Reviews
NYFF Review: Todd Haynes Turns Up the Volume for His Engaging Velvet Underground Doc
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The Velvet Underground might have been the best American rock band of all time, and Todd Haynes has made a documentary about their relatively short but extremely influential career, which means covering not just core members Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, but collaborators and contemporaries like Nico, Andy Warhol, and Jonas Mekas. Started Shaking to That Fine, Fine Music: Todd Haynes obviously loves rock and roll, which makes it all the more impressive that he’s spent his career making movies about key figures in its history while avoiding the usual lionizing cliches. Starting with Superstar, his doll-acted Karen Carpenter biopic that’s not commercially available, and continuing wit...
NYFF Review: Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch is a Star-Packed Issue Worth Picking Up
The Pitch: Wes Anderson returns with his first live-action movie since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, crafting another group of stories within stories (and aspect ratios within aspect ratios). Here, he presents a 1975 issue of The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, a fictional New Yorker-ish magazine, featuring dramatizations of three major stories: a profile of an imprisoned artist (Benicio del Toro); a chronicle of youthful social revolution, led by Timothée Chalamet; and a combination crime story and food piece narrated by a jack-of-all-trades writer (Jeffrey Wright). That’s just a fraction of the sprawling cast, which includes Anderson mainstays like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Edward Norton alongside newbies like Chalamet, del Toro, Wright, and Léa S...
NYFF Review: Simon Rex Gets a Surprising A24 Showcase in Sean Baker’s Red Rocket
The Pitch: Mikey Saber (Simon Rex) rolls back into his hometown on a bus, bruised and nearly penniless. His career as an adult film performer has seemingly dried up some time ago, so he shows up at the doorstep of his not-quite-ex-wife Lexi (Bree Elrod), another porn-industry castoff. With few job prospects and no car — he tools around on a one-speed bike — Mikey attempts to rebuild his life. This might sound like a kitchen-sink recovery drama, but Mikey’s interest in self-improvement is questionable and filmmaker Sean Baker’s interest in misery-wallowing is, as ever, minimal. Instead, Red Rocket is a queasily hilarious chronicle of misdirected American hustle. Sunshine States: After exploring the streets of Los Angeles in Tangerine and the outskirts of Orlando in The Florida Project, Bake...
Brandi Carlile’s In These Silent Days Is Brilliantly Intimate
Perhaps no artist was better equipped to withstand quarantine, at least from a logistical perspective, than Brandi Carlile. The singer lives on a farm in rural Washington state, about 45 minutes outside Seattle (and 10 minutes from her tiny hometown of Ravensdale). Her core bandmates Phil and Tim Hanseroth are her neighbors, and their families hunkered down together throughout the pandemic. With her songwriting partners conveniently located within her “bubble,” Carlile continued to work, conjuring her aptly titled seventh studio LP In These Silent Days. The anticipated follow-up to her Grammy-winning masterstroke, 2018’s By The Way, I Forgive You, is once again magnificent — a triumphant patchwork of Americana, folk-rock, pop and soul anchored by yet another show-stopping centerpiece in “R...
No Time to Die Offers a Thrilling Swan Song to Daniel Craig’s 007: Review
The Pitch: After James Bond (Daniel Craig) left MI6 after the events of Spectre, he attempts to leave his past — and that of his new paramour, Madeleine Swann (Léa Seydoux) — behind him. But the ghosts of SPECTRE and his foster brother-turned- supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Christoph Waltz), remain, particularly once a gene-coded supervirus falls into the hands of a secretive villain (Rami Malek) who has his own ax to grind against the criminal organization. Reluctantly, Bond re-enters the world of spycraft and intrigue, now competing with MI6 and the new 007 (Lashana Lynch) to track down the virus and stave off global genocide — and close a few holes in his personal story along the way as well. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: We’ve long known that No Time to Die would...
Governors Ball 2021 Day 2 Live Gallery: Megan Thee Stallion, Phoebe Bridgers, A$AP Rocky and More
Day 2 of Governors Ball 2021 — the New York City festival’s 10th anniversary — is in the books. 50,000 attendees flooded the parking lot outside Citi Field on Saturday, September 25th to check out sets from a bill stacked with hip-hop and indie rock greats. With A$AP Rocky closing down the night and J Balvin marking the fest’s first Latino headliner, the day also saw performances from MUNA, Bleachers, King Princess, Megan Thee Stallion, Phoebe Bridgers, Cordae, Big Thief, and Pink Sweat$. Ahead, see pictures of all the sets the Consequence team caught, whether you’re reliving your favorite moments from Gov Ball Day 2, or looking for some FOMO. You can also revisit our Day 1 Governors Ball photo gallery, and stay tuned for a portrait collection at the end of the weekend. Advertisement Relat...
