Critics At Large

Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King . Around the turn of the millennium, the director Terry Gilliam struggled to bring an up...

Talia Suskauer and Laura Sky Herman in Gypsy . (Photo: Diane Sobolewski) You know that Jenn Thompson , the director of the Goodspeed Opera ...

Porcupine’s Quill Press, 2022. "There is something missing . . . if I knew what it is then it wouldn't be so missing . . . "...

Peter Moore (Matthew Maher) gives Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) a first look at the Air Jordan, in Air . (Phot...

Princeton University Press (2022); Princeton University Press (2022) “We have arrived at an era of humans and their doubles. We no longer n...

Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban in Sweeney Todd . Despite the intermittently brilliant Stephen Sondheim score and a superb cast headed ...

Lea Michele in Funny Girl . (Photo: Matthew Murphy) The Broadway revival of Funny Girl is a hit, but its path has been slippery. Michael M...

Cate Blanchett with Zethphan D. Smith-Gneist in Tár . Todd Field’s T ár is one of those self-important, self-promoting movies of the moment...

“Ever since Adam, who has really gotten the meaning of this great allegory—the world?” – Herman Melville, 1851 “Any sufficiently advanced te...

Jessica Lange in Marlowe . The Irish writer John Banville’s The Black-Eyed Blonde , published in 2014 and the source of the new Neil Jordan ...

Charles Laughton in The Suspect (1944). Robert Siodmak began his filmmaking career in Germany, hot-footed it to France when Hitler came to ...

(Courtesy Ecco Press/Harper Collins);(Wordsworth Editions) “Tell me your company, and I will tell you what you are.” – Sancho Panza, Don Qui...

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin . Set on an island off the coast of Ireland in the early 1920s, the era of th...

 Olivia Colman in Sam Mendes's Empire of Light . In Sam Mendes ’s Empire of Light , Olivia Colman plays Hilary, the assistant manager o...

Federico Ielapi as Pinocchio and Marine Vacth as The Blue Fairy in Matteo Garrone's Pinocchio (2019). Those with fond memories of the 1...

Author and film critic Charles Taylor. (Photo: Lelia McCabe) I've long been a fan of 1970s American movies,  a time when American cinem...

Christian Borle & J. Harrison Ghee in Some Like It Hot . (Photo: Marc J. Franklin) The best romantic comedy released in the early fiftie...

“Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” – Dorothy Parker (among others). “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.” – George Burns (on his deathbed). Hav...

Adrianne Krstansky (far left), Michael Kaye, and Rom Barkhordar (far right) in The Art of Burning . (Photo: T Charles Erickson) Kate Snodg...

Art censorship, especially in cases that did not involve printed books, also once again reveals the limitations and often fortui...