Reviews
Metallica Dig Out More Deep Cuts for Second and Final 40th Anniversary Show: Review
Setting the Stage: The first night of Metallica’s two 40th anniversary shows at in San Francisco’s Chase Center delivered a strong career-spanning set, so expectations ran high for Night 2 a couple of evenings later (Sunday, December 19th). Once more, no special guests were present for this final performance (unlike their 30th anniversary concerts), but quite a few setlist surprises occurred. Similar to the first night, the setlist was constructed in a manner that featured a tune or two from each album chronologically. But, this night, instead of starting from 1983’s Kill ‘Em All and running through 2016’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, it was set up in reverse order, starting with the band’s last album and finishing up with selections from their debut. Taking the Stage: As with the fi...
Metallica Rep Every Album At First of Two 40th Anniversary Shows: Concert Review + Photos
Setting the Stage: It’s hard to believe, but it has been 40 years since thrash legends Metallica first formed. And to celebrate this impressive career accomplishment, the band — frontman James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett, bassist Robert Trujillo, and drummer Lars Ulrich — booked two arena shows (December 17th and 19th) at San Francisco’s Chase Center. When those concerts quickly sold out, the metal titans announced they were making the shows available to stream for free via Prime Video and Amazon Music. Unlike their livestreams from last year, including the charity show Helping Hands Concert & Auction, Live & Acoustic from HQ, each night of the “40th Anniversary Live” performances is taking place in front of a sold-out arena, with tickets initially being made available exclusi...
Spider-Man: No Way Home Review: A Daring Narrative Feat With a Lot to Say About the Web-Slinger
The Pitch: It’s very very hard to make specific references to much of what happens in Spider-Man: No Way Home without spoilers. But at one point, while discussing the memory spell that Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) has agreed to perform for Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Peter voices his concern over his beloved MJ (Zendaya) forgetting that he’s Spider-Man. Doctor Strange then points out that if MJ is only Peter’s girlfriend because he’s Spider-Man, then what does that say about their relationship? It’s perhaps the smartest thing Doctor Strange says in the entire movie, and evaluating No Way Home leads to a similar dilemma. What director Jon Watts and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have done with this film is an unprecedented piece of corporate-produced art. But attempting to ...
The Succession Season 3 Finale Confirmed Why the HBO Series Is One of TV’s Most Fascinating Dramas
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of Succession, “All the Bells Say.”] One of the elements which stood out the most about Season 3 of Succession was location: specifically, a shift to the sun-dappled splendor that is rural Tuscany, site of both Lady Caroline Collingwood’s (Harriet Walter) wedding and her betrayal of her children. While the HBO series has always been aesthetically lush, with an emphasis on the elegant homes and offices in which the Roys seem born to dwell in, having some of the series’ most ugly behavior to date take place in such a beautiful place seems like the ultimate distillation of the show as a whole. The finale once again featured the Roy children coming after control of the company, this time in an effort to prevent tech mo...
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...
