Mark Hill / HBO HBO’s Watchmen shouldn’t be as good as it is. In the three decades since the debut of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons’ genre-shattering comic, DC Comics has done everything possible to exploit it—always poorly, and always against the will of Moore. But every time I watch this new, wildly […]
Bobby Roberts
Bobby Roberts is one of the Portland Mercury's calendar editors, as well as one of its film and pop-culture critics. His past career choices included joining corporate broadcast radio just in time for its death, and leaving the world of independent podcasting just before it blew up, but luckily for him there is nothing more stable in the 21st century than a career in alternative print media.
Posted inMusic
What We’re Listening To: Ari Lennox, Helm, Tom Misch, and More!
Ari Lennox, Shea Butter Baby Dreamville/Interscope 2019 A small sampling of what Mercury editorial staffers have been listening to lately. Ari Lennox, Shea Butter BabyI’ve been listening to soul/R&B artist Ari Lennox on the regular, but since she hasn’t yet toured to Portland, it hasn’t been relevant for me to write about her in the […]
Posted inMovies & TV
So What’cha Watching? Our Current TV and Streaming Obsessions
This Way Up, Hyperdrive, Gallery Girls, and More
This Way Up Channel 4 To steal a line from the current-best show on TV, HBO’s Succession: Here at the Mercury, we work hard, but we play soft. (Why would you play hard?) And all that soft play comes in the form of winding down in front of the tube. So what are we watching […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Disney+ Doesn’t Believe in the Binge. This Is Smart. It Also Sucks.
Jesse Grant/Getty Images In case, somehow, you missed it: The Walt Disney Company, after buying 20th Century Fox, gaining a controlling stake in Hulu, and almost singlehandedly propping up the theatrical exhibition business via their veritable home-run derby of brand-driven blockbusters, will be launching their own streaming platform in November. Called Disney+, it will be […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Black Mirror‘s Still Worth Watching Because We’re Still Technology’s Bitch
Netflix Netflix dropped the fifth “season” of Black Mirror yesterday with three new episodes that explored the show’s dystopian premise of “what if phones but too much” (h/t: Daniel Ortberg). As in previous installments, Black Mirror holds up an, I dunno, dark-hued reflective surface to contemporary society and its relationship with technology. Reviews of the […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Godzilla: King of the Monsters Review: A Very Okay Review of a Supremely Okay Movie
Warner Bros. “Cinematic universes” are not new to Godzilla. Nothing is new to the King of the Monsters after 65 years—not even the title King of the Monsters. Writer/director Michael Dougherty’s entry into Godzilla canon isn’t only the 35th film in a 65-year-old series, it’s also the third movie in Warner Bros. attempt to mold […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Game of Thrones and the Endgame of Fan Service
HBO If you’re not familiar with the history of the term “fan service”—introduced and mainstreamed by anime audiences in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s—you might feel like observing contextual clues is all you need. This is how dilettantism, and the majority of pop-cultural criticism, works: You look around, see other people saying a thing, maybe-sorta-kinda figure […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Game of Thrones Sees Internet Petition Make Disproportionate News Thanks to Lazy Entertainment Writers Staring at Twitter All Day
HBO A tiny fraction of the overall audience (18.4 million viewers) for the most popular television show currently airing—HBO’s 239 Emmy-awards-winning Game of Thrones—have spent the last few weeks drunk on memes, review-bombing recent episodes to little fanfare or notice. But seeing as time is short, and this Sunday evening both the show and their […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Pet Sematary Review: Sometimes Dead Is Better
Paramount Pictures What if Stephen King wrote a book so disturbing not even Stephen King could read it? The answer to that question is Pet Sematary, a merciless version of the Monkey Paw fable with only a middle finger to wish upon. Published in 1983, the book was written years prior, but after King shared […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Movie Review: Glass Is an Amazing Waste of Time and Talent
The slide that filled the screen before the press screening of Glass featured a note from director M. Night Shyamalan. Most of it was a gentle plea for viewers to keep the film’s secrets—a request I’m more than happy to indulge, so long as I can warn you that all those secrets are fairly fucking […]
Posted inMovies & TV
My Favorite Movie of 2018: Annihilation
As we looked back at 2018, each of the Mercury’s movie critics decided to highlight just one of our favorite movies of the year—movies that might not get as many awards or eyes as the most talked-about or financially successful films of the year, but movies that are still very much worth watching and rewatching. […]