Category Culture

Donald Trump’s Chaos, Straight to Your In-Box

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story The epistolary novel, a literary genre that has included, among its entries, works like Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela” and Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” has recently welcomed a new classic to…

“Perfect Days” and the Perils of Minimalism

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Fantasy comes in many forms, and one of them arises when a work of scrupulous realism strains plausibility to the point that it plays like mere wish fulfillment. The German director…

The Dark Delights of a Millennial “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story In the opening minutes of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”—Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane’s minor-key remix of the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as married, duelling assassins—the series symbolically…

Canceling All Russians Is the Opposite of Clever

State of the Union: The West could have courted sympathetic and apolitical Russians; instead we demonize them for their ethnicity. Credit: WikiCommons It took less than three weeks for Serbian actor Milos Bikovic to lose his job on the HBO…

Nicholas Konrad’s “Online Profile”

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Early in 1925, Harold Ross set out to revolutionize “the humorous magazines of the country,” which, in his mind, “weren’t very funny, or meritorious in any way.” Ross and his wife,…

Lily Gladstone Is Holding the Door Open

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story Life was different for Lily Gladstone in the summer of 2020. She had built up a small but impressive résumé in independent films, including two by Kelly Reichardt, “Certain Women” and…

The Deaf Artist Reinventing Conversation

Save this storySave this storySave this storySave this story It’s around one in the afternoon, and Joseph Grigely is bashing his head against the wall. The wall is a white expanse of Sheetrock in a vast, high-ceilinged room on the…