What might be most horrific about the horrors exposed in Matthew Heineman’s overwhelming City of Ghosts is their familiarity. The film documents the efforts of citizen journalists to alert the world to ISIS’s ravaging of Raqqa, their Syrian hometown, which Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and his extremist followers seized four years…
Jenny Slate’s laughter comes out in a wild gush, as though she’s been shaken and uncorked, the sound somehow puppyishly sweet and punkishly impolite. Her characters, cheery cynics, often fail to quite match the mood of a room, so their amused eruptions can hurt feelings, stir bafflement, inspire the ol’…
“Cutting the cord” has become a point of pride for some TV watchers. Streaming services like Netflix, SlingTV and Hulu have challenged cable’s longtime monopoly, offering both traditional and original TV programming, and the ability to access it from a variety of devices, all for a low monthly subscription fee…
Junior Players Present Othello Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre 1500 Tenison Parkway 8:15 p.m. nightly through Sunday Free Tuesday and Wednesday Although the Junior Players perform children’s theater, they still produce modified versions of traditional theater, and that means the troupe rarely shies away from heavy material. Adding to its impressive roster of…
A handful of Dallas rescue pups got ready for their closeups this month when Bark, the company behind pet-oriented subscription service Barkbox, partnered with a local animal rescue service to promote its new line of toys. The company decided to forego “professional” dog models to market its “Lights,…
The middle of winter may not sound like an ideal time to open a massive water park. However, Grand Prairie’s new 80,000-square-foot water park, under construction and scheduled to open its first phrase around mid-November, will be able to make it feel like summertime no matter the season. The $100…
This week, NFLshop.com released data about its best selling jerseys in May. Two Dallas Cowboys, quarterback Dak Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott, made the top 10. While Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch moved the most jerseys, Prescott came in third and Elliott came in fourth. Elliott was allegedly…
Friday Forgive the terrible wordplay, but Killer Queen is guaranteed to blow your mind. Labeled as the U.K.’s premier Queen tribute band, it has carried the legacy of one of history’s most revered rock bands for 24 years. The England-based band takes its role of purveying Queen’s legacy seriously, not…
One of the most hallowed weeks of the year is almost upon us: Shark Week. It’s that glorious time of year when the Discovery Channel and everyone else pays homage to one of the most feared and majestic creatures of the ocean, presumably so sharks see it as a sign…
Insecure returns July 23 on HBO No moment captures the elations of HBO’s Insecure better than the opening scene of the sophomore season’s second episode. The morning after sleeping with her ex-boyfriend, Issa (Issa Rae) recounts her confusion about the abrupt quickie to her snappish best friend, Molly (Yvonne Orji)…
With summer tipping over the halfway point, the realization has sunk in that some of us haven’t taken a summer vacation. Some years, a summer vacation just isn’t in the cards. A myriad of reasons stack up that prohibit a vacation-rich Instagram feed. But no frets. We’ve rounded up plenty…
Kuso premieres on Shudder July 21. It’s nearly impossible to categorize the first feature-length film by Steven Ellison (aka Flying Lotus, the experimental beatmaster, music producer and rapper). Made up of multiple, wildly varied vignettes that intersect and revolve around the theme of a chaotic post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where every…
Ozark premieres on Netflix July 21 When Skyler White challenged her husband’s secret fun life of crime on Breaking Bad, the backlash to her drove Anna Gunn to write an op-ed in The New York Times. Gunn revealed that a number of disturbing “hate boards” had often conflated her with…
If you wander into the Dallas Museum of Art on Friday night and find a sea of people dressed in eccentric costumes more appropriate for a nightclub, don’t worry, you haven’t taken a wrong turn. This week’s Late Night, a monthly event in which the Arts District stays up late,…
A “feminist” film need not portray all its female characters in a positive light. Women aren’t a monolith of benevolence. Still, a film with multiple female characters who are equal parts sympathetic and sadistic, who face off against one another in a battle of wits and will, exposing some harsh…
It must be nice being Luc Besson, stuck at the age of 14 for the past 44 years. Back when I was that age, in the late 1980s, Besson was among my favorite working filmmakers. I adored the earnest wonder of the deep-sea worlds of The Big Blue (1988) and…
‘Til Midnight at the NasherNasher Sculpture Center 2001 Flora St. 6 p.m.-midnight Friday Free ‘Til Midnight at the Nasher represents one of Dallas’ great community events — a lawn filled with a patchwork of spread-out blankets, kids with popsicles and the buzz of conversation as people get to know everyone…
At 88 years young, the rebel-shaman filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky has led an eclectic life and enjoyed a provocative career not easily encapsulated. His 1970 acid western, El Topo, crowned him godfather of the midnight-movie craze. His phantasmagoric 1973 masterpiece, The Holy Mountain, was ripped off by Kanye West for the…
Truth in advertising: Girls trip hard during their New Orleans getaway in Girls Trip, which maybe doesn’t need that possessive apostrophe after all. Malcolm D. Lee’s comedy, written by Kenya Barris and Tracy Oliver — the same creative team behind last year’s uneven Barbershop: The Next Cut — pops with…
Most video game arcade champions spend their entire lives trying to master one machine. Lauren Featherstone isn’t even old enough to remember arcades’ heyday, yet she just smashed the world record for Tapper, one of the most beloved games of all. Featherstone, 24, first played the beer-slinging arcade classic only…
Thursday Fort Worth band Quaker City Night Hawks attributes its success to its brand of rock ‘n’ roll, which has roots in Texas boogie with a Memphis-like soul and heavy blues sound. The foursome made waves throughout North Texas when it formed in 2009 and dubs its music the “spirit…
“Every love story is a ghost story,” David Foster Wallace wrote, more than once. That evocative observation is probed in David Lowery’s A Ghost Story, a film that occasionally reaches a similar level of eloquence. Lowery’s fourth feature reunites Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, the leads of his second, the…
