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Film

Arts in Society

Mike Nichols and the American Century

The director made landmark contributions to three distinct art forms. His life reflected the American experience in the latter half of the twentieth century—both its failures and its feats. 

Jonathan Kirshner

Arts in Society

Angels of History

In the 1974 cult-classic teleplay Penda’s Fen, the past holds the key to escaping the catastrophic present.

Andy Battle

Arts in Society, Law & Justice

A Parable and Parody of Restorative Justice

The Netflix series Dead to Me suggests that we might get closer to justice by forgiving each other and ourselves for the sometimes literally fatal flaw of being human.

Judith Levine

Arts in Society

Untangling Fiction and Reality in the Balkans

The award-winning documentary ‘Honeyland’ sets out to offer a timeless environmental parable, but in the process it also explores misconceptions about the region’s culture and history. 

Daniel Petrick

Arts in Society

The Mythic Whiteness of the Hillbilly

Ron Howard’s Netflix adaptation of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ continues a long tradition of seeing hillbillies as a symbol of pristine American whiteness. It’s the same nostalgia Trump has mobilized on the far right.

Ellen Wayland-Smith

Gender & Sexuality

Pathologizing Desire

Current contempt for age gap relationships serves to strip both men and women of their agency. 

Jessa Crispin

Arts in Society

The Virus Has Seized the Means of Production

In films such as Contagion, virology is often confused with the invisible workings of capital.

Mark Bould

Arts in Society

The Precarity of Black Motherhood

Jordan Peele's ‘Us’ depicts the terrors faced by black mothers in a way that owes as much to Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’ as it does to classic Hollywood horror. 

Tao Leigh Goffe

Arts in Society

The Other Toni Morrison

A timely new documentary celebrates Morrison’s novels, but downplays the enduring power of her work as an editor and essayist.

Joy James

Arts in Society, Race

Aretha Franklin’s Soul

‘Amazing Grace,’ the long-lost film of Franklin’s gospel album, offers a lesson in the deep connections between gospel and soul music.

Ed Pavlić

Reading Lists

Our Best Film Writing For Oscars Weekend

Lars von Trier. Stanley Kubrick. Michael Haneke. 

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Arts in Society

Monsters vs. Empire

Trump’s Space Force is a bad reboot of the old imperial fantasy of control from above.

Mark Bould

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