Reviews
Clerks III Is an Invitation Inside Kevin Smith’s Heart
Kevin Smith’s best films have always been his smallest and most personal works; as a filmmaker, his legacy is a fascinating one, as his attempts at more mainstream Hollywood flicks have never been as creatively successful as the films he increasingly makes specifically for his loyal fanbase. This comes out specifically in the Clerks series, which Smith seems to use as a way of processing big turning points in his life: The original Clerks, of course, was all about the malaise of being in your 20s and not being sure about what to do with your life (its success solving that latter problem for Smith, at least initially). Clerks II, arriving during the middle portion of Smith’s career, focuses a lot on what it means to settle down, get married, start a family, and embrace what you love doing, ...
Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me Is Mired in Mediocrity
Following up the biggest album of your career is tough sledding for any artist. But for rappers? It’s something only Houdini might pull off with ease. Hip-hop is always about what you’re doing now, not what you did yesterday. Just one false move takes you from relevant to irrelevant at the drop of a quarter, nickel, or dime. Lil Baby finds himself in that very unenviable position. 2020’s My Turn was, in a word, massive. Baby not only refined his hit-making skills but improved his rapping technique and writing. Since its release, Baby found himself the focus of a documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. So yeah, Lil Baby finds himself in a bit of a moment. It’s Only Me, out Friday, October 14th, is the result of all that pressure, success, and newfound lifestyle for the...
Armageddon Time Review: James Gray’s Coming-of-Age ’80s Drama Proves Unsatisfying
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: James Gray, an experienced outer-borough tour guide, brings us closer to his own Queens past in Armageddon Time, a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama (though he says he wasn’t aiming for that genre; more on that later). The film follows 12-year-old aspiring artist Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) as he struggles with school, makes a friend in his classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), clashes with his parents Irving (Jeremy Strong) and Esther (Anne Hathaway), and takes solace in the love of his grandfather (Anthony Hopkins). The 1980 presidential contest looms in the background; at one point, kids at a posh private school start an impromptu chant for Reagan at the mere mention of elections, just before an assembly ...
The 1975, Happily Washed
Being Funny in a Foreign Language is the sound of the 1975 no longer selling their own myth. They sound relieved. After a decade of playing the self-referential and pop-minded rock band – frontman Matty Healy’s famous “a millennial that baby-boomers like” lyric can still summarize why people love and hate him – the British band made a straight-up pop record. It will feel instantly familiar to anyone who follows their new collaborator on this project, Jack Antonoff. The latter’s co-production will not change your mind, whether you believe he brings a more adventurous side out of his collaborators (Taylor Swift, Lorde, Lana del Rey) or simply bends them to his will, insisting that the sound of music peaked with Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love. The main question going into this album: Is this a ...
The Midnight Club Takes Big Risks and Gets Satisfyingly Creepy: Review
The Pitch: High school senior Ilonka (Iman Benson) has her whole life in front of her, which won’t be long. When she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer, and her doctors say the treatment isn’t working, she decides to spend her remaining days at Brightcliffe, a hospice care center for dying teens, where all the tenants are wrestling with their mortality while trying to enjoy however much time they have left. But all is not as it appears at Brightcliffe, which at one point was home to a mysterious cult, and where every night the youths meet in the library to tell terrifying stories. Ilonka joins this “Midnight Club” and in this adaptation of a whole bunch of stories by Christopher Pike, soon reveals to them that she has secrets of her own, a special reason for coming to Brightcliffe, and a pla...
Reginald the Vampire Is Here for a Good Time: Review
The Pitch: Lonely, unfulfilled, and too insecure to tell his cute Slushie Shack co-worker, Sarah (Em Haine) that he’s into her, Reginald Andres (Jacob Batalon) is coasting through his twenties terminally disappointed with where his life has taken him. But while taking out the Slushie Shack trash at the end of one particularly long shift, Reginald stumbles into a hypnotic new friendship with a smooth operator named Maurice (Mandela Van Peebles), and everything changes. Overnight, and at the most inconvenient moment imaginable, Reginald finds he’s been turned into a member of the undead. This proves to be problematic for more reasons than just can’t go out in the sun, have to drink blood to survive — in Reginald the Vampire’s world, creatures of the night are vain, status-obsessed perfection...
