Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
A police officer stops a woman on a Texas road for speeding and driving like something is very wrong. She tells him she has just given birth. There is a newborn in the car, and the baby is real. Almost nothing else she says that day turns out to be. That traffic stop is where … Read more
Most movies have a shelf life you can feel. They arrive, everyone talks about them for a week or two, and then they slide quietly down the list while the next thing takes their spot. KPop Demon Hunters never did that. As of this week, the animated film has done something no title in Netflix … Read more
This week, two very different movies named Avatar landed on streaming, and the overlap is almost funny. One is the live-action remake of the cartoon, now into its second season. The other is the one that made close to a billion and a half dollars at the box office. Avatar: Fire and Ash, the … Read more
Some movies are content to tell you a story. In the Hand of Dante wants to grab you by the collar and drag you across seven centuries. Julian Schnabel’s new film, which played at Venice last fall and arrived on Netflix on June 24 after a brief run in theaters, is a literary heist, … Read more
Voicemails for Isabelle arrived on Netflix on June 19 and shot straight to the top of the movie chart, which is the kind of thing that happens when a rom-com has a hook this clean. A grieving woman keeps leaving voicemails for her dead sister, not knowing the number has been reassigned to a stranger … Read more
Most TV revivals are a bad idea wearing a beloved name. They show up two decades late, trade on your affection, and leave the original looking a little worse for the visit. Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair is the rare exception. The four-episode revival landed on Hulu in April and immediately became the … Read more
The Handmaid’s Tale ended in 2025 after eight years, and rather than let Gilead fade, Hulu has handed the story to the next generation. The Testaments, based on Margaret Atwood’s 2019 sequel novel, finished its first season on May 27 and was renewed for a second before the finale even aired. It has already pulled … Read more
Paul Thomas Anderson has spent thirty years making films that critics revere and casual audiences quietly avoid. One Battle After Another is the one that broke through. It swept the 2026 Academy Awards with six wins, including Best Picture and, at long last, a first Oscar for Anderson himself. Now that it has arrived on … Read more
Netflix just dropped all 22 episodes of The Polygamist, its biggest South African telenovela to date, and it has spent the days since burning up social media. The title puts a man at the center, a self-made CEO juggling a wife and several other women. But the smartest thing about the show is that it … Read more
On paper, Song Sung Blue sounds like a punchline. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, two of the most charismatic movie stars alive, playing a married couple who spent their lives in a Neil Diamond tribute band in Milwaukee. You can already hear the sequins rustling. But the film, which landed on Netflix on June 13 … Read more