Renaissance doesn’t rise to the heights of more personal records like Beyoncé and Lemonade, but it’s complex deep house influence still makes a persuasive case for the…
Gold Rush Kid finds George Ezra co-opting TikTok music-making trends to abysmal effect. George Ezra, with his signature deep baritone and radio-friendly pop sensibilities, opts…
Get Used To It doesn’t necessarily have a strong thematic arc to its musical core, but KayCyy’s diverse skill set offers more than enough reason to…
The highs on Harry’s House hit, but the record as a whole is sadly lacking in the charming crooner’s usual energy. One of the most compelling and…
We is a considerable improvement on Arcade Fire’s dumpster of a past decade, predictably failing to reach the band’s heights but effective in spurts at reminding…
Orville Peck’s sophomore album Bronco proves he isn’t just a sideshow gimmick — he’s in on the joke. Because he’s released a continuous stream of new…
B.I.B.L.E. is evidence that the past year’s features king is only grinding for superstardom, sanding down any Brooklyn drill edges in favor of bland studio…
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…
Sob Rock finds John Mayer effecting something between self-effacement and contrition, but it’s all couched in just more of the same soft-boy bravado. John Mayer may…
Delmer Daves has his deserved champions, but even so, he’s an interesting sell; not a hard one, per se, but one that’s mildly inundated with…
With Call Me If You Get Lost, Tyler loses his spark in an album that is just more of the same — but worse. Let’s first address…
One of the great madcap poets of the American cinema, Alan Rudolph has seemingly slipped into irrelevance since his heyday in the 1980s and ’90s.…
There are certain iconic questions in cinema history that have endured long after the credits roll. Who shot first, Han or Greedo? Did the spinning…
The verdict is in: Lil Nas X is the realest of deals. After being subjected to a deluge of dissent — first from Billboard, and then cynical…
In taking on the horrors of Vietnam, Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War may be said to mark a departure for the American director of…
The decade of the Great Depression saw a slump in high-end Western productions. This indigenous genre had been immensely popular with audiences of the two…
Right off the bat, Sicario: Day of the Soldado gooses you with its ripped-from-the-headlines reactionary nastiness. Terrorists are in league with the drug cartels and the Somali…
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: the new Ghostbusters remake/reboot/whatever isn’t a bad movie because it stars four women instead of four men.…
There is a remarkable shot late in The Age of Innocence when the narrator (Joanne Woodward) describes a room in Newland Archer’s (Daniel Day-Lewis) New York City…
Chappie opens with documentary-style footage of artificial intelligence experts discussing the apparently paradigm-shifting events of the film about to begin, before shifting to faux news clips…