Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

What's Good Wednesdays

Hump day recommendations, May 1, 2024

Make us preferred on Google

Watch: “Monkey Man” Dev Patel knocks it out of the park in his directorial and screenwriting debut. The film is an action thriller/revenge story that also serves as a critique of Hindu nationalism in India. It features impeccably choreographed fight scenes — this movie is quite bloody, I must warn you — and the performances were as fantastic as the storyline. Highly recommend it! – John

Watch: “Fallout.” I was astounded at how well Amazon’s new series captured the dark humor (and plain ol’ darkness) of the Fallout video games, which imagine surviving in a terrifying wasteland two centuries after a global nuclear war. You won’t be able to take your eyes off Ella Purnell as she leaves the vault where her family has survived closed off from the world for generations (with implied mild incest) to rescue her father from brutal raiders from the surface. – Matt


Listen: Serial 4 Guantánamo. I have been counting the days before each new episode. This tells the story of Guantánamo Bay and the prison camp the US set up there shortly after 9/11 through the personal stories of the prisoners, guards, and military leadership. The brilliance is its timeliness. It's still fresh, it's still a national event we haven’t reconciled, but enough time has passed that a lot of interviewees are feeling comfortable disclosing what really happened (spoiler alert, a lot of chaos) for the first time. – Riley

Listen: The Rest is Politics US If you’re a fan of The Rest is Politics podcast, there’s a new weekly US version hosted by Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci. The first one dropped last week, and I found myself leaning in to hear the former White House comms director’s insights about Trump’s legal issues — and why so many Americans may turn a blind eye to (his alleged) bad behavior. — Tracy

Watch: “The Hardest Hour.” Experience life in wartime Ukraine through the eyes of Ukrainians in this powerful documentary from Alan Badoev and Ukraine’s 1+1 broadcaster. Compiled from 200 hours of smartphone footage from the camera rolls of civilians, this film shows the reality of adapting to a life upended overnight. You’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with people enduring tearful goodbyes, hiding in bomb shelters, crouching amid gunfire, staring down Russian tanks – taking in moments of everything from joy and fear to grief. – Emilie Macfie, GZERO’s social media guru

More For You

Read about a political drama at a New York food co-op may sound like the kind of dispute only Brooklyn could produce. Think contentious debates over tahini, permissions, and a peanut butter snack puff called Osem Bamba. Yet, it’s also a microcosm of the ideological divisions in the US over Israel after the war in Gaza. The New York Times breaks [...]
Read: “Angel Down,” which just won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It’s a World War I novel by Daniel Kraus about a group of soldiers who discover a fallen angel on a French battlefield, told as one breathless sentence from beginning to end. Kraus’s last novel, “Whalefall,” was about a scuba diver literally swallowed by a whale, and this one [...]
Watch: “The Panic in Central Park” from Girls on HBO. The episode, which premiered 10 years ago this month, is a classic and has appeared on countless lists of the greatest TV episodes ever made. Yes, that’s a sweeping and subjective claim, but the story of a relationship that swings from bad to good to bad again perfectly captures the angst (and [...]
Watch: “The Studio.” If you’ve ever wondered how the movies get green-lit before they hit the big screens, you’ve got to watch this 13-time Emmy-winning show. It is a chaotic comedy that follows the life of studio head Matt Remick, played by Seth Rogan, and his team at the fictional Continental Studio. It gives a glimpse into what really happens [...]