Leisure

Reviews and think pieces on music, movies, art, and theater.

In the District

An hour in the Life of a First Lady: The Portrait Gallery Presents Every Eye is Upon Me: First Ladies of the United States

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.” -Eleanor Roosevelt As the longest serving First Lady of the United... Read more

By November 21, 2020

Music

Ariana Grande Stands Healed, In Love, and Comfortable in Positions

Ariana Grande presents herself on her own terms, in all her flaws and vulnerabilities, in her sixth studio album titled Positions (2020). In this newest release, she delves deep into... Read more

By November 12, 2020

Leisure

The Welcome to the Blumhouse campaign serves as little more than a collection of entertaining and diverse but unremarkable horror films

If you like tacky horror movies, Amazon Prime is the site to stream this Halloween. Its set of films from the horror collection Welcome to the Blumhouse (2020) went live... Read more

By October 30, 2020

Movies

Kajillionaire is weird in the best way

Kajllionaire (2020) is first and foremost a weird movie. Most elements of the film—from the quirky characters paranoid of every rumble or quake to the puzzling visuals of pink foam... Read more

By October 27, 2020

Leisure

Amidst a Black horror renaissance, Antebellum is a blunder

(CW: spoilers, mentions of racial violence and sexual assault) Antebellum (2020) begins with an undeniably stylistic long take. The camera follows a few soldiers, winding along the grounds of a... Read more

By October 26, 2020

Movies

All In: The Fight for Democracy makes its message clear—Young people, vote

In the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race, former Georgia House of Representatives member Stacey Abrams could have become the first Black female governor in American history. While the election ended in... Read more

By October 24, 2020

Music

The Neighbourhood dazzles with genre-bending new album Chip Chrome & The Mono-Tones

Creating a concept album is an ambitious feat, but when done right, the end result has the potential to be stunning. Who better to attempt it than The Neighbourhood? The... Read more

By October 21, 2020

Music

BTS connects with fans through online concert Map of the Soul ON:E

Eight months ago, when BTS kicked off promotions for their new album Map of the Soul: 7 (2020) with a monumental performance of “ON” in an empty Grand Central Terminal,... Read more

By October 15, 2020

Music

Troye Sivan Creates Glorious, Otherworldly Pop with In A Dream

Troye Sivan’s latest EP, In A Dream (2020), contends with harsher realities and darker feelings than ever before. Since the release of his lush tribute to love, Bloom (2018), Sivan... Read more

By September 25, 2020

Music

Phoebe Bridgers’s Punisher radiates authenticity and wistfulness

Quarantine peaked for me when I was watching Phoebe Bridgers perform in shooting-star pajamas and a skeleton costume while promoting her latest album, Punisher (2020). In her performance of “Kyoto”... Read more

By September 21, 2020

Movies

Tenet is hard to see, and even harder to review

Movies are back! Well, they are according to this instantly iconic clip of Tom Cruise going to the theater to see Christopher Nolan’s newest film, Tenet (2020). The bizarre video... Read more

By September 18, 2020

Music

Dominic Fike rises above the pressure to deliver a masterful debut with What Could Possibly Go Wrong

Dominic Fike’s long-awaited first full-length album, What Could Possibly Go Wrong (2020), came out two and a half years after his hit EP, Don’t Forget About Me, Demos. The new... Read more

By September 16, 2020

Movies

Chemical Hearts trivializes mental illness with its doomed love story

Chemical Hearts (2020) may be a romance, but it was never supposed to be a love story. Based on Kyrstal Sutherland’s novel Our Chemical Hearts, the film follows the doomed... Read more

By September 16, 2020

Movies

Irresistible offers political commentary for 2019, in 2020

As the 2020 election draws closer, ads humanizing wealthy politicians start to fill television screens once more. Inboxes are cluttered with donation requests, and campaign speeches hitting just the right... Read more

By August 28, 2020

Music

Bombay Bicycle Club creates an acoustic escape in Two Lives EP

The first Bombay Bicycle Club song I ever listened to was a soft acoustic track called “You Already Know.” I would play it while on the train, imagining the road... Read more

By August 19, 2020

Music

Raleigh Ritchie’s Andy matches wit with honest introspection

Jacob Anderson isn’t the artist you might expect. Most well known for playing the taciturn warrior Grey Worm on HBO’s Game of Thrones, the familiar actor might give most folks... Read more

By July 28, 2020

Music

Jeremy Zucker’s love is not dying is desolate yet compelling

I’m not sure if the universe could have cooked up a more fitting album for our current situation than Jeremy Zucker’s solo debut, love is not dying (2020). Throughout the... Read more

By May 27, 2020

In the District

Fashioning a Nation shows what America is made of

The National Gallery of Art’s online exhibit Fashioning a Nation is a memorial to the close relationship between two essential facets of culture: history and fashion. Each sketch connects the... Read more

By May 2, 2020

Movies

The Hunt Doesn’t Live Up to the Controversy

Back in July of 2019 the first trailer for The Hunt (2020) dropped online, showing a group of rich, snobby (liberal) elites hunting a bunch of regular (conservative) people, and... Read more

By April 12, 2020

Music

The Weeknd Embraces Darkness on After Hours

In the music video for “Blinding Lights,” The Weeknd, born Abel Tesfaye, dances maniacally through the empty nighttime streets of Las Vegas. Bandaged and bloodied, he sports a red suit... Read more

By April 11, 2020