IZ*One Spotlight: ‘Lethality’ by Kwon Eunbi
Another great release by Kwon, further solidifying her status as one of this generation’s best K-pop solo artists. A powerful title track in “Underwater” coupled with whimsical and cheerful pop B-sides of “Flash” and “Hi” make ‘Lethality’ worth a listen.
‘C’mon C’mon’: Mike Mills’ refreshing take on the labors and joys of parenthood
A24’s latest black-and-white flick offers a poignant, hopeful lens into what it means to care for a child.
Schumacher is a brilliant ode to a brilliant racing driver
It’s the first (and, so far, only) documentary made about seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher that has his family’s seal of approval, and it charts his journey from a young boy racing in go-karts to his five consecutive titles with the iconic team Ferrari.
What we do with ‘RENT’
The story of RENT moves far beyond the scope of a few artists in New York City in the ’90s — it still rings true for us, too, 25 years later.
Family Weekend Concert: a wonderful night for music aficionados
The song selection skillfully balanced jazz funk with more classical forms of jazz, and the experience of attending a concert in person after so many months of virtual compromises contributed to the positive mood.
A classic love story, unraveled
While lighthearted, this is not a love story. The violence takes center stage, suffocating the budding infatuation.
The pursuit of blind nostalgia and shimmering stardom
Welcome to Soho, where your brightest desires become your darkest nightmares.
The marginalization of weeds
‘Grave/Grove’ is one of three exhibitions on display at the MIT List museum’s reopening. The installation is a conscientious representation of an important societal issue that manages to be both thought-provoking and aesthetically pleasing.
A trip to old Havana
I had the opportunity to order from Mariel’s dinner menu. The restaurant is tapas style, which allowed us to sample a wide range of Cuban-inspired dishes.
What happened in 1809?
Arcadia was a wonderful display of the talents of LOST in their abilities to bring characters to life and reel the audience into the story.
Ranch-flavored ice cream? Red Bull sorbets? Oh my
Needless to say, J.P. Licks’ two newest featured flavors were disappointing. The midnight munchies mashed together two very different textures — sweet peanut butter with salty garlic-tinted ranch — the end result of which detonated my tastebuds.
Teaching a nation to cook
‘Julia’ is the portrayal of a female icon that we need — inspirational, humanizing and comforting.
Wes Anderson’s ode to ‘The New Yorker,’ the French, and Bill Murray
The cheerful elements often mask an underlying bleakness, and ‘The French Dispatch’ is no exception to this classic Wes Anderson formula.
Three ways to celebrate live music
“Celebration” was expressed by MITSO as the end to a long year-and-a-half without live music. The first concert of the semester brought forth infectious energy to Kresge Auditorium with a colorful palette of joy by Bernstein, Ravel, and Respighi.
‘No Time to Die’ had far too much time
It is tiring to watch men who go off to far-flung, foreign countries and claim that murder is justified because they are “saving the world,” when what they are really doing is defending nebulous national interests.
Prepare to be amazed
The Champions of Magic team consists of five members, each with their own special talents and brands of magic. There’s Young & Strange, a comical dynamic duo who specialize in classic magic illusions, some imbued with their own personal twist, Fernando Velasco is the whimsical escape artist, Kayla Drescher is the bubbly close-up trick magician, and Alex McAleer is the charming mind reader.
Let’s get down to business
Decades after the founding of Rynoka and the discovery of five dungeon gates, you play as Will, a young and adventurous shopkeeper. By day, Will maintains Moonlighter, the shop passed down to him by his old man; but by night, he dives into the Golem Dungeon to fulfill his dreams of someday becoming a true hero.
“That’s MY car!”
The ‘Incredibles 2’ is just as entertaining, intelligent, and action-packed as its predecessor. Featuring memorable music and funny moments alike, audiences will not be disappointed by this long-awaited sequel.
Panda pandemonium
Due to their adorable appearance, pandas have embedded themselves in human society as cute icons found in advertising and media. Embracing the cuteness of these animals, ‘PANDAS’ depicts the challenges of panda conservation as Chinese and US biologists collaborate to train panda cubs for success in their natural habitat.
Watch this wild, heartfelt goose chase to cockblock teenagers
What could otherwise be a raunchy teen comedy becomes a feel-good film about parenting and the process of watching your children become adults. Yes, parents: young adults can have sex, try drugs, or move to college, or all three.
A curse hangs over the youngest of the Kennedys
While on Chappaquiddick island, Ted, with Ms. Kopechne seated beside him, drives his car over the bridge and into the water one night, setting off the infamous scandal of the 1970s.
The greatest pizza is the simplest
To feel at home in Boston as a New Jersey transplant, I found unexpected cheap slice near Chinatown.
Audience ‘Members Don’t Get Weary’
Chances are, if you’re picturing modern dance, you’re imagining something that drew its inspiration from choreography by Alvin Ailey, who is credited with popularizing the art form while simultaneously blazing his own trail.
