Nothing Was the Same further establishes a persona driven by Drake’s still-developing conflict between assurance and hesitation.
This is a film that seems less fixated on life’s pitfalls than the occasions for triumph these provide.
Self Made, Vol. 3 never defies the training camp aesthetic that defines these kinds of collaborations.
Despite the grim fatalism of these characters, the focus is less on universal questions of mortality than the lengthening shadows cast by the passage of time.
The Luc Besson film’s only distinguishing characteristic is how big a mess it makes of its already meager ambitions.
The Weeknd’s Kiss Land makes for a generally brutal, misogynistic listen.
Despite an undeniable attraction to the majestic, Sokurov seems averse to straightforward spectacle.
The album is an autumnal tour of vanished youth that blends period touches and details with Okkervil River’s familiar musical tics.
With Slow Focus, Fuck Buttons continue to toy with notions of what an album should be.
Doris confirms that one of rap’s most technically accomplished voices has also got his conceptual vision firmly in place.
The Nextwave Sessions feels more like a rehash of the band’s nagging problems than a sample of potential future directions.
The film’s small, improvisational skeleton struggles to meet the demands of the more ambitious story it’s trying to tell.
It takes the basic form of the revenge flick and dips it in tar, making for a movie that comes out sticky, nasty, and black.
The Big Dream is briefly amusing, consistently strange, but rarely resonant.
Andrew Bujalski’s film sits at the nexus between spoken and written language.
Thundercat’s Apocalypse is mostly rooted in the lethargy of his likable but often too-static production style.
Hoary and pompous, Magna Carta definitively signals the rapper’s shift toward creative insignificance.
While Short Circuit 2 may be dumb, there’s no slickness or meanness to its stupidity.
There’s so much baggage involved in the kind of dilettantish games Jamie and Crystal are playing that it’s a shame that the film never fully engages with these enticing issues.
With his third album, The Gifted, Wale continues to struggle to define himself.