Reviews
Wu-Tang Clan and Nas Bring it Back to Hip-Hop’s Golden Age at Tour Kickoff in St. Louis: Review and Setlist
East Coast hip-hop royalty descended upon the Midwest as Wu-Tang Clan and Nas kicked off their “NY State of Mind Tour” (grab tickets here) at the Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in St. Louis on Tuesday night (August 30th). The house was packed; lawn tickets were being sold for the same price as a 25-ounce Bud Light at the concession stand, and the strategy paid off. If it wasn’t sold out, the turnout had to have been close to the venue’s 20,000 capacity. Given that the tour’s namesake is derived from Nas’ legendary Illmatic track, nostalgia was the evening’s leitmotif. The night would lean heavily on material from Nas and Wu-Tang’s classic albums, with both making frequent references to hip-hop’s golden age and those who were there to live it. “Who here had a hip-hop album on cassette tape?”...
Muse’s Will of the People is Vague, Jumbled, and Unimaginative: Review
At the end of Muse‘s third studio album, 2003’s Absolution, is a powerful ballad that, to this day, is one of the band’s best ever creations: “Ruled By Secrecy.” The song, rooted in Matt Bellamy‘s dueling arpeggiated pianos, is a patient exploration of an individual’s lack power against an unknown societal force, a stirring call to those who “are working so hard/ but [they’re] never in charge,” and a nod of suspicion towards society’s manipulative leaders. “Ruled By Secrecy,” along with the other dramatic, apocalyptic themes of Absolution, marked a new thematic highway for the British trio, and it’s one that they’ve followed staunchly since the album’s release in 2003. Black Holes and Revelations came next with a greater emphasis on sci-fi, but still found the band using a s...
Three Thousand Years of Longing Is Very Much George Miller’s Version of a Fairy Tale: Review
The Pitch: Alithea (Tilda Swinton) is an aloof and solitary scholar who travels to Istanbul for a conference; browsing through the markets one day, she purchases a small glass bottle that intrigues her. Back at her hotel room, she uses her electric toothbrush to clean some dirt off the bottle, and poof! Out comes a Djinn (Idris Elba) who, after taking a few minutes to catch up with the 21st century and the existence of the English language, does his job and offers Alithea three wishes. Alithea, though, is a scholar of mythology, and so she’s immediately wary of the Djinn’s offer, given the centuries of precedent which suggests that no good can come of magical wishes. So she asks the Djinn to tell her his life story: How he came to be imprisoned in the bottle, and why he has been imprisoned...
Samaritan Proves That Some Superheroes Should Remain Retired: Review
The Pitch: You’ve heard of Superman. You’ve heard of the Punisher. You’ve even heard of Hancock, but you likely have never heard of Samaritan. However, Overlord director Julius Avery wants you to know his name. Adapted from the Mythos Comics series of the same name, this film centers around a young boy named Sam (Javon Walton) with a love for the titular long-thought-dead superhero named Samaritan. Sam has a hunch that the revered hero is still alive, but can’t really prove it as more than a fan theory. The legend goes that Samaritan went to battle with his equally strong yet villainous brother Nemesis over twenty-five years ago, both of them dying in the chaos. Without any real evidence that he’s right about Samaritan still being alive, Sam spends his time doodling, finding scrap metal to...
Psycho Las Vegas 2022 Invades Sin City with Mercyful Fate, Emperor, and More: Recap + Photos
With a new and larger venue at Resorts World, the 2022 edition of the Psycho Las Vegas festival took place this past weekend, serving up its most diverse lineup yet. The six stages offered something for everyone, and despite a few last-minute scheduling changes the festival once again went off without a hitch. The festivities unofficially kicked off on Thursday (August 18th) with the annual Psycho Swim party, which brought many to the pool area to soak up the sun (and the beer) while watching Uniform, Starcrawler, Death Chant, Bridge City Sinners, Elders, and Eyehategod, before Midnight closed out the evening with one of their heaviest and most frantic sets in recent memory. The festival got its official start on Friday (August 19th) and highlights throughout the day included Devil Master,...
Rammstein Storm Montreal to Kick Off North American Tour: Recap + Photos
In the hours leading up to the kickoff of Rammstein’s North American stadium tour in Montreal, Canada on Sunday (August 21st), a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the city and surrounding area. The threat of heavy rains, potentially dangerous gusts of wind, oversized hail, intense lightning and pounding thunder were forecast throughout the day. And while there were flashes and bursts of all these elements throughout the afternoon, the weather report had it wrong. It was not the Earth’s atmosphere that was about to deliver on this powerful barometric disturbance. It was the German industrial-metal icons. It’s not hard to imagine that their impending 2-million-watt assault on Montreal’s Parc Jean Drapeau and its home on St. Helen’s Island was about to cause such a seismic ripple acr...
Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson Square Off In FX’s Riveting Psychothriller The Patient: Review
The Pitch: Psychotherapist Alan Strauss (Steve Carell) is a man in the grips of mourning — not just for the recent loss of his wife (Laura Niemi) to cancer, but also for his strained relationship with his son Ezra (Andrew Leeds), whose choice to become an Orthodox Jew has drawn a deep rift against his more liberal Jewish father. But Alan receives the challenge of a lifetime in the form of Sam Fortner (Domhnall Gleeson), a new patient who seems cagey, mysterious, and unable to truly open up. Turns out, that’s because Sam is a serial killer, one desperately searching for a way to stamp out his compulsions, and he hopes that Alan’s expertise can help. In classic serial-killer fashion, that means kidnapping Alan, chaining him to the basement of his mother’s remote house out in the woods, ...
Welcome to Wrexham Review: Watching Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds Buy a Sports Team Is Damn Compelling
The Pitch: English: PitchAmerican: FieldWelsh: Traw In 2020, Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds bought a Welsh football team. Neither of them had ever been to Wales before taking such an enormous leap, let alone Wrexham. Nor had either of them ever followed the English football league, let alone the fifth-tier Wrexham Red Dragons. And yet, they saw some real potential both in the club (which is the third oldest football team in the world and the oldest professional club in Wales — they even play at the Racecourse, the oldest international football pitch in the world, est. 1807) as well as in the residents of Wrexham. Potential for historic sporting success, sure, but also the potential for an incredible story. And so they started making this docuseries. And then they bought the club. (Y...
My Chemical Romance Launch North American Tour with Howlingly Chaotic Oklahoma City Show: Recap, Photos + Setlist
Donning a green camo jacket and a face full of Heath Ledger-style Joker makeup, Gerard Way leads My Chemical Romance into their first North American tour in more than 900 days, often channeling the same chaotic energy of whom he decorated his visage. The fizzing static distortions in the intro to “The Foundations of Decay,” the surprise single released this May in support of the reunion tour, practically serve as white noise behind the jubilant roars of the crowd as the band takes the stage inside Oklahoma City’s Paycom Arena. (Grab tickets to the rest of MCR’s tour dates here.) Clocking in at an epic six minutes, “The Foundations of Decay” features a bite-sized version of the same world-building story-craft often associated with the My Chemical Romance albums. Way’s soft-spoken early vers...
Echoes Review: A Fascinating Story Gets Undermined by a Thirst for Twists
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of Echoes, “Falls.”] The Pitch: What if two adult identical twins swapped places every year, unbeknownst to everyone in their lives? Such is the premise of Netflix’s Echoes, a show that opens on a shrewd and successful author named Gina (Michelle Monaghan), who lives an exceedingly normal life in an austere Los Angeles mansion with her doting therapist husband, Charlie (Daniel Sunjata). Living in Mount Echo, a modest farm town halfway across the country, is Gina’s identical twin sister, Leni, a ranch owner with a hearty southern drawl and permanently braided hair. Every year on their birthday, Gina and Leni switch places for a year, unbeknownst to anyone else: From their accents to their devoted husbands to Leni’s ...
House of the Dragon Review: A Beautifully-Made History Lesson From an Ugly Fictional World
The Pitch: Perhaps you are a carbon-based life form with an Internet connection and/or cable TV subscription, and thus are aware of the existence of a little show called Game of Thrones, which for a few years there was pretty dang popular. Well, here’s some more of it! Specifically, here is House of the Dragon, HBO’s prequel/spinoff that does not involve Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, but does hope to capture the imagination of an ever-fickle viewing public. To that end, we return to King’s Landing 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen (House of the Dragon is very specific on this point), where Daenerys’ ancestors still hold the very familiar-looking Iron Throne. Though we begin with the line of succession in flux, as a ruler without heirs has to make a choice...
Spin Me Round Serves Up An Amusing but Messy Slice of Dark Comedy: Review
The Pitch: Amber (Alison Brie) runs the Bakersfield outpost of Tuscany Grove, a popular Olive Garden-adjacent family eatery chain. Great at her job but yearning for something more, Amber gets the opportunity of a lifetime when her boss (Lil Rel Howery) selects her for an all-expenses-paid work retreat to Italy. Amber’s excitement is doubled when her best friend Emily (Ego Nwodim) suggests a tantalizing possibility during her time in Europe: What if she falls in love? On the trip, she meets a group of other lucky Tuscany Grove managers, including the nosy Deb (Molly Shannon), the arrogant Fran (Tim Heidecker), and the friendly Dana (Zach Woods). Most notably, she’s introduced to Nick Martucci (Alessandro Nivola), the chain’s wealthy, handsome owner. Nick immediately takes a liking to Amber ...
