“The Studio” Pokes Fun at Hollywood’s Existential Struggle
The tension between art and commerce is a tale as old as time, and perhaps the most dramatic clashes in recent history have played out in Hollywood. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunning...
10 Apr 202553min
Gossip, Then and Now
Gossip, an essential human pastime, is full of contradictions. It has the potential to be as destructive to its subjects as it is titillating to its practitioners; it can protect against very real thr...
3 Apr 202548min
Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang
The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with technical equipment. But Rogan quickly proved adept at th...
27 Mars 202552min
Critics at Large Live: The Right to Get It Wrong
In 1939, reviewing the beloved M-G-M classic “The Wizard of Oz” for The New Yorker, the critic Russell Maloney declared that the film held “no trace of imagination, good taste, or ingenuity.” The use ...
20 Mars 202543min
Our Modern Glut of Choice
For many of us, daily life is defined by a near-constant stream of decisions, from what to buy on Amazon to what to watch on Netflix. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry,...
13 Mars 202547min
How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills
“The Pitt,” which recently began streaming on Max, spans a single shift in the life of a doctor at an underfunded Pittsburgh hospital where, in the course of fifteen gruelling hours, he and his team s...
6 Mars 202549min
In “Severance,” the Gothic Double Lives On
“Severance” is an office drama with a twist: the central characters have undergone a procedure to separate their work selves (“innies,” in the parlance of the show) from their home selves (“outies”). ...
27 Feb 202550min
The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine
The first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” which aired in October of 1975, was a loose, scrappy affair. The sketches were experimental, almost absurdist, and the program was peppered with standup fro...
20 Feb 202550min
