What we'll be listening to, watching, and reading to sate our pop culture needs.
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The return of Lily Tomlin to the big screen, Ottessa Moshfegh’s thriller in our hands, and The Muffs in our ears—the weekend is here!
Lily Tomlin is a national treasure and this film is the perfect vehicle to showcase her genius. Because even though Judy Greer and Marcia Gay Harden have A+ supporting roles, Grandma is all about Tomlin and her mouthy, stubborn, endearing turn as septuagenarian poet Elle Reid. Portraying a mission to raise money for her granddaughter’s abortion, this indie flick is the summer’s most feminist film, and that’s saying a LOT, considering the season’s cinematic offerings.
Yes, this album originally came out in 1993, but the debut from seminal L.A. punk-poppers The Muffs is just as catchy today, and the reissue that came out this week features eight unheard demos and two b-sides to satisfy all your badass bubblegum needs.
Ottessa Moshfegh has struck a nerve—an uncomfortable yet titillating one—with her debut novel Eileen. Recounted by the title’s namesake as a memory of who she was in the ’60s—a 24-year-old secretary at a boy’s correctional facility who lives at home with her paranoid, overbearing father—each subtle revelation is more intriguing than the last, until we finally learn how Eileen escapes, and it’s just as dark as we anticipated.
If you can’t get enough zombies, you’re in luck! There’s a whole new crop of the undead coming to your screen with Sunday’s premiere of this Walking Dead spinoff. It’s the prequel to the hit AMC show so expect plot twists and turns, high stakes survival, and, of course, plenty of gore.
Inspired by an autobiographical New Yorker essay by one of our fave feminists, Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive stars Patricia Clarkson as Wendy Shields, a book critic who’s just been left by her husband, and decides to learn to drive, gaining some independence in the aftermath. Ben Kingsley plays her Indian-American driving instructor, and an unlikely friendship unfolds, one that touches on issues from divorce to cultural philosophies of marriage to mother-daughter relationships, and more.