Bill Maher’s case for mediation in the national divorce

Even though I’m a religious person, I’ve always had a soft spot for a certain kind…

Who are the Tony Awards for?

It may also come as a surprise to the relatives, friends, and roommates whom I’ve forced…

I do tip my cap to Ren Faire

What do you call unscripted TV featuring lunatics — when you’re not calling it “C-SPAN,” that…

Any given Tuesday

Cultural decline can be measured in a thousand different ways, but surely one of them is…

Diplomacy in picaresque

In a geopolitical climate dominated by creeping great-power competition, calls for renewed diplomacy sound misguided. Efforts…

A hit man for all seasons

Director Richard Linklater thrives at documenting the offbeat and odd, and his new movie Hit Man…

Netflix’s nightmarish puppetry mashup, Eric

No one is likely to accuse Netflix’s new limited series Eric of a lack of ambition.…

The best music festival in America is in …Spain?

Great live performances reveal things in music that hide within the recorded version: You aren’t washing…

The Big Cigar and the bullshistory of the Black Panthers

In late 1977, in the days before he suborned mass suicide in a Guyanese jungle, the…

Reviewed: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

In the Mad Max franchise he established in 1979 and continues to the present day, Australian…

Monty Python’s fourth season: The terrible end of the greatest sketch show of all time

When Monty Python is remembered these days, it’s generally for its two seminal films, Holy Grail…

Out of the mouth of babes

The problem with pregnancy movies is that they never feel quite right. Waters break like fire…

The Phantom Menace at 25

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the release of Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom…

The multiverse strikes again: Review of Dark Matter on Apple TV+

Like most people, I sometimes wonder how life might have unfolded had I made, at critical…

Susan Backlinie, 1946-2024

Many famous movie actors are associated with a particularly punchy line or memorable monologue; some are…

The Planet of the Apes franchise forgets the purpose of civilization

The reboot series that began with 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes is one…

Why F1’s pipeline for female drivers is a fraud

“Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. … It’s not going to happen.” That’s what Regina George,…

John Mulaney’s talk show of the weird

Everybody’s in LA, John Mulaney’s six-part Netflix live talk show, loosely about Los Angeles, is a…

What’s a Tom Wolfe story with white liberal guilt? Not Tom Wolfe

Is Tom Wolfe, the pioneering journalist and popular novelist who died six years ago this month,…

The documentarians and the murderer

Because documentary films contend with real people and real events, it is to be expected that…