Reviews
In The Book of Boba Fett, the Bounty Hunter’s Not a Regular Crime Lord, He’s a Cool Crime Lord: Review
The Pitch: Do you already think Boba Fett is cool? Your answer to that question is 1000% going to drive your interest in the second Star Wars series (of many) to finally debut on Disney+. Featuring Temuera Morrison in the role he was set up to play by the prequels, The Book of Boba Fett is a love letter to an action figure, with occasional glimpses at a deeper significance lurking in the shadows. Do you not already think Boba Fett is cool? Well, that’s a concept which creator Jon Favreau and pilot director Robert Rodriguez clearly find to be inconceivable. If you don’t even know who Boba Fett is, and/or feel disinclined to learn more — well, sorry, this show has no patience for your kind. This is a true super-fan effort designed to reveal just how much of the core fanbase is still excited ...
The LCD Soundsystem Holiday Special Aims for Nostalgia to Mixed Effect: Recap
Even after COVID forced LCD Soundsystem to cancel the remaining three shows of their 20-night Brooklyn Steel residency, the band hasn’t given up on trying to keep things jolly. On December 22nd, James Murphy and co. brought the holiday cheer to Amazon Prime Video with their part comedy, part concert film Christmas special, appropriately titled The LCD Soundsystem Holiday Special. Directed by Eric Wareheim (of Tim & Eric fame), the hour-long special aims to capture nostalgia twofold. It opens with a parody of a ’90s sitcom titled “All My Friends,” in which Wareheim stands in as Murphy in a fictionalized version of LCD Soundsystem. With Macaulay Culkin portraying drummer Pat Mahoney, the band fumbles through assembling the perfect setlist for the night’s gig. Spanning their 2005 de...
Why Hawkeye Was the Best MCU Adventure of 2021
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the season finale of Hawkeye, “The Boss.”] 2021 was the MCU’s busiest year to date, thanks to films and shows delayed by the pandemic. It was also a period rich with the inclusion of new voices behind the scenes and on-screen, as well as some of the franchise’s most experimental storytelling to date. From WandaVision breaking all the fourth walls to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings incorporating wuxia and mythical wonder to Loki giving us the gift of Richard E. Grant in that costume, Marvel delivered some truly wild moments. Given all of that, it could have been the case that Hawkeye, now having completed its six-episode run on Disney+, would have ended up being a bit of an afterthought. Instead, the complete series may not f...
The Matrix Resurrections Review: A Wild, Meta, Sometimes Muddled, Occasionally Transcendent Love Story
The Pitch: Here’s the problem with reviewing The Matrix Resurrections: At this point, we basically have to accept that the franchise peaked with the first installment. This isn’t meant as an insult, but an honest statement of fact– this is what happens when a film is a masterpiece. If 1999’s The Matrix is a nearly perfect movie, almost transcendent at some points with how it blended genre and technology in service of its storytelling, then yeah, it may be impossible to top it. What makes Resurrections such a fascinating viewing experience, though, is the fact that the movie knows this. And, rather than try to shift the narrative to some different angle on the original, director Lana Wachowski, who co-wrote the script with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, decides to take on that problem...
Metallica Dig Out More Deep Cuts for Second and Final 40th Anniversary Show: Review
Setting the Stage: The first night of Metallica’s two 40th anniversary shows at in San Francisco’s Chase Center delivered a strong career-spanning set, so expectations ran high for Night 2 a couple of evenings later (Sunday, December 19th). Once more, no special guests were present for this final performance (unlike their 30th anniversary concerts), but quite a few setlist surprises occurred. Similar to the first night, the setlist was constructed in a manner that featured a tune or two from each album chronologically. But, this night, instead of starting from 1983’s Kill ‘Em All and running through 2016’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, it was set up in reverse order, starting with the band’s last album and finishing up with selections from their debut. Taking the Stage: As with the fi...
Metallica Rep Every Album At First of Two 40th Anniversary Shows: Concert Review + Photos
Setting the Stage: It’s hard to believe, but it has been 40 years since thrash legends Metallica first formed. And to celebrate this impressive career accomplishment, the band — frontman James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, bassist Robert Trujillo, and drummer Lars Ulrich — booked two arena shows (December 17th and 19th) at San Francisco’s Chase Center. When those concerts quickly sold out, the metal titans announced they were making the shows available to stream for free via Prime Video and Amazon Music. Unlike their livestreams from last year, including the charity show Helping Hands Concert & Auction, Live & Acoustic from HQ, each night of the “40th Anniversary Live” performances is taking place in front of a sold-out arena, with tickets initially being made available exclusi...
