Contributor: Adam R. Holz

The latest effort from this Atlanta prog-metal band is a concept album grappling with the hard reality of death.

The Zookeeper’s Wife, based on a true story, is a tender, beautiful, courage-filled movie. It’s also grim, devastating, at times surprisingly graphic for a PG-13 film.

Vulgarity—visual and verbal—runs rampant in this buddy cop reboot that’s ostensibly about law and order.

Voice alum RaeLynn’s country debut brims with self-respect, hard-won wisdom and only a few wild moments.

Drake’s self-described “playlist” unloads 22 tracks that meander from melancholy insight to profanity-drenched braggadocio.

The first big hit from this alternative band that’s not from Portugal proffers a fuzzily vague political perspective.

The Sense of an Ending is both a quiet cautionary tale and a narrative about an aging man trying to deal with his unfinished emotional business.

British superstar Ed Sheeran’s latest features a lot of sweetness and sentimentality … when he’s not doing shots and hooking up, that is.

Table 19 delivers an unexpectedly sweet ending by the time the credits role. Less sweet, however, is this PG-13 film’s frequent profanity and sexual innuendo, as well as winks at marijuana use.

British superstar Ed Sheeran’s latest features a lot of sweetness and sentimentality … when he’s not doing shots and hooking up, that is.

Lorde’s latest hit finds the young New Zealand singer trying to navigate her wildly disorienting emotions after a heartbreak.

Little Big Town’s eighth studio effort focuses more what it takes to be whole than it does being broken.

Rock Dog is a movie that is at times mildly charming (if predictable and formulaic) but more often just kind of … odd.

Alt-pop chanteuse Lana Del Rey’s latest is as earnest and wonder-filled as her last album was grim and nihilistic.

What begins as taut, suspenseful thriller descends into horror story that’s as lurid as it is absurd.