While Stranger Things has always depicted the frustration of dealing with the baggage left behind by a previous generation, the fourth season is particularly exceptional in how it explores collective trauma.
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?
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.
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.
Top Gun: Maverick is not, at its heart, a story about what one man can achieve. Instead, it's an exploration of whether Man even matters.
Mad God is a stop-motion nightmare, a film that reads like a Boschian painting, a voyeur’s dream, and a dire warning all at once.
"To see a character like Lydia Tár onscreen feels both cathartic and thorny."
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.
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.
James Gray's Armageddon Time traces a line from 1980 to now and asks, with no shortage of despair: What exactly has changed?
Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All is a film that is full of flesh, but also anti-flesh: ethereality and ephemerality.
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.
