Album Review: Arca ‘KiCk i’
“Taken as a whole, ‘KiCk i’ is a delirious tour-de-force, a compilation of experiments that don’t fully cohere but still build up to an intriguing final image.”
Putting the Record Straight: In Conversation with 70s Rock Icon Suzi Quatro
“Right now, I’ve never felt more creative.” – Rhys Handley Interviews 70s Rock Icon Suzi Quatro About Her Career and the 2020 Documentary ‘Suzi Q’
Album Review: Phoebe Bridgers ‘Punisher’
“Bridgers, like all her millennial contemporaries, contains multitudes as yet unseen. She is living any number of lives all at once — but, at the core of it all, there’s still a vulnerable child of the 90s adrift in a merciless world…”
Album Review: Jehnny Beth ‘To Love Is to Live’
“Unafraid of what makes her difficult, idiosyncratic or complex, Jehnny Beth ties a bow on this project with an impressive clarity that serves to reinforce her already-established and considerable talents while boldly traversing new, untested, innately personal ground with aplomb.”
Album Review: Run the Jewels ‘RTJ4’
“The verbal gymnastics and musical dynamism on display serve as an exacting call to attention, turning listeners’ eyes and ears onto a reality long disregarded by the privileged.”
Album Review: The 1975 ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’
“By the end, ‘Notes on a Conditional Form’ reveals itself to be about very little — too incoherent to justify its length and too scattershot to feel like a unified whole.”
Album Review: Hayley Williams ‘Petals for Armor’
“Although ‘Petals for Armor’ continually returns to a well of torment and reflection, there is a sense of reinvigorated purpose and direction at play in both Williams’ words and her aesthetic choices.”
Album Review: Car Seat Headrest ‘Making a Door Less Open’
“Much of what Toledo communicates in ‘Making a Door Less Open’ taps aptly into the strangeness and hysteria of the present moment, reaffirming his ability as an assuredly human and fallible rock ’n’ roll troubadour.”
Review: Pablo Larraín’s ‘Ema’
“‘Ema’ is a challenge to the walls we build around ourselves, to the baggage we leave behind for our children and the folly of the damage we can do to each other.”
Review: Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s ‘Bacurau’
“Relishing in its ability to wrong foot and thrill right to its final moments, ‘Bacurau’ is an unashamedly cinematic experience, with its makers playing in a sandbox of tropes and expectations, subverting them to put forward a radical and wholly essential message.”
Why Criticism: Mediocrity as a Catalyst at Berlinale 2020
“We are all mediocre writers when we start, and we must engage with others’ mediocrity throughout our careers. But we must engage with it level-headedly, picking out the good from the bad and making those distinctions to the best of our ability.”
Berlinale 2020 Review: Kelly Reichardt’s ‘First Cow’
“Reichardt’s story has the mythic quality of a fable, but refrains from moralising or casting judgement on the misdeeds and mistakes of its characters.”
Berlinale 2020 Review: Bassam Tariq’s ‘Mogul Mowgli’
“Similarly to its lead, ‘Mogul Mowgli’ indicates its awareness of the big themes tied to the experiences of young British-Pakistani men, but doesn’t quite do all the legwork required to properly manifest a thesis.”
Review: Ico Costa’s ‘Alva’
“A showcase of the potent purity of visual expression, ‘Alva’ concerns itself with consequence, more specifically the consequences we attribute to ourselves, as well as those we put upon others we can never truly know.”
Review: Noah Baumbach’s ‘Marriage Story’
“At once riveting and entertaining, while inciting in the viewer visceral and arduous self-reflection, ‘Marriage Story’ is an uncompromising and deeply affectionate reflection on what pulls us apart and yet what keeps us bound together despite it all.”
Review: Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Laundromat’
“A great magician never reveals his tricks, and Soderbergh far too nakedly shows the craft in ‘The Laundromat,’ whereas a narrower focus, with the human consequence of the Panama Papers in clear sight, could have beguiled, incited and entertained in equal measure.”
Locarno Film Festival Review: Eric Bergkraut and Ruth Schweikert’s ‘Parents – Wir Eltern’
“‘Parents – Wir Eltern’ is an imminently likeable movie, but frustrating for the insurmountable reach of its ambition.”
On Reaching Outward for Understanding in The National’s ‘I Am Easy to Find’
“What is crucial to its success is the way Mills and The National reach outward just as much as they do inward, using one woman’s painfully ordinary life to commemorate the differences and the commonalities that define the waves, cycles, memories and echoes of human life.”
Clermont-Ferrand 2019 Short Film Review: Kitao Sakurai’s ‘The Passage’
“With a gorgeous vintage sheen across its 4:3 aspect ratio, Sakurai’s short establishes a magical realist land that magnifies the burgeoning diversity of America today – along with all the confusion, preposterousness and sudden violence that comes with it.”
Review: Camille Vidal-Naquet’s ‘Sauvage / Wild’
“‘Sauvage’ emerges in the context of ‘BPM (Beats Per Minute)’ as a darker, grittier cousin. Both tell physically intimate stories, but where ‘BPM (Beats Per Minute)’ brims with romance, anger and sheer joy, ‘Sauvage’ has a harder edge and leaves more of a bitter taste.”