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Here’s the answer for “Wordle” #1141 on August 3, as well as a few hints, tips, and clues to help you solve it yourself.

Oh hey there! If you’re here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we’re serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today’s answer.

If you just want to be told today’s word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for August 2’s Wordle solution revealed. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

Not the day you’re after? Here’s the solution to yesterday’s Wordle.

What’s the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website’s creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn’t any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle‘s Hard Mode if you’re after more of a challenge, though.

Here’s a subtle hint for today’s Wordle answer:

Something a reptile may shed.

Does today’s Wordle answer have a double letter?

There are no reoccurring letters.

Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with…

Today’s Wordle starts with the letter S.

The Wordle answer today is…

Get your last guesses in now, because it’s your final chance to solve today’s Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today’s Wordle is…

SCALE.

Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.

Reporting by Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

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Connections is a New York Times word game that’s all about finding the “common threads between words.” How to solve the puzzle.

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that’s captured the public’s attention. The game is all about finding the “common threads between words.” And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we’ve served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today’s puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for August 3’s Connections solution. But if you’d rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections?

The NYT‘s latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications’ Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there’s only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here’s a hint for today’s Connections categories

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

Yellow: Elation

Green: Being civil with someone you don’t like

Blue: That’s BS

Purple: Things you press

Here are today’s Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today’s connections fall into the following categories:

Yellow: Bit of Excitement

Green: Tolerate

Blue: Nonsense

Purple: Things to Click

Looking for Wordle today? Here’s the answer to today’s Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today’s puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today’s Connections #419 is…

What is the answer to Connections today

Bit of Excitement: HIGH, KICK, RUSH, THRILL

Tolerate: BEAR, STAND, STOMACH, TAKE

Nonsense: BALONEY, BULL, BUNK, TRIPE

Things to Click: HEELS, MOUSE, REMOTE, TOUNGE

Don’t feel down if you didn’t manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we’ll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Is this not the Connections game you were looking for? Here are the hints and answers to yesterday’s Connections.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today’s Strands.

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The best gaming deals of the day as of Aug. 2 include $200 off a PlayStation VR 2 bundle, savings on Game Pass memberships, and more.

Amazon Prime Day might be long gone, but great deals are still bountiful after the massive shopping event, especially in the gaming category. Luckily, you won’t have to go looking far for those savings, because we’ve already put together a list of the best gaming deals you can get today. Check out our top picks below, including a great PSVR 2 bundle deal that expires in just a few days (Aug. 4).

Our top pick

Why we like it

While PlayStation VR 2 didn’t really blow up in the way that many of us expected it to, Sony’s attempt at creating a smash-hit headset is still a worthwhile investment for VR diehards, if you ask us — especially when you can snag one for $200 off. This PSVR 2 deal not only comes with the VR rig itself, but also with a copy of Horizon Call of the Mountain, which is definitely a must-play PSVR 2 title. The deeply immersive experience throws you into the world of Horizon as you’ve never seen it before. You’ll climb treacherous mountains, go head-to-head with dangerous machine enemies, and bask in the gorgeous environments that the game has to offer. If you’ve enjoyed the other Horizon games and want to connect with the franchise even deeper, this is your best bet. This deal ends on Aug. 4, so be sure to grab one quickly if you’re considering it.

Best subscription deal

Why we like it

If you’re passionate about EA’s expansive library of sports titles and beyond, picking up an EA Play membership will be more than worth it for you. As of the time of this writing, EA is offering your first month of the service for just $0.99 to celebrate EA Play’s ten-year anniversary (after the first month, your membership will convert to $5.99 per month or $39.99 per year if you don’t cancel). Member benefits of EA Play include unlimited access to an assortment of EA titles, including Madden 23, The Sims 4, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and many more. You’ll also get in-game rewards as you play, the ability to test out new games using the game trials feature, and a 10% discount on other EA digital content like season passes and DLC for select titles.

Best Xbox deal

Why we like it

We’ve already told you approximately one million times before, but it always bears repeating: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is one of the best deals in gaming, and if you have an Xbox console, a necessity. Game Pass offers subscribers access to a massive library of games to download from and play whenever they want, which spans from Xbox classics to day-one new releases. At the Ultimate tier, you’ll also be able to play online with friends, get exclusive discounts in the Microsoft Store, unlock access to PC Game Pass, and many other perks. Pick up a three-month membership at Amazon and save yourself $5, just $44.99.

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M. Night Shyamalan’s latest “Trap” is a ludicrous romp filled with surprising sentimentality. Movie review.

