Furry Road: Isle of Dogs, reviewed.

Boss (Bill Murray), a former baseball team mascot, is part of a pack of exiled canines.

It's no shocker that I loved Wes Anderson's new stop-motion adventure of Isle of Dogs. It's a mild shocker that I didn't cry watching it. Either time! My NPR review is here. UPDATE: I'm on the Pop Culture Happy Hour episode where we hash over some of charges of insensitivity and cultural appropriate that a few critics have levied against the movie, too. That's on the same page as the review, but you can hear below, too.

Farewell, Angelina: Tomb Raider, reviewed.

Alicia Vikander and Walton Goggins pay some bills. (Graham Bartholomew)

People always told me, don't go raiding tombs... I mean, if you're determined to see Tomb Raider, a movie, technically, based on a 2013 reboot of a 1996 video game that previously spawned a couple of Angelina Jolie-starring movies, nothing will deter you. But you'll be going against critical advice.

Nothing to Declare: Gringo, reviewed.

David Oyelowo and Sharlto Copley

Here's my NPR review of Gringo, a bloody farce that musters four good comic performances from primarily non-comedic actors in the service of nothing much.

Cloak & Dagger? I Hardly Know 'Er: Red Sparrow, reviewed

J-Law and Joel Edgerton make love and also war.

Red Sparrow, a nasty adaptation of a novel by C.I.A. veteran Jason Matthews starring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton, is the Black Widow origin movie Marvel Studios will never make. I like a movie that gets at the existential misery of spycraft. Here's my NPR review.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: Annihilation! (emphasis mine)

Gina Rodriguez and Natalie Portman breach the perimeter in Annihilation. (Paramount)

Here is a joke you will not hear on today's episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein I join old friends Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson and new friend Daisy Rosario to dissect (heh) Annihilation, the new thriller from Ex Machina writer/director Alex Garland starring Natalie Portman and involving lots of cool but hella gross body horror stuff:

 Portman hand

Portman finger

Portman foot

Portmanteau

(Bows.)

Let nothing, nothing go to waste. You can hear the episode here.

Vibranium v Unobtanium: A Slate Investigation

Hey, what's my costume made out of again? (Disney/Marvel)

Most of Black Panther is set in the imaginary African nation of Wakanda, a technological utopia whose monarchs have for centuries observed a strict policy of isolationism, keeping would-be colonizers at bay by hiding their nation’s wealth and scientific advancement from the outside world. We’re told in the movie’s very first minute that Wakanda’s prosperity derives from its abundance of Vibranium, and that this bounty was delivered via meteorite long before humans walked the Earth.

And for a resource they're trying to keep secret, the Wakandans sure talk about it a lot. 

Even more than the characters in Avatar (Remember Avatar? Nominated for nine Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director for my boy James Cameron? Still the highest-grossing movie in the history of movies?) speak the much-derided name of that movie's extraterrestrial miracle metal, Unobtanium.

A lot more.

For this Slate piece, I did the transcription. And the math.

Field Notes. I should've let my mom teach me shorthand like she wanted.