Critics At Large

“Life is a tragedy when seen in a close-up, but a comedy when seen in the long shot.” – Charlie Chaplin Melodrama: the essential link betwee...

Christopher Durang and E. Katherine Kerr in Laughing Wild, in 1987. It’s hard to imagine a more tragic-ironic fate for the playwright Chris...

Brian d'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara in Days of Wine and Roses . (Photo: Joan Marcus) At first  Days of Wine and Roses , written by J...

Koto Ishihara in UtopiVerse . (Photo: Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada) The National Ballet of Canada' s Winte...

  Air Signs Talking , 48 x 48 in. “Tantra is a technique that allows you to connect with your inner energy and experience transformation. On...

Sanjit De Silva and Toby Stephens in Corruption . (Photo: T Charles Erickson) In his new play, Corruption , which opened last week at Linco...

Tirion Law and Svetlana Lunkina Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . (Photo: Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of The National Ballet of Canada) T...

The Beatles with Little Richard, 1962 (Photo: Horst Fascher/Redferns) “Now I'm stepping out of this old brown shoe Baby, I'm in lo...

Leonie Benesch and Leonard Stettnisch in The Teachers'  Lounge . In the unnerving German drama The Teachers’ Lounge, a theft in the fac...

Milo Machado Graner in Anatomy of a Fall . The gripping French film Anatomy of a Fall may be the most unconventional courtroom thriller I’v...

Photo by Christophe Raynaud deLage. In a six-day run at Boston’s Paramount Theater under the auspices of Arts Emerson , the Norwegian comp...

Hinata Hiiragi and Soya Kurokawa in Monster . The movies of the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda are not just different from those of ot...

KAIROS Records, 2023. “Whatever you think can’t be done, someone will come along and do.” – Thelonious Monk “Don’t play the piano part, I’m...

The heron in Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron . One of the cinematic high points of 2023 was surely the great Japanese animator H...

Taraji P. Henson in one of her spectacularly ugly costumes she wear in The Color Purple . Why are most of the recent movie musicals so ghast...

Dominic Sessa and Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers . The review of The Holdovers contains spoilers. In The Holdovers a prodigiously bright ...

Mireille Asselin as Eurydice, with Artist of Atelier Ballet Xi Yi, in Orpheus and Eurydice . (Photo: Bruce Zinger) Life after death? The qu...

Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor in  Fair Play . There’s nothing wrong with the kind of movie Fair Play purports to be, but there’s eve...

Arnold Schoenberg, MS 96. “It’s all about starting in the middle of a musical sentence and then moving in both directions at once.” – John C...

Natalie Gold, Alyssa Emily Marvin, Michael Esper, Sarah Paulson and Corey Stoll in Appropriate . (Photo: Joan Marcus) A magnificent cast und...