The 21st entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while certainly a financial success, didn't easily snap into place with the rest of the series. A new character from earlier in the timeline jumping back-and-forth with flashbacks can do that.
Walt Disney StudiosPlus, in 2019, anything with even a glancing relationship to Blockbuster Video is swimming upstream already.
Brie Larson's turn as the amnesiac Kree Starforce special agent / USAF top gun / '90s fashion plate did not have the loopy humor of Thor: Ragnarok, visual crackle of Ant-Man And The Wasp, historical sweep of Black Panther, or the kick in the feels of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. And those looking for a superhero girl power champion were undoubtedly better-served by Wonder Woman. But before we had a chance to assess Carol Danvers qua Carol Danvers, the movie got shunted aside in the run-up to the mighty Avengers: Endgame only a few weeks later. Thank Mar-Vell for Blu-ray and streaming!
The time for reassessment is now. Because this movie rules. Annette Bening as a mind-reading AI, Ben Mendelsohn drinking Pulp Fiction's milkshake, and the origins of Nick Fury's missing eye are just three reasons. Jude Law becoming the poster boy for "Debate me!" bozos looking to annoy women online is further icing on the cake.
7
Hedwig And The Angry Inch
It's been two decades since John Cameron Mitchell's East German glam-rock queer icon made her debut in an Off-Broadway theater that's now the bar of a stylish boutique hotel. At the time, it was a mostly dormant ballroom attached to a decrepit hotel built in 1908. (Fun fact: When it had the florid name of the American Seaman's Friend Society Sailors' Home and Institute, it housed survivors of the Titanic.) The story of Hedwig, the Teutonic genderfluid chanteuse, her protege/muse Tommy Gnosis, husband Yitzahk, and its colorful interpretation of Aristophanes' speech from Plato's Symposiums, has been delighting theater kids ever since.
The 2001 movie version is at long last getting the Criterion treatment it deserves, with a new batch of interviews, a conversation between composer Stephen Trask and rock journo David Fricke, a look into Hedwig memorabilia, and a new essay from America's most fashion-forward film critic, Stephanie Zacharek.
Related: The Best, Most Underrated Lines From Shows And Movies, Pt. 1
Do you know anything about day trading? Of course you do. You retired at age 29 after amassing a fortune, and now you spend your hours reading Cracked, like all righteous geniuses of leisure. On the off-chance this doesn't apply to you, know that in the world of high-tech economics, fortunes aren't made in seconds, but fractions of seconds. Hence this weird drama starring Jesse Eisenberg (that absolutely nobody saw, but we swear is good) about the surprisingly thrilling arms race surrounding trade-reflective pings and a quixotic quest to quietly drill a fiber-optic cable from Kansas to New Jersey.
The OrchardTruly, it's a tale as old as time.