The Great American Losers
Unlike most other American directors, Joel and Ethan Coen have always been interested in depicting failure. Their new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, takes such an unblinking look at humiliating defeat.
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Thor 2 is a Cinematic McDonald’s Cheeseburger
Thor: The Dark World is a perfect example of how market competition does not actually provide us with the highest quality product.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967–2014)
To see Philip Seymour Hoffman even in films that you hated was to come away awed.
No War but Ape War
Who doesn't want to watch armed chimpanzees ride horses?
Crocodile Tears of the Wolf
The Wolf of Wall Street's eleventh hour Hail Mary doesn't atone for the rest of the film's gleeful celebration of rich assholes.
Horror for the Whole Family
David Fincher’s Gone Girl revels in the sickness of our culture by making it seem attractive.
Thinking Serious Thoughts
We’re not saying we're on North Korea’s side this time around. But we’re definitely not on Seth Rogen's.
Reactionaries in Space
Interstellar celebrates American-style frontier expansion and retrograde masculinity. It’s an ideological monstrosity.
We Rarely See Films as Fresh as I Love Boosters
Boots Riley’s remarkably easy confidence and visual flair in I Love Boosters is a tonic in an era of boring CGI slop. He’s one of the most compelling filmmakers working today.
The Specter of Capital
How the housing crash got us believing in ghosts again.
1976 Was Hollywood’s Swan Song
The mid-1970s were a good time for film buffs. But the industry was on the precipice of a long decline that has stripped productions of not only their political content but their seriousness.
Klass and Kids’ Films
Disney-Pixar vs. Laika
“We’re New — We Don’t Have Any Customs”
Two films about the Tennessee Valley Authority stress its utopian promise and the lives that had to be destroyed to fulfill it.
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.
Many Are Called, Few Are Chosen
There are innumerable cinematic Jesuses, most of them bland, pious, and blue-eyed — until an Italian communist decided to preach the old gospel in a new way.
Minecraft Scorsese
A Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg satire of mainstream film’s IP problem — in which everything is an adaptation of something else — fails to excuse or address their own extensive IP crimes.
Orson Welles, South of the Border
After his post–Citizen Kane slump, Orson Welles teamed up with Universal for a big Hollywood comeback about corrupt police on the US-Mexico border. The executives balked at his vision — but today Touch of Evil is regarded as Welles’s final masterpiece.
The German Take on Gotham
Fritz Lang’s masterful visual depiction of class stratification in Metropolis remains unrivaled by its would-be inheritors.
Where the Crawdads Sing Is Pure Book Club Sentimentalism
Reese Witherspoon’s book club made the 2018 novel Where the Crawdads Sing a hit. The new film adaptation, just like the book it's based on, is pure bathos of the mushiest kind.
Jordan Peele’s Nope Is a Triumph
Writer-director Jordan Peele’s mysterious third film, Nope, draws on genre tropes from both alien invasion films and Westerns, but it ends up with something altogether original: a Hollywood spectacle about spectacle.