The New York Times’ weekly short story series, Modern Love, is noteworthy for its nuance and contemporary understanding of intimacy. Amazon Prime’s adaptation is something more sinister: an overtly sentimental show in which under-utilized A-list actors (Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, Dev Patel) interpret eight stories…

In the weeks leading up to the release of Todd Phillips’ Joker, some critics caused a stir online after implying that the titular character’s sympathetic backstory could inspire violence, particularly from other angry white men. According to Movies (and Other Things) author Shea Serrano, while the discourse around the…

Nah: Katy Perry, “Harleys in Hawaii” - Many aging rockers would like a word with Katy Perry, who is not-so-ambitiously trying to steal their retired-American-motorcycle-Hawaiian-vacation vibe. This track is a bit more apathetic than I’m used to Perry sounding, and the result is an unmemorable tune about nothing. Take…

The film Greener Grass starts with one suburban housewife giving her baby to another out of politeness, and it only gets weirder from there. The brainchild of Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, who met years ago in their New York Upright Citizen’s Brigade sketch group (they’ve both since relocated to Los Angeles), Greener…

Can a cat be a woman? Zoe Kravitz seems to thinks so, and I’m not arguing with her. She’s been cast in The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as Bruce Batman Wayne. In other Batman news, Jonah Hill is reportedly not circling a role as the Riddler anymore, and that seems sad. The role now belongs to Paul Dano, whose…

Robert Eggers’s followup to his beloved 2015 hit The Witch is a descent into madness of the most unorthodox kind. For one thing, reaching the apex of the narrative’s madness involves literally going up stairs of the titular structure of The Lighthouse. Before you get to that, though, two lighthouse keepers (“wickies”)…

There’s an oddly poignant moment in the movie Spy Kids 2, in which Steve Buscemi’s character says, “Do you think God stays in Heaven because he too lives in fear of what he’s created?” It’s a question that immediately came to mind upon hearing that ’90s teen classic Clueless is getting a TV reboot that has been…

I want to know how Nicole Scherzinger (née Schershingburger) knows Montell Jordan’s height off the top of her head. (When she said he was 6'8" on Wednesday night’s The Masked Singer, she wasn’t wrong.) I want to know how she thinks she could get away with marrying baby Jesus. To borrow her words, I don’t even know…

First, there was Netflix’s boring, sexist docuseries on Ted Bundy, a banal serial killer who was frequently deemed a charming “genius” because he eluded police officers who simply did not do their job properly. And then there was Netflix’s dramatized biopic about Bundy, directed by the same man who did the…

Is Vanessa Hudgens aiming to be a queen of Christmas TV movies? She should. The title and concept of her future Netflix classic, The Knight Before Christmas, is so good, it needs to be celebrated and duplicated. The movie, according to Deadline, “follows a gallant English knight who seeks out his true quest after a…

If romantic comedies are so predictable, why are they still so good at making me cry? “There’s a comfort in knowing what you’re getting in the movie,” Shea Serrano, author of Movies (And Other Things), explains.

Kate Bush’s sixth album came into the world 30 years ago today sounding old. Largely midtempo and/or melancholy, The Sensual World signaled a calming down of sorts from the furious innovation and conscious madness of the albums that directly preceded it: 1980's Never Forever, 1982's The Dreaming (her masterpiece, in…

I finally watched the Season 2 finale of Succession, a television show that is not deep but has the aesthetics of deep and so is often mistaken for deep. Still, each episode offered a new version of grotesque that was generally hard to look at, which also felt like the point. It was like staring into the sun, if the…

The line “I just took a DNA test/Turns out, I’m 100 percent that bitch” has been quoted ad nauseam since Lizzo’s song “Truth Hurts,” released in 2017, became a platinum single in 2019. On social media, everyone from Hillary Clinton to Cookie Monster has bragged about the results of their own DNA tests. But, as it…

The food on Terrace House is known for looking appetizing. The cast members cook a lot and seem to enjoy what they’re eating, because they comment on the taste, with reactions like “yum” and delicious,” to show their appreciation. It’s admirable, the joy of cooking and eating on display in this series, and so rare to…

For three seasons, Maggie Gyllenhaal has been one of the primary reasons to keep watching The Deuce, despite compelling reasons (James Franco in two roles) to stop watching The Deuce. As Eileen, a Queens girl from a good Catholic family who’s exiled from her home for unknown reasons and winds up doing sex work in 1971…

El Camino, which premiered October 11 on Netflix, is a harrowing and meditative two-hour long imagining of what happened to Jesse Pinkman after the series finale of Breaking Bad. If you have the stomach for the sort of low-simmering anxiety that creator Vince Gilligan specializes in, then please set aside two hours of…

On Saturday night, Lifetime premiered the first in what, I can only imagine, will be an unlimited supply of movies, TV shows, and TV movies about Operation Varsity Blues. The College Admissions Scandal follows two devoted, wealthy mothers who would do anything to stay rich and elite by ensuring their not-so-bright…

As someone who has given little more than an iota of a fuck about a Disney movie in well over a decade, news that the rapidly monopolizing studio giant was unveiling a streaming service called Disney Plus piqued little interest. Access to every Disney theatrical release sounds great for parents, and access to every…

America doesn’t really make monsters anymore. Rare is the blockbuster horror movie where a werewolf or vampire poses a threat greater to young women than simple seduction, and demons and devils seem passé these days. Even popular space movies, from Interstellar to Gravity and Ad Astra, tend to hone in on existential…