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146 pieces

Poster for Caught by the Tides showing Zhao Tao against a changing Chinese cityscape.

Caught by the Tides and the Archive of a Face

Jia Zhangke built his new film out of twenty-two years of his own discarded footage. The result is the rare picture whose real subject is the time it took to shoot.

Lena Ashworth·3 Jun·5 min

A man's face partially in shadow, eyes lit, photographed against a blackened doorway.

Film

Wolf Man, Leigh Whannell, and the Universal Monster Problem

Leigh Whannell's January 2025 Wolf Man cost about $25 million and grossed about $36 million globally. The film is not the disaster the numbers suggest. The strategy around it is.

Marcus Vell·7 May·7 min

A young woman in a fur coat sitting in the front seat of a parked car at night, neon light catching the windscreen.

Film

What Anora's Ending Pays For

Sean Baker's Brooklyn fairytale won five Academy Awards on the strength of two minutes of silence in a parked car. The film is more interested in what that silence costs.

Lena Ashworth·6 May·6 min

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket alone on a bright suburban American lawn at midday.

Film

Dream Scenario: Borgli's Cage Vehicle as Media Critique

Kristoffer Borgli's A24 feature used Nicolas Cage as the vehicle for a media satire that landed in late 2023 and has aged, through 2024 and into 2025, into a specifically sharper object than the reviews initially registered.

Priya Nair·8 Apr·6 min

A vintage medicine cabinet filled with pastel-coloured bottles under clinical lighting

Film

The Substance and the Body Horror Renaissance

Eighteen months after Coralie Fargeat's prosthetic-heavy fable drew both Oscar nominations and walkouts, the strange alchemy of The Substance has only clarified. The film is less about Hollywood than it looks, and more about what we're allowed to say with bodies on screen.

Lena Ashworth·28 Mar·5 min

A misty forest at dawn with bare trees and a distant ruined tower silhouette

Film

Nosferatu: Eggers' Gothic Masterwork

Eggers' remake was received with admiration rather than fervour, a proper film from a proper filmmaker. Sixteen months later, it looks like the serious piece the year needed, and the one we were too cool to love properly at the time.

Lena Ashworth·20 Mar·5 min

A man and woman standing in the kitchen of a bright English cottage.

Film

We Live in Time: Crowley's Non-Linear Gamble

John Crowley's third collaboration with A24 runs the ten-year relationship in a non-linear shuffle, and the shuffle is what makes the film survive its cancer-drama premise. Just barely, but it does.

Jules Okonkwo·18 Mar·6 min

A concrete modernist building viewed from below at dusk, strong vertical lines cutting the sky

Film

The Brutalist: In Defence of the 3.5-Hour Epic

A year after The Brutalist swept its technical categories and divided audiences, its length has stopped looking like a gamble and started looking like the point. An argument for the long film in a short-film decade.

Lena Ashworth·11 Mar·6 min

Neon-lit Brooklyn street at night reflecting off wet pavement

Film

Anora's Best Picture Win, Defended

A year after Sean Baker's fourth feature took five Oscars including Best Picture, the predictable backlash has arrived on schedule. Here's why the Academy, improbably, got it right.

Lena Ashworth·2 Mar·5 min

A brightly-lit gym at night, a muscular woman reflected in a wall of mirrors.

Film

Love Lies Bleeding: Rose Glass Goes Pulp

Rose Glass's second feature dragged the lesbian bodybuilder noir into A24 territory and got reviewed as a tonal mess. The case I want to make is that the tonal mess is the movie, and the movie earns it.

Marcus Vell·26 Feb·6 min

A smudged greasepaint mask on a concrete floor under a single harsh bulb

Film

Anatomy of a $200M Musical Flop: What Killed Folie à Deux

Eighteen months after Todd Phillips' much-hated sequel opened to a $37 million weekend and a 30% audience score, it is time to autopsy the corpse. The film isn't good. It also isn't quite what you've been told.

Marcus Vell·22 Feb·6 min

A tennis court at dusk, long shadows stretching across the baseline, empty seats

Film

Challengers and the Year Guadagnino Made Sport Sexy

Two years after Challengers arrived in its pastel pressure-cooker, the film's trick is clearer: it is not really about tennis. It is about what love looks like when three people are too competitive to admit they love anything but competition.