‘Unsane’ captures the internal struggles we all face
I first heard of Unsane while I was on YouTube; I was taking pset break by watching some videos when the trailer popped up. My first instinct was to press the “Skip Ad” button, but as the summary unfolded, I couldn’t help but finish watching.
Synth, swamp, and soul
The Berklee Popular Music Institute (BPMI) connects student and alumni musicians with students studying management to give aspiring professionals a taste of life in the music industry. Hoping to be the next St. Vincent or Passion Pit, two of BPMI’s more notable alumni, five musical acts were chosen from over 300 submissions to perform at the Sinclair.
A movie with distasteful humor, violence and not many redeeming qualities
‘Gringo’ combines a story full of drugs, corruption, and action with an all star cast to somehow create a movie that is not equal to the sum of its parts.
Contemporary comparisons with the Boston Ballet
The triple bill showcases three of today’s most prominent choreographers — Jorma Elo, Justin Peck and William Forsythe — each faced with the challenge of bringing shape to sound through a non-narrative work. This grants us the rare opportunity to compare and contrast their unique takes on George Balanchine’s classic charge, to “see the music, hear the dance”.
The million bright sides of life
We have seen tragedies and comedies, but Every Brilliant Thing is a tragicomedy that frames a tragedy through a comedic lens by pairing Krstansky’s outstanding acting with Macmillan’s unbridled optimism.
Exploring both sides of the spectrum
If one thing can be said of the play, it is that 'Orlando' is one of the first modern attempts to examine gender. However, it does so by beating you over the head with its discoveries.
Back to the basics
Nestled right outside of Harvard Square, Waypoint is Michael Scelfo’s second restaurant after the excellent Alden & Harlow. Featuring beautiful coastally-inspired dishes, elegant modern décor, a carefully curated raw bar, and prices to match, Waypoint is the type of nice restaurant you might not expect to find MIT students very often.
Lily and Amanda aren’t horsing around with murder
The two female leads are distinct from each other, but the chemistry between Cooke and Taylor-Joy makes their friendship work, and ultimately reveals that they are not as different as the film fools you into believing.
Imagine a world where mechanical pencils are advanced technology
Chris Babu ’97 graduated from MIT with a mathematics degree and worked on Wall Street as a bond trader for 19 years. But since then, despite being told he was crazy to not stay in finance, he’s changed his career to a novelist.
In defense of Area Four
MIT students might say that A4 is too pretentious or expensive, but this pizza enthusiast says it’s worth it for their perfectly proportioned pie.
‘I’d love to see that magic raw’
Both acts will play at Club Passim next week, a fact I was indifferent about — being a for-the-most-part concert naysayer — until I heard their music.
‘You can’t write 3 distinct symphonies in C’ Mozart: ‘Hold my beer’
Conductor Blomstedt and the BSO employ Mozart to show that repetition is, in fact, beautiful.
‘Game Night’ won’t scare you, but it will leave you in tears
Yes, it’s campy and over the top, but it’s also a bucketful of fun. If you can’t handle absurdity — don’t go; otherwise, you will have a great time!
A confusion of sex and violence
Red Sparrow introduces a desolate look at life under the guise of a “thrilling” espionage movie.
‘Bombshell’: A deeper look into one woman’s incredible life
Her brilliant mind and her strong will led her daughter to call her “ahead of her times as a feminist.” In addition to her inventions, she produced 18 films, something unheard of from a woman, in addition to being a single mother to her two kids.
In response to the last BSO... review
I’m sympathetic to it being the reviewer’s first time experiencing classical music, but it seems unnecessary to phrase the title in such a way as to question why anyone would ever enjoy such a thing.
How do you deal with the loss of a loved one?
Transgenderism can be a topic some people tiptoe around. In the backdrop of Chile, this Oscar-nominated foreign language film explores it in a slow-moving, yet very real way.
Stereotypes and subculture
Tom of Finland is a biopic of the artist of the same name, who pioneered the BDSM subculture through his homoerotic illustrations in beefcake magazines and pornographic comics from the ’50s to the ’80s.
Timeless yet nostalgic, Destroyer does not disappoint.
Bejar, along with the half dozen other members of Destroyer performed at The Sinclair near Harvard Square. Much like the opening lines of “Tinseltown Swimming in Blood,” from the latest album Ken, the group’s performance featured wonderfully colorful and evocative phrases that complemented each other with a surprising and wonderful strangeness.
The customer’s always right
This is the second part of my episode-by-episode review and analysis of the new Channel 4 television show Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. This week’s episode was called “Autofac”, based on the short story of the same name.
Freedom from the chains of your heart
'Bilal: A New Breed of Hero' addresses various concerns about pre-Islamic Makkah, without even explicitly addressing the religion throughout the entire movie.
Rostam hasn’t lost‘em
It was nice to be in a theater seat, not jostling for a view of the stage, able to lean back and soak in the untroubled vibrations of Rostam’s creations. There was something very special about being able to hear tunes I know and love performed live, but not feeling pressured to shout along, or cheer louder than anybody else.
