Criticism

movie review

Questlove’s Sly Lives! Is a Revealing Portrait of the Hazards of Genius

 You walk out of Sly Lives! feeling like you’ve genuinely learned something, but you also walk out exhilarated. By Bilge Ebiri
movie review

With Mickey 17, Bong Joon-ho Offers a Bitterly Funny Take on America

 Robert Pattinson plays an immortal drudge and Mark Ruffalo gives sci-fi Trump in the new film from the director of Parasite. By Alison Willmore
hammer of the gods

Becoming Led Zeppelin Isn’t Trying to Tell the Whole Story

 A thoroughly researched documentary blessed by control freaks who still can’t, or won’t, wrestle with the less flattering parts of the band’s history. By Brady Gerber
  1. movie review
    The Best Movie at Cannes Last Year Is Finally in TheatersMatthew Rankin’s Universal Language feels warm and familiar even as we realize just how startlingly original it is.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  2. just as you are
    Bridget Jones ForeverAs long as Bridget Jones lives, we should be allowed to tag along for the ride.
    By Fran Hoepfner
  3. the cog you are
    Ricken Got Lumon-edThe self-help author’s shift from naysayer to bootlicker reveals what the Severance corporation actually produces.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  4. movie review
    Paddington in Peru Bites Off More Than It Can ChewFortunately, adorable talking bears have big appetites.
    By Alison Willmore
  5. tv review
    Subsisting on ScrapsYellowjackets saves the juiciest meat for its ’90s story line, leaving characters in the present day starved for attention.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  6. art review
    The Exhilarating Anger of Christine Sun KimHer new show at the Whitney reveals that language is a social currency that constantly places the deaf at a disadvantage.
    By Jerry Saltz
  7. theater review
    All Bark, No Bite: RedwoodIdina Menzel grieves in a tree and leaves.
    By Sara Holdren
  8. theater review
    A Henry IV That Doesn’t Know Its Own StrengthThis play has underappreciated muscles that its director intermittently flexes.
    By Sara Holdren
  9. close read
    For God’s Sake, Let’s Talk About a Different MovieFor months, cinephiles have claimed to find substance in a certain body-horror movie. I am politely asking you to look elsewhere.
    By Angelica Jade Bastién
  10. movie review
    Marvel Is Now a Giant Slop MachineThe messy and tiresome Captain America: Brave New World has a few ideas, but it handles them in the most shallow, simplistic ways.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  11. movie review
    It’s Honestly Really Nice to Get Older With Bridget JonesIn Mad About the Boy, Renée Zellweger’s chaotic singleton has finally learned to love herself.
    By Alison Willmore
  12. close read
    Netflix’s Witcher Universe Keeps ShrinkingAn enjoyable attempt to win back lapsed fans, the new animated movie Sirens of the Deep still feels like a dead end for the once-expansive franchise.
    By Scott Meslow
  13. tv review
    The White Lotus Knows What You’re Here ForSeason three finds Mike White’s series in full franchise mode, most defined by what came before.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  14. movie review
    Horizon Will Be a Monumental Achievement — If Kevin Costner Can Finish ItThe latest installment of Kevin Costner’s four-part western epic is darker and more intimate than the first.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  15. an urgent plea
    When Fans Love a Movie to DeathOscar contenders and Sundance breakthroughs alike are suffering at the hands of the people who want to see them the most.
    By Alison Willmore
  16. theater review
    Urinetown Is Still PotableWhoa, there! Plenty of prescience reveals itself in Encores!’s revival of the 2001 musical.
    By Jackson McHenry
  17. movie review
    The Horror Comedy Is the Genre of Our MomentAnd Heart Eyes is funny and gory enough to fit the bill.
    By Alison Willmore
  18. movie review
    The Michelle Yeoh Star Trek TV Movie Just Doesn’t Have the JuiceIt’s almost cruel to compare Star Trek: Section 31 to the series Deep Space Nine, which created its core concept.
    By Angelica Jade Bastién
  19. movie review
    Does Love Hurts Even Count As a Movie?If you can’t make the fight scenes interesting in a film that’s nothing but fight scenes, what have you got?
    By Bilge Ebiri
  20. surprise?
    Let’s Discuss Severance’s Big ‘Twist’If you can even call it that.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  21. movie review
    A Woman Is a Woman and the Legend of Anna KarinaJean-Luc Godard’s second released feature — a magnificent and bizarre “neorealist musical” — is back in theaters in a 4K restoration.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  22. art review
    Caspar David Friedrich’s Lonely IslandsA retrospective at the Met captures the German romanticist’s epic melancholy.
    By Jerry Saltz
  23. theater review
    The Antiquities Puts Humanity in a Museum Display CaseThe robots memorialize us in Jordan Harrison’s time-hopping speculative drama.
    By Jackson McHenry
  24. tv review
    Clean Slate Goes All in on Feel-GoodLaverne Cox’s sitcom protagonist doesn’t operate in our world. Honestly, good for her.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  25. close read
    Severance’s Title Sequence: Full of Clues or Just Plain Creepy?Why not both!
    By Nicholas Quah