Priya Nair·14 Feb·6 min

A rural wooden building at night lit by a red neon sign, long dirt road approaching

Film

Sinners: Coogler's Vampire Western and the Return of the Studio Auteur Movie

Ten months on, Ryan Coogler's 1930s Mississippi vampire film doesn't just still hold up, it looks like the clearest sign in years that the studio auteur movie is not dead. A field report from inside the juke joint.

Marcus Vell·5 Feb·6 min

A tall figure in a rusted metal fire-helmet walking through a sunlit pine forest.

Film

In a Violent Nature: The Slasher from the Wrong Side

Chris Nash's debut takes the slasher apart from the killer's point of view, and the radical formal choice is also the reason the film divides its audience. I want to argue for it.

Marcus Vell·4 Feb·6 min

A lone motorcycle trails dust across a barren red desert under a yellow sky

Film

Furiosa and the Death of Mid-Budget Action

Almost two years on, Furiosa's $175m worldwide gross still looks like the most depressing box-office story of the 2020s. Not because the film is bad, it is not, but because of what its failure reveals about the economics of the action film.

Marcus Vell·28 Jan·6 min

A dim doorway at the end of a wood-panelled hallway, warm lamplight seeping out

Film

Heretic: Hugh Grant's Villain Era, Explained

A year and a bit on, Hugh Grant's turn in Heretic has been canonised as the late-career reinvention of the decade. The interesting question is what reinvention actually means when the performance is, in truth, an intensification of what he was always doing.

Marcus Vell·19 Jan·6 min

A wooden deck above a lake at dawn, six coffee mugs scattered on a long table.

The Four Seasons: Tina Fey's Middle-Aged Friendship Show

Tina Fey's adaptation of the 1981 Alan Alda film is a show about three couples, four vacations, and what middle-aged friendship sounds like when nobody is performing for an audience.

Jules Okonkwo·16 Jan·7 min

A vaulted corridor with chequerboard marble floor and late afternoon light slanting across

Film

Conclave and the Surprise Return of the Talk Movie

Fifteen months after Conclave's surprise commercial run, Edward Berger's Vatican procedural still feels like an argument from another era of filmmaking. The genre it quietly revived, the talk movie, is worth examining.

Jules Okonkwo·10 Jan·6 min

A life-size wooden mannequin of a man seated in a dim rural Irish farmhouse.

Film

Oddity: McCarthy's Puppet as Grief

Damian McCarthy's second feature is the best pure-horror indie of 2024, and the clearest argument going for what micro-budget Irish genre cinema can do when it commits to a single effect and doesn't blink.

Marcus Vell·5 Jan·6 min

An old microphone in close-up against a deep red stage curtain, light hitting the capsule

Film

A Complete Unknown: Why the Dylan Biopic Works When Most Don't

A year after James Mangold's Dylan biopic arrived in the middle of a tired genre, the film's decisions keep looking smarter. An argument for the underrated music biopic of the decade.

Jules Okonkwo·30 Dec·6 min

A man in a dark coat standing outside a stone convent wall at dusk in winter.

Film

Small Things Like These: Murphy's Quiet Indictment

Tim Mielants's adaptation of the Claire Keegan novella was reviewed as a modest Cillian Murphy vehicle. The careful reading is that the film's restraint is the indictment, and the restraint is harder to film than the indictment would have been.

Lena Ashworth·16 Dec·6 min

An empty jury box in a wood-panelled American courtroom at late afternoon, light falling in diagonal bars.

Film

Juror #2 and Clint Eastwood's Final Courtroom

Clint Eastwood's probable farewell as a director was buried by Warner Bros in a ghost release. The film is better than the release, and the release is part of the story.

Marcus Vell·16 Dec·7 min

A long fluorescent-lit office corridor with identical doors disappearing to a vanishing point

Severance Season 2 and the Mythology Problem

Eleven months after Severance returned, the second season's structural gambles are clearer. The show's patience has always been its argument; the real question is whether that argument still scales.

Priya Nair·15 Dec·6 min

A wealthy Connecticut driveway at twilight, three luxury cars parked in formation.

