Reviews
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...
Guillermo del Toro Turns From Gory Monsters to Gauzy Film Noir with Nightmare Alley: Review
The Pitch: When we first meet Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), he’s burying a body under the floorboards of a country home and setting it aflame, burning his past and his previous life to the ground, presumably to start anew. Eventually, his wanderings lead him to a run-down carnival deep in the sticks, where he quickly ingratiates himself with the freaks and geeks who populate it. It’s not long before he sees the flim-flams underpinning each of their acts — particularly the mentalism of fortune teller Zeena (Toni Collette) and her drunken husband, Pete (David Strathairn), who correctly divines the identity of objects with the help of verbal codes — and wants in on the action. Stars in his eyes, Stan makes his way to the big city with young, virginal carny Molly (Rooney Mara) in tow...
Even After 15 Seasons, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Keeps Getting Better
The Pitch: Think back to what you were doing in the year 2005. It’s pretty unlikely that your life then was the same as it is now — different friends, different pop culture, different kinds of work keeping you busy. Maybe your then-toddler is now getting ready for college, or maybe you were yourself still basically a child. But since 2005, one thing remains constant: The gang behind It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia have continued to make their FXX show, and do it better than so many of the comedies out there today. The secret behind this pretty wild degree of success can be very easily attributed to the fact that the series has very deliberately, especially in the last five or so years, matured to a degree. Not that the gang running a crappy Philly bar has grown up — though several of the...
The Beatles: Get Back Is a Comprehensive Time Capsule of the Fab Four’s Last Hurrah: Review
The Pitch: In January of 1969, the Beatles, wearing by internal tensions and alienated through years of not touring together, attempted to do the impossible: get back together to craft not only a new album but to record it live in concert, without any overdubs or studio tricks. Not only that, they wanted to film a TV special to coincide with the album’s release, which necessitated the hiring of director Michael Lindsay-Hogg and the building of Twickenham Film Studios into an erstwhile rehearsal space. On top of all that, they had just four weeks to pull this all off. The results were bittersweet: The album was released to muted fanfare (though it’s since been reappraised), and the ambitious TV special was whittled down to a now-iconic live concert atop the roof of Apple headquarters. ...
House of Gucci Is as Italian as a Pizza Bagel and It Knows It: Review
The Pitch: On March 27, 1995, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), then head of the luxury fashion label Gucci, was shot dead on the steps outside his Milan office. Two years later, his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani (Lady Gaga), and her accomplices were sentenced to prison, most of them for more than twenty-five-year sentences. But how did we get here? How did a woman who found herself at the top of the fashion world turn into a black widow? Ridley Scott‘s House of Gucci wants to answer those questions, with all the brio and style to which the Gucci name is accustomed. We flash back to the early ’70s, where a young Patrizia meets and charms the bookish Maurizio, who wants less than nothing to do with the Gucci dynasty, considering his strained relationship with his ailing father Rodolfo (J...
Adele Wonders What’s Next on Powerful 30
No artist deserves to be defined by their romantic failures, least of all Adele, whose catalog has provided solace to leagues of lovelorn listeners over the past decade-plus — a generational voice worth wailing along to on our lowest days. So in 10, 25 and 50 years, when anniversary retrospectives are written about the star’s excellent new album 30, may it not be unjustly labeled as her “divorce album.” Because it’s not a divorce album. It’s an identity album. Adele’s fourth LP, out Friday, is largely informed by her 2019 split from her entrepreneur ex-husband Simon Konecki after a seven-year relationship. But 30 does not dare to wallow long in “woe is me” melancholy. Instead, Adele poses a much more constructive inquiry: Who am I now? Her marriage is over, the family she spent a decade nu...
Garth Brooks Brings The Hits, Salutes His Heroes at Nashville Show
Garth Brooks’s concert Thursday (Nov. 18) at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville was billed as “an intimate evening” with the superstar — and with just an acoustic guitar, no band, and a lengthy list of iconic songs, Brooks certainly lived up to the promise. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news At one moment soon after making his way onto the austere Opry House stage, Brooks gestured to the center stage circle of wood that was taken from the Grand Ole Opry’s former home at the Ryman Auditorium and installed when the Opry House opened in 1974—calling it “the same floorboards that the greatest of all have stood on.” From there, he offered a snippet of “Three Wooden Crosses,” which Randy Travis turned into a hit in 2002. Throughout the evening, Brook...
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Is Too Haunted By the Past to Feel Fresh: Review
The Pitch: Trying to tell a really good 21st century Ghostbusters story seems to be an enterprise guaranteed to make absolutely no one happy. Which already makes Ghostbusters: Afterlife a depressing venture right out of the gate; one can almost sense director Jason Reitman screaming from the sidelines, “Are you nerds happy now?!?” Unfortunately, as much as Afterlife openly seeks to draw upon nostalgia for the original, a lot of fans may find the taste of their youth to be curdled by the level of pandering involved. Things begin with the reveal that one of the original Ghostbusters (the movie gets a bit coy about this, but it’s Egon Spengler, who was played by the recently deceased Harold Ramis) had left his friends and moved to Summerville, Oklahoma in the years before his death. Following...
Adele’s 30 Is Much More Than a Divorce Album — It’s a Hard-Won Journey to Self-Love
“To be loved and love at the highest count, means to lose all the things I can’t live without.” When Adele croons that line on the devastating piano ballad “To Be Loved,” one gets the impression that it is not only emblematic of her latest album, but also the journey of the past six years of her life. On the surface, 30, out Friday (November 19th), could be perceived as a divorce album, but it’s more than that: It’s about depression, new love, rebirth, choosing the harder road even if it means self-preservation. Here, the singer digs deeper than she ever has before. Though Adele has always mastered the art of remaining notoriously private, despite being one of the biggest pop stars in the world, 30 unveils the extreme change she’s experienced over the years. Advertisement The world has bee...
