Critics At Large

Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel in News of the World . When movie lovers look for a studio-era comparison to Tom Hanks , the star who crops up m...

Julian Barbour is the author of The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time (Basic Books, 2020). “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know wh...

Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman .  Promising Young Woman begins as a black comedy-horror picture about the revenge that Cassie ( Ca...

James Baldwin in Terence Dixon’s Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970). It’s been a year now since the pandemic officially began, ...

Andra Day in The United States vs. Billie Holiday . What is it about Billie Holiday that brings out the twenty-four-carat fakery in dramati...

left: Marina Tsvetaeva, 1925. (Photo: Roger Viollet); right: Nina Kossman (Photo: courtesy of American Pushkin Society) “A real translation ...

Gérard Philipe and Micheline Presle in Devil in the Flesh (1947). If you ask movie fans to come up with a classic drama about a romance bet...

Magistrati show, 2016, Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary, Alberta. All the photographs in this piece are courtesy of Michael Davidson.   ...

Frances McDormand in Nomadland (2020). Fern (played by Frances McDormand ), the protagonist of Nomadland , loses her job and her home in a ...

Eric Stoltz and Penelope Ann Miller in Gregory Mosher's production of Our Town , 1989. I’ve been living with Our Town for more than ha...

Frank Zappa. (Photo: Roelof Kiers/Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures) I have been listening to a lot of Frank Zappa's music of late, everyth...

Simon Baron-Cohen, author of The Pattern Seekers . "Philosophers have long posited self-knowledge as a foundational necessity for a mor...

Emily Skinner and Solea Pfeiffer performing "Losing My Mind" and "Not a Day Goes By" in Simply Sondheim . Stephen Sondh...

Leslie Odom Jr.as Sam Cooke in One Night in Miami (2020). Kemp Powers adapted the screenplay of One Night in Miami from his stage play, an...

Paul Celan (1920-1970). “I can swim like everyone else, only I have a better memory than them. I have not forgotten my former inability to s...

Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in Friends with Benefits (2011). (Photo: David Giesbrecht) The title is a cliché, and there are half a do...

Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, Scott Paulin, Ed Harris, Charles Frank, Scott Glenn and Lance Henriksen in The Right Stuff (1983). In The Right S...

Faraway places with strange sounding names  Far away over the sea Those faraway places . . . are calling, calling to me. They call me a drea...

Pierfrancesco Favino in The Traitor (Il traditore ) , directed by Marco Bellocchio. (Photo: Laura Siervi/Sony Pictures Classics) The Traito...

Meryl Streep and James Corden in The Prom , now streaming on Netflix. Early on in The Prom , director Ryan Murphy ’s new Netflix movie musi...