Your Friends and Neighbors: Jon Hamm and the Middle-Aged Crisis Show

Jonathan Tropper's Apple series gave Jon Hamm a part he has been waiting a decade for. The show itself is a more complicated object.

Priya Nair·5 Dec·7 min

A silhouette of a young lion cub on a dry African plain at dawn, long shadow trailing behind.

Film

Mufasa and the Disney Prequel Machine

Disney hired Barry Jenkins to direct a photoreal prequel to a remake of an animated film. The economic logic is intelligible. The artistic logic is not. A year on, the question is what Jenkins was doing there.

Marcus Vell·2 Dec·7 min

A coastal Japanese landscape at dawn, wooden torii gates in silhouette against fog

Shōgun's Emmy Sweep and the Future of the Limited Series

Fifteen months after Shōgun's historic Emmy sweep, and with a second season confirmed, it's worth asking what the show changed about prestige TV, and what it didn't.

Priya Nair·2 Dec·6 min

A clay figurine of a young woman with thick glasses sitting on a bed surrounded by snail ornaments.

Film

Memoir of a Snail: Elliot's Claymation Grief

Adam Elliot's second stop-motion feature took eight years to make and collected festival prizes from Annecy to Annapurna. The Australian argument is that his particular strain of misery-claymation is one of the country's more unusual exports.

Jules Okonkwo·24 Nov·5 min

A hallway in a damaged Iraqi home, a rifle leaning against a doorframe, dust held in a shaft of light.

Film

Warfare: Mendoza and Garland's Real-Time Iraq

Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland's second collaboration rebuilds a 2006 Ramadi engagement from the memories of the men who survived it, and the film's claim on attention is its specific refusal to shape.

Lena Ashworth·19 Nov·7 min

A hospital window at night, reflecting two women's silhouettes laughing.

Dying for Sex: Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, and the Limited Series as Vessel

Liz Meriwether's eight-episode FX series handed Michelle Williams the role of the decade and Jenny Slate the best supporting performance on television last year.

Priya Nair·18 Nov·7 min

Two figures at either end of a long dinner table in a dim London townhouse, a single candle between them.

Film

Black Bag and the Return of the Competent Genre Film

Steven Soderbergh's ninety-four-minute spy thriller is the specific kind of mid-budget adult drama American studios have stopped making. Its existence is the argument. Its execution is the reward.

Lena Ashworth·18 Nov·7 min

A stainless-steel restaurant kitchen at rest, warm service light spilling in from a pass window

The Bear Season 3: The Season That Slowed Down

Eighteen months after The Bear's third season landed to the worst reviews of its run, the season has quietly become the one I most want to rewatch. An argument for the slow, prickly middle chapter.

Priya Nair·18 Nov·7 min

A whimsically decorated New York apartment interior with bold graphic patterns

Film

Problemista: Julio Torres's Visa Fable

Julio Torres's 2024 debut feature is a specifically strange American indie about a Salvadoran immigrant, a specifically difficult art-world widow, and a specifically failing visa petition. It is also, quietly, great.

Jules Okonkwo·14 Nov·4 min

A middle-aged Black woman standing in a precisely-ordered suburban British kitchen.

Film

Hard Truths: Leigh's Return to Pansy

Mike Leigh's first film since 2018 reunited him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste for a character study of sustained anger. The argument is that the film is one of his best, and the conditions that produced it are the ones his method has been waiting to find.

Lena Ashworth·12 Nov·6 min

A lone car on a snow-dusted Idaho highway at dusk, headlights cutting through pine shadow.

Film

The Order: Justin Kurzel's Patient Procedural

Justin Kurzel's FBI procedural about white supremacist terrorism in 1980s Idaho was one of the most under-watched American films of 2024. It is also one of the best, and the under-watching is a specific commercial failure worth understanding.

Marcus Vell·4 Nov·6 min

An interior of a small upstate New York synagogue with afternoon light falling on the bimah

Film

Between the Temples: Nathan Silver's Cantor

Nathan Silver's improvisational comedy about a grieving cantor and his retired music teacher is the specifically strangest American indie comedy in years. I keep coming back to it.

Jules Okonkwo·2 Nov·4 min

A sterile corporate bunk row lit in sickly fluorescent green, numbered duplicate bodies receding into shadow.

