Daily coverage of Criticism by Vulture
  1. movie review
    Challengers Is Almost a Sexy MovieJust like it’s almost a good tennis film, and almost the mature starring role Zendaya needed.
  2. theater review
    Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in Cabaret.
    Dancing on the Surface in Cabaret and OrlandoAtmosphere is all in the loose hustle and bustle of a pre-show, but in a play proper, it can only carry you so far.
  3. movie review
    Zack Snyder’s Screensaver Space Opera Comes to an Uneventful EndRebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver is a dream fulfilled for Snyder but one that ultimately isn’t that ambitious.
  4. #blariko
    Shōgun’s Lost ’ShipIt was never going to happen, but I’ll sure miss pretending it could have.
  5. movie review
    What If We Didn’t Know Abigail Was a Vampire Movie?Oh, sorry, did I just ruin it?
  6. theater review
    Living Is Harder: Suffs and GrenfellSuffrage and outrage make for rich stage experiences.
  7. movie review
    Guy Ritchie Goes Brutally PoshThe purveyor of British gangster sagas goes upscale for his Inglourious Basterds knockoff, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
  8. theater review
    The Wiz Rolls Back Into TownBig high-energy performances, undercut by the folks behind the curtain.
  9. theater review
    Writing Down the Bones: Sally & TomA curiously muted Hemings-and-Jefferson meta-story by Suzan-Lori Parks.
  10. book review
    Salman Rushdie Did Not Want to Write This BookIn Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, the many incarnations of Rushdie are at war with one another.
  11. theater review
    Look, I Made a Woman: LempickaThe musical somehow turns a radical bisexual painter, living and loving in Paris between the wars, a little bit boring.
  12. tv review
    Grad School Was Never This FunPark Chan-wook’s HBO adaptation of The Sympathizer is a captivating senior seminar on postcolonial theory.
  13. theater review
    St. Ronnie the Oblivious: Richard Foreman’s Symphony of RatsThe Wooster Group brings back a Reagan-era yawp of discontinuity.
  14. movie review
    Pedro Almodóvar’s Queer Cowboy Short Is Too Sumptuous for Its Own GoodIt’s a gorgeous but unsatisfying sketch of a thing.
  15. movie review
    I’m Glad Everyone Had Such a Good Time Making Sasquatch SunsetIf only there were more reason to actually watch the movie they made.
  16. theater review
    Not Without Ambition, But … Macbeth (an undoing)A reimagining of Shakespeare, centering Lady Macbeth, asks the wrong questions about her.
  17. tv review
    In Fallout, the Joke Is on HumanityNot quite the raucous comedy it’s billed as, Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan’s heady new video-game adaptation is basically Westworld 2.0.
  18. endings
    Tokyo Vice Goes to PressJake’s big exposé, and what it took to publish it, cements the series as a great gangster show that’s also a great journalism show.
  19. close read
    What Quiet on Set Leaves Out Is Just As DamningThe docuseries’ tendency toward sensationalism fails to dig into the system’s biggest failures.
  20. close read
    Physical: 100 Remains Gloriously PointlessName another show that makes you wonder, Can the moving-van guy do more pull-ups than me?
  21. movie review
    With The Old Oak, Ken Loach Goes Out on a Hopeful NoteIn the director’s final film, the people of a dying English town and a group of Syrian refugees discover they have more in common than they realize.
  22. movie review
    There’s Really Nothing Else Like The BeastLéa Seydoux and George MacKay are doomed lovers over three lifetimes in Bertrand Bonello’s haunting movie.
  23. close read
    How Netflix’s 3 Body Problem Loses Its Own PlotThe China episodes are excellent. The London ones are bizarre. The reason is less obvious than you think.
  24. album review
    Our Sweetheart of the RodeoBeyoncé’s Cowboy Carter chronicles an artist with a voice pliable enough (and a following large enough) to crash whatever scene she pleases.
  25. movie review
    A Sad-Eyed Josh O’Connor Goes Tomb-Raiding in the Lovely, Mysterious La ChimeraAlice Rohrwacher’s playful, rambling new film follows a man who robs graves to find his way into the next world.
  26. movie review
    Wicked Little Letters Should’ve Been for the SickosThere’s a great psychosexual drama lurking inside this otherwise serviceable trifle starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley.
