He lives in New York, she in LA. She has a home, shared with her 13-year-old son, that feels remarkably homey: lived-in and warm and deliberately modest in size, helplessly convincing us of its innate coziness. He lives in a steely Brooklyn apartment with a view of Manhattan that’s furnished …
Read More »'Harley Quinn' Gifts Us a Beautifully Twisted Valentine's Day Special
You may have heard that both HBO Max and DC’s film and television properties are in a state of major turmoil. Projects are being canceled even after they’ve completed production, other series are being dropped from the streamer altogether — the proper term for this is, I believe, “Zaslaving” — …
Read More »'The Outwaters': Found Footage of a Music Video Shoot Turned Bloody Nightmare
The Outwaters, Robbie Banfitch’s compellingly creepy new horror flick, takes the found-footage genre and the lost-in-the-desert nightmare, smashes them together, and spins them off their axis. Watching it, I kept thinking of that Matt Damon and Casey Affleck movie Gerry, from 2002, about two men who go off-trail during a …
Read More »Who Knew a Kinky Sex Party With Cara Delevingne Could Be So Boring?
If you were an adolescent with occasional bouts of insomnia in the early 2000s, you probably grew up watching Real Sex, the groundbreaking HBO series that aired in the wee hours before softcore time-travel movies and re-airings of Problem Child 3. Real Sex was truly revolutionary: it was frank, straightforward, …
Read More »How Bill Russell Paved the Way for LeBron James and So Many Others
Mere hours after LeBron James broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record, one held for decades by the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the two-part documentary Bill Russell: Legend debuted on Netflix. Directed by Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI), it’s a three-hour-plus survey of the life and career of the basketball legend, civil rights icon, …
Read More »'Magic Mike's Last Dance' Is Very Unlikely to Turn You On
Something’s off about Magic Mike’s Last Dance. It starts off well enough — it gives us what we want by giving us more of what worked before — before it loses its way. But it opens enticingly, teasingly, like a fly. Mike Lane (Channing Tatum), titular hero of the Magic …
Read More »Tom Brady, Cheating Trump Fanatic, Ruins '80 for Brady'
This week, Tom Brady, an NFL quarterback of some note, announced for the second time that he would be retiring from professional football. I’ll believe it when I see it, because about a year ago I wrote an aggravated goodbye-to-Brady piece, watched him return to the game, and then learned …
Read More »An Urgent Ode to Worker Solidarity, Through the Eyes of a Desperate Woman
Railway strikes, needy kids, a birthday party to plan, a job in Paris (a long commute away), interviews for another job (which demand sneaking away from work), and a babysitter who is increasingly over it: The deck of Julie Roy’s life is full, and because that life is happening fast, …
Read More »Native American Women Keep Turning Up Dead. Why Is Nothing Being Done?
Their stories are achingly similar. A young Native American woman goes to a house party, or drinks with friends, or just ventures out into the Montana night. She doesn’t come home. Law enforcement, after untangling questions of jurisdiction, conducts a search. Sometimes the bodies are recovered, the cause of death …
Read More »Léa Seydoux's Sexual and Spiritual Awakening in 'One Fine Morning'
Life changes as it happens. Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning takes the various compartments of a woman’s life and allows them to act naturally, which is to say, to change: shifting, recurring and reflecting back on each other in ways that feel true to that life. It’s a life situated …
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