Film

Mickey 17 and the Expensive Satire Bong Joon-ho Made

Bong Joon-ho's first film after Parasite is a $118 million science fiction satire that Warner Bros marketed badly and audiences did not know how to process. A year on, the failure is the studio's, not the director's.

Marcus Vell·28 Oct·7 min

An ornate nineteenth-century staircase in an official residence, empty, lit from a single side.

The Residence: Uzo Aduba, Shondaland, and the Detective as Structure

Shondaland's White House whodunnit handed Uzo Aduba the role she has been waiting for since Orange is the New Black. The rest of the show is trying to catch up to her.

Priya Nair·25 Oct·7 min

An empty community theatre stage with a single lamp illuminating the darkness

Film

Ghostlight: Community Theatre as Grief

Kelly O'Sullivan and Alex Thompson's 2024 indie is the specific small American film about grief that the specific small American film is specifically built to make. And rarely does this well.

Jules Okonkwo·18 Oct·4 min

A glass-walled London trading floor at dawn, rows of empty workstations glowing blue

Industry Season 3: Still the Best Show About Money

A year after Industry's third season brought Kit Harington and a green-energy IPO into the show's London trading floor, the season looks like the moment the show became the best finance drama in TV history.

Priya Nair·18 Oct·5 min

A bank of CRT monitors in a dim broadcast control room, each screen glowing with an indistinct image.

Film

September 5 and the Control Room Film

Tim Fehlbaum's procedural about the ABC Sports team covering the 1972 Munich hostage crisis narrows its field of vision to a single control room. The narrowing is the film's argument, and it holds.

Priya Nair·17 Oct·6 min

A disorderly London office at night, a single desk lamp burning over scattered papers

Slow Horses Season 4: The Gary Oldman Show

A year on from Season 4, Slow Horses is still the most consistently-good spy drama on television. An argument for the show that has quietly become one of the best.

Priya Nair·12 Oct·5 min

A teenage girl on a concrete walkway at dusk watching a bird overhead.

Film

Bird: Arnold's Kent Fable

Andrea Arnold's fifth feature split the reviews, and the split was real. The retrospective argument is that the film's unexpected magical turn is not a failure of the social-realist grammar, it's what the grammar was always walking toward.

Jules Okonkwo·10 Oct·6 min

A mountain ridge at dusk, a single horseman silhouetted on a crest, snow on the pines.

American Primeval: Peter Berg's Utah and the Cost of a Six-Episode Western

Peter Berg and Mark L. Smith's six-episode Netflix limited western compresses a brutal 1857 Utah into ninety minutes per episode, and the compression is both the method and the mistake.

Marcus Vell·9 Oct·7 min

A dimly lit Parisian interior with mirrored walls reflecting an unseen figure

Film

The Beast: Bertrand Bonello's Time-Travel Dread

Bertrand Bonello's 2023 film, released in the US in April 2024, is the strangest and most formally ambitious film I saw in either year. An argument for the specific dread of being alive in multiple decades at once.

Marcus Vell·5 Oct·4 min

A Los Angeles apartment building courtyard in afternoon light, a single empty chair

Film

Thelma: June Squibb's Late-Career Lead

Josh Margolin's debut feature gave June Squibb her first leading role at 94. It was not a stunt. It was a film.

Lena Ashworth·4 Oct·5 min

A manicured suburban street at dusk, seen from above, under a featureless painted sky.

Paradise: The Bunker Twist That Reframes the Show

Dan Fogelman's Paradise uses a first-episode reveal as a structural argument. The reveal works; what the show does with it is the interesting part.

Priya Nair·2 Oct·7 min

A 1960s Florida highway seen through a car window in afternoon light.

Film

Nickel Boys: Ross's First-Person Adaptation

RaMell Ross adapted Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel through a first-person camera almost continuously across two hours. The argument is that the formal gamble is the adaptation, and the adaptation is, so far, the film of the awards year.

Lena Ashworth·2 Oct·6 min

An abandoned American highway with distant columns of smoke on the horizon

Film

Civil War: Alex Garland's Failure of Nerve

Alex Garland made a film about an American civil war and deliberately stripped out the politics. A year and a half later, the emptiness in the middle of Civil War is not a choice to respect. It is the thing that breaks the film.

