Alt-J’s early albums were a revelation, where literature met melody and turned pop music into art.

Their first two albums—An Awesome Wave and This Is All Yours—hit like lightning. They were smart and sharp, full of stories and strange beauty. These were not just albums. They were novels written in sound. Each track had a spine and chapters, characters and plots. This wasn’t background music. It was music that demanded you stop, listen, and think.

“Matilda,” from An Awesome Wave, is a quiet masterpiece. It’s an ode, a lament, a whisper. You don’t have to know it’s about Natalie Portman’s character in Léon: The Professional, but when you do, the song deepens.

And then there’s “Fitzpleasure.” A thunderclap of sound. It starts sparse and strange and builds into something huge. You feel it in your chest. Inspired by Last Exit to Brooklyn, it paints the gritty and the violent with a brush soaked in poetry.

The same brilliance carried into This Is All Yours. Tracks like “Nara” and “Every Other Freckle” showed the band’s ability to blend intimacy with grandeur. Their lyrics were dense with meaning, but the music never felt weighed down. Alt-J’s ability to balance complexity with accessibility was unmatched.

But something changed.

Their third album, Relaxer, wasn’t bad. It had its moments—“In Cold Blood” is a clever, catchy tune. But it felt different. Less literary, more hook-driven. The band seemed to lean into simpler pleasures.

By their fourth album, The Dream, this trend solidified. Tracks like “U&ME” have an easy, breezy quality, but they don’t linger in the mind the way their earlier songs did.

There’s no shame in this shift. Catchy hooks are their own kind of craft. But the hyper-literary magic of their debut is what made Alt-J special. That’s what set them apart, made them singular. Without it, they’re merely good, not great.

Alt-J still crafts a good tune, but the spark of genius that lit their first two albums is what lingers.

The movie Wicked feels less like a reimagining of The Wizard of Oz and more like a rebellion against it.

From the opening frame, it’s clear this isn’t Kansas anymore—or the Technicolor utopia we’ve come to associate with the 1939 classic.

Instead, Wicked recasts the story as a pointed critique of the Wizard, Oz’s gleaming authoritarian leader, and the system he represents. Gone is the bumbling, lovable fraud; in his place stands a shrewd manipulator whose machinations come to symbolize corruption and propaganda. The movie pulls no punches in making the Wizard a figure of ire, transforming him from a figurehead into the central antagonist of the tale.

This sharp turn isn’t new. Both Gregory Maguire’s novel and the Broadway production laid the groundwork for a sympathetic retelling of Elphaba’s story, the so-called “Wicked Witch of the West.”

But while the book was cerebral and the stage show leaned into its musical theater charisma, the movie opts for something bolder: a seething, cinematic anti-establishment statement. It doubles down on Maguire’s themes, turning every interaction with the Wizard into a battle of ideology.

There’s a revolutionary spirit here that’s reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s approach to The Shining. Just as Kubrick froze the Overlook Hotel, rejecting Stephen King’s fiery destruction of the haunted space, Wicked systematically dismantles the optimism of The Wizard of Oz. The original Oz was a world of vibrant cheer, where moral binaries were easy to grasp and order was restored with the click of ruby slippers.

Wicked rejects all of that, exposing the rot beneath the Emerald City’s glossy veneer and turning the Wizard into the story’s true source of evil.

The movie’s tone is darker, more dramatic, than its predecessors. The visual palette is rich with greens, blacks, and golds, a deliberate contrast to Oz’s usual saccharine brightness. Even Munchkinland looks less like a whimsical village and more like a microcosm of a broken society.

The musical numbers—still dazzling and operatic—are injected with a rawness that underscores the narrative’s revolutionary theme. Songs like “Defying Gravity” and “No Good Deed” bristle with fury and determination, no longer just anthems of self-discovery but rallying cries against tyranny.

