The Leftovers makes two competing claims: that other people are mostly what gives life meaning; and that, despite guaranteed loss, we have to invest in them anyway. Read More
I wasn’t ready for The Meyerowitz Stories when it was first released, just as I wasn’t ready for forgiveness—to ask for it or to bestow it. Read More
There were days where I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be able to sit with loved ones and share these first-time viewings in real time, and others when the combination of quarantine cabin fever and less-than-stellar runs of films made it seem like everything would be mediocre. A privilege and, 32 movies, shorts, and episodes later, a pile-up. Read More
An Unmarried Woman, 20th Century Women, Freaks & Geeks, and the malaise of being an American woman during the Carter era. Read More
Our pilot episode is here! Join hosts Veronica Fitzpatrick and Chad Perman as they talk through a perennial BW/DR staff favorite, Moonstruck (1987), with special guest Zosha Millman. Read More
Big Fan's excursion into the psyche of an alienated sports fan now plays like a prophetic warning, anticipating a number of the more ruinous social pathologies that plague this country, from the incoherent angst of working-class white men to the epidemic of loneliness engulfing them. Read More
Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place isn’t a whodunnit or a murder mystery. Rather, it’s the tale of a man who refuses to apologize for his bad behavior and the city that bends over backwards to excuse him anyways. Read More
Describing News from Home’s distinct quality of attention stumps me every time that I watch. But I would like to look at what’s before me in the way Akerman does, equanimous in the face of all that vacancy and rush. Read More
I return often to The Souvenir because what happened inside it happened to me, too. Its gift is that it hands those feelings back to me in a pure and unencumbered way. Read More
The Straight Story represents the Lynchian world redeemed, a pocket of America that battled dread and violence and won, earning its just reward. Read More
In 1974, Muhammad Ali, a master of his fate, immortalized himself; When We Were Kings shows how. Read More
In Noah Baumbach's earliest films—Kicking and Screaming, Mr. Jealousy, and Highball—Carlos Jacott, in particular, feels like an old friend. Read More