Somewhere along the way, M. Night Shyamalan went from a classy, “elevated horror” auteur — “The Next Spielberg,” Newsweek called him in 2002 — to a purveyor of cheap thrills. It was the best thing that ever happened to him. Trap follows in the footsteps of the schlockier work he’s made in the last decade, beginning with the self-funded found footage thriller The Visit. The film’s story is tightly wound around a dopey premise, but it’s also buoyed by incredible heart and soul, and seldom slows down while twisting every possible screw. In short, it’s an absolute blast.

Set largely at a pop concert, and featuring narrative zig-zags that stretch incredulity, it’s easy to see how Trap might lose viewers eager to nitpick plot holes and logistics. However, that would be missing the forest for the trees. At the movie’s core is a surprisingly layered story of parenthood, which is entirely in service of the kind of thrilling goofiness Shyamalan brought to 2021’s Old — a movie whose visual and narrative framing is similarly (and intentionally) off-kilter while remaining utterly committed to sincere melodrama.

Trap is wonderfully good. It might even be great. And if it’s not attuned to your sensibilities, chances are, you’ll have a hoot of a time regardless.

What is Trap about?

Man, what isn’t Trap about? 

In the broadest possible strokes: it’s about a well-to-do Philadelphia firefighter, Cooper (Josh Hartnett), who takes his teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a show by her favorite popstar, only to discover that the concert is also a trap to capture him — as it turns out, he’s secretly a notorious serial killer known as The Butcher.

That’s all you really need to know going in, though the film is surprisingly spoiler-proof. Long gone are the days when even Shyamalan’s most prestigious works hinged on major reveals — such has been his reputation, even though it’s only really happened in three or four of his 16 features — because he’s proven much more adept at telling stories with numerous, cascading twists and turns. But perhaps the biggest twist in Trap is that it’s a thoughtful father-daughter story at its core. 

Trap is a film about ‘girl dads’

As much as its plot concerns Cooper discovering the scale of this police operation, and wriggling through whatever cracks he can find, the reason it feels urgent — and why he can’t simply go on the run — is that he truly, deeply cares about Riley. She’s been having a tough time at school with bullies and seeing the spark in her eye as she sings and dances means the universe to him. As much as Cooper might want to find a way out of the labyrinthine concert venue, he doesn’t want to arouse her suspicions, and he needs to make sure she has a good time too.

Which is to say: if the premise didn’t seem loopy enough from the trailers, it’s also a girl-dad movie in saccharine, sentimental ways. After all, the pop singer at its center, Lady Raven, happens to be played by R&B artist Saleka (Shyamalan’s daughter), who features heavily on screen (not to be confused with his other daughter, Ishana, who directed The Watchers this year). Trap is practically an ode to his daughters and their teenage years, though it also wrestles with some of the darker implications of fatherhood. It plays, at times, like a confrontation of what it means for a daughter to challenge a man’s view of the world, and of himself.

During Trap, it’s fun to see the uncommon sight of a western pop star of South Asian origin (quite fitting for brat summer, the doing of British Asian sensation Charli XCX), but the inclusion of Saleka is more than just a gimmick. Sure, Shyamalan attempts to highlight her musical talents, but the young singer-songwriter proves a surprisingly key (and radiant) presence, a bastion of aspirational goodness who vitally contrasts with Cooper. Shyamalan casts his daughter as a symbol of absolution, who suggests that her fans hold up their phone flashlights in the name of forgiveness and acceptance — traits Cooper doesn’t adhere to when the movie occasionally delves into his backstory. It’s a moving meta-text, made all the more tragic by the fact that Cooper is constantly trying to escape Lady Raven’s orbit, and willing to make innocent bystanders his pawns.

There is perhaps no more fitting a venue in which to wrestle with casual misogyny than a pop concert aimed at teenage girls, and the film incorporates this idea with surprising subtlety. Cooper is quick to put several young women and girls at the concert in harm’s way to create distractions, and he doesn’t appear to take Lady Raven very seriously (his ultimate folly, Shyamalan, you old softie). Protecting Riley from bullies may be just as important to him as evading the cops, but he also has a casually violent misogynistic streak. One gets the sense that Cooper might trot out a defense like “as the father of a daughter…” as though it were a get-out-of-jail-free card. 

