Reviews
Chan-wook Park’s Decision to Leave Is a Sizzling Romantic Thriller: Review
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: A mountain climber is found dead at the bottom of one of Busan’s most intimidating peaks. An accident? Probably. But ace Busan detective Hae-jun (Park Hae-il) still finds himself drawn to the man’s Chinese widow, Seo-rae (Tang Wei), with whom he shares a beguiling, unspoken connection. She’s elusive, enigmatic; he grows more obsessed with her the longer he watches her on long stakeouts. And the closer the two get, the harder it is for him to see the woman she truly is — and the harder for her to hide it. The Mist: If there’s one thing you can count on from a Chan-wook Park film, it’s that it will be chock full of surprises. That’s certainly true of Oldboy, Stoker, and The Handmaiden, thre...
Björk Is as Vibrant as Ever on the Moving, Earthy Fossora
Aside from her unmatched ability to constantly and successfully reinvent herself, one of Björk’s greatest qualities is her deft, poignant interrogations on the complex ties between humanity and nature. On her previous album, 2017’s lovely Utopia, the Icelandic experimental pop singer envisioned a world beyond ours, contrasting ethereal imagery and feather-light production with her growing concerns about the environment and her lingering grief around her divorce. Fossora — the followup to Utopia and her 10th overall record, out Friday (September 30th) — finds Björk coming back down to Earth, surveying the decay of our natural world and meditating on its debilitating effect on our own relationships. We don’t take care of our planet, Björk seems to suggest, because we fail to take care o...
NYFF Review: Bones And All Sucks the Marrow Of Its Horrific Premise
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: Something’s a bit off about Maren (Taylor Russell) — when we first meet her, she looks like an ordinary teen just trying to finish high school and fit in with her new environment. But it’s not long before a get-to-know-you sleepover (and a torn-off ring finger) reveals her for who she is: an “eater,” someone with the insatiable need to consume human flesh. Fed up with the constant moving and the pressure of looking after such a dangerous girl, her father (André Holland) abandons her one morning, leaving only her birth certificate and a cassette tape detailing his account of their early years together. The rest, as he narrates, is up to her. Related Video Thus begins her odyssey to track down her long-mi...
Entergalactic Review: Kid Cudi’s Next Album Is Also a Low-Key Charming Animated Rom-Com
The Pitch: Jabari (Kid Cudi, or Scott Mescudi, as he’s credited here) is a street artist on the cusp of great things, as his original character Mr. Rager, featured in graffiti art all over New York City, has been tapped by a major comic book company for a potential series. He’s even got a great new loft in Manhattan, which just so happens to make him new neighbors with Meadow (Jessica Williams), a photographer who’s also getting ready for a big professional leap with her first major show. Neither Jabari or Meadow are particularly looking for a big epic romance, but keep finding themselves spending time together after a late-night encounter, and their mutual interests plus a natural chemistry quickly accelerate them into relationship territory. However, insecurities on both ends, escalated ...
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Spin Their Wheels on Cool It Down
When the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ensnared the rock consciousness with Fever to Tell almost 20 years ago, the band’s true magic was never bound to where they’d been — the romanticized New York underground pedigree, those “had to be there” early shows — but where they might be going. With Fever, in all its exhilarating, teeth-baring bar room glory, every moment felt as though Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase were hurtling toward the precipice of something extraordinary, and perhaps with a little more time to grow and live, the young trio would bloom into one of the most indispensable rock bands of the 21st century. But that never really happened. The follow-up, 2006’s Show Your Bones, was more tentative and familiar in an uninspiring way — wholly forgettable, especially 15 years later. The alt-p...
Foo Fighters Honor Taylor Hawkins with a Second Six-Hour Musical Lovefest in L.A.: Review
We’ve been at a collective loss since the passing of beloved and ultra-talented drummer Taylor Hawkins. The Foo Fighters staple had a place in the hearts of many inside the music world and outside of it — a piece to the grand puzzle that leaves it incomplete now that it’s gone. As if the initial tribute show in London’s Wembley Stadium earlier this month wasn’t proof enough, another horde of Hawkins fans sold out The Kia Forum in Inglewood on Tuesday night (September 27th) with hearts swelling and energy flowing, not knowing exactly what laid ahead of them. For another six hours, as with Wembley, David Grohl and his rotating cast of guests rolled their way through some of Hawkins’ favorite tracks, as well as Foo Fighters classics. And while family was again an overarching theme of the nigh...