  27. movie review
    A Gore-Soaked Spectacle of Depravity and PainYou can practically smell the Asphalt City director chain-smoking behind the camera, muttering about spitting in the face of humanity.
  28. theater review
    Always Gets a Replay: The Who’s TommyYes, it’s a show from another time and culture. But the tension that disconnect brings is fascinating.
  29. movie review
    Did We Really Need Kaiju to Get All Cute?Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire doesn’t deliver the giant-monster goods, but it does make its creatures disconcertingly adorable.
  30. theater review
    Grief Hotel, Where You Check In to YourselfLiza Birkenmeier’s discontinuous, fragmented play imagines a quasi-spa marketed to anyone experiencing loss.
  31. bug out
    3 Body Problem’s Imagination ProblemIn ignoring humanity’s wider reaction to the end of the world, the Netflix adaptation fails to find gravity in its final scene.
  32. theater review
    A.J. Shively and David McElwee in Irish Rep's 2024 production of PHILADELPHIA, HERE I COME!
    Becoming Brian Friel: Philadelphia, Here I Come!At the Irish Rep, early work by a future master.
  33. movie review
    Netflix’s Shirley Chisholm Biopic Never Matches the Power of Its SubjectThe Regina King-starring drama about the first Black woman presidential candidate doesn’t do its subject (or the star who plays her) justice.
  34. movie review
    The Tense and Gruesome Immaculate Is an Art Film at HeartSydney Sweeney, however, is spectacular as a pregnant nun suffering the tortures of the damned.
  35. movie review
    The Best and Bleakest Comedy of the Year So FarRadu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World makes being ground up in the global machinery of capitalism look good.
  36. movie review
    Bustin’ Makes Me Feel BlehIn Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the jokes are witless, the emotions artless, and the film joyless.
  37. theater review
    Water for Elephants Is Best When It’s Behind the TimesDazzling circus arts and great puppetry are almost enough.
  38. movie review
    A New Road House by Way of Looney TunesJake Gyllenhaal is better at oddballs than heroes — thank God he’s playing one of the former in this Road House remake.
  39. achievement in tv yelling
    Shōgun’s Class ClownAs the volatile John Blackthorne, Cosmo Jarvis is high-key giving the comedic performance of the year.
  40. theater review
    In Teeth, Purity Culture Leaves Bite MarksMichael R. Jackson and Anna K. Jacobs are out for blood.
  41. album review
    Justin Timberlake Wants You BackHis new album sticks to a safe, occasionally satisfying script, even when it’s clear he’s lost the plot.
  42. art review
    What to See and What to Skip at the Whitney BiennialJerry Saltz searches for the real thing at the museum’s latest survey of contemporary art.
  43. movie review
    A Portrait of Frida Kahlo Like We’ve Never Seen Her BeforeCarla Gutierrez’s documentary uses the artist’s own words (and pictures) to tell her story.
  44. theater review
    Ibsen, Translated Into American: An Enemy of the PeopleWith Jeremy Strong, Michael Imperioli, and drinks on the house.
  45. movie review
    A Final Farewell to Ryuichi SakamotoA new concert film, Opus, represents the culmination of a lifelong journey from effusive maximalism to gentle simplicity.
  46. theater review
    Love and Brains, Dull and Sharp: The Notebook and The EffectA musical adaptation that’s generic to the point of inanity, and a play that asks and examines real questions about what a person is.
  47. movie review
    Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour - Mexico City, Mexico
    The Eras Tour Film Is Sequined Asset ManagementTaylor Swift’s big-screen adaptation is almost too much movie.
  48. returnity
    GIRLS5EVA
    It’s Not 2 Late 4 You 3 Get On the Girls5Eva BandwagonIt’s on Netflix now. So what are you waiting five?
  49. close read
    Shōgun Explodes Into the FutureCannon fire soundtracks a polite society being ushered into a new, more indiscriminately brutal age.
  50. the industry
    Marni - Front Row - Milan Fashion Week - Womenswear Fall/Winter 2024-2025
    Who Put Ye at the Top of the ‘Hot 100’ Again?How the rapper found chart success despite a litany of hateful rhetoric.
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