And the Wizard? He’s portrayed as an unrepentant autocrat, wielding charm and cruelty in equal measure. His lies about Elphaba’s powers and motives go from whispers to full-on propaganda campaigns, cementing him as the face of a patriarchal regime. The film takes evident pleasure in dismantling his façade, making it impossible to separate the personal betrayal of Elphaba from the broader societal critique.

For fans of The Wizard of Oz, this may feel sacrilegious, even jarring. The 1939 film portrayed a world of clear moral binaries—good witches, bad witches, a righteous Dorothy. Wicked obliterates that simplicity, instead reveling in the gray areas of morality. Glinda is more complicit than virtuous, Dorothy is absent, and Elphaba is a tragic figure, the victim of a system that needs her to be the villain.

Cynthia Erivo stuns as Elphaba, delivering a performance packed with raw emotion and vocal power, particularly in her rendition of “Defying Gravity.” Ariana Grande brings surprising nuance to Glinda, balancing her comedic charm with a poignant undercurrent of moral conflict. Jeff Goldblum’s turn as the Wizard is both chilling and magnetic, embodying the perfect blend of charisma and menace. 

Ultimately, Wicked is less about Oz and more about the systems of power that shape our perceptions. It’s a cinematic rebellion against the Wizard, against the mythology of Oz as a utopia, and perhaps against the naïve optimism of the original film itself.

Its kicker is as bold as its lead: Wicked isn’t content to simply rewrite the tale—it sets the whole thing on fire and invites you to watch it burn.

A Complete Unknown finds its rhythm in historical accuracy but falters in the impossible task of recreating Bob Dylan’s singular voice.

James Mangold’s film ambitiously tackles the mythos of Bob Dylan, focusing on his meteoric rise as the scrappy troubadour who transformed folk music into a political and cultural force. The film excels in recreating the iconic Greenwich Village of the early ’60s, right down to the coffee-stained folk clubs and the simmering tensions of a youth culture in rebellion. It’s a beautifully rendered love letter to a pivotal era in American music, full of reverence for Dylan’s place in history.

Yet, for all its strengths, the film stumbles in its portrayal of the man himself, trapped by the very thing it celebrates: Dylan’s inimitability.

At the center of the film is Timothée Chalamet, who is nothing if not an intriguing choice for the role. Chalamet captures Dylan’s laconic physicality and a fair bit of his mercurial aura. His scenes with Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger are among the highlights, brimming with charged dynamics that reflect the tensions and alliances of the burgeoning folk movement.

But when it comes to embodying Dylan’s voice—both literal and metaphorical—Chalamet’s performance falls flat.

To be fair, Dylan’s voice is a particular kind of bad that’s almost impossible to mimic. It’s nasal, monotonal, and ragged, but also imbued with an urgent passion that made it unforgettable.

Dylan didn’t sing with range; he sang with conviction. Chalamet, unfortunately, renders it as disinterested mumbling. His brand of bad isn’t charmingly raw—it’s just bad. Instead of evoking Dylan’s piercing intensity, he often comes across as aloof, missing the fire that drove songs like “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

The result is a portrayal that feels more like an impression than an embodiment, which is compounded by the fact that Chalamet doesn’t quite carry Dylan’s androgynously beautiful mystique. Dylan wasn’t conventionally attractive, but his wiry charisma and angular features had an allure that transcended beauty norms. Chalamet’s interpretation lacks that edge, and it’s hard not to imagine a newcomer who might have captured it more faithfully.

That’s the film’s central irony: it’s called A Complete Unknown, yet its lead is anything but. While Mangold has crafted a film that sings with the spirit of its time, it’s weighed down by a central performance that misses the mark. Perhaps the role of Dylan was never meant for a star but for a newcomer—someone plucked from obscurity not for their fame but for nailing Dylan’s look, mannerisms, and ineffable essence.

Ultimately, the film’s biggest flaw might just be its casting. Dylan himself was an enigma, a paradox, and an outsider—a complete unknown. The film could have used the same.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​