From The A.V. Club

  • The girls are fighting: Breaking down Spotify’s complaints about Apple

    Spotify has been on a crusade against Apple, which continued on Friday with renewed complaints about the tech giant’s “anticompetitive” behavior. “Apple’s anticompetitive practices harm competitors and result in higher prices, lower product quality, and less choice,” the music streaming service posted to social media. “In tech, a good user experience is everything. But Apple intentionally forces competitors like Spotify to degrade the consumer experience while giving their own apps (like Apple...

  • Prom Dates review: A lively entry into the raunchy teen buddy comedy subgenre

    As far back as they can remember, Prom Dates’ Hannah (Julia Lester) and Jess (Ginny & Georgia’s Antonia Gentry) always wanted to have a spectacular senior prom. At 13, the two even went as far as to make a blood pact, swearing that they would do whatever it took to make the fateful night one to remember. Flash forward a couple of years and the duo seem to be on the right track. They each have dates lined up. Neither date is perfect. Jess’s Luka (Jordan Buhat) has a license plate that reads...

  • 10 men detail new allegations against Kevin Spacey in new docuseries

    Kevin Spacey may be attempting to chart a sordid Hollywood comeback right now, but a new docuseries from the U.K.’s Channel 4 is hoping to remind people who he really is—like we could ever forget. Spacey Unmasked promises to take a “forensic look” at the disgraced actor’s rise in the industry and subsequent alleged sexual abuse, featuring testimony from 10 men who say he assaulted them while they were also hoping to make it in the business. While the docuseries was announced last month, The...

  • Tiffany Haddish has been calling up her haters

    The new Tiffany Haddish profile in The Los Angeles Times covers a lot of ground—past trauma, sexual assault, sobriety, infertility, and more—but nothing will raise eyebrows more than Haddish’s admission that she occasionally calls up her haters. This comes after she claims she’s “working with a therapist to learn how to set better boundaries.” Apparently, those are professional boundaries (turning down the occasional project, for instance), and not personal boundaries, like creating a fake...

  • James Corden is going back to Gavin & Stacey

    Sometimes when the chips are down and you’ve lost some shine stateside, the best thing to do is return to your roots. For James Corden, that doesn’t just mean going back to the United Kingdom. It means reviving his popular sitcom Gavin & Stacey one last time. Having finished his U.S. talk show The Late Late Show With James Corden successfully but with a somewhat diminished reputation, it only makes sense that he’d want to revert back to a situation both comfortable and much beloved. Corden...

  • Emily in Paris will also be Emily in Rome in season four

    Netflix announced the premiere date for Emily In Paris season four today, and—who woulda thunk!—it’s actually two premiere dates. While two for the price of one is usually a great deal, this is kind of worst-case scenario. Netflix keeps splitting its seasons into two—and sometimes even three—parts, and we’re incredibly sick of it. It ruins the flow of the series and interrupts the binge method the streamer worked so hard to foist on all of us a decade ago. At this point, why not just go back to...

  • So what's the deal with Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show?

    “This is not the truth; it’s a narrative,” an anonymous, masked friend warns Jerrod Carmichael about his HBO series in the premiere, calling it “exhibitionist.” And it’s true because Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show is an irrefutable vanity project. The show, which airs its finale on May 17, is equally awkward and transfixing. It unravels the comedian’s relationship with his parents, friends, boyfriend, peers, and even himself. The most important one, though, is his love affair with the masses,...

  • Game Theory: SpongeBob Squarepants meets Dark Souls, somehow kind of rocks

    Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We’ll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you’re playing this weekend, and what theories it’s got you kicking around. Another Crab’s Treasure exists at a weird underwater crossroads: One of the cutest games to ever bear the “Soulslike” descriptor, the new...

  • Tarot review: A flimsy horror flick with an identity crisis

    “Frustrating” is a word that came to mind a lot while watching Tarot, the new horror film from directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg based on Nicholas Adams’ 1992 novel Horrorscope. For one thing, it’s frustrating that the studio decided to change the film’s title from the much more fun Horrorscope to simply Tarot, a word that evokes too many different things to establish any kind of tone. Setting the right tone and holding to it is vital for horror films, more so than in any other genre....

  • 11 haunted objects in film ranked by how dumb you’d have to be to mess with them

    For those of us who are smarter than Homer Simpson, horror movies have taught us a very important lesson: If anyone warns you against interacting with something because it’s cursed or haunted, just back away. Doesn’t matter if you believe in it or not. Just play it safe, and you won’t end up at the mercy of an evil puzzle box or a spirit you’ve literally invited into your body via a dismembered hand. But sometimes you don’t get a warning, or the haunted object seems innocuous enough that there’s...

  • 6 things to watch on TV this weekend

    Welcome to the weekend edition of What’s On. Here are the big things happening on TV from Friday, May 3 to Sunday, May 5. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekly edition of What’s On publishes on Sundays.] 1. Live from L.A., it’s John Mulaney Netflix, Friday, 10 p.m.: All we know about the mysterious six episodes of John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In L.A. is that the comedian/actor goes on various adventures in the city with a bunch of famous people. The show premieres live on May 3,...

  • Hacks recap: A juicy, propulsive second episode

    The Hacks season-three premiere gave us everything we wanted when it reunited star-crossed collaborators Deborah and Ava in a hotel elevator. And now that we’ve had our appetizer, we’re eager for the main course. Thankfully, the writers don’t keep us waiting. The aptly titled “Better Late” is a propulsive half hour of television that introduces the season’s big plot arc—and boy, is it a juicy one. After their tentative reconciliation, Deborah is making good on her promise to be a better friend...