It’s hardly a secret, but, for a land that bills itself as a land of freedom and ...
Film
Editor: Sharon Marcus
How Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” Misses the Mark
When in December I heard an interview with Greta Gerwig on All Things ...
Exile by the Bay
Imagining home is an inescapable preoccupation of disinherited people. Of all the possessions lost or denied, none is more precious than the security and feeling of belonging that a genuine home ...
Cute. Dangerous. Asian American. “Gremlins” @35
Gremlins—released 35 years ago this summer—is about a cute, furry ...
Be Kind, Rewind
Biologists use the term endling to refer to the last remaining member of a particular species. As of May 2019, there is only one remaining Blockbuster video store left, located in Bend, Oregon ...
On the Absurdity of Ethical Capitalism
I worked two “jobs” during my first summer as a graduate student in Indiana. One involved telemarketing research, convincing people to answer telephone ...
Toward an Ecological Cinema
In France, a recent legislative bill identified the task of bringing about “corporate transformation” as one of the major challenges of the 21st century ...
“Wendy and Lucy” @10
Quick! Name an important fiction film of the Great Recession. The Big Short? Yes, surprisingly fun, considering the topic. Margin Call? Love it, except for the ...
Anna Biller on Classic Films and Twitter Feminisms
To date, the independent filmmaker Anna Biller has tweeted somewhere in the ...
Against Cuteness: “Bambi” @90
Felix Salten’s Bambi: A Life in the Woods—which first appeared in English 90 years ago this summer—is now better known as the inspiration for Disney’s charming ...
Virtual Roundtable on “Get Out”
In the weeks immediately following its release, Jordan Peele’s Get Out quickly established itself as the crossover film ...
Are You Nobody Too?
Early in 1862, Emily Dickinson began one of her poems with a startling announcement: “I can wade Grief – / Whole Pools of it – / I’m used to that – / But the least push of Joy / Breaks up my feet.” The British filmmaker Terence ...
Blood Brothers: Dracula vs. Nosferatu
Many of the vampires that swarmed the last hundred years of cinema are descended from one of two forefathers: one is a striking, elegant, and even ...
A Tale of Two Artists in ”La La Land”
It isn’t a surprise that Damien Chazelle’s third film, the sunny musical La La Land, would be a portrait of jazz artistry. His 2009 debut ...
16 Books and Movies That Make You Want to Be an Engineer
“Movie science” is often so ludicrous (Armageddon, 2012, The Core) that it gets used as a teaching tool: students are asked to identify the oops! moments in order to learn correct science …
Lin-Manuel Meets “Moana”
Disney’s new animated film, Moana, with songs by Hamilton genius Lin-Manuel Miranda, arrived last weekend to great expectations. Would it keep Disney’s musical franchise afloat? Would it continue ...
The Intrusion Artist
By the late ’50s, when he was already widely considered one of France’s finest filmmakers, Robert Bresson would confess in interviews that he hardly ever went to the movies. There was something about ...
A Handmaiden’s Tale
A hit at this year’s Cannes film festival and when it opened in Korea over the summer, The Handmaiden (Ah-ga-ssi) is now in limited release. This stylish and twisty Korean thriller remains true to ...
The Rhapsodes of Cinema
A. O. Scott’s Better Living Through Criticism—released in January of this year, to some fanfare—is a handbook for living by a kind of generalized critical “ideal,” one which combines openness to ...
Wall Street Women on Film
In an early scene in the recent film Equity, senior investment banker Naomi Bishop (Anna Gunn) and vice president Erin Manning (Sarah Megan Thomas) are celebrating a deal with clients in an upscale ...