Reviews
Russian Doll Season 2 Review: Natasha Lyonne’s Metaphysical Comedy Continues to Screw With Time
The Pitch: Nearly four years after the Birthday That Just Kept Killing Them, Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne) and Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett) are still free of the cosmic death wishes that tied their fates together in the first place. Well, mostly. While neither seems in imminent danger of falling down a flight of stairs or getting walloped by an errant taxi, neither do they seem to have particularly warmed to the idea of being alive in a world that deals people such uneven hands. This means that as yet another of Nadia’s birthdays is approaching — and not just any birthday, but her milestone 40th — they are neither of them surprised when the universe decides to step in and screw with their experience of time once more. In Nadia’s case, this screwery takes the form of a No. 6 train that i...
Conversations With a Killer: The John Wayne Gacy Tapes Shows the Banality of Evil: Review
The Pitch: Years on, the American public is still obsessed with serial killers — who they are, what makes them tick, the lurid details of their murderous escapades. No one knows this more than the folks at Netflix, who toss out a new true-crime documentary every other week, and whose biggest hits include shows like Mindhunter. One of the platform’s biggest hits was 2019’s Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, which assembled a four-part chronicle of his crimes, his history, and the trial that ignited the public’s imagination. Now director Joe Berlinger is back with a follow-up, The John Wayne Gacy Tapes, drawing from nearly 60 hours of recorded interviews with another infamous mass murderer to tell another tale of lost innocence, the nature of madness, and the various...
Outer Range Is Yellowstone Meets Ozark Meets Stranger Things: Review
The Pitch: Stretched out over the sprawling plains and towering mountains of Wyoming, a kind of Hatfields and McCoys situation plays out between two neighboring ranch families — the Abbotts, led by firm but fair patriarch Royal (Josh Brolin), and the Tillersons, an out-there clan led by Wayne (Will Patton), an ailing land-grabber with his eyes on the Abbotts’ western pasture. But things turn ever more complicated when a mysterious drifter named Autumn (Imogen Poots) shows up at the Abbotts’ doorstep and asks to camp on their land (and can pay for the privilege), her motivations unknown. That same day, a tractor-sized hole opens up in the ground along — you guessed it — the Abbotts’ western pasture, a bottomless black pit covered in smoke, seemingly leading to nowhere. Where did it com...
The Flight Attendant Season 2 Keeps the Story Going — and Soars: Review
The Pitch: When the first season of The Flight Attendant hit HBO in late November of 2020, it signaled a bit of a shift for star Kaley Cuoco (who also acts as an executive producer on the series). Known best for her longtime role on The Big Bang Theory, Cuoco entered new territory for many viewers with the twisty, darkly comedic mystery, and stuck the landing as an alcoholic flight attendant, imbuing the title character with something so human the audience couldn’t help but be sympathetic to her antics. Season 1 caught on quickly through word of mouth as the puzzle unfolded. Season 2, premiering on HBO with the first two episodes on Thursday, April 21st, picks back up with Cassie (Cuoco) living her very best life. Things are a bit different for our chaotic heroine — she’s relocated to Los ...
BTS Take Their “PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE” Concert to Las Vegas: Recap, Photos + Setlist
Las Vegas may be a good time gal, but she isn’t easy. The self-proclaimed “Entertainment Capital of the World” is accustomed to hosting countless entertainers. And perhaps because there’s always another visiting celeb, the city rolls out her red carpet for no one… that is, until BTS arrived in Sin City. In this case, it was a purple carpet, and it blanketed the city in excitement. In honor of a sold-out, four-night run at Allegiant Stadium (April 8th-9th and 15th-16th) titled PERMISSION TO DANCE ON STAGE IN LAS VEGAS, the iconic Bellagio Fountain Show has been playing BTS hits, while Strip marquees display the word “Borahaegas” in a purple-hued nod to the group. But that’s just the beginning of a city-wide immersive event, or “urban concert playpark,” called BTS PERMISSION TO DANCE THE CIT...
Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century: Doomed Love Songs For the Pseudo-Nostalgic
“What’s ‘deeply funny’ mean anyhow?” Father John Misty asks on “Q4,” a single from Chloë and the Next 20th Century. The song is the album’s clearest, most cutting satire, but this question feels earnest, the stakes intimate to the singer — as a performer and person seeking connection in a modern wasteland. Over five albums, singer-songwriter Josh Tillman has been a craftsman of story-songs delivered via absurdist personae, scaffolding ironic provocation with heartfelt croons and soaring folk-inspired instrumentation. On Chloë, singer-songwriter Josh Tillman returns with his first new material since 2018’s taciturn God’s Favorite Customer. Written and recorded in fall/winter 2020, the album sees Tillman continuing to collaborate with multi-instrumentatlist/producer Jonathan Wilson and engin...
