// Category Archive for: Current Faves

Movie Review: Green Room

By Brian Baker

At one point, during the film Green Room, “Welcome to the meatgrinder” is uttered.

No other phrase can sum up the misadventures of an out-of-town punk quartet—with left-of-the-middle politics—as they take on a last-minute gig at a white supremacist roadhouse outside of Portland, Oregon.

Green Room is director Jeremy Saulnier’s third full-length feature and much like his cult favorite Blue Ruin, it’s a lovely shot of adrenaline directly into the scrotum called fear.

WARNING: SPOILERS

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TV Review: Broad City S3 E10, “Jews on a Plane”

By Sachin Hingoo

“Shabbat shalom, motherfuckers.”—Ilana

When an episode of Broad City, set almost entirely on an airplane, starts with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine in an absolute fever dream of an airline safety video, you know it’s about to pop off. And pop off it does, because with Abbi and Ilana in the air, en route to Israel, there are no punches left to be pulled in this finale. I can safely say that “Jews on a Plane” is the perfect bookend to a near-flawless season of Broad City and is easily my favorite episode of a comedy show in which a person’s homemade tampon is mistaken for a bomb.

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Music Review: Big Black Delta, Trágame Tierra

By Less Lee Moore

“It’s a saying here in Chile when something terrible happens and you want to disappear from the face of the earth. Is there a similar sentence in English?”
–Username kiesha, regarding the phrase “trágame tierra” on WordReference.com

Sometimes upbeat, happy music doesn’t cut it. Sometimes there needs to be that murky undercurrent of melancholy or it just feels fraudulent. So much of modern pop music is missing that yearning quality; there is not enough darkness to temper the glittering, brittle, and frequently hollow light.

Big Black Delta, the musical alter ego of one Jonathan Bates, knows this. Big Black Delta exploded into my musical consciousness in 2012 with an EP that was like nothing I’d ever heard before or since. The self-titled full-length release that followed it was a tour de force of varying sonic landscapes: ridiculously, almost hysterically hooky, while at other times shockingly contemplative, or even sinister. It was one of my Top Ten favorites of 2013.

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Movie Review: Tickled

By Sachin Hingoo

I think most of us are familiar with the “Wikipedia hole,” where you’ll go to the site to look something up and find yourself entangled in a long series of links to related-but-unrelated entries, only to forget what you came for in the first place. A rabbit hole like this is the only way I can describe Tickled, because it’s a documentary that begins with the most benign and banal of subjects and ends up as a three-continent-spanning pursuit of, well, I’m still not sure. The characters along the way have a Lynchian surrealness to them, never as repulsive and pitiable on the surface as they are under the skin, which is really saying something because some of them are pretty gross externally, too.

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TV Review: Outsiders S1 E11, “Mortar”

By Laury Scarbro

In the wake of Breece’s death, I expected things to go just a bit differently. Thankfully, I was wrong about Ledda blaming Wade, but he does indeed blame himself. Normally, I would say that’s a bad thing, but the new and improved Wade uses that guilt to propel himself into taking action that he should have been more willing to take several episodes back.

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Blu-Ray Review: Bride Of Re-Animator

By Tim Murr

The follow up to 1985’s cult classic comedy gorefest Re-Animator, 1989’s Bride of Re-Animator, was a wild and rollicking film, amping up the craziness and gore with comic book flair. Directed by Brian Yuzna (who also directed the next sequel, Beyond Re-Animator) on a very short time frame, Bride picks up several months after the “Miskatonic Massacre” that ended Re-Animator.

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Music Review: Tiny Tim, The Complete Singles Collection (1966-1970)

By Hanna

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Tiny Tim’s death, providing a good opportunity to revisit his heritage. By now, his place as a cult artist and important archivist of old songs is assured, and most of his work can be found on some compilation or other. This compilation from Cherry Red, however, collects his singles from his breakthrough or “peak era” as they call it, from 1966 to 1970. It represents his journey towards being a mainstream artist, and his attempts to remain one. That specific idea is a new one for a Tiny Tim compilation, and definitely interesting.

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Music Review: Dinner, Psychic Lovers

By Less Lee Moore

“Dinner’s music is about parties. And women. Late nights and early mornings in strange cities. But mainly it’s about magic and the communion with spirits,” Dinner says. “It’s like sexual Christian rock, really. But with out all the Christianity.”
–From Dinner’s press release for Psychic Lovers

How do you write a review of Dinner? How do you accurately convey the exciting idiosyncrasies of his musical and vocal style?

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Music Review: Various Artists, Wake Up You! Volume 1

By Melissa Bratcher

I’d wager that you’ve not heard music quite like Wake Up You! Volume 1. Culled from Nigerian music from a very specific time, with familiar influences filtered through a decidedly African use of rhythms, the result is arresting, funky, and meant to make you move.

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TV Review: Broad City S3 E09, “Getting There”

By Sachin Hingoo

“Jews! Jews! Jews! JEWS! JEWS! JEWS! JEWS! JEWS!!”—Jews

Last week was the heaviest episode yet in Broad City’s run, and it seems that Ilana and Abbi felt that we needed a break after all that sobbing and drama. Enter “Getting There,” a tried-and-true Broad City madcap adventure through New York City, this time to the airport as Abbi and Ilana are headed for a destination that’s kept under wraps for most of the episode. This is the first half of the two-part season finale and if it’s going where I think it’s going, next week’s episode should be a real banger.

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