The Great Believers begins, like all great novels, with a funeral — only not a funeral, exactly. Yale, the bookish and gentle main character, arrives with his dashing British boyfriend, Charlie, at the doorstep of a friend’s Chicago row home. It’s a gathering to celebrate the life of their friend, Nico.
One of Charli XCX’s most redeeming qualities as a musician is her unflinching artistic sincerity and independence. From the very beginning of her career, Charli has been committed to brave sonic experimentation and exploration, not just in the way that she produces her albums, but also in the manner by which she proactively incorporates features from diverse artists into her music. This very sincerity and independence is at the forefront of what is her most revealing and dynamic album yet, Charli.
Once again creating a huge buzz, this year’s New York Fashion Week (NYFW) ended just last Saturday, Sept. 14, telling us what our closets will look like this coming season.
The Peanut Butter Falcon, which hit theaters early last week, follows the journey of Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down syndrome who makes a chaotic run away from the nursing home he’s been placed in, all with hopes of making it to a wrestling school in the Carolinas. Along the way, he meets Tyler (Shia LaBeouf), a down-and-out fisherman who’s been run out of his nearby home-town after enacting some costly — and potentially misplaced — revenge.
There is no way to review The Spy, Netflix’s new show about Israeli agent Eli Cohen, without talking extensively about the brilliance of Sacha Baron Cohen. It’s true that the history behind the show is fascinating and that there are some incredible side stories as well. There’s no question that there are distinctive and remarkable artistic decisions taken by the director and cinematographer in almost every episode.
I’ll get the unfortunate news out of the way first. Despite all of the buzz on the internet, Hustlers probably isn’t going to win any Oscars. However, it is easy to see why the film — and Jennifer Lopez’s performance — has garnered so much praise since its release earlier this week.
Leaving my apartment in Nine East to go to India for part of this summer, I had to wait 15 minutes for my very slow Uber to make its way to pick me up and take me to the airport. The security guard sitting at the front desk was someone I recognized — she always sees me at my sleep-deprived best. Yet, waiting for the Uber was the first time I had the chance to have a real conversation with her.
Pasta is my go-to comfort food. So when a friend suggested this past Saturday that we treat ourselves to dinner in Little Italy, I agreed. It had been a long first week back, and I’d spent too much time on campus. There was also a festival that she wanted to go to, which sounded nice, but I didn’t really know what that was about.
About three quarters of the way through every concert that I’ve been to, I find myself transitioning from a state of enjoying the concert and the moment that I’m in, to realizing that the experience will be ending soon and feeling stressed about having to enjoy the performance.
The Red Sea Diving Resort is based on a true story. Directed by Gideon Raff, it’s about a team of Israeli Mossad agents who smuggle endangered Jewish Ethiopian refugees out of Sudan through a fake exotic resort on the coast of Sudan.
If the first part of the It saga was about the terrors of childhood — the uncertainty of growing up, the possibility that adults can’t or won’t help you solve your problems — then It: Chapter Two is a treatise on stagnation, the fear that maybe we can’t ever escape the demons (metaphorical and otherwise) that haunted us as children.
Many may recognize Justin Chon as a frequent collaborator of popular Asian-American Youtubers Wong Fu, Ryan Higa and KevJumba. Or to others less familiar with YouTube, he can be associated with Eric Yorkie from Twilight or Brenda Song’s annoying brother in Disney’s Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior.
With the release of So Much Fun, Young Thug is finally seeing the commercial success fans have wanted for him for years. Despite being a household name for many as far back as 2015 with his Barter 6 project, or even 2014 through the single “Lifestyle” as a part of Rich Gang, Thugger’s road to superstardom has been long and fraught to say the least.
The annual Hopkins Dance O-Show took place this past Saturday at the Shriver Hall auditorium. The event is a popular showcase of the University’s dance performance groups, usually held a couple weeks after freshman orientation. Several minutes into the show, the auditorium was already filled to the brim, with more students shuttling into the auditorium between performances.
Premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and released shortly after in April, Hail Satan? follows the rise and growth of The Satanic Temple (TST), a “nontheistic religious and political activist group,” according to Wikipedia. The documentary, directed by Penny Lane, draws attention to The Satanic Temple and their confrontations with local governments and media outlets as they advocate for religious pluralism and the separation between church and state.
The Great British Bake-Off is back for its tenth season, with new episodes available on Netflix every Friday, just three days after they originally air in the U.K. By now, the reality show has garnered a reputation for being undeniably soothing. It’s the show you fall asleep to after watching a horror movie, and it’s the show you turn on when the news is stressing you out.
It’s somewhat ironic that the stylish aesthetics of The Great Hack, Netflix’s recent documentary on the 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, are so indebted to the social media world it indicts. Throughout the film, its subjects walk through city streets bustling with digitally superimposed messages and posts hovering in the air.
With the 2020 presidential election around the corner and my summer mornings on the subway inundated with bolded headlines across passengers’ phones about the Democratic debates, tensions are at an all-time high.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, directed by André Øvredal and produced by Guillermo del Toro, is a film adaptation of the popular children’s book series of the same name.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, directed by André Øvredal and produced by Guillermo del Toro, is a film adaptation of the popular children’s book series of the same name. Although it has a running time of only 108 minutes, the film manages to develop unique renditions of the original stories and creatively incorporates them into the larger narrative plot of the film.
