19 canceled spin-offs, Cannes wrap-up, and more: The A.V. Club's best stories of the week

Here’s a compilation of our favorite features we published this week.

Monday

• David Bowie, The Monks, and Steve Reich were buried under one of rock’s biggest years
  
• What if Gaspar Noé threw a party and everyone lost their minds?
  
• Can robots compose entire albums? Switched On Pop examines the evidence
  
• Alien³ is so much better than David Fincher and its reputation insists
  

Tuesday

• We wade through Netflix to find the best streaming series for your kids
  
• Ask an indie rock veteran: Do musicians enjoy listening to their own music?
  
• The Thermals’ best album is relevant again, but that’s not what makes it so great
  
• Spike Lee teams up with Jordan Peele for the funny, pointed, uneven BlacKkKlansman
  
• God Of War’s ending leaves plenty of clues about where the series is headed next
  
• The paranoid late ’90s thriller Arlington Road hides a cruel twist in plain sight
  

Wednesday

• Solo, a canceled story: 19 TV spin-offs for breakout characters that no one wanted
  
• Lars von Trier doesn’t need a press conference to shock the hell out of the Cannes Film Festival
  
• The Handmaid’s Tale puts everyone in their places
  
• Jeff Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones chew scenery in 1994’s other mad-bomber thriller
  

Thursday

• Before TV revivals happened every day, Adult Swim turned Home Movies’ camera back on
  
• Han Solo brings not enough fun to Cannes, while a superb film makes its late-festival premiere
  
• The Chronicles Of Riddick barely makes sense, and that doesn’t matter in the slightest
  

Friday

• The Phantom paid tongue-in-cheek homage to old-timey do-gooders but never got its due
  
• Grey’s Anatomy’s lengthy existence isn’t a joke, it’s a strength
  
• The B+ career: 10 artists who always deliver very good—but never truly great—work
  
• The best movies of Cannes 2018, plus a serious Palme D’Or threat at the end of the festival
  
• After Face/Off, John Woo and Nicolas Cage reunited for an earnest war movie
  
• The Highest House delivers fantasy comic excellence in an oversized package