The Review

Top Gun: Maverick is out soon! But can any movie with fast planes, Tom Cruise, and beach volleyball truly compare to the classic fighter pilot movie about, as writer Shirley Li puts it, "cute boys calling each other cute names"? Find out with Shirley, Megan Garber, and David Sims, and explore the moral (but fictional) simplicity of an earlier era: the Cold War 80s.

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In a possibly-soon-to-be-post-Roe v Wade world, our hosts Sophie Gilbert, Megan Garber, and Hannah Giorgis thought it'd be worth re-examining the Judd Apatow/Seth Rogan comedy "Knocked Up," to discuss the way the movie treats women's bodily autonomy, angry reactions from men, and abortion.

Megan also wrote recently on what it says that the movie simply edits direct mention of abortion out — and what that portended for the future of Roe, even fifteen years ago.

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The 1980s Los Angeles Lakers were one of the most dominant teams in sports. At a time when professional basketball was on its heels, the Lakers dynasty brought new excitement: Magic Johnson vs. Larry Bird, Jerry Buss and the glitzy Forum Club, and an uptempo flow offense. That’s the story of HBO’s big-budget series Winning Time, whose season 1 finale aired on Sunday, May 8th.

David Sims, Vann Newkirk, and Ross Andersen—three of The Atlantic’s biggest basketball fans—get together to discuss the series. Does it manage to weave together the era’s many storylines? Does producer Adam McKay’s style energize or distract? And why is the story of the Showtime-era Lakers called “Winning Time”?

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The Apple TV+ dystopian thriller Severance is one of the most acclaimed shows of the year. Its grim take on the furthest extreme of "work-life balance" speaks to our strained pandemic-era relationship with the workplace and, according to our critics, offers a gripping throwback to an era of prestige TV before (as David Sims sees it) Netflix ruined everything. 

Spencer Kornhaber, Sophie Gilbert, and David Sims go down the elevator to Lumon’s basement to talk waffle parties, real-life workplace anxieties, and what dystopian sci-fis they recommend besides Severance.

Further reading:

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Shirley Li, David Sims, and Sophie Gilbert discuss the brutal new blockbuster The Northman. From the director of The Lighthouse and The Witch and based on the viking legend that inspired Hamlet, the film is a visceral experience that’s hard to summarize: Is it an arthouse revenge epic? A viking myth about toxic-masculinity? Shakespeare for people who love crossfit?

The Northman joins The Green Knight and The Last Duel as part of a trend of recent films recontextualizing medieval tales. David, Shirley, and Sophie unpack that trend. They discuss the 10th century tale the film is based on, how both Shakespeare and director Robert Eggers adapted it, and how modern storytelling has tried to bring the historical experiences of women into these hypermasculine myths.

Further reading:

• The Northman Is an Unsentimental Portrait of a Hero

Coming Soon: 

Severance

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Shirley Li, David Sims, and Spencer Kornhaber discuss the hit action comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once. At a time when every show or movie has a multiverse, how does this film’s “verse-jumping” manage to be so cathartic it made us cry?

The trio follows up on last week’s discussion of Turning Red to unpack how this movie uses a multiverse to convey the experience of an immigrant family. They also unpack Michelle Yeoh’s incredible career and how the film’s unique mix of silliness and sentiment gave her an opportunity she’s waited years for. 

Further reading:

Coming Soon: 

The Northman

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Shirley Li, Spencer Kornhaber, and Lenika Cruz discuss the Pixar coming-of-age film Turning Red, why they found it utterly charming, and why this post-villain era of animation is a welcome one.

Further reading:

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Spencer Kornhaber, Shirley Li, and Hannah Giorgis assess the state of pop music following the Grammys. While the much-derided awards have improved at celebrating the diversity of modern music, they still tend to reward safer throwback sounds. And modern music as a whole seems to be going through a nostalgic phase—just look at Silk Sonic’s retro soul, or Lady Gaga’s big-band ballads, or even Olivia Rodrigo’s pop-punk influences.

The trio reviews the Grammys, debates pop music’s retro obsession, and explains why we’re in a moment with more sound-recycling than usual. With streaming tracking all our listens, is old music killing new music? Or is the industry finally seeing (and monetizing) a type of listening we’ve always done? And with a backward-looking mainstream intersecting with a Tik-Tok-ification of pop stardom, where do we expect music to go next?

Further reading:

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From Theranos to WeWork to the socialite grifter Anna Delvey, television these days is all about the art of the scam. Why are we so fascinated with the rise-and-fall stories of swindlers? What do these shows reveal about American culture at this moment? 

And with many of these shows following female scammers through the “Lean In” / girlboss 2010’s in particular, what should audiences make of that brief era of feminism today?

Sophie Gilbert, Megan Garber, and Shirley Li attempt their best Elizabeth Holmes impressions as they discuss the Hulu series The Dropout and the other scammer shows airing now. 

Further reading:

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West Side Story is a work with some huge names behind it: Leonard Bernstein wrote the musical, Stephen Sondheim the lyrics, and Shakespeare the source material Romeo and Juliet. And sixty years after the classic 1961 film dominated the Oscars, another name was added to that list: Steven Spielberg.

The big names behind West Side Story don’t just have status in common though; they’re also all white men telling a story of Puerto Rican migrants in New York City. That lack of diversity among the creative team is evident watching the original film sixty years later. The Puerto Rican characters are portrayed by white actors, often in broad stereotype and brownface. Even Rita Moreno, who portrayed Anita and was born in Puerto Rico, was forced to wear dark makeup.

The 2021 update escapes many of the dated and problematic aspects of the 1961 version by grounding the story in real history. Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner used the period setting of slum-clearance era New York to give the rival gang members more real-world motivation and less stereotyping. In doing so though, the remake may lose some of the kaleidoscopic dreaminess that made the old Hollywood original the classic that it is.

David Sims, Sophie Gilbert, and Spencer Kornhaber compare the two versions ahead of an Oscars weekend in which West Side Story is up for seven awards.

Further reading:

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