Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Fully half of the best films ever—from Charlie Chaplin’s to Claude Lanzmann’s—are replete with cinematic selfies. Yet they are rare over all, perhaps because the camera is an unflinching diagnostician. The…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Nikki Giovanni died this week, at the age of eighty-one, as that rarest of things: a best-selling poet. Her work burst onto the scene in the nineteen-sixties already fully formed—it was…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story So—a few weeks ago, I saw Kenneth Branagh in “King Lear” at the Shed. Maybe you did, too? It’s been a while, but I’ve been hesitating to write: I’m still processing.…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Along with three quarters of a million other people, I’m a member of r/AmIOverreacting, a forum on Reddit devoted to the problem of potentially freaking out too much. It’s a thriving…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story I joined Spotify, the Swedish streaming service, toward the end of 2020, spending the better part of a Sunday transferring my Apple Music library and local files onto the platform. I…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story For the past two decades or so, cinema’s loss has been television’s gain. As the mid-budget movie, once the natural home of grown-up fare, collapsed, prestige programming ballooned on the small…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The film “Paid in Full,” from 2002, is a fictionalized retelling of the brief but titanic reign of three real-life New York drug kingpins during the crack era of the mid-eighties.…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story As soon as December rolls around, children everywhere start keeping an eye out for the iconic red-and-white Santa outfit. And there is perhaps nothing that preoccupies their imaginations more than the…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Midway through the A24 film “Sing Sing,” Divine G, an incarcerated man played with poise and panache by Colman Domingo, appears before a parole board. Divine G is the leading light…
Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The British realist director Mike Leigh loves the term “character actor,” which he uses often and with zeal. To him, it’s a term of great respect, meaning a performer who’s highly…
