Joy Ride Never Really Cuts LooseThe R-rated comedy is ready to make jokes about threesomes and drug smuggling but can’t bring itself to lean into anything truly discomfiting.
ByAlison Willmore
tv review
Last Call Sees What Most True Crime MissesLoving yet full of palpable fury, HBO’s docuseries will make you deeply sad, then even sadder that more true-crime stories aren’t told this way.
ByKathryn VanArendonk
close read
The Donna EffectThe Bear’s chaotic matriarch is the Berzatto family’s foundational world, cracks and all.
This Might Be the Strangest Movie of the YearRuby Gillman, Teenage Kraken seems like a trifling dose of high-concept sweetness, but it’s truly absurd in all sorts of unexpected ways.
This Should Have Been a No-BrainerThe Weeknd and Sam Levinson aimed for greatness with The Idol. The result was as subtle as a Lifetime film.
ByCraig Jenkins
movie review
Nimona Was Worth the WaitAfter multiple delays and a studio shutdown, the film arrives on Netflix with something specific to say about its queer characters and the status quo.
Class of ’09 Leaves Its Biggest Case UnsolvedIn its pursuit of the threat AI poses to the criminal-justice system, the miniseries stumbles into an indictment of that threat’s root cause.
Wes Anderson Has Gone MadHis new movie, Asteroid City, brings a necessary madness to the meticulous director’s method, and it amounts to a masterpiece.