Marcus Vell·2 Oct·5 min

A rain-darkened spaceport at night, a single figure in a hooded coat crossing a lit walkway.

Andor Season 2: Tony Gilroy Finishes the Sentence

Tony Gilroy's second and final season of Andor is the most disciplined piece of franchise television anyone has produced. It is also an argument about what franchise television could have been.

Lena Ashworth·30 Sep·8 min

A child's toy monkey with cymbals frozen mid-clap in blue stage light

Film

The Monkey: Osgood Perkins' Stephen King Mechanism

Osgood Perkins' follow-up to Longlegs is a better film than the hype-fatigue has let on. An argument for the adaptation that does not care about the source material.

Marcus Vell·30 Sep·5 min

A New York apartment hallway at night with light spilling from one open door

Film

A Different Man: Aaron Schimberg's Face-Swap Comedy

Aaron Schimberg's 2024 comedy about an actor who gets a medical procedure and regrets it is the year's strangest mid-budget indie, and the one whose specific comic machinery I keep returning to.

Marcus Vell·25 Sep·4 min

A small London pub interior at closing time, chairs turned up on tables

Baby Reindeer: What Richard Gadd Actually Wrote

Richard Gadd's seven-episode autobiographical drama was the TV moment of spring 2024 and the legal controversy of summer 2024. A year later, the show itself is still the best argument for why it exists.

Priya Nair·25 Sep·5 min

A green tracksuit folded neatly on a metal bunk, a white numbered square on the chest.

Squid Game Season 2: Hwang Dong-hyuk and the Insurrection Inside the Tournament

Three and a bit years after the first season, Hwang Dong-hyuk's second Squid Game is a structurally different object from the original, and the difference is the thing worth describing.

Priya Nair·22 Sep·7 min

A theatre stage in late afternoon light, empty save for a single microphone stand downstage right.

Film

Maria and Pablo Larraín's Closing Argument

Pablo Larraín's third and probably final entry in his trilogy of distressed-woman biopics is the most formally certain of the three, and the one least willing to flatter its subject.

Lena Ashworth·22 Sep·7 min

A Mexico City bar interior in warm amber light, two drinks untouched

Film

Queer: Guadagnino's Burroughs and the Case for Tenderness

Guadagnino's second film of 2024 was the quieter one, the one with the more difficult source material, and the one that has settled, a year later, as the more specifically strange.

Lena Ashworth·18 Sep·5 min

An emergency department trauma bay at shift change, fluorescent light above an empty gurney.

The Pitt: A Real-Time Argument for Procedural Discipline

R. Scott Gemmill's real-time hospital drama on Max ran fifteen episodes across a single shift. It is the best procedural television has produced in a decade.

Priya Nair·14 Sep·6 min

Two chairs on an empty train platform under a grey Polish sky.

Film

A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg's Two-Handed Script

Jesse Eisenberg's second film as director is a tightly written cousins-on-a-trip movie that uses its ninety minutes to say something particular about inheritance, grief, and the specific tolerances of family.

Priya Nair·10 Sep·7 min

Rippled sand dunes stretching to a horizon flattened by heat

Film

Dune: Part Two and the Anti-Hero Blockbuster

A year and a half on from the sequel, the case for Dune: Part Two is less about its scale and more about its refusal. An argument for the blockbuster that does not entertain.

Lena Ashworth·10 Sep·5 min

A mid-century Manhattan apartment building facade at golden hour

Music

Only God Was Above Us: Vampire Weekend at Full Power

Vampire Weekend's fifth album, released in April 2024 after a five-year wait, is the record where the band finally stopped being a band about youth. A year on, the shift is the interesting thing.

Jules Okonkwo·6 Sep·4 min

A small black cat on a floating raft watched by a capybara and a lemur at dusk.

Film

Flow: Zilbalodis and the Wordless Feature

Gints Zilbalodis made a dialogue-free animated feature in Blender with a team of a dozen, won the Oscar, and put the Latvian film industry on the global animation map. The patient argument is that the form, not the novelty, is the achievement.

