Perfect Days Celebrates Spare, Mindful Escapism
Critics love Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days for its depiction of a happy and humble Japanese toilet cleaner. But it’s really a fantasy of escape — one that seems to appeal mostly to the affluent.
353 Articles by: Eileen Jones
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.
Kate Winslet Rules as an Unstable Autocrat in The Regime
The new HBO miniseries The Regime imagines the last days of a crumbling modern-day autocracy. The series is obviously intended to draw parallels to our own slowly collapsing empire, with Kate Winslet as a grandly imperious and unstable head of state.
Bob Marley: One Love Is a Feel-Good Fake
The story of Bob Marley’s reggae music and his politically infused Rastafarian beliefs is fascinating. Not that you’ll learn anything about them from watching the new feel-good biopic Bob Marley: One Love.
Drive-Away Dolls Is a Wonderfully Unimportant Romp
Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls is a delightfully raucous lesbian road comedy. Don’t listen to the wet-blanket critics — this film is good news in dull times for American movies.
Dior and Chanel Square Off in the Messy The New Look
Largely set in occupied France during World War II, the new Apple TV+ series The New Look zeroes in on Christian Dior’s rivalry with Coco Chanel — but it falls flat when it tries to handle Chanel’s infamous Nazi sympathies.
The New Mr. & Mrs. Smith Is Very Different From the Brangelina Film
Loosely based on the 2005 film, the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV reboot uses the action-comedy genre to represent how impossible life is for so many people today, with two misfit unemployables turning to assassin work out of desperation.
Feud: Capote vs. The Swans Reminds Us to Never Trust a Writer
The second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud follows Truman Capote’s infamous breakup with the East Coast socialites he called “the Swans,” showing how his charm and talent as a raconteur couldn’t save him from being banished by wealthy elites.
The Zone of Interest Is Much More Than a Holocaust Film
Jonathan Glazer’s haunting new film The Zone of Interest follows the life of an Auschwitz commandant in 1943 as his family goes about their business with the horrors of the Holocaust just on the other side of a wall. It’s mesmerizing and unsettling.
The Oscar Nominations Have Kicked Off Another Wave of Outrage
The “Barbie snub” has kicked off an online kerfuffle about the 2024 Academy Award nominations. The decisions of the Academy are generally cynical and silly — but perhaps we should appreciate the fighting spirit awakened annually by the nominations.
American Fiction Is a Scathing Satire of Representation Discourse
The 2023 film American Fiction, starring Best Actor nominee Jeffrey Wright, aims to spark discussion through a darkly comedic portrayal of a long debate about representations of black Americans on film. It’s a worthy directorial debut by Cord Jefferson.
Hollywood Welcomes Its Silicon Valley Overlords
Hollywood AI boosters claim that “democratized” movies based on personal choice await us, if only we can get rid of those pesky human beings.
Poor Things Is a Light and Gorgeous Lanthimos Fantasy That Could Use More Weight
Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’s new film, is gorgeous, thought-provoking, and wonderfully acted. All it’s missing is some more weight behind its feminist spirit.
2023 Was a Bad Year for Movies. Here Were the Best.
When it came to movies this year, the junk outstripped the gems. But three films rose above the muck.
Let Bradley Cooper’s Maestro Be the Death of the Biopic
In Maestro, Bradley Cooper plays famed conductor Leonard Bernstein, but the film leaves out the complicating — and fascinating — real-life details for a more streamlined, tear-jerking product. It will doubtless do well at the Oscars.
The New Willy Wonka Prequel Is Fun, but It Doesn’t Hold a Candle to Its 1971 Predecessor
In Wonka, Timothée Chalamet dons the eccentric chocolatier’s purple jacket in yet another film adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This one is playful and harmless, but it can’t touch the 1971 original movie.
Dream Scenario Tries to Spin Magical Realism as Cultural Criticism
Nicolas Cage’s new comedy fantasy film Dream Scenario desperately wants to satirize our celebrity-obsessed times. But with American society already so steeped in hypercommercialism, it feels like it’s several decades too late.
Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers Is a Holiday Triumph
Alexander Payne’s new film The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti, is the kind of wonderful comedy-drama we used to take for granted. Today it feels like a cinematic miracle.
The Killer Is David Fincher at His Most Bland
David Fincher’s new movie The Killer is supposedly a metacommentary on hit-man films — and possibly on the director himself. Or that could just be an excuse for how boring it is.
Nathan Fielder and Bennie Safdie’s The Curse Adds a Dash of Horror to Cringe Comedy
The new series The Curse, starring Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone as rich, clueless gentrifiers, follows a married couple filming an HGTV reality show. It’s a low-key cringe comedy that makes everyday selfishness and awkwardness feel like a horror movie.
John Le Carré Is Still an Enigma in Errol Morris’s New Documentary
Celebrated spy novelist John Le Carré is the subject of Errol Morris’s new documentary The Pigeon Tunnel. While it claims to reveal secrets about his famously strange life, you get the sense Le Carré told as much as he ever meant to and no more.