Governors Ball Day 2: The 5 Best Things We Saw
Let’s get it out of the way: those on Rihanna Watch will be pleased to know that she did indeed show up for her beau A$AP Rocky’s blistering headlining performance at Governors Ball on Saturday, September 25th. On stage, there were surprises all around at Day 2, including J Balvin’s dazzling fireworks display, a Phoebe Bridgers cameo, and a full-crowd sing along of “WAP” during Megan Thee Stallion. Saturday’s lineup boasted more rock and alternative options. Bleachers brought the energy of a Bruce Springsteen set, complete with two (2) drummers two (2) saxophone players, and Big Thief gave a deeply inspired performance, with a highlight being the furious and extended jam, “Not.” Advertisement Related Video Meanwhile, Megan Thee Stallion and NY native A$AP Rocky drew mammoth crowds and gave...
Billie Eilish Assumes Her Role as Pop Icon at Governors Ball 2021
Billie Eilish was only 16 years old the last time she played Governors Ball back in 2018, but she still felt like it was something different. “It was my favorite show I’d ever done,” she told the crowd on Friday night (September 24th) as she headlined Day 1 of Gov Ball, which has relocated to Citi Field from Randall’s Island, “And this might be that the second time.” A Billie Eilish show in 2021 is certainly a marquee event, and last night’s crowd knew that very well — thousands of fans showed up to cheer on one of the biggest stars in the world and experience live music again. Regardless of where you were situated in the crowd, you could physically hear the army of fans singing Eilish’s words back to her, almost louder than she even expected. Advertisement Related Video Oftentimes when ar...
Governors Ball 2021 Day 1: The 5 Best Things We Saw
It was just a few months ago that Foo Fighters welcomed back live music in New York City with their Madison Square Garden show, and that already feels like a lifetime ago. If that was the city healing, the return of Governors Ball is NYC thriving. The festival kicked off its 10th anniversary celebration on Friday night, beckoning the throngs of music-hungry youths to its new location at Citi Field. The parking lot setting is a far cry from the barely-accessible Randall’s Island of years’ past, and frankly that’s a good thing. There was already enough anxiety about being in such massive throngs once again (checked for vaccinations and negative tests though they were) without worrying about cramming onto a bus or missing the last ferry to get off the island. That relative ease compared to ye...
Eddie Vedder Debuts New Band, Covers R.E.M., Kings of Leon, Pretenders, Prince and More at Ohana Fest
Eddie Vedder was slated to pull headlining double duty at his Ohana Festival this weekend with a solo set on Saturday and bringing Pearl Jam back to Southern California for the first time since 2013. However, following Kings of Leon’s sudden withdrawal on Thursday to tend to a family matter, Vedder sprung into action. The day was slightly marred by a thunder and lightning warning, but things got cooking with the Regrettes, Black Pumas and a blistering set by My Morning Jacket that was extended due to the Kings’ absence before Vedder took the stage. Previously at Ohana, Vedder performed solo acoustically with help from a few guests on occasion. Not tonight. Enlisting and debuting an all-star group of musicians, including super-producer Andrew Watt, bassist Pino Palladino, Glen Hansard and c...
NYFF Review: Joel Coen Goes Solo in Style with The Tragedy of Macbeth
This review is part of our coverage of the 2021 New York Film Festival. The Pitch: The Coen Brothers plus Shakespeare — whaddaya need, a roadmap? Actually, you might; or at least a program note to explain why The Tragedy of Macbeth has only one Coen on hand. It’s not a retro affectation that Joel Coen is taking sole director credit, as he used to on the joint Coen projects (until 2004’s The Ladykillers, Joel took “director” and Ethan handled “producer,” even though they were always really doing both). Ethan is taking a break from making movies, while Joel has mounted a black-and-white version of Shakespeare’s famous (and fleetest?) tragedy, with Denzel Washington as Lord Macbeth, who becomes convinced he must take bloody action to fulfill his destiny and become king of Scotland, and France...
The Fugees Return to the Stage in Epic Fashion
On a windy rooftop above Pier 17 of New York’s South Street Seaport—and approximately three and a half hours after the show’s advertised start time—the Fugees performed together for the first time in 15 years, presenting a colossal show taped to be aired as part of this weekend’s Global Citizen Festival. Billed as a pop-up show, it was far from that. With a pageantry rarely seen at a rap show, the set opened with the one-by-one emergence of a 20-piece mixed-style orchestra (14 horn players in formal attire, multiple guitarists, keyboardists, and bass players, backup singers, and a DJ), followed by Wyclef Jean, Pras Michel, and finally, Ms. Lauryn Hill, wearing a red-ruffled couture gown (which word is she designed). As an instrumental horn and key version of “The Score” led into “How Many ...
