words, while the title of…
The Trouble with Being Born is remarkable not just for its futurism and ambient atmosphere, but for the care with which its relationships — not all interpersonal — are crafted. Austrian director Sandra Wollner’s The Trouble with Being Born is a stylish, small-scale film whose narrative revolves around a…
I Was a Simple Man is a wildly contradictory affair, rife with unresolved ideas and a deluge a thematic material that find little purchase. “Maybe we don’t deserve to go so easily” — this line is offered in response to the gruesome account of a suicide attempt that opens…
Bad Luck Banging borders on the didactic, but smartly allows its archetypes to conflate and contradict, turning its sketchbook designs into a platform for equal-opportunity ire. Radu Jude’s films are an acquired taste, his unconventional brand of humor droller than Wes Anderson, more off-kilter than Tati, yet less…
G-Eazy By the time Macklemore (and Ryan Lewis) got around to making their second, career-killing album, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, it had already been clear for some time that their successes were entirely tethered to the cultural moment (i.e. 2012) into which they delivered their first album,…
HEY WHAT proves that even down a bandmember, Low is still one of the best at perpetual, successful reinvention. Fresh off of another lineup change, Low puts together an impressively tense experimental pop album with HEY WHAT, a record sure to rank high in their large discography for years…
Mother is both brutal and poetic, a contention with self and homeland, and an introduction to one of contemporary cinema’s most exciting voices. When Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese’s film This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection was released earlier this year, this critic mistakenly identified it as his “debut feature.”…
What Do We See, in its rejection of atomized systems of characterization and narrative, offers a kinder, more free-spirited form of cinema. Alexandre Koberidz’s first feature, Let the Summer Never Come Again, begins with the maxim, “Love has no end — a story always has,” followed by, “You…
There’s very little to distinguish Belfast as a work of art, a film that uses its dramatic and formal elements only in service of feel-good platitudes. The semi-autobiographical film can often bring us closer to a director, pulling back the maintenance panel to reveal the subconscious machinery powering their…
Uppercase Print mishmashes modes and can become a bit of a slog, but there’s enough formal playfulness to recommend it as a valuable addition to Jude’s body of work. Building upon the explicit interrogation of images and their meanings that one finds in I Do Not Care If We…
Jimmy O. Yang makes for an unconventional, likeable lead, but Love Hard is an otherwise frothy and disposable holiday trifle. The bafflingly titled Love Hard would seem to promise an exciting return to the golden age of rom-coms, back before feminism went mainstream and when every character populating such films…