On Alvvays’ Thrilling Blue Rev, Nostalgia Spurs Indie-Rock Triumph
Let’s talk about Blue Rev. Not the new Alvvays album, but the booze for which it’s named, because this is some deeply, deliciously Canadian shit. The niche nostalgia play is fitting for a Toronto band largely defined by backward glances: to past loves and the jangly post-punk of C-86 bands like Primal Scream and the Wolfhounds. Anyway, Blue Rev is the forefather to our infamous Four Loko — a trashy, plastic bottle “alcopop” energy drink that looks like antifreeze, tastes like blue slushie (or freezie in Canada) and blew up around 2000 in Ontario, when and where it was released, mainly with club kids. It’s also exactly the sort of sugary garbage that teens would sneak behind a mall or roller rink, grabbing a quick buzz in between hating everyone and everything. Such is the essence of Blue R...
Turnstile Rip Through the Pouring Rain to Kick Off Fall 2022 Tour in Brooklyn: Recap, Photos + Video
Turnstile are keeping the momentum going for their superb 2021 album, GLOW ON, with a fall headlining North American tour. The outing kicked off Monday night (October 3rd) in the pouring rain at the outdoor New York venue Brooklyn Mirage, but the wet and chilly weather didn’t stop the Baltimore band from delivering one if its signature high-energy shows. Indie rocker Snail Mail (aka Lindsey Jordan) got the evening going with 10-song set, before giving way to hip-hop artist JPEGMafia, who got the crowd moving with a 16-song performance. At certain points in the show, JPEGMafia jumped down to the barricade to get up close and personal with fans, who welcomed him with a warm response. The rain let up for a brief moment right before Turnstile took the stage, only to return for the duration of ...
Hellraiser Review: A True Reboot That’s Pretty Darned Good
The Pitch: The eleventh film in the Hellraiser franchise finds a recovering addict named Riley (Odessa A’zion) stealing and unlocking a mysterious puzzle box, which summons sadomasochists from beyond the grave, led by their high priest Pinhead (Jamie Clayton). These mutilated “Cenobites” will drag either Riley or someone she chooses — intentionally or otherwise — into a supernatural dimension where torment and ecstasy are indistinguishable, and eternal. Now it’s up to Riley and her boyfriend Trevor (Drew Starkey) to uncover the mysteries of the box and stop the Cenobites before they drag everyone into a kinky version of hell. Yes, There Are Eleven Hellraisers: Hellraiser may be one of the most famous modern horror movie franchises, but there hasn’t been a theatrical installment in wi...
A Friend of the Family Review: A Slow-Burn True Crime Series That’s Truly Harrowing
The Pitch: When Robert “B” Berchtold (Jake Lacy) moves with his family to a quaint, peaceful town in rural Idaho, he becomes an instant hit with the Broberg family. The Berchtolds and the Brobergs instantly become inseparable: they vacation together, dine together, and attend the Church of the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints together. The catch? B has a secret sexual obsession with the Brobergs’ eldest daughter, pre-pubescent Jan (Hendrix Yancey/McKenna Grace). Despite his charming, charismatic goody-two-shoes persona, B can only keep his infatuation hidden for so long. Based on the grisly true story that yielded the popular 2017 Netflix documentary Abducted in Plain Sight, A Friend of the Family sees B’s fixation on Jan spiral out of control, resulting in a whirlwind of abuse, deception...
NYFF Review: Noah Baumbach Delightfully Skewers Our Fear of Death in White Noise
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Dom LeLillo’s White Noise is one of those “great American novels” long thought to be unfilmable, a scattered, acerbic takedown of late American capitalism and its incessant need to distract from the inevitability of death with movies, culture, conversation, stuff. And honestly, it’s oddly fitting that the filmmaker who’d finally tackle it would be Indie Darling Noah Baumbach himself: Like DeLillo, he too is concerned with the fits and foibles of academia, the crumbling nature of the family unit, the ways we cling to ephemera just to keep ourselves from falling apart. And so it is with this three-part tale of the Gladney clan, a nuclear family about to go metaphorically (and in some ways litera...
Till Digs Into a Deeply Shameful, Deeply American Tragedy: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The horrific, deeply shameful, and deeply American story of Emmett Till galvanized the civil rights movement with its tragedy: A 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, visiting relatives in Mississippi, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered for having the temerity to interact with a white woman, and Emmett’s mother Mamie Till-Mobley (then known as Mamie Till-Bradley) made the momentous decision to have an open-coffin funeral for her son, displaying his body, mutilated by his killers and bloated from being dumped into a river. These images, heavily circulated in Black publications, brought attention to the evils and injustice of U.S. racism — though they were not enough for Till’s killers (who admitted to the cr...