Priya Nair·4 Sep·6 min

A suburban American cul-de-sac at twilight with the warm glow of late-summer evenings

Film

Dìdi: Sean Wang's Coming-of-Age Debut

Sean Wang's 2024 debut feature is one of the best American coming-of-age films in years. Specifically about being thirteen, Taiwanese-American, and on MySpace in 2008.

Priya Nair·30 Aug·4 min

Two men walking together through a cobblestone street in an old Polish town.

Film

A Real Pain: Eisenberg's Cousins Movie

Jesse Eisenberg's second feature as director-writer is a specifically small, specifically patient Polish heritage-tour film, and the film it most resembles is a Broadway play that someone has somehow filmed correctly.

Jules Okonkwo·28 Aug·6 min

A dim backstage dressing room with two framed costume pieces on the wall

Film

Deadpool & Wolverine: The Last MCU Win

A year after Deadpool & Wolverine made $1.3 billion and saved a bad year for the MCU, the film looks less like a triumph and more like the last thing Marvel is going to get away with.

Marcus Vell·26 Aug·5 min

A rain-soaked Belfast street in 1970s half-light, reflections of streetlamps pooling on wet cobbles.

Say Nothing and the Problem of Adapting a Book That Cannot Be Filmed

Joshua Zetumer's FX adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's Troubles-era book is a better television show than many people expected. It is also a book that perhaps should not have been adapted at all.

Lena Ashworth·25 Aug·8 min

A small black cat balanced on a floating tree branch in bright water, light catching the ripples.

Film

Flow and the Case Against Animated Dialogue

A Latvian animated feature made on Blender with a team of fifteen people won the Oscar and beat DreamWorks, Pixar, and Netflix. The reason is not budget. It is silence.

Jules Okonkwo·21 Aug·6 min

A suburban American living room with heavy curtains drawn against bright midday light

Film

Kinds of Kindness: Lanthimos Unplugged

A year on from Lanthimos' three-part anthology, the film reads cleaner than the reviews made it sound. An argument for what happens when a director stops worrying about being liked.

Lena Ashworth·20 Aug·5 min

A pink-lit tour bus parked outside a venue at dusk

Music

Short n' Sweet: Sabrina Carpenter's Fully-Funded Year

A year on from Short n' Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter is the first pop star of her generation who has successfully metabolised the Disney-pipeline training into something that is not, finally, Disney.

Jules Okonkwo·19 Aug·5 min

A vintage television set with static distortion on the screen in a dim studio

Film

Late Night with the Devil: Found-Footage 1977

Colin and Cameron Cairnes's Australian indie horror, shot as a 1977 late-night TV broadcast gone wrong, is the rare genre exercise whose formal commitment pays off at every level.

Marcus Vell·14 Aug·4 min

A sun-dappled Italian stone staircase leading down to a deserted coastal piazza

Ripley: The Slowness Was Always the Point

Steven Zaillian's eight-episode Netflix adaptation of Patricia Highsmith was the quiet prestige show of April 2024. A year later, its patience has only looked smarter.

Priya Nair·14 Aug·5 min

A dim Tehran apartment hallway with one door slightly ajar.

Film

The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Rasoulof's House Film

Mohammad Rasoulof shot the film in secret, fled Iran during post-production, and arrived at Cannes with a three-hour domestic thriller about a judiciary father and his protesting daughters. The retrospective argument is that the long cut is the cut.

Lena Ashworth·12 Aug·5 min

A New Orleans bar at night with a single patron at the counter

Film

Hit Man: Richard Linklater's Star Vehicle for a Non-Star

A year on from Hit Man's Netflix release, the film is a quieter argument than it first appeared. Richard Linklater made a star-launcher for someone he knew would not, in the end, need launching.

Lena Ashworth·12 Aug·5 min

A sniper rifle broken down across a white hotel bedsheet in hard sidelight.

The Day of the Jackal: Eddie Redmayne and the Ten-Episode Thriller

Sky and Peacock's Jackal adaptation stretched the Forsyth novel across ten episodes and bet the show on Eddie Redmayne's stillness. The bet paid off, mostly.

Priya Nair·8 Aug·6 min

A Los Angeles motel sign glowing at dusk against a palm tree silhouette

Film

MaXXXine and the Trilogy Problem

Ti West closed his X/Pearl/MaXXXine trilogy in July 2024 with a film that tries to be several kinds of movie at once. A year later, only some of them worked.

