If there’s one good thing I can say about “Justice League”, it’s that the league itself is in top-notch shape. DC’s greatest heroes have excellent chemistry with one another while remaining interesting on their own merits. It truly is a shame, then that they inhabit what is otherwise, at best, a thoroughly mediocre movie. Any strong character work fades away in the face of an incredibly choppy story, tonal issues, a boring villain and poor visual effects. What should be a major pop culture event winds up feeling like yet another poorly-made blockbuster.
“The Florida Project,” one of the year’s critical darlings, immediately places a question in viewers’ minds that remains unanswered by the rest of the film. What exactly is the “Florida Project”?
What’s in a name? This question drives director Greta Gerwig in her new film, “Lady Bird.”
The film centers on the tumultuous final year of Catholic high school for Christine McPherson, who chooses to rename herself “Lady Bird” in an attempt to alter her identity.
Although the film is set in the years 2002 and 2003, the anxiety and excitement that Lady Bird feels — and actress Saoirse Ronan expertly portrays — are timeless, and they will evoke similar memories in any viewer.
“We are all Peer Gynt,” the actors chanted, some on stage, others surrounding the audience, all dressed in the signature red that coded them as the main character they all played. The house lights glowed as the audience shrank into their seats, trying to hide their discomfort with the subverted theatre norms.
Whether you’re returning home for Thanksgiving or not, there were certainly be plenty of downtime next week, and if you’re anything like me, part of this time will be spent catching up on all the shows that have fallen by the wayside as a result of endless piles of work. Often, some of the best shows on Netflix and Amazon get lost amidst the countless promotions for the latest original series and suggestions for shows you’ve seen too many times. Here is a compilation of some of the lesser known shows out there for you to consider next time you want to enjoy good television.
Dance and Step at Amherst College (DASAC) hosted its fall show this past weekend, and in it, the group once again exemplified how to combine style, agility and audience engagement in a performance piece. The theme for this show was “Old School vs. New School”, but after a few minutes watching the show, it became clear to me that this was really a show about two schools of confidence. There is the cocky, big-headed kind of confidence that constitutes the old school.
Since the release of his 2013 debut mixtape, “Unknown Death 2002,” Swedish alternative rapper Yung Lean has held an odd place in the hip-hop world. As a European, he started out as an outsider in the largely-American genre. Many Americans viewed his melodic and occasionally nonsensical rap about drugs and sadness as a joke, not to be taken seriously.
