The Critics Ruined “Us”
Jordan Peele's "Get Out" was a masterpiece. "Us" is a tedious drag tailored to the sensibilities of critics.
405 Article(s) by: Eileen Jones
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.
Remind Me Never to Watch the Oscars Again
The Academy Awards were even more of a shitshow than usual this year. This is Jacobin’s last Oscars article, because we will find better things to do with our lives than watch that garbage.
The Man Who Shot America in the Face
Vice reminds us of the hell Dick Cheney wrought, with help from a rogue’s gallery of perps, hacks, creeps, and fall guys.
Beale Street’s Tragedy Made Gorgeous
In If Beale Street Could Talk, the ugliness of oppression and persecution stand in tense contrast with Barry Jenkins' lush, color-drenched cinematography.
The British Royals Have Always Been Scum
Despite generations of imperial murder, torture, rape, and plunder, the British ruling class still gets the brown-nose treatment in historical depictions. Not so in The Favourite, where the royals are shown as the disgusting creatures they were and still are.
The Specter of Capital
How the housing crash got us believing in ghosts again.
The Monster and the Final Girl
The new Halloween is a serviceable remake of a truly great horror film.
Klass and Kids’ Films
Disney-Pixar vs. Laika
BlacKKKlansman Is Both Awkward and Enthralling
BlacKKKlansman is a messy, unfocused film. But it's also one of Spike Lee's best.
“Crazy” Anticapitalism
Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You captures the crude madness that we live in every day under capitalism.
The Man in the Neighborhood
Fred Rogers was a wonderful human being who tried to use his influence for good. I just couldn't stand his show.
Year of the Zombie
George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead showed a new society devouring the old.
George Bailey’s Shrinkage
It’s a Wonderful Life of lowered expectations.
A Rough Night at the Opera
John Adams and Peter Sellars’s Girls of the Golden West is bland, poorly staged liberalism.
Seventeen Soviet Films
The October Revolution unleashed cinematic brilliance that even decades of political censorship couldn’t extinguish.
His Finest Hour
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is short, action-packed, and not as bad as it could have been!
The Not-So-Beguiled
Sofia Coppola’s new film gets rid of everything that made the original interesting.
The Uncanny City
A new translation of the 1970s horror novel The Twenty Days in Turin is an eerily resonant read today.
Against Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep’s speechifying at the Golden Globes was the worst thing to happen since Trump’s election.
Carrie Fisher (1956–2016)
What we liked about Carrie Fisher was that she seemed inclined to tell the truth, and almost nobody does that, certainly not Hollywood stars.