Review: Bradley Cooper’s ‘A Star Is Born’
“Gaga’s mere presence in ‘A Star Is Born’ allows Cooper a wide berth to go big with scenes and moments that play with and embrace camp.”
Review: Joseph Kahn’s ‘Bodied’
“‘Bodied’ is a blisteringly urgent and inescapably topical meditation on race, class and identity; the kind of movie that could only be told with the panache and in-your-face directness of Kahn.”
Baby and The Driver: Motion, Music and Meaning
“‘Baby Driver’ and ‘Drive’ are not road maps to modernity, they don’t offer any route through it that guarantees a safe arrival. The only advice they might offer is to tear up the map itself. To simply drive.”
Album Review: The Quick ‘Mondo Deco’ Expanded Edition
“It’s hard not to listen to The Quick’s output and wonder, wistfully, what could have been.”
Album Review: Iceage ‘Beyondless’
“At times, ‘Beyondless’ is overwhelming in the scope of its genius, but the chord progressions that Johan Surrballe Wieth has conjured are something divine.”
Album Review: Drinks ‘Hippo Lite’
“The music of Drinks is uncategorizable, yet addictive. For those who crave something that genuinely challenges the ears, ‘Hippo Lite’ is a real find.”
Album Review: A Place to Bury Strangers ‘Pinned’
“With ‘Pinned,’ A Place to Bury Strangers shows that the band’s exploration of ‘one good idea’ continues to yield amazing results.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s ‘The Red Shoes’
“‘The Red Shoes’ dynamically crosses from reality to fantasy, befitting a film that is itself a grand fiction, simultaneously reflecting and critiquing a true reality. That’s the power of cinema — that’s the power of ‘The Red Shoes.’”
Music for a Brutal, Contemporary Planet: A Selective Alice Cooper Retrospective
Mike Thorn on Alice Cooper’s ‘From the Inside, ‘Special Forces’ and ‘Brutal Planet’
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Marshall Shaffer on Paul Robeson
“As both a man and an artist, Paul Robeson deserves more recognition in 2018 and beyond.”
Vague Visages Is FilmStruck: Marshall Shaffer on Valentine’s Day and a FilmStruck Wedding
Love Is Love: Peter Putzel Marries FilmStruck
Album Review: The Soft Moon ‘Criminal’
“While The Soft Moon has always released music that could best be described as ‘none more bleak,’ with ‘Criminal,’ there seems to be something like acceptance. Maybe that’s the bleakest timeline of all.”
Album Review: Ty Segall ‘Freedom’s Goblin’
“These are songs that don’t feel like they’ve been corrupted by overthinking or compressed by studio gloss.”
Album Review: De Lux ‘More Disco Songs About Love’
“De Lux excels at provoking a ‘what did he just sing?’ curiosity while you’re moving back and forth to the beat.”
The Song of the Cloud-Capped Mountain: Anushka Meenakshi and Iswar Srikumar’s ‘Kho ki pa lü’
“‘Kho ki pa lü’ is about a lot of things, but it’s mostly about music. It is about Li, the songs that people sing when they cultivate rice in small müles.”
Album Review: WHIMM ‘A Stare Ajar’
“This is a trio dwelling on the sharp, atonal edge of post-punk”
Album Review: Melkbelly ‘Nothing Valley’
“Melkbelly is hard to pin down; their songs flaunt a flagrant disregard for what many would consider indie rock or punk or post-punk.”
Album Review: O.R.B. ‘Naturality’
“The first two songs on ‘Naturality’ prove O.R.B.’s members have clearly got the chops to do something different with their doom-inspired template.”
Album Review: Wand ‘Plum’
“Perhaps ‘Plum’ represents the incarnation of what Wand fans didn’t know they were looking for until they heard it.”
Ty Segall Goes Acoustic at Toronto’s Night Owl Festival
“As Segall’s self-assurance increased, so did his funny banter.”