Reviews
Iron Maiden Bring the “Beast” to Newark, New Jersey: Recap, Photos + Video
Iron Maiden are set to wrap up their extensive “Legacy of the Beast World Tour,” with the latest North American leg having kicked off last month in El Paso, Texas. The ongoing run made a stop in Newark, New Jersey, at a packed Prudential Center on Friday (October 21st), featuring support from Within Temptation. The worldwide outing, which began in 2018, comes to an end at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida, on October 27th, with tickets available here for the last couple shows. Iron Maiden are on the road in support of their 17th studio album, Senjutsu, and the UK heavy metal legends made sure to bring a few new tunes to Jersey, kicking off their 15-song set with the album’s title track, while also showcasing “Stratego” and “The Writing on the Wall.” Fans pumped their fists in the air as the b...
Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities Is a Horror Anthology Haunted By Creative Freedom: Review
The Pitch: A racist scavenger (Tim Blake Nelson) uncovers the ultimate score in the storage locker of a dead Nazi. A desperate grave robber (David Hewlett) gets more than he bargained for on his latest excursion. A medical examiner (F. Murray Abraham) autopsies a dead body from a mine explosion and finds a passenger hiding within the flesh. An awkward, frumpy bank teller (Kate Micucci) is tempted with the secrets of beauty by a mysterious skin cream. An art student in 1909 (Ben Barnes) grows obsessed with the horrific paintings of a strange new colleague (Crispin Glover). A desperate man (Rupert Grint) searches for his dead twin sister through the veil of spiritualism. A reclusive billionaire (Peter Weller) gathers a group of illustrious talents to view his latest otherworldly find. A...
House of the Dragon Season 1 Wasn’t Perfect — But It Was a Worthy Heir to Game of Thrones
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon, “The Black Queen.”] Probably the most unintentionally hilarious part of House of the Dragon’s first season finale came at the very end, if you were watching with subtitles on: When Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), having just learned of her son’s death, turned away from the fire to reveal her grief-stricken face, the captions acknowledged a shift in composer Ramin Djawadi’s score like so: [Vengeful music plays]. It was funny because the captions really didn’t need to say anything — D’Arcy’s face said it all. It was all a jaw-dropping capper to a largely gripping season of television, because as we come to the finale, it can be said: If the goal was to create a new series that would please even ...
George Clooney and Julia Roberts Reunite in Seaweed-Thin Romcom Ticket to Paradise: Review
The Pitch: David (George Clooney) and Georgia (Julia Roberts) are two hugely successful, extremely divorced people, with 19 years of bitter animus between them. In fact, the only times they even see each other are for the major milestones in the life of their daughter, Lily (Kaitlin Dever), and even then they can’t help but snipe at each other through forced smiles. But they’re forced back into each other’s orbits when Lily shacks up with a handsome seaweed farmer (model Maxime Bouttier) on her post-graduation trip to Bali, and invites them to her whirlwind wedding on the Indonesian island paradise. Recognizing that throwing her career away for idle island living and a guy she’s just met is a Bad Idea, the two plot to sabotage the wedding from the inside. Along the way, though, t...
In Black Adam, Dwayne Johnson Rejects the Hero Part of Being a Superhero: Review
The Pitch: Thousands of years ago, in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Kahndaq, an evil king enslaved his people to mine for a precious ore. One young boy rose up to challenge the king, and his bravery was noticed by some wizards with the ability to grant the pure-of-heart awe-inspiring powers. (Cool idea for a superhero origin — definitely sounds familiar.) Stories about what happened to the boy once he was able to harness those powers and defeat the king are vague, but the resulting hero, known as Teth Adam (Dwayne Johnson), was not heard from again. Until the present day, that is, a time when Kahndaq is largely under the control of outside mercenaries who are also trying to mine for the unobtanium vibranium adamantium eternium there. Despite their strict control, the mercenaries ...
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...