Wet Leg’s Riotous Debut Stands up to the Hype
It’s so easy to be cynical about a band like Wet Leg, who in a matter of months last year signed a management deal, a record contract with tastemaker Domino (Arctic Monkeys, Cat Power) and sold out their first headlining tour, despite having released only two singles — six minutes of music to secure all the success many artists spend a lifetime trying to achieve. So followed the exhaustive Twitter and Reddit discourse over whether the Isle of Wight duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers were actually industry plants, backed by resources far greater than the scuzzy indie-punk satire of their debut hit “Chaise Longue” might suggest. How else could they have so quickly landed airplay on Elton John’s Apple Music radio show or notched a public co-sign from Dave Grohl? To all this over-hype...
Olivia Rodrigo Kicks Off Her “Sour Tour” in Portland, Oregon: Photos + Setlist
Olivia Rodrigo was already a two-time Grammy winner before she’d even had her own tour. Not the typical order of operations for artists, but Rodrigo is a new kind of pop star. With her Best New Artist gramophone in tow, the “drivers license” singer finally launched her first-ever headlining tour on Tuesday, April 5th at Portland, Oregon’s Theater of the Clouds — and our photographer Dan Garcia was there to capture it all. The “Sour Tour” kick-off concert featured an entire (if out of order) run-through of the album of the same name — not surprising as Sour is Rodrigo’s only LP. The setlist was padded with a pair of covers: Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” (in honor of “the pop-punk princess herself,” as Rodrigo put it) and Veruca Salt’s “Seether.” Below, find a photo gallery of Olivia Ro...
Metal Lords Review: Game of Thrones’ D.B. Weiss Delivers A Light Comedy About Heavy Metal
The Pitch: Heavy metal, with its knowingly ridiculous embrace of deafening volumes and over-the-top violent imagery, and predominantly young male audience, has been fertile territory for comedy since This Is Spinal Tap. And over the last few decades, some enduring comedies have irreverently paid tribute to hard rock bands and the adolescents who love them, including School of Rock, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Detroit Rock City. Screenwriter D.B. Weiss, best known as the co-creator and co-showrunner of Game of Thrones, has brought us a potential new addition to that canon with Metal Lords. In 2019, Weiss and his Game of Thrones creative partner David Benioff inked a $200 million deal to produce films and series for Netflix. And while some of Benioff and Weiss’s more ambitious ...
Ambulance Review: Some Deranged Grandeur, Courtesy of Michael Bay
The Pitch: In his 2019 Netflix film 6 Underground, Michael Bay stages an opening car chase where his heroes smash through the streets of Italy, goring bad guys and yelling nonsense at each other. “I’m conducting surgery!” one character screams while, essentially, just tending to a wound. But maybe that moment stuck in Bay’s head. Maybe he regretted not making that set-piece more surgical, to the point where he built an entire movie called Ambulance around the premise: What if you were performing life-saving surgery during a car chase? Technically, Bay did not come up with this premise. Ambulance is a remake of a 2005 Dutch film, and Bay is not a credited screenwriter. But his penchant for breaking tension with over-explained jokes, or breaking jokes with melodramatic bombast, transcend any...
Father John Misty’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century Shines With Its Old Hollywood Palette
Father John Misty is something of an online discourse generator. You never quite know what to expect from him. He used to have a tremendous presence on the internet and social media at large, but he has receded a bit in recent years. Around the album cycle for 2017’s epic Pure Comedy, it seemed like Josh Tillman, who has been performing under the Father John Misty moniker for a decade now, couldn’t stop over-explaining his music. The following year, however, he became notably less loquacious on the understated, masterful, and personal God’s Favorite Customer. He’s keeping that up for his fifth record as Father John Misty, Chloë and the Next 20th Century. Although Tillman’s music is fun to talk about online because of its excess and decadence, his delightfully outsized personality has taken...
Better Call Saul Season 6 Review: The Beginning of the End Is As Exquisitely Stressful As Ever
The Pitch: “Meticulous.” “Chilling.” “Engrossing.” There are so many words that come to mind when sitting down with a new installment of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off which has somehow soared to a whole new tier of quality over the years. No spoilers (for fear of the Salamancas knocking at the door), but it can be said that the first two episodes of Season 6 keep this proud tradition going. As the show gears up for its last hurrah (the first seven episodes of the final season debut starting Monday, April 18th, with the second half of the season returning in July), every element of one of TV’s best-made shows is working hard to invest us in so many of the show’s biggest questions, including the most important one of all: How’s it going to end? Where Were We? Season 5 of Saul e...