  26. tv review
    You’ve Seen This One BeforeApple Cider Vinegar plumbs a new low for TV scammers.
    By Jackson McHenry
  27. theater review
    At the Kennedy Center, Schmigadoon! Briefly Reappears Through the MistStill sweetly spoofing classic Broadway, albeit with a little less bite than on TV.
    By Rhoda Feng
  28. close read
    The 2025 Grammys Were a Little Too Feel-GoodMainstream music seems to see itself as a refuge from real-world trolls.
    By Craig Jenkins
  29. album review
    Our Sweetheart of the RodeoBeyoncé’s Cowboy Carter chronicles an artist with a voice pliable enough (and a following large enough) to crash whatever scene she pleases.
    By Craig Jenkins
  30. movie review
    Companion Is a Perfectly Mean RompSophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid star in a comedic thriller that’s better with dark twists than it is with big ideas.
    By Alison Willmore
  31. movie review
    Rom-Com You’re Cordially Invited Is a Much Better Com Than RomWill Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon just don’t have natural romantic chemistry?
    By Alison Willmore
  32. close read
    The Recipe WorksElsbeth and High Potential illustrate the enduring appeal of quirky crime-solving-TV comfort food.
    By Brian Grubb
  33. sundance 2025
    Train Dreams Is a Staggering Work of ArtNetflix just bought one of the best films of the year out of Sundance, but please, for the love of God, don’t watch this masterpiece on your phone.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  34. sundance 2025
    The Wedding Banquet Is Rom-Com Whiplash in the Best SenseThe characters in Andrew Ahn’s remake of an Ang Lee classic can get gay-married, but they’re going to get fake straight-married instead.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  35. sundance 2025
    An Absorbing Sundance Thriller With a Dark HeartAlireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill is a case study for how to make an effective psychological thriller.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  36. tv review
    Wildcat Is Down
    It’s a Smooth-Brained Dystopia, and I Feel FineThis may shock you, but things on Paradise are not what they seem.
    By Kathryn VanArendonk
  37. sundance 2025
    The Best Film at Sundance Is Just Two People TalkingIra Sachs’s new film, Peter Hujar’s Day, starts off as an elevation of the quotidian but transforms into something more reflective.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  38. sundance 2025
    A Slithery, Singing John Malkovich Is All Opus Has Going for ItIt’s frankly shocking that nobody has asked him to play a pop star until now.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  39. book review
    Neko Case Survived It AllThe songwriter’s unusual tell-all skips the gossip, revealing a life in music as the solution, not the plot.
    By Emma Alpern
  40. movie review
    Zodiac Killer Project Brilliantly Deconstructs Our Obsession With True CrimeA work of criticism as well as a work of art, Charlie Shackleton’s sly film is nebulously sinister and dryly hilarious all at once.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  41. sundance 2025
    One Star-Making Performance Can’t Save Kiss of the Spider WomanEnergetic and riveting, Tonatiuh brings layers of tenderness and complexity. If only the rest of the picture could match his vitality.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  42. sundance 2025
    The Thing With Feathers Almost Wastes a Great Benedict Cumberbatch PerformanceThe actor is at his best, most alive and inventive here. But The Thing With Feathers doesn’t know what kind of movie to be.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  43. sundance 2025
    All That’s Left of You Isn’t Looking for Just EmpathyA Palestinian acting dynasty stars in this uneven but artful film about the alienation that survival sometimes requires.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  44. sundance 2025
    A Languorous, 87-Minute Movie Worth WatchingSierra Falconer’s Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) is an anthology film that actually works.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  45. sundance 2025
    Rabbit Trap Needs More Than Technical Razzle DazzleThe Sundance horror movie has a lot to say about repression, but you can’t really call it subtext when it’s literally screeched from minute one.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  46. sundance 2025
    A Dark Truth Runs Beneath the Surface of The Dating GameThe colorful, almost exuberant surfaces of Violet Du Feng’s Sundance documentary mask a grim, dystopian reality.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  47. endings
    The Agency Makes Betrayal So RomanticA heartbreaking cliffhanger emphasizes the series’ portrayal of love as an act of blissful self-destruction.
    By Roxana Hadadi
  48. album review
    FKA Twigs Did This for HerselfThe timing of Eusexua and its knotty sexual politics is not accidental.
    By Craig Jenkins
  49. movie review
    Cinderella Was Always a Body-Horror StoryNorwegian director Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister underlines the base grotesquerie of the original fairy tale.
    By Bilge Ebiri
  50. theater review
    Freedom in Speech: Sanaz Toossi’s EnglishFor these characters, learning a global language is both broadening and restraining.
    By Sara Holdren
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