Film
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The New Literalism Plaguing Today’s Biggest Movies March 11, 2025
A warrior is in a prison cell. His guard approaches and shows him the wooden sword that he will receive once he has earned his freedom. The warrior grabs it, uses his unlocked cell door to knock the guard down, and places the sword’s tip on the guard...
'Mickey 17' Is Bong Joon-ho's Most American Movie Yet March 11, 2025
This story contains mild spoilers for Mickey 17.When the indie distributor Neon recently won their second Best Picture Oscar with Anora, it also marked the fifth anniversary of their first win: for Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, a South Korean thriller abo...
A Visual Feast that Fails to Frighten March 11, 2025
Iconic though the name “Dracula” has become in our culture, it is, in fact, a diminutive. The Transylvanian potentate Vlad III, who was feared for impaling his captured military opponents, took it from his father, Vlad II, who was known as “Dracul,” ...
‘Mickey 17’ Review March 10, 2025
Parasite, 2020’s Best Picture winner, is director Bong Joon Ho’s second-best film about the depredations of capitalism.Don’t get me wrong: Parasite’s a solid movie, particularly through the first 90 or so minutes. Bong does an impeccable job of intro...
The Expendability of Bong Joon-ho’s ‘Mickey 17’ March 07, 2025
There are two Robert Pattinsons in Mickey 17—one sweet and dopey, one sullen and sharp, each the other’s distorted mirror image. They’re both clones hatched as part of a futuristic experiment designed to literalize the concept of “human resources”; t...
Can James Bond Be Licensed to Thrill Again? March 07, 2025
James Bond has stared down plenty of villains over the years—garden-variety megalomaniacs, faceless henchmen, Soviet killers with weird skills—but his latest mission may be the most unexpected: proving that the espionage genre still has a pulse....
Trying To Save Emilia Pérez From Itself March 06, 2025
When a film has been widely condemned and derided, it can create within one an illogical hope that the movie is actually good. And I, the genius, am the only one to see its goodness and I will bravely present my contrarian take and convince everyone ...
In Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho Misses the Moment March 06, 2025
Bong Joon-ho was delighted by a congratulatory letter he received from Martin Scorsese after his 2019 Korean-language film Parasite triumphed at the Oscars. At a press conference, Bong revealed that Scorsese had said he and other directors were keenl...
The Artificial Culture March 06, 2025
I'll start with a simple premise. If we now have direct evidence that the federal government was funneling millions of dollars into supposedly free market press organs (such as Politico, which has received federal subscription payments from agencies ...
'Anora' and the Pain and Power of Being Sexy March 05, 2025
Hollywood has always loved a hooker, so long as she has a heart of gold.The history of prostitutes in film is one in which the prostitute’s depth of character is portrayed as ironic, surprising, even tragic, given her line of work. She’s usually fall...
Architecting a Myth March 04, 2025
I wonder if László Tóth escaped the Nazis by jumping out of a prison transport train? Director Brady Corbet does not tell us how Tóth, a fictional Hungarian Jewish émigré in America, survived the Holocaust in his epic The Brutalist. But towards the b...
Sean Baker’s American Dreams March 04, 2025
At last night’s Oscars ceremony, Mikey Madison was dressed like a winner. The star of Sean Baker’s Anora wore a pink Dior gown, a wink, perhaps, to this one Audrey Hepburn wears in Funny Face, and to Gwyneth Paltrow, a fellow Best Actress winner. In ...
High Infidelity March 04, 2025
Sunday’s Oscars ceremony was a productive night for The Brutalist, which scooped up the statuettes for cinematography, score, and best actor. Since the film’s release late last year, the deluge of acclaim for Brady Corbet’s epic, three-and-a-half hou...
REVIEW: ‘The Brutalist’ March 03, 2025
The most impressive film of 2024, up for 10 Oscars this weekend, is The Brutalist. It is an extraordinary achievement—nearly three-and-a-half hours and never less than gripping, beautifully rendered dialogue, stunning cinematography and music, all in...
Gene Hackman’s Forgotten Classic March 03, 2025
Gene Hackman’s grandfather and uncle were small-town newspaper reporters. The abusive father who abandoned Hackman when he was just 13 operated a daily’s printing press. Hackman himself dabbled in journalism school.So it figures that he would have be...
England’s Real-Life Quietus December 11, 2024
Two weeks ago, the British House of Commons voted in favor of a bill that, according to the BBC, “would allow terminally ill adults expected to die within six months to seek help to end their own life.” The final vote was 330 to 275.This news immedia...
The Best Movies of 2024 December 11, 2024
Halfway through 2024, I wrote that scary times call for scary movies. Several months later, the sentiment still holds—there haven’t exactly been glimmers of hope, on-screen or off. The growing popular groundswell around Wicked and its broadly progre...
Ariana Grande and Paul Mescal Chat December 11, 2024
Ariana Grande travels with a furry companion; no, not Toto, but close. The Grammy-winning pop singer — and, thanks to her film “Wicked,” newly minted movie star — shows up at our shoot hours early, ready to make friends as she meanders around the cof...
A Complete Unknown’ Review December 11, 2024
In Walk the Line, James Mangold’s entertaining 2005 account of how Johnny Cash found his sound and the love of his life in June Carter, first-rate actors and rousing musical interludes helped boost a conventional bio-drama approach that sanded down m...
Culture Slop December 10, 2024
In a recent interview, Tim Robbins said that if you want a picture of moviemaking’s destiny, imagine a mudslide of algorithmic garbage coming out of the streaming-industrial complex and crushing a human brain—forever. “You go on Netflix right now, yo...
2025 Golden Globe Nominations December 10, 2024
The 2025 Golden Globe nominations went their own way, as this infamous awards show does every year. Emilia Perez may have been the subject of social media scorn for the past month, but these voters—who, yes, do tend to forecast a good chunk of Oscar ...
The Penguin Has Mommy Issues December 10, 2024
As any fan of Batman knows, the main draw of the franchise are the villains. While Batman himself has an interesting story—a billionaire who trains to become a vigilante detective after witnessing the murder of his parents—his opponents are what defi...
A Feminist Director Takes On the Erotic Thriller December 10, 2024
The final day of shooting for “Babygirl,” a new erotic thriller, was devoted to a sequence that the film’s writer and director, Halina Reijn, had deliberately saved for last. In the movie, which will be released on Christmas, Nicole Kidman plays Romy...
The Romanticized Squalor of 'Queer' December 06, 2024
The Beat writer William S. Burroughs began his second book, Queer, just months after killing his wife, Joan Vollmer, at a party above the Bounty Bar in Mexico City. Though he completed the novella in 1953, Queer was not released to the public until 1...
