The Meg is just about everything that you want it to be. It follows the destructive path of a giant, not-so-prehistoric shark who is surfacing for the first time in thousands of years and wants a taste of beach-happy humans. Along the way, The Meg nods to Jaws a few times, dangles a person or…
I watched Bo Burnham’s comedy special “Make Happy” on Netflix for the first time in the fall of my freshman year. In the final song, Burnham emulates Kanye’s famously long and rambling rants from the Yeezus tour. It focuses in on performance and the joys, anxieties, and resulting pain of being on a stage for…
Mission: Impossible – Fallout is everything audiences have come to expect from this iconic action film franchise and then some. With impressively choreographed stunts, thrilling action sequences, ever-rising stakes, a likable cast and, surprisingly, a heart, the movie transcends the stereotype of a summer blockbuster, becoming perhaps the best Mission: Impossible installment to date and…
There’s a scene in Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade that is more casually upsetting than anything you’re bound to see in any horror film this year. Positioned against the locker-lined walls of a middle school hallway, the mostly preteen student body watch as a body armor-sporting, boot-stomping maniac stalks it with a machine gun, nonchalantly plugging…
The Purge films are special, mostly because they’ve offered up perhaps the purest examples of modern exploitation cinema being made with a mainstream mindset. Beginning with a simple hook—for one night in America each year, crime has been legalized by the government as a means of spiritually “cleansing” the nation of its vilest impulses—writer/director James…
Electro Indie Pop duo Sylvan Esso will be bringing their talents to the District on July 26. Hailing from Durham, North Carolina, their music is unlike anything else, even though the genre they fit into can be overrun with similar-sounding songs. Their debut self-titled album, released in 2014, is complete with dancey hits like “Coffee,”…
It’s the squeak, that’s the first thing. The strain in his voice over high open-vowel sounds, Lil Reek sounds a lot younger than he is. He’s not old though. The Graduation EP is his debut project, made as a send-off for his high school graduation. Admittedly, that’s almost old in Soundcloud terms. Lil Yachty was…
Courtney Barnett’s mellow Melbourne folk stylings are not to be missed. Her thick Aussie accent is what stands out most in her music, but the rustic guitar riffs and indie rock stylings are what really make her one of this era’s best artists. Her songs “Avant Gardener” and “Depreston” showcase this talent best, both relatively…
There is a scene in Sorry to Bother You — the much hyped debut film from multihyphenate screenwriter-director Boots Riley — wherein our protagonist Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield) is obliged to perform for wealthy, coked out partygoers. At first, expectations deflate around Cash’s lame attempt at freestyling until he begins half-rapping, half-shouting the n-word over…
On the title track of Deaf Poets’ newest E.P., Change & Bloom, Sean Wouters repeats the chorus line, “My wasted years trying to change and bloom / My future is written and it’s not with you.” This one lyric captures the sentiment of the entire track collection. Inspired by the band’s recent move from Miami…