Marcus Vell·8 Aug·5 min

A Manhattan street at dusk, paper drifting on the kerb, a single cat silhouetted on a stoop.

Film

A Quiet Place: Day One, and the Discipline of a Small Apocalypse

Michael Sarnoski's Quiet Place prequel is a studio horror release built to break the franchise's scale rules, and the smaller it stays, the better it works.

Marcus Vell·7 Aug·7 min

A sun-bleached pine wall viewed from below, light falling through cracks in vertical bars.

Film

Nickel Boys and the Camera That Remembers

RaMell Ross adapted Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer novel by refusing the one thing most literary adaptations insist on. The camera is the character, and the choice changes what the film can do.

Lena Ashworth·2 Aug·6 min

A Las Vegas theatre marquee lit for a late show, empty lobby visible through glass

Hacks Season 3: The Show That Keeps Getting Sharper

A year after Hacks Season 3 landed, the show is quietly one of the best ongoing comedies on television. An argument for the series whose cruelty keeps getting better-calibrated.

Priya Nair·1 Aug·5 min

A glass corner office at dusk, the silhouette of a figure at the window against the Manhattan grid.

Film

Babygirl and the Return of the Corporate Erotic

Halina Reijn's erotic drama returned a genre the American studios had given up on, and gave Nicole Kidman the kind of role the mid-budget adult film had stopped being able to produce.

Lena Ashworth·30 Jul·7 min

An empty basketball court at a practice facility, morning light through clerestory windows.

Running Point: Mindy Kaling, Kate Hudson, and the Workplace Comedy Still Works

Mindy Kaling's Netflix NBA comedy is a vehicle for Kate Hudson's return to screen work. The show around her is more conventional than her performance deserves.

Priya Nair·28 Jul·6 min

An isolated ranch house in winter light, lit by one upstairs window

Film

Longlegs: What Perkins Was Really Doing

A year after Longlegs' extraordinary marketing run turned into an extraordinary opening weekend, the film looks smaller than the hype suggested and stranger than the backlash allowed.

Marcus Vell·28 Jul·5 min

A large indoor arena at dusk, rows of empty pink seats rising

Film

Trap: Shyamalan's Attention Problem

M. Night Shyamalan's August 2024 thriller had a genuinely great first act and two acts that could not sustain the premise. A year later, the unevenness is worth thinking about.

Marcus Vell·22 Jul·5 min

A New England farmhouse porch at sunset with two chairs set out, one empty

Film

Janet Planet: Annie Baker Goes to Film

Annie Baker's film debut is the rare coming-of-age film that refuses every coming-of-age convention. Just a specific eleven-year-old and her specific mother, one summer in western Massachusetts, 1991.

Jules Okonkwo·21 Jul·4 min

A rooftop at night above a New York cross street, rain on steel plating, a single figure silhouetted.

Daredevil: Born Again and the Ghost of the Netflix Show

Disney's Daredevil revival survived a mid-production creative overhaul and emerged looking, eventually, like a continuation of the Netflix show it nominally wasn't.

Marcus Vell·20 Jul·7 min

A rain-slicked Bombay street at night with reflections of distant neon.

Film

All We Imagine as Light: Kapadia's Bombay Nocturne

Payal Kapadia's Cannes Grand Prix winner was received, on its US release, as the decade's strongest import from Indian indie cinema. The re-reading is that the film is even stranger, and more formally considered, than the initial reception allowed.

Lena Ashworth·18 Jul·6 min

A club exit doorway at 4am, fluorescent lit, with a fire extinguisher in the corner

Music

Brat Summer: What Actually Happened

Charli XCX's Brat was the pop event of 2024. A year on, the question is not whether the record was good. The question is what Brat Summer actually was, who it was for, and why almost everything it inspired was bad.

Jules Okonkwo·15 Jul·5 min

A spiral staircase descending into darkness, lit by a single emergency lamp.

Silo Season 2: The Patience Economy

Graham Yost's second season of Silo split its story across two bunkers and asked viewers to wait. The waiting is the show's argument, and also its risk.

