What to watch, play, read, and listen to this weekend
The movie to watch
Thoroughbreds
“Thoroughbreds, in other words, has been made with diabolical craft and intelligence, the kind that marks [director Cory] Finley as a major new American talent. But it’s no empty exercise, no mere calling card. The style all comes in service of the central relationship and the superb performances that bring it to bewitching life. Proving that the bubbling cauldron of intensity she stirred in The Witch was no fluke, [Anya] Taylor-Joy peels back Lily’s layers of well-honed artifice over four plot-pivoting chapters. [Olivia] Cooke, meanwhile, plays Amanda’s emotional blankness to a deadpan hilt, while still managing to make her oddly likable, ultimately even sympathetic—she’s a human android trying to sort out her place in a world she sees with a mercenary clarity.”
Read the rest of our review here.
The video game to play
Into The Breach
“One part pint-sized Pacific Rim simulator, one part fiendish, chesslike puzzle fight, Subset Games’ latest, Into The Breach, is all about the pleasures of defusing a crisis. Like the studio’s 2012 hit, the starship strategy game FTL: Faster Than Light, Breach delights in dropping players into starkly unfair situations, providing them with tools, information, and obstacles, and then giving them as much time as they need to think their way through the chaos.”
Read the rest of our review here.
The podcast to listen to
Sooo Many White Guys, “Phoebe And Zoe Kravitz Are Witchy AF”
“Phoebe Robinson is back with a third season of her podcast celebrating everyone except white dudes. Kicking off the new batch of episodes is a thoughtful, fun, and very witchy conversation with Zoë Kravitz. Despite growing up with famous parents, Kravitz has lived through much of the same discrimination that women and people of color face in the industry… Part of what makes this podcast so great is Robinson’s ability to connect with just about anyone in a joyful manner, and Kravitz’s down-to-earth personality makes that connection all the more relatable.”
Read about the rest of this week’s best podcasts here.
The book to read
Uzodinma Iweala, Speak No Evil
“An evocative narrative and stark dialogue keeps Uzodinma Iweala’s Speak No Evil from a single dull moment. [The book] delves deep into a swamp of familial pressures, guilt, and acceptance. Iweala’s characters’ rawness and beauty overwhelm page by page, looping their two stories into one heartbreaking narrative, one that embodies and echoes the pains of current, broader inequalities.”
Read the rest of our review here.
The album to listen to
Young Fathers, Cocoa Sugar
“The beats here feel a little more subterranean than on [previous] records, riding toward their climaxes on tracks like ‘Tremolo’ and ‘Border Girl’ with an almost dub-reggae sense of propulsion (or is it disco?), and the sunbursts of melodies that peek through on ‘Lord’ or ‘In My View’ sound more indebted to gospel than arena rock. Ultimately, though, this is another dispatch from the post-genre space Young Fathers have claimed for their own, blasting out triumphant, sincere, and deeply humanistic sound collages that beg for you to join them there.”
Read the rest of our review here.
The show to watch
Jessica Jones
“Series creator Melissa Rosenberg hasn’t harnessed [Krysten] Ritter’s smoldering star power so much as entered a kind of synchronous orbit, working in tandem with her lead actor on characterization and even dialogue. The show mirrors that partnership in its latest outing by strengthening Jessica’s support network, beefing up Trish’s and Malcolm’s sidekick bona fides, though there’s still a clear hierarchy. And season two really does need Jessica (and Ritter) in as close to top shape as possible, because in the midst of unveiling more painful revelations, the new episodes venture into perilous territory—that of the origin story.”
Read the rest of our review here.