How to Watch a Movie
In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, a group of young French critics issue...
21 Aug 202548min
Les Américains à Paris
Nineteenth-century Americans regarded Paris as a libertine paradise: a smorgasbord of food and fashion, of night life and sex. Today, the pull toward France endures, though the precise nature of its a...
14 Aug 202550min
How Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City
On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compelling enough to make him the front-runner to lead the...
7 Aug 202551min
Late Night's Last Laugh
Two weeks ago, when Paramount cancelled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” insiders in Hollywood and Washington alike deemed the move suspicious: Colbert had just called his parent company’s payout...
31 Jul 202551min
“Eddington” and the American Berserk
Ari Aster’s wildly divisive new movie “Eddington” drops audiences back into the chaos of May, 2020: a moment when the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Bla...
17 Jul 202553min
“Materialists,” “Too Much,” and the Modern Rom-Com
Audiences have been bemoaning the death of the romantic comedy for years, but the genre persists—albeit often in a different form from the screwballs of the nineteen-forties or the “chick flicks” of t...
10 Jul 202554min
Why We Travel
It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular vacation spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Soci...
3 Jul 202550min
The Diva Is Dead, Long Live the Diva
The word “diva” comes from the world of opera, where divinely talented singers have enraptured audiences for centuries. But preternatural gifts often go hand in hand with bad behavior—as in the case o...
26 Jun 202553min
