Two sensational stories collide in Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed, a new three-part documentary series airing on Peacock. One helped bring the culture into the era of nonstop TV crime and jurisprudence coverage: the grisly 1989 murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez by their sons, Erik and Lyle. The other …
Read More »'32 Sounds' Is the Greatest Documentary You've Ever Heard
Sam Green wants you to stop and listen for a second. Like, really listen. The Bay Area documentarian wants you take in the world around you, one curated noise at a time. It might be church bells, cicadas, wind chimes, or rushing currents. He may throw a few sonic curveballs …
Read More »'White House Plumbers' Gives Watergate the 'Veep' Treatment and Misses Big
In All the President’s Men, the iconic 1976 film about how reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal and brought down the entire Richard Nixon presidency, Woodward’s inside source, nicknamed Deep Throat, famously says, “Forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, …
Read More »'The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning' Is Your New Reality-TV Addiction
Decluttering has become an industry in itself in recent years, with Hoarders prompting TV viewers to recoil in shock at the sight of dwellings stacked to the brim with stuff and Marie Kondo teaching readers The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Let there never be a doubt that a buck …
Read More »'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3' Is Yet Another Big Marvel Movie Misstep
The whole thing felt like a glorious fluke from the get-go. Never mind all those top-tier, name-recognized Marvel superheroes that were being trotted out in the name of establishing a multimedia, cross-branded empire. Let’s spend a lot of money on an obscure late ’60s comic-book title, using characters from its …
Read More »'Sweet Tooth' Season 2: Netflix's Gentler 'The Last of Us' Is Back
The Last of Us struck a nerve with its story of a grizzled cynic shepherding a youngster across a treacherous post-apocalyptic America. But Sweet Tooth got there first, even if it didn’t create as much of a fuss. The dark Netflix YA drama premiered in June 2021, when the Covid …
Read More »'Citadel' Is a $300 Million Disaster for Amazon
Imagine for a moment that in the late 2000s, Marvel did not simply announce a movie about Iron Man, but that they would simultaneously go into production on Captain America, Thor, and Avengers films, with even more in immediate development, and that these would be among the most expensive movies …
Read More »'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret' Is a Coming-of-Age-Movie Masterpiece
When was the first time you realized you were a woman? Was it when you got your first period? Was it when you had your first heartbreak? Was it when you were in ninth grade and the unibrowed kid on your school bus wouldn’t stop calling you a slut, despite …
Read More »'Love & Death' Boasts a Delightfully Gonzo Elizabeth Olsen and Little Else
Why does the new HBO Max miniseries Love & Death exist? On a certain level, yes, I understand why it exists. This is prime Emmy-bait season, and the role of Candy Montgomery — a Texas housewife who, on a warm Sunday in 1980, killed her friend Betty Gore, striking her …
Read More »'Baby J': John Mulaney Makes Beautiful Comedy Out of His Addiction Struggles
It’s been a turbulent few years for John Mulaney, the former SNL writer and ace stand-up comic. In December 2020, Mulaney’s pals — Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and Fred Armisen among them — staged an intervention, prompting the comic to check into a rehab facility for addiction to alcohol, cocaine, …
Read More »