Trap is a cat-and-mouse game where the mouse has a head start

However, Trap isn’t a film of learning moments. It’s far too mischievous for something so didactic. Rather, it uses Cooper’s relationship to Riley as a kind of rubber band. He often leaves her to enjoy the show while scouting the venue for exits, like some kind of serial killer 007 — it’s hard not to root for him each time he pulls off a small heist to slip past security guards. But his role as a chaperone means he constantly finds himself back with Riley no matter how much progress he makes.

The more Cooper’s suspicions are aroused by the increased police presence, the more he tries to sleuth out their strategy. It’s a cat-and-mouse game where the mouse has a head start (the police don’t know what he looks like). Minor characters are surprisingly forthcoming with what they share — in part because he can turn on the charm, but also for plot convenience — and new opportunities to slip out unnoticed seem to arise as soon as existing ones are thwarted. Some of these exit strategies are ludicrous, from Cooper trying to score a backstage pass, to a featured artist inexplicably appearing through an illogically placed trap door (heh).

But Shyamalan has a secret weapon amid all this: the talents of Josh Harnett. 

Josh Hartnett’s fine-tuned, operatic performance keeps Trap on track

Trap does for Harnett what Shyamalan’s Split did for James McAvoy: both films provide their actors with some truly madcap material that allows them to flex their most unexpected thespian muscles. Hartnett and McAvoy ham it up like nobody’s business, but they have so much god damn fun with it.

In Harnett’s case, the first layer of this fun takes the form of well-meaning dad jokes and stilted delivery that hints at a kind of pretense. Shyamalan’s dialogue has never felt polished or naturalistic, but its floweriness here beats with distinct purpose. It feels robust during fleeting moments of exposition, allowing Cooper to create a detailed roadmap to his origins through implication, and paint pictures of his daily life using words alone. It also creates a sandbox for Hartnett, in which he plays with polite pleasantries and laces them with devious implications, accentuating the character’s white, suburban, middle-class façade. The actor wields Cooper’s friendly front with precision, luring other characters in with his charm while winking to the audience. 

Trap is effectively about an all-American father trying, and slowly failing, to maintain a work-life balance, while keeping an addiction to bloodshed under wraps. The film isn’t particularly interested in any realistic serial killer psychology, and it’s also not concerned with his actual methodology, or any of the salacious tenets one might expect from Dexter or Criminal Minds — trauma, motive, trophies, what have you. However, the film is deeply invested in the mask of normalcy Cooper wears.  

The film circles the question of what fatherhood means for someone who has such horrific, secret impulses, a theme that may as well reflect the desire to create horror movies, as though Shyamalan were turning the camera on himself. However, this self-reflexivity is more of an echo than a linear conclusion. Harnett is far from an avatar for Shyamalan. Rather, he seems to represent Shyamalan’s movies — his cinematic essence — which tend to wrestle with beliefs about the world, and about oneself.

Cooper, in the process, embodies the kind of spiritual war Shyamalan’s movies have come to fight in the latter half of his career, with works like After Earth, Old, and Knock at the Cabin. These films ask what it would take for parents to protect their children from the world, and from themselves, and Trap is no different. But as thoughtful as it may be, the reason it works like a charm is because it’s unrelenting in its use of themes of family and fatherhood as fuel for a genuinely raucous thriller.

Trap is a propulsive visual romp 

As much as Shyamalan is responsible for Trap as its writer-director, an equal degree of credit must be given to cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the Thai maestro behind Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee and Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. Shyamalan’s thriller wouldn’t be nearly as impactful without Mukdeeprom’s visual trickery and his evolving use of space.

When the movie begins, it features a sense of vast, open possibility while framing Lady Raven’s performance as a distant feature. Her show is always seen through Cooper’s point of view, literally and metaphorically, as something far away, and something he doesn’t understand (or really care to). But the film takes surprisingly intimate turns, and contorts geography until it feels like every wall is closing in on Cooper, à la non-stop concert thrillers like Grand Piano and the opera scene in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Mukdeeprom employs techniques like split diopters to compress space when it feels like authorities are close, and in immediate response, awkward framing with an excess of emptiness whenever Cooper finds some kind of escape hatch. The film practically controls your breathing through its aesthetics, alternating between claustrophobia and a bizarre form of relief, where you find yourself rooting for a guy to get back to his hobby of dismembering innocent people.

Trap is also impeccable in its use of close-ups, which become tighter and more discomforting as the film progresses. Each time Harnett is in frame, Mukdeeprom lights him in ever-so-slightly eerie ways. Nothing feels overtly “wrong” with Cooper, but his eyes feel just a little too obscured by shadow. He feels a little too duplicitous, or a little too asymmetrical, in ways that your brain may only register subconsciously.

