For our annual fashionably late “Best Of” issue, we’re looking at a 2022 highlight: Charlotte Wells’s staggering debut feature Aftersun, with film critic, author, and educator Adam Nayman.
Now Playing
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, takes the classic structures of a Christie caper and levels them up, building an impossibly polyhedral monument to all that a mystery can be.
Writing about Memoria ignites the very challenge Jessica faces: how do I translate my thoughts to another person who cannot hold them, and why am I so determined to do so?
Terence Davies' Benediction is not a puzzle, nor does it court confusion. Instead, it explains how Siegfried Sassoon’s life, whether he wants it or not, is a blessing.
We know the songs and the big story beats, but Baz Luhrmann shows us that with Elvis, there's still more to discover; not facts, really, but feelings.
The Fabelmans is not a coming-of-age story. There is no answer. It isn’t a parable or lesson or meditation. Instead it reflects, renders in real time, its creator’s relationship to his memories.
Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All is a film that is full of flesh, but also anti-flesh: ethereality and ephemerality.
The Great Muppet Caper is ultimately a metatextual love poem to the magic of moviemaking and its raw, beating heart rests in a tenuous love triangle between Kermit, Miss Piggy, and Charles Grodin.
On the rom-com genre's obsession with numbers, love as algebra, and What's Your Number (2011)
December means one thing: Happy Cruisemas, from our home to yours. This month we welcome back special Cruise correspondent Elizabeth Cantwell to discuss Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky. Surrealist rom com or indulgent puzzle film? Flop or parable?
In weaker, lesser, dumber hands, Design for Living is a movie about three horny morons; in Lubitsch’s, all three characters spark and sparkle, an abundance of wit powering them through reckless indecisions.
Park Chan-wook’s new film may come to us in the guise of a detective story, a police procedural, even a quasi-erotic thriller. But at its heart, Decision to Leave is really a romantic comedy.
My Best Friend’s Wedding takes an archetype and strays, all while revving up our expectations. It’s enough to make us wonder what film universe we’ve stepped into: is this even a romantic comedy, or have we wandered into a Greek tragedy?
Featured Essays
from the archives 2013 - 2022
