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CHROMAKOPIA: Tyler, the Creator's Paranoia Record

Tyler, the Creator's eighth album dropped on a Monday morning, which was a specific choice. The record itself is the specific choice that matters.

Jules Okonkwo·15 Nov·5 min

A lone robot silhouette on a forested island at sunset

Film

The Wild Robot: Animation, Still

Chris Sanders' adaptation of Peter Brown's novel is the best animated feature of the year and an argument for DreamWorks doing specifically what Pixar has stopped doing.

Lena Ashworth·24 Oct·5 min

A futuristic skyline drawn in architect's white ink against a midnight background

Film

Megalopolis: Coppola's $120 Million Argument With Himself

Francis Ford Coppola self-funded his first film in thirteen years. It is nearly unwatchable in specific places and almost-great in others. The project is the point.

Lena Ashworth·18 Oct·5 min

A neon-green theatrical sign in the shape of a striped sandworm

Film

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: The Rare Legacy Sequel That Remembers What the Original Was

Tim Burton returns to Beetlejuice after 36 years and makes a legacy sequel that actually works, mostly because he refused to make a serious one.

Marcus Vell·14 Oct·5 min

A neon pink stage curtain pulled half-open, empty seats in the foreground

Music

Chappell Roan: The Slow-Motion Pop Star

Chappell Roan's album came out in September 2023. Her stardom arrived in summer 2024. The eleven-month gap is the interesting thing.

Jules Okonkwo·18 Sep·5 min

A crow silhouette against a stormy grey sky above a decaying industrial building

Film

The Crow: How Not to Remake a Movie

The Crow remake, after two decades of failed attempts, finally arrived in August and confirmed every reason the attempts should have stayed failed.

Marcus Vell·8 Sep·5 min

An alpine resort at dusk, concrete balconies in fog

Film

Cuckoo: Tilman Singer's Weird Alpine Fever Dream

Tilman Singer's second feature is one of the weirdest mid-budget horror films of the year, and one of the least bothered about making sense. An argument for the horror film that works on dream logic.

Marcus Vell·2 Sep·5 min

A rural Pacific Northwest cabin in red-tinted magic-hour light

Film

Strange Darling: A Formal Con in Six Parts

JT Mollner's non-linear indie thriller has a gimmick and knows it. A case for the film that uses its structural trick as an actual argument.

Marcus Vell·30 Aug·5 min

A dim corridor of an abandoned space station, emergency lighting flickering at the far end

Film

Alien: Romulus and the Legacyquel Problem

Fede Álvarez's Alien entry is a competent piece of horror filmmaking that wants, urgently, to remind you of other films. The reminders are where it falters.

Marcus Vell·28 Aug·5 min

Stone castle battlements in grey storm light above a misty landscape

House of the Dragon Season 2: The Momentum Problem

House of the Dragon's second season ended earlier this month. After eight episodes that often circled material without advancing it, the season is a specific diagnostic.

Priya Nair·22 Aug·5 min

Music

Charm: Clairo Grows Up Again

Claire Cottrill's third album, produced with Leon Michels, is the record where she finally finds the sonic register her songwriting has been reaching for.

Jules Okonkwo·16 Aug·4 min

A tornado on an Oklahoma horizon, a pickup truck in the foreground silhouetted against it

Film

Twisters: The Legacy Reboot That Weirdly Works

Lee Isaac Chung's Twisters sequel-slash-reboot should not have been any good. It is, instead, one of the strongest American genre films of the summer.

Marcus Vell·14 Aug·5 min

A Chicago courthouse photographed through rain at dusk

Presumed Innocent: The David E. Kelley Engine, Warmed Up Again

Apple's Presumed Innocent is not a radical show. It is a competent one, and competent legal drama has become rare enough that the competence is worth noting.

Priya Nair·18 Jul·5 min

A stylised animation of abstract coloured shapes drifting against a dark blue background

Film

Inside Out 2: Pixar Figures Itself Out Again

Pixar's ninth sequel turns out to be, surprisingly, one of the studio's best films in a decade. An argument for the animation that grew up with its audience.

Lena Ashworth·12 Jul·5 min

A Midwestern highway at dusk, one motorcycle pulled over by the shoulder

Film

The Bikeriders: Jeff Nichols' Slow Elegy

Jeff Nichols' motorcycle-club drama was held up by distribution chaos for a year, then released in a summer that did not know what to do with it. A case for the slower film.