Something just feels off, much in the same way cinematographer Michael Gioulakis made each camera movement feel off in Shyamalan’s Old. In this case, what’s most puzzling is an inescapable stillness that’s as alluring as it is uncanny. You can’t look away, but you also don’t want to. Trap is filled with these opposing dichotomies. At the end of the day, it’s about following a serial killer as he finds his way out of a corner like a wounded animal, if only for his daughter’s love — until a sly switch in POV turns it tense, tragic, and downright terrifying, both thanks to Hartnett’s performance, and thanks to Shyamalan’s fable-like approach to perpetuating cycles of bad parenthood.

His masterstroke, however, is that all throughout every thematic and tonal turn, and each gonzo narrative escalation, Trap  remains wildly and consistently entertaining, with laugh-out-loud dramatic ironies that collide headfirst with a sincere father-daughter story in the most fucked up packaging.

Trap is now in theaters.

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As of August 2, get your first month of EA Play for just 99 cents in celebration of the service’s 10th anniversary.

SAVE $4: As of August 2, new members can sign up for their first month of EA Play for just $0.99. That’s $4 off its normal price through August 15.

When it comes to gaming, you can never have too many things to play. One day you might be into a lengthy adventure game. The next, you might decide you want to jump into a co-op session with friends. Platforms like EA Play make it easy to try out tons of different games without having to break the bank. The subscription service is celebrating its 10-year anniversary, with members having played over 230 million game trial hours and 760 million rewards across its platform since its August 2014 inception. And now, EA is offering an enticing deal to count you among its members as well.

As of August 2, you can score EA Play for just 99 cents for your first month across Xbox, PlayStation, and PC from now through August 15. That’s $4 off a monthly subscription fee. This offer only applies to new members, and only the basic EA Play tier, which is otherwise $39.99 a year. The EA Play Pro tier is not included in this discount.

EA Play is a great way to check out some of the best and brightest games from the company. Choose from a curated list of games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, The Sims 4, and It Takes Two and play them as long as you want, all for free. There are tons of different games to choose from, and you can try them out all at your leisure, just like with Xbox Game Pass. But you also get a great perk when it comes to new releases, too. EA Play allows you to try the hottest new games with 10-hour trials that don’t cost you a dime. If you decide to buy, you can keep all your progress.

Additionally, there are free in-game rewards to collect as well as a 10% discount off every purchase you make from Electronic Arts, including on game downloads, season passes, DLC and more. If you play a lot of EA titles or want to see what the catalog looks like, jumping in for a dollar is a great idea. There’s a lot to see, and even if you decide to stay on at the $5.99 monthly fee, it’s well worth joining for the value.

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Josh Hartnett, M. Night Shyamalan and Saleka Shyamalan dissect Josh’s character from ‘Trap’ and where it overlaps with his iconic role in ‘The Faculty’.

Josh Hartnett, M. Night Shyamalan and Saleka Shyamalan dissect Josh’s character from ‘Trap’ and where it overlaps with his iconic role in ‘The Faculty’.

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Senior Social Media Editor, Lily Kartiganer rants about her gripe that the dragons in ‘House of the Dragon’ are not dragons, they are actually wyverns.

Senior Social Media Editor, Lily Kartiganer rants about her gripe that the dragons in ‘House of the Dragon’ are not dragons, they are actually wyverns.

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“House of the Dragon” stars Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Ewan Mitchell, and Harry Collett guess emoji names.

“House of the Dragon” stars Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Ewan Mitchell, and Harry Collett guess emoji names.

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“The Daily Show” host Ronny Chieng took a chunk out of Donald Trump after his false rant about Kamala Harris’ racial identity and his post about Mindy Kaling.

“The Daily Show” host Ronny Chieng took a chunk out of Donald Trump after his false rant about Kamala Harris’ racial identity and his post about Mindy Kaling.

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In “Kneecap,” the music-fueled biopic named for the Irish hip-hop trio on which it centers, Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, and DJ Próvaí play themselves.

Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. Kneecap, the music-fueled biopic named for the Irish hip-hop trio on which it centers, spins a tale that is at times so outrageous you might suspect poetic liberties have been taken. But the film itself embraces the blurring of fact and feeling to deliver a propulsive and political romp that rejects the austere approach of so many indulgent Oscar-chasing biopics. And thank God and all the saints for that! 

