As we are reminded in far too many saccharine Hollywood tales like Stand and Deliver and Freedom Writers, teachers are capable of being extremely impactful to the impressionable youngsters in their care. When they excel at their craft, educators often…
Movie Review: Beach Rats
“I don’t really know what I like,” blankly states the protagonist of Beach Rats more than once during the course of the film. Much like her previous effort, It Felt Like Love, Eliza Hittman’s second feature is about the road…
Movie Review: Goon: Last of the Enforcers
Well, it’s no secret that the powers that be have completely scraped the bottom of the barrel when it comes to original ideas. Now, they are banking on nostalgia with a seemingly endless batch of unnecessary sequels and reboots, giving…
From the Record Crate: Michael Jackson – “Bad” (1987)
It would be a gross understatement to say that Michael Jackson had big shoes to fill following the cultural explosion that was Thriller. In 1987, after nearly five years without releasing any new material, the world was salivating with anticipation…
Album Review: The War on Drugs – “A Deeper Understanding”
There has been a fair amount of pressure placed on Adam Granduciel and company over the past few years. The War on Drugs quickly became one of rock’s most endearing success stories from the past decade, with albums like 2011’s…
Album Review: Iron & Wine – “Beast Epic”
If there’s any one man who can claim responsibility for the indie folk rock boom of the 21st century, it’s Sam Beam. When he tapped into an intimacy that acoustic singer-songwriters had drifted away from with 2002’s The Creek Drank…
Dirty Dancing: 30 Years Later
“That was the summer of 1963” opens Dirty Dancing, a movie that set out to create a time capsule for the Kennedy administration and ended up inadvertently doing so for 1987. The inescapable hit that almost wasn’t, this cultural smash…