A night at the Cantab
A woman scribbles rapidly into her old, worn-out notebook in the dim light of the bar. There’s a world buzzing around her, but the only things she sees in her peripheral vision are the dark colors of the counter and the clear bubbles in her drink. She’s focused on her writing, finding words for the feelings pulsing through her.
Step aside, Shakespeare, Dame Christie’s here
While clear in retrospect, the conclusion was monstrously difficult to guess, even with evidence as given (not salty about being wrong at all…).
The subconscious of the Cold War era – revived
While not particularly true of its print counterpart, the modernizations provided an interesting, fresh interpretation of the 54-year-old story. The devil, here, was in the details.
True jazz pizzazz
The Great Nostalgist begins with a deep, rolling groove under the fairly mystical title “Adult Joe.” The nine songs that follow have similarly wistful names, from “Theme for Gloomy Bear” to “Truant” to “Emotional Baggage Carousel.”
“Shall I compare thee to a mummer’s play?”
Imagine a William Shakespeare (George Olesky) who isn’t quite as eloquent as his plethora of plays would imply. At the beginning of Shakespeare in Love, this is the version of Will we get: writer’s block, broke, and losing his faith in his own career as a playwright and a poet.
La La Circus
While taking large artistic licences on the true story, the writers bring to life an emotionally engaging, visually stunning, and auditorily amazing performance...
The Poker Princess’s empire of wealth rises and falls
Twice, Molly Bloom falls from grace: first her Olympic skiing accident that puts her out of the contest; next, her arrest for running poker games that marks her as a felon. Brilliant law student turns criminal as she buries herself deeper into the world of the elite.
‘Hostiles’ is a brutal, if unfeeling, portrayal of the Western Frontier
In what begins with a lurch but slows to a crawl, director and writer Scott Cooper’s film ‘Hostiles’ has us wishing for dynamic dialogue and a more succinct and surprising script.
Second novel by Andy Weir, author of ‘The Martian’, falls short of expectations
The book has overarching themes of class and plot devices typical in a story where there are haves and have nots. There’s an interesting amount of detail about how the moon colony would function from an engineering perspective, which immediately engaged me.
‘What kind of frigging person bashes in their friend’s knee?’
Two-time national champion Harding was infamous in the early 90s for her association with the knee-smashing of her biggest skating competitor, Olympic medalist Nancy Kerrigan.
Lady Bird: A funny, bittersweet tale of female adolescence
Throughout the movie, Lady Bird and her mother’s conversations slip to and from endearing moments of mother-daughter synchronicity to irate bickering in a way that is both hilarious and entirely familiar.
The greatest of adventures
Based off of Michael John LaChiusa’s 1994 musical adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Hello Again features ten people engaging in a daisy chain of sexual affairs.
Steal from the dead, spend a night with the dead
Pixar dazzles us again with their newest movie, Coco. This culturally rich film is sure to leave viewers everywhere teary-eyed at the touching messages Pixar tries to teach us.
What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?
Since the publication of God of Small Things nearly twenty years ago, critics and fans have been waiting for the next big thing that Arundhati Roy comes up with. With Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Arundhati Roy makes the wait worthwhile...
The age of heroes is upon us
Zach Snyder’s Justice League gathers together the old and the new superheroes to save the world, and on some level, the future of the DC cinematic universe.
The Breadwinner: A heartwarming tale of bravery and the strength of a family
The Breadwinner is an undeniably beautiful movie and story. The strength of the women in the family to survive is evident by all the sacrifices they make.
‘I swear I don’t love the drama’
Let’s get one thing out of the way: it doesn’t matter to me whether this album is good. It’s a Taylor Swift album. It’s immaculately produced pop.
Marsalis unpolished
My finger hovers over the play button; going into Kalamazoo — the first-ever live album from trombonist-composer Delfeayo Marsalis — I don’t know what to expect. But from the first note, I know that what I’m hearing is special.
The greedy, horrific, but fairly moving tale of Mr. Burke and Mr. Hare’s victims
“The people of Edinburgh aren’t… dying… QUICKLY ENOUGH!!!” Here cry the despairing voices of the schools of anatomy. The cadavers are running low, so study is restricted. Gravedigging is illegal, and only those who die as criminals or as otherwise properly indicated by the state are allowed to be sold for science, so supply is limited.
Off to the symphony
Last Saturday evening I had the pleasure of watching the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s 2014 Fall Season premiere. But before I got there, I had to actually get there, a process that no one had really explained to me before. So, for all the other hapless fools like me out there, here is how to get a ticket to watch a BSO performance.
Lehninger leads impeccable BSO
Marcelo Lehninger, the young Brazilian-born Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra proved himself worthy of widespread praise Saturday night. Leading the BSO through program centered around Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor Op. 67, Lehninger captivated the audience’s imagination and left them awestruck.