Marcus Vell·2 Jul·5 min

A Tokyo public toilet at night, illuminated from within by soft neon

Film

Perfect Days: Wenders, Tokyo, and the Discipline of Noticing

Wim Wenders' film about a Tokyo toilet cleaner is the quietest great film of the year. An argument for the discipline of the ordinary.

Lena Ashworth·20 Jun·5 min

A 1970s Los Angeles street at night, a cinema marquee glowing in the rain

The Sympathizer: Park Chan-wook's American Adaptation

Park Chan-wook's HBO adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel is the most formally audacious prestige TV of the spring. A show about duality delivered by a director who specialises in it.

Priya Nair·14 Jun·5 min

An underwater image of a body sinking below a blue-lit surface

Music

Hit Me Hard and Soft: Billie Eilish Grown Up

Billie Eilish's third album is a quieter, longer, more patient record than the one she was commercially expected to make. It is also, easily, her best.

Jules Okonkwo·8 Jun·5 min

A Japanese mountain forest in early morning mist, a single trail winding out of view

Film

Evil Does Not Exist: Hamaguchi's Quietest Provocation

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's follow-up to Drive My Car is the quietest major film of the year. An argument for the patience the film requires and rewards.

Lena Ashworth·25 May·5 min

A retro-futurist poster for a nuclear fallout shelter with faded pastel tones

Fallout: How Amazon Adapted a Video Game Without Breaking It

Jonathan Nolan's Fallout is the best video game adaptation anyone has made, because it treats the source material’s tone as the thing worth preserving.

Priya Nair·20 May·5 min

A cluttered home office at dusk, a typewriter on the desk and stacks of books on the floor

Film

American Fiction: Cord Jefferson's Double Movie

Cord Jefferson's debut feature is two films trying to be one. The surprise, two months into its run, is that both films work.

Lena Ashworth·12 May·5 min

An old typewriter on a wooden desk with a stack of handwritten pages beside it

Music

The Tortured Poets Department: Taylor Swift's Unedited Record

Taylor Swift's eleventh studio album, released as a double in April, is the longest piece of popular music she has ever put out, and the most urgently in need of an editor.

Jules Okonkwo·6 May·5 min

An ornate palace corridor with red carpet and gilded mirrors

The Regime: Kate Winslet's Strange Little Show

The Regime, the six-episode HBO political satire starring Kate Winslet, finished airing earlier this month. The show is a specific tonal experiment, and it is worth taking seriously.

Priya Nair·30 Apr·5 min

Three suns suspended in a dark sky above a frozen plain

3 Body Problem: Netflix Bets Big on Hard Science Fiction

Netflix's adaptation of Cixin Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy is, on balance, a better show than the Game of Thrones showrunners' previous form suggested. It is also structurally compromised in specific ways.

Priya Nair·18 Apr·5 min

A wildflower meadow in late afternoon light with a single tree in the distance

Music

Deeper Well: Kacey Musgraves' Retreat

Kacey Musgraves' fifth album is the record of an artist deliberately stepping back from the cultural centre she had briefly occupied. An argument for the retreat as a specific creative choice.

Jules Okonkwo·8 Apr·5 min

A high-rise window at night overlooking a London skyline seen through light rain

Film

All of Us Strangers: Andrew Haigh's Ghost Story for Survivors

Andrew Haigh's film is a queer ghost story, a family reconciliation, and a grief piece. What it does with all three in 105 minutes is astonishing.

Lena Ashworth·2 Apr·5 min

A New York brownstone kitchen at night, an open bottle of wine on the counter

Mr & Mrs Smith: The Show That Figured Out Television

Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane's Amazon spy drama is not a remake. It is a character study dressed as a spy show, and it works because of what it refuses to be.

Priya Nair·22 Mar·5 min

An ornate Victorian-era dollhouse illuminated from inside, seen in a dim room

Film

Poor Things: Lanthimos Unleashed

Emma Stone's performance as Bella Baxter does something almost no leading actress is allowed to do in a studio film: she becomes less polite, less articulate, less easy to root for, and the film rewards her for it.

Lena Ashworth·15 Mar·4 min

A B-17 bomber formation in black and white against a cloudy sky

Masters of the Air: Apple's Expensive Mid-Range

The third Spielberg-Hanks World War II series landed on Apple TV+ in January with enormous production ambition and uneven dramatic execution.

Priya Nair·14 Mar·5 min

An English country manor photographed at dusk, the gardens immaculately clipped

Film

Saltburn: A Thin Reading of the English Country House

Emerald Fennell's second feature wants to be a class-war satire and a Brideshead pastiche and a body-horror provocation. It pulls off one of the three, sometimes two.

Marcus Vell·8 Mar·5 min