The Anxiety and Ambition of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Cool It Down
It goes without saying that the world has changed since the Yeah Yeah Yeahs unleashed their feral debut album, Fever to Tell, in 2003. Written in the wake of of 9/11, it was a 37-minute adrenaline rush of post-punk you can dance to. The record cemented them as an integral part of the wave of guitar-heavy New York bands, such as The Strokes and Interpol, that rose to prominence at the start of the century. Even now, they’re still considered a New York band, despite the city, its music, the band themselves, and the world around them continuing to change. The band went on hiatus shortly after releasing their third album Mosquito in 2013, though Karen O focused on releasing her solo work and contributing to film soundtracks, and became a mother for the first time. Meanwhile, Nick Zinner lent h...
The Munsters Review: Rob Zombie’s ‘60s Sitcom Reboot Embraces Its Campy Source Material
The Pitch: Herman Munster, a big goofy lummox made of reanimated dead bodies in the style of Frankenstein’s monster, marries the ghoul of his dreams, a vampire named Lily. But the newlyweds aren’t shacked up in her father The Count’s castle in Transylvania for long before they’re unceremoniously kicked out, and decide to start a new life in America. The Munsters is rock star-turned-horror auteur Rob Zombie’s reboot of the CBS series of the same name, which ran for two seasons in the mid-‘60s, and then staggered around for decades in syndication like the living dead. And while the Netflix film is a prequel, detailing Herman and Lily’s meet cute before the birth of their sitcom son, werewolf boy Eddie Munster, it’s otherwise impressively faithful to the source material’s look and sense of hu...
Demi Lovato Rages at “HOLY FVCK” Tour Stop in Sacramento: Review and Setlist
After months of anticipation and the release of a rock-centric new album, Demi Lovato played their first solo show on the US leg of their “HOLY FVCK” tour (grab tickets here) at Sacramento’s Hard Rock Live on Thursday night (September 22nd). Dressed in all red and supported by an incredible backing band, Lovato was in excellent form, showcasing her powerhouse vocals while proving they’re well-suited for just about any genre, be it the pop sound that comprised Lovato’s last several albums, or the heavier rock tone that persists on her 2022 entry Holy Fvck. First up was opener Dead Sara, a Los Angeles five-piece who ripped their way through a barrage of tracks that combined hard rock, punk, and grunge elements. Frontwoman Emily Armstrong — who also features on the Holy Fvck album standout “H...
Bros Refuses to Apologize For The Specifics of Queer Romance (Except When It Does): Review
The Pitch: Bobby Lieber (Billy Eichner) is a successful pillar of the gay community in New York City: He’s got a popular podcast, he’s the director of what’s soon to be the nation’s first LGBTQ+ history museum, and he was just named “Cis White Gay Man of the Year.” The only thing missing is a man in his life, but Bobby isn’t into all that: “Love is not love,” he stresses early on to his friends, rejecting the oft-used gay rights sentiment as a lie to get straight people to treat queer folks like human beings. Instead, he chips away at one awkward Grindr hookup after another. But fortune changes when Bobby runs into hunky estate lawyer Aaron (Luke Macfarlane) at a club; they each clock the other as angry and boring, respectively, and their shared fatigue for the performative, ima...
Dahmer Review: Ryan Murphy’s Serial Killer Drama Puts the Victims First
The Pitch: What often gets lost in the lurid stories of America’s most infamous serial killers is how profoundly they expose the cracks in our democracy. Such is the case for Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters), a lonely and disturbed young man who murdered and dismembered 17 young men between the years of 1978 and 1991. The horrific details of those murders gained Dahmer immediate fame when he was finally arrested in 1991 and eventually sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment: this was a necrophiliac, a cannibalistic child molester, a gay man who drugged and killed other gay men at the height of the AIDS epidemic. When the Milwaukee Police Department searched Dahmer’s apartment, they found so many severed body parts that the chief medical examiner described the experience as “more like disman...
Interview With the Vampire Review: AMC Delivers a Proudly Queer Take on the Anne Rice Saga
The Pitch: Vampires are back! Really, our bloodsucking undead brethren never truly go out of style, but it’s been a few years since the sparkly Twilight boom and it’s time for the original kings of the genre to make their way to the forefront. Hence AMC throwing a lot of money behind a lavish adaptation of Anne Rice’s multi-million best-selling gothic saga, The Vampire Chronicles — starting with her most famous work, Interview With the Vampire. The late Rice essentially reinvented the modern vampire, turning them into baroque creatures of sensuality and emotion, and with it, she inspired intense devotion from her fans. It’s no mean feat for any creator to take on this saga for the big or small screen, given that it encompasses hundreds of characters, thousands of years, a total r...
