Mitski makes music about inexpressible emotions—urgent, intimate dispatches that seem to come from her very soul. At least, that’s how many, including this writer, have characterized her past work. And there’s something romantic about the idea that someone has captured the secret fears and desires that perch on the…

Aretha Franklin, the iconic R&B singer and songwriter known for decades simply as “the Queen of Soul,” has died. Franklin was admitted into hospice care on August 13, amid reports that she was “seriously ill” with pancreatic cancer. She retired from touring in February 2017, and was forced to cancel a pair of…

In the background of all the painful and very necessary conversations about gender, power, and talent that have come out of the #MeToo movement, a figure has hovered. He’s frequently a drunk or a philanderer (or both), usually surrounded by sycophants who hang on his every word, and always intimidating and…

After a number of tech companies—including Apple, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Pinterest, Linkedin, and, um, YouPorn—banded together to kick psychotic cone of gyro meat Alex Jones off of their platforms early last week, all eyes turned to Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, who looked down from the pod high above Silicon Valley…

Having acquired a healthy stash of Hollywood capital after the smash success of his Oscar-winning horror satire Get Out—and the enthusiastic critical reception to Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, produced by his company Monkeypaw Productions—Jordan Peele has refused to be even remotely shy about spending it. Earlier today, …

In an outcome that’s both surprising (considering the plop with which it landed with critics) and not surprising at all (because it’s Jason Statham and a giant fucking shark), The Meg was the No. 1 movie in America last weekend. By quite a bit, too—the film outperformed expectations with a megalodon-sized $44.5…

A few weeks ago, after surveying the nation’s nerd coffers and somehow finding them to be empty, AMC declared that Chris Hardwick would return to his post as host of The Talking Dead. Last night, he did so, his eyes welling up with tears as gave a little speech at the top of the show, thanking the “Walking Dead …

Note: This article contains plot points of BlacKkKlansman.

If Summer Of ’84 had come out before Stranger Things became a phenomenon, would it have been better received? Maybe. At least then it would have been novel. But the fact is that we are currently late in a cycle of films and TV series—a cycle that not only includes Netflix’s hit, but also last year’s Super Dark Times…

Music writers everywhere are clearing their calendars, as Nicki Minaj, as has become customary for many hip-hop and pop artists in the post-iTunes era, surprised the world today by releasing her new album Queen a week early. (Whether it’s truly unexpected if you expect something to happen remains an open question.)

A dark magick has been unleashed on the music industry, as reckless mortals have conjured the twin demons of Irony and Nostalgia for their own foolish ends, oblivious to the ghastly rupture in the fabric of space and time from whence occult creatures slither, gnashing and howling, in their sombrero-clad wakes. Today,…

It’s been three years since Appleton, Wisconsin punk trio Tenement released its sprawling, grandiose double album Predatory Headlights—and we would know, as we named it one of our best albums of 2015 so far in June of that year. The band has released another studio album, The Self-Titled Album, two movie soundtracks,…

Yesterday, the film world united in one big, “wait, what?,” when the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences announced the creation of a new award for “Best Popular Film,” a.k.a. the Consolation Oscar for Dum-Dum Movies. It was a return to the Oscars’ roots, where in 1929 the Academy gave out awards for…

This year’s edition of the Toronto International Film Festival was already shaping up to be excellent, and today’s announcement of the fest’s famed Midnight Madness section adds two sequels we’ve been talking about quite a bit on The A.V. Club: The world premieres of David Gordon Green’s Halloween and Shane Black’s …

If the kids are anything like Skate Kitchen, the real-life all-female New York City skate crew that inspired, shaped the direction of, and stars in The Wolfpack director Crystal Moselle’s narrative feature film debut of the same name, then they really are all right. Though concerned with stereotypical teenage-girl…

Feeling the cold hand of irrelevance gripping the back of its neck despite its best, selfie-based efforts, today Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced a new series of rules, from practical to extremely “what the fuck?,” in a message to its membership.

The late Carrie Fisher was the opposite of Donald Trump in nearly every way—witty, empathetic, self-aware, and, most importantly for the purposes of this particular sentence, unconcerned with having a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. For as we point out every time this particular piss-stained stretch of Los Angeles…