Spider-Man: No Way Home Review: A Daring Narrative Feat With a Lot to Say About the Web-Slinger
The Pitch: It’s very very hard to make specific references to much of what happens in Spider-Man: No Way Home without spoilers. But at one point, while discussing the memory spell that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) has agreed to perform for Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Peter voices his concern over his beloved MJ (Zendaya) forgetting that he’s Spider-Man. Doctor Strange then points out that if MJ is only Peter’s girlfriend because he’s Spider-Man, then what does that say about their relationship? It’s perhaps the smartest thing Doctor Strange says in the entire movie, and evaluating No Way Home leads to a similar dilemma. What director Jon Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have done with this film is an unprecedented piece of corporate-produced art. But attempting to ...
The Succession Season 3 Finale Confirmed Why the HBO Series Is One of TV’s Most Fascinating Dramas
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of Succession, “All the Bells Say.”] One of the elements which stood out the most about Season 3 of Succession was location: specifically, a shift to the sun-dappled splendor that is rural Tuscany, site of both Lady Caroline Collingwood’s (Harriet Walter) wedding and her betrayal of her children. While the HBO series has always been aesthetically lush, with an emphasis on the elegant homes and offices in which the Roys seem born to dwell in, having some of the series’ most ugly behavior to date take place in such a beautiful place seems like the ultimate distillation of the show as a whole. The finale once again featured the Roy children coming after control of the company, this time in an effort to prevent tech mo...
Sorry, But the Story Part of West Side Story Sucks
The Pitch: On a very literal level, Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story is a technically perfect film. Every detail on screen, from the period-accurate production design to the costumes to the choreography and sound design, is flawlessly rendered by some of today’s best artisans, and regular Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography is unmatched, using the full frame at all times, playing with depth of field and brilliant lighting choices in ways that only enhance the cast’s brilliant performances. There is so much to admire about this new take on West Side Story, especially how it makes up for the 1961 original by casting actual Latinos in key roles, and takes a bilingual approach to the dialogue that adds to the authenticity. The problem, unfortunately, is that all of this i...
Toss a Coin to The Witcher’s Strong, Straightforward Season 2: Review
The Pitch: In the wake of the battle of Sodden Hill, rumbly-grumbly witcher Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill) has finally reunited with the adopted child handed to him by destiny: exiled Princess Cirilla (Freya Allen), last seen trundling around the woods by herself for an entire season. But now, winter has come and it’s time for Geralt to get some R&R at Kaer Morhen, where witchers go to fill up on elixirs and ale and put up their feet till spring. With Ciri in tow, it may well be time to train her into a new witcher (even as the secrets of her true parentage threaten to upend the land). Meanwhile, Geralt’s on-again-off-again sorceress lover Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) finds herself magicless after her explosion of fire “chaos” (read: magic) at the end of last season, first captured by...
And Just Like That… Review: HBO Max Reminds Us Why We Should Never Look Back
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for And Just Like That…, Episode 2, “Little Black Dress.”] The Pitch: The blunt truth of being alive is that there’s no such thing as a happy ending. Everyone has happy and sad moments over the course of their time on this earth, and when the inevitable comes all you can hope for is that it’s not too soon, and that the good outweighed the bad as much as possible. This is an annoying and awful truth, which is just one reason why we’re a culture obsessed with stories, and why the Sex and the City continuation And Just Like That… is both a very welcome trip home to visit old friends, and also an existential crisis in the works. Advertisement A Big Twist: HBO Max deliberately withheld screeners from critics until the moment of the show’s premiere...
Don’t Look Up Is a Smug Satire About the End of the World: Review
The Pitch: What would happen if you found out the world was ending and — get this — no one in power was going to do anything about it? That’s the discovery that Michigan State astronomers Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) make, right after scoping out a nine-kilometer comet that’s about to slam into the Earth in six months’ time. Their entreaties to the aloof President of the United States (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic failson Chief of Staff (Jonah Hill) fall on deaf ears; they’ll cling to even the .01% chance the two Midwestern hayseeds are wrong. To drum up public support for any effort to deflect the comet, Mindy and Dibiasky go on a whirlwind media tour that takes them from the smug, peppy cohosts of a morning talk show called the Dai...
