The Crime of the Century
The mystery of Agatha Christie’s enduring popularity is rooted in a nostalgia for the certainties of the Victorian class system.
353 Articles by: Eileen Jones
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.
Minari Is Dedicated to Grandmas Everywhere — And Everyone Loves Grandmas
Minari is a gentle, universal story about a resilient South Korean family trying to make it in 1980s America. You should watch it.
Ernest Hemingway Was a Leftist Who Was Hounded By the FBI
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s PBS docuseries Hemingway sheds new light on writer Ernest Hemingway’s life. But it leaves out key details of his left-wing political convictions — including the FBI surveillance that haunted him until his suicide.
Justice League’s Snyder Cut Is Here. And It’s Still Bad.
After a long internet campaign demanding its release, HBO Max has unleashed Zack Snyder’s Justice League on the world. But it’s four hours of tedious superhero melodrama you’ll never get back.
Jessica Walter Was Robbed of the Decades-Long Stardom She Deserved
Jessica Walter thankfully found fame through roles like Arrested Development’s Lucille Bluth late in her life. But she should’ve been a major star when she was a young woman. Hollywood’s misogyny in the 1960s and ’70s made that impossible.
Eddie Murphy Is So Much Better Than Coming 2 America
Eddie Murphy is one of the most talented actors alive. Yet his brilliance is wasted in this sloppy sequel to the classic 1988 film Coming to America.
Nomadland Is a Great and Terrible Film
While Nomadland goes out of its way to avoid talking politics, its genius is in locating the emotional truth of what it’s like to be one of the many millions of Americans cast adrift by disaster.
Flaws and All, You Should Watch Judas and the Black Messiah
The story of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton’s assassination by Chicago Police and the FBI has finally been made into a movie. Judas and the Black Messiah is uneven as a film, but it’s a small step toward a serious reckoning with America’s past.
Bob Dylan’s American Apocalypse
Dylan’s latest album, Rough and Rowdy Ways, is a fitting capstone for our end times.
You Have to Watch Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Chadwick Boseman’s final performance in playwright August Wilson’s new Netflix adaptation of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a haunting but appropriate farewell.
WandaVision Needs More Surrealism
Disney Plus’s new Marvel show WandaVision promises a surreal spin on a 1960s sitcom reality. But so far, it’s delivered little more than winks and nods to Marvel Cinematic Universe loyalists.
Wonder Woman 1984 Has Set the Bar Even Lower for Superhero Films
The big-budget Wonder Woman sequel is an ugly, tedious, bloated, badly CGI-ed mess and a wretchedly directed film. And yet critics keep making excuses for it because of its supposed social relevance.
Mank: A Great Screenwriter in Search of a Great Biopic
David Fincher’s ode to Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz revives an eighty-year-old debate over whether or not Orson Welles deserves a co-writing credit — and it’s exactly as entertaining as that sounds.
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe Is Pretty Damn Good So Far
The first film in Steve McQueen’s new Amazon Prime anthology chronicles the struggle for racial justice in Britain with the 1970s Mangrove Nine trial. It’s a wonderful achievement and valuable popular education on the British struggles against racist policing.
Ronald Reagan Paved the Way for Donald Trump
A new Showtime docuseries reminds us of just how awful Ronald Reagan was and how his brand of demagogic racism became a model for Trump.
Hillbilly Elegy: Bad Politics, Even Worse Cinema
The only good thing we have to say about the reactionary film adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy is that it’s so boringly told you’ll forget about it in an hour.
Sofia Coppola Wants You to Feel Bad for the Very Rich and the Very Sad
Sofia Coppola’s On the Rocks is yet another meandering depiction of life as a bored and alienated celebrity.
John Carpenter, Apocalyptic Filmmaker
John Carpenter’s movies provide visions of societies falling apart. No wonder his work is resonating now more than ever.
We’re Sorry to Report That the New Borat Movie Isn’t Funny
Amazon’s Borat sequel tries to replay the zany laughs of the original but picks easy, woke moralizing over funny social satire.
Aaron Sorkin Turned the Chicago 7’s Militancy and Defiance Into Bland Liberalism
Netflix’s new Aaron Sorkin movie on the Chicago Seven tries — and fails — to turn a travesty of justice and an attack on the Left into a defense of American institutions.