Staff Lists
The 100 Greatest Summer Blockbuster Movies of All Time
“Cool.” “Riveting.” “Gripping.” “High-Octane Thrill Ride!” All cliches of film criticism and yet all feelings we’ve experienced while watching a crackerjack summer blockbuster. Oops, there we go again. All things considered, any moviegoer can speak to the divine feeling of sitting in a cool, packed theater in the heat of the summer and being united by narrative. Not just united, but hypnotized, mentally convinced that the fate of the world is before your eyes, and there is nothing more important in that very moment. It’s escapism. It’s popcorn. It’s Chinatown. But also, it’s the power of spectacle. Over the years, Hollywood has certainly run that concept through the ringer, having turned what used to be a summer blockbuster season into, well, an entire calendar year. Now, all those aforeme...
Top 10 TV Shows of 2020 (So Far)
Our Mid-Year Report comes to a captivating conclusion today as we reveal the Top 10 TV Shows of 2020 (So Far). In case you missed it, be sure to revisit our previous mid-year lists for top albums, songs, metal albums, and films. Television’s always been there. There’s a reliability to the boob tube that gives us solace day in and day out. It’s the reliable notion that no matter how awful things get in real life, you can always eject, curl up on the couch, and escape into a story. Well, rest assured, television has been working overtime in 2020. As billions of people across the world stay locked inside — we can only hope — the small screen has become less of a life line and more of a permanent member of the family. Fortunately for all of us, we’ve been living in a time of Too Much Televisio...
Top 25 Albums of 2020 (So Far)
Welcome to our Mid-Year Report. All week long we’ll be sharing the music, movies, and television that have helped us survive a strange and confusing six months. We start today with our Top 25 Albums of 2020 (So Far). It’d be fatuous to pretend that the first six months of 2020 have been like any other. All of us are facing difficult realities: the pain of injustice, the loss of a loved one, or even just the despair of looking out the window and not knowing what tomorrow will bring or when it will come. For the purposes of this list, then, maybe it’s equally foolish to think music impacted us the same way it always does. Then again, perhaps that’s what makes music so integral to our lives: that no matter what the world or our individual lives look like, music has the magical knack of provid...