Too often, larger-than-life rock stars or pop divas or legendary musicians are reduced by a color-by-numbers approach that fails to capture exactly why they were so enthralling to begin with. (For recent examples, see Elvis, Back to Black, and One Love — or don’t.) However, Kneecap embraces the raw and reckless energy of Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, who perform under the stage names Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, and DJ Próvaí. So, early on, a sprawling club scene with flashing lights and hard drug-taking spills into a dark, forbidding forest — not nearby, but connected — as the police (or “peelers,” as the boys call them) chase them down. 

By collapsing the set of a nightclub into a forest that seems plucked out of nightmarish fantasy, director/writer Richard Peppiatt swiftly establishes that Kneecap won’t play by the rules. Hand-drawn graphics burst onto the screen, emphasizing motions and odd analogies. Claymation will be employed to illustrate the mind-bending effects of an ill-timed ketamine trip. And alongside the band, who play themselves in the film, two-time Academy Award nominee Michael Fassbender strides onscreen to bring a bit of surreal grit. 

Combined with a soundtrack flushed with Kneecap’s high-octane hip-hop, the result is a rush to the head that’s hard to shake. But why would you want to?

“Kneecap” is a fuck you to boring biopics and tedious vanity projects. 

The premise of Kneecap might sound a bit dry if you’re new to the group’s music. A few years back, a debate brewed over the proposed Irish Language Act, which would formally recognize the native tongue alongside English. While advocates and academics rallied for the dying language, an unlikely resurgence came to it through fast-growing interest in a band from Belfast, who rap in Irish about drugs, sex, and rebelling against British authority — including the police. 

Smartly, Kneecap interweaves this larger political story into the playful personal stories of its three members. Liam Óg serves as the cheeky narrator, providing voiceover to all parts, including his Romeo-and-Juliet romance with a British party girl (Jessica Reynolds), who likes a kinky night in. However, the story begins with Naoise’s baptism, which was raided by a police force suspicious of his father, a Catholic radical Republican named Arló (Fassbender), who had a habit of planting bombs in the name of rebellion. Raised under the shadow of his dad’s politics, Naoise is stuck between a rock and a hard place, pressured by Arló’s admirers to follow in his dad’s footsteps and the snarl of a police force that expects him to. As the Irish language was previously banned by the imperialist English authorities, Naoise’s embrace of it does follow in his father’s edict that “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom” — though perhaps not as Arló intended.

While these “Ceasefire babies” are painted as altar boys corrupted by the bad streets of West Belfast — and not troubled about that or The Troubles — JJ is introduced as a middle-aged music teacher on the brink of dying of boredom. A chance encounter over a police interrogation table changes everything, when JJ becomes inspired by Liam’s in-your-face lyrics and proudly Fenian posturing. Just like that, a band is born. But their rise will be rife with violence, huge mistakes, and lots of drugged-up shenanigans. And most of that is an absolute blast. 

Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí thrill playing themselves…as fools. 

Kneecap throws up a brazen middle finger to another “North of Ireland” set biopic, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Where the world-renowned actor/director made a prestige pic out of his childhood, Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap, and DJ Próvaí reject the opportunity to gloss up their images. Instead, they gamely present themselves as fun-loving fuckups, never shying away the havoc that lies in the wake of their road to stardom. 

They welcome us to witness them stumbling on stage, too high to function after a dime bag mix-up. They invite us to laugh at sexual proclivities that thrust into political orgasms. They show their asses, literally and metaphorically, which proves crudely inspiring. These three didn’t set out to change their nation. They set out to sing (or rap) a song for themselves, and in doing so, connected to an undercurrent of cultural pride and resilience that connected them to others. 

But what first unites us to them is their rough-hewn charisma. Playing themselves on-screen could have spelled disaster, as plenty of musicians have fumbled at acting. But they excel, managing to play scenes of clownish absurdity and more tender moments with stirring screen presence. DJ Próvaí proves the strongest — to the point where I wondered if his signature onstage attire of an Irish flag balaclava allowed them to cast an established actor for the role. But the whole crew thrives on-screen as they do onstage, exploding in a frenzy of humor, music, and attitude that is wicked fun. 

In the end, Peppiatt has done a superb job of not only shaking off the oh-so-serious shackles that are musician biopic conventions, but also enthusiastically embracing the hip-hop energy of his subjects, allowing them to be both the stars and fuel of their story, propelling them to a climax that deserves its rowdy encore across the credits. 

Simply put, Kneecap is sensational, silly, sharp, and ultimately sublime. 

Kneecap opens in theaters Aug. 2. 

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