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Kathryn VanArendonk is a critic who writes about TV and comedy. She gets mad when people say TV is a 10 hour movie. Kathryn VanArendonk is a critic who writes about TV and comedy. She gets mad when people say TV is a 10 hour movie. This review of Birbiglia’s Broadway show was originally published on November 13, 2022. We are republishing it to mark the premiere of its debut on Netflix. [Read More]

Earlier this year, Dua Lipa released her shimmering disco-inspired album Future Nostalgia, one in a string of new disco releases this year. Miley Cyrus has also been throwing it back this year, from her glam rock-inspired single “Midnight Sky” (not to mention its Stevie Nicks-featuring remix) to her covers of rock hits like Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and the Cranberries’ “Zombie.” So consider their team-up on Cyrus’s new song “Prisoner” a match made in ‘70s heaven. [Read More]

The narrative dependability of Geraldine Viswanathan and Daniel Radcliffe as besotted lovers allowed the anthology series to get as inventive, weird, and dumb as it wanted. Spoilers follow for all four seasons of Miracle Workers, the series finale of which aired on TBS on August 28.  Whether the setting was Heaven, Inc.; the Middle Ages; the American Old West; or a postapocalyptic future, certain things were guaranteed in each go-round of Miracle Workers, the TBS series from creator Simon Rich that ended its four-season run this week. [Read More]

What if God was one of us, and by one of us, I mean Steve Buscemi? It’s probably not fair to compare Miracle Workers, a new TBS limited series starring Steve Buscemi as an unmotivated God, to NBC’s The Good Place. But it is inevitable. Both shows imagine a version of heaven that is dysfunctional. Both reveal that the leaders “in charge” of the great beyond have no real idea what they’re doing. [Read More]

Our kaiju king. Because franchises are inherently an extension of the hungry maw that is capitalism, the default treatment of IP is always more. Sequels, prequels, and spinoffs, multiverses and revisitations, remakes and reboots; we keep coming up with new terms and new ways to expand recognizable properties. Recently, the results of these overextended gambles have felt like homework, an irresolution, or a creatively challenged attempt to make something uninteresting feel interesting (a building, what Princess Leia was like as a child, other words that rhyme with Billions). [Read More]

Adam Chanler-Berat and Sarah Steele in I Can Get It for You Wholesale, at Classic Stage Company. Since it was first (and last) seen on Broadway in 1962, I Can Get It for You Wholesale has developed a lopsided reputation based on one very specific fact. The show is remembered, when it’s brought up at all, as the launching pad for Barbra Streisand, who made her Broadway debut as the harried assistant Miss Marmelstein at 19, followed that up with a leading role in Funny Girl a few years later, and became the superstar you can read all about in her upcoming memoir. [Read More]

Monique Heart. America, it is certainly a sad day for RuPaul’s Drag Race viewers everywhere. Monique Heart, the heart of season ten, the Ooh Ah Ah Sensation herself, has left the competition, and many would argue (including the authors of this post) that her elimination will make the workroom a much less fun place. The Snatch Game is an infamous turning point in any season of Drag Race, and Heart’s Maxine Waters failed to (forgive us) reclaim her time in a crowded field. [Read More]

Black or White isn’t so much an offensive movie as it is a pointless one. On its surface, Mike Binder’s film about a widowed white grandfather fighting to maintain custody of his biracial grandchild from her paternal black grandmother has all the hallmarks of a white savior melodrama. Told from the point of view of wealthy Santa Monica attorney Elliot (Kevin Costner), who has recently lost his beloved wife to a car accident, the film details his struggles to raise 7-year-old Eloise (a charming Jillian Estell) while dealing with a bitter legal battle that ensues after Rowena (Octavia Spencer), mother to the child’s estranged father, decides that Eloise needs to have a better sense of her black identity. [Read More]

For all its surface amiability, The Big Wedding might be one of the more frustrating films of the year. For the most part, this star-studded comedy about zany family melodramas during one wedding weekend does exactly what you’d expect of something so disposable — it takes generic situations and handles them generically. But the likable cast, made up of so much talent, wins us over just enough to exasperate us that they don’t have more to do. [Read More]

Cursed with an excruciatingly boisterous trailer that screams “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter,” the Snow White comedy Mirror, Mirror turns out to be not that terrible — or maybe it’s that the terrible first half hour wears you down so much that the rest seems relatively pleasant. The problem is that there’s a lot of competition in the “fractured fairy tale” genre these days and it’s not enough to have beloved Brothers Grimm favorites cracking wise and dropping anachronisms. [Read More]