Priya Nair·12 Jul·6 min

An empty American suburban hallway from a low camera angle, daylight filtering through a distant open door.

Film

Presence and the Ghost POV Soderbergh Trusted

Steven Soderbergh shot a haunted house film entirely from the ghost's point of view. The formal constraint should not work. It does, and the reasons are technical.

Marcus Vell·12 Jul·7 min

A dim corner of a New York bar with two chairs slightly turned toward each other

Film

Past Lives: Celine Song's Quiet Argument About Time

Two Oscar nominations, a slow-burn awards run, and a second viewing at home. Celine Song's debut keeps revealing itself. An argument for the film that refuses its own climax.

Lena Ashworth·12 Jul·5 min

A black-and-white winter landscape with a solitary figure in the foreground

Film

Hundreds of Beavers: The Silent-Era Revival Nobody Expected

Mike Cheslik's 108-minute silent slapstick about a 19th-century fur trapper fighting mascot beavers is one of the strangest American indie films of the decade. It is also one of the funniest.

Marcus Vell·8 Jul·4 min

A rain-slicked Gotham alley at night, a single streetlight reflecting in a puddle

The Penguin: Colin Farrell's Prosthetic Triumph

A year after The Penguin finished its run on HBO, the show is a strong argument for what the superhero universe can still do on television when nobody makes it wear tights.

Priya Nair·8 Jul·5 min

A cracked marble bust of a Roman emperor against a dusty ochre sky.

Film

Gladiator II: Ridley Scott's Sequel Problem

Ridley Scott made Gladiator II twenty-four years after the original and repeated most of the first film's beats without any of its conviction. The problem is not age. The problem is a director who no longer believes the genre.

Marcus Vell·5 Jul·7 min

A guitar leaning against a bedroom amp, a blurred streetlight through a window behind it.

Music

Mk.gee's Two Star & the Dream Police: The Guitar Record the Year Needed

Mk.gee's debut full-length is the strangest guitar record a twenty-something American songwriter released in 2024, and nine months in it is still rewiring what popular guitar is allowed to sound like.

Jules Okonkwo·3 Jul·7 min

A silhouette against a neon pink Mexico City skyline with overlapping musical staves rendered as skyline wire.

Film

Emilia Pérez and the Genre Problem Jacques Audiard Made For Himself

Jacques Audiard's Spanish-language narco musical swept the Cannes awards and collapsed in the awards season that followed. The collapse had less to do with the controversies than with the film's formal failure to decide what it wanted to be.

Lena Ashworth·28 Jun·6 min

A London townhouse at dusk with lamps lit in every window

Disclaimer: Cuarón's Expensive Mistake

Alfonso Cuarón's seven-part thriller on Apple TV was the prestige-TV arrival of October 2024. A year out, the shape of what went wrong is clearer.

Priya Nair·24 Jun·5 min

A darkened suburban bedroom with a TV glow illuminating the ceiling

Film

I Saw the TV Glow: The Trans Allegory Hollywood Couldn't Place

Jane Schoenbrun's sophomore feature played small in theatres, spoke loudly to the audience it was made for, and kept speaking afterwards. A year later, it is still teaching viewers how to be seen.

Marcus Vell·22 Jun·5 min

A teenage girl in a canoe on a calm Canadian lake at golden-hour sunset.

Film

My Old Ass: Megan Park's Summer Movie with Actual Time

I took my younger sister to see Megan Park's second feature thinking it would be a throwaway, and we walked out crying. The retrospective case is that it is the sharpest coming-of-age indie of the year, and I'll fight about it.

Jules Okonkwo·21 Jun·6 min

A marble-floored embassy corridor at night, a single figure walking away from the camera.

The Diplomat Season 2: Allison Janney Arrives and the Show Reorganises

Debora Cahn's second season ran six episodes and handed its final scene to Allison Janney. The compression changed what the show is.

Priya Nair·20 Jun·6 min

A green-tinted proscenium arch opening onto an emerald horizon with a single silhouette at centre stage.

Film

Wicked: What Jon M. Chu's Part One Gets Right About Musicals

Jon M. Chu's Wicked was the studio musical that worked, and the reasons it worked are specific to the form. A year on, its choices look like a template.

Lena Ashworth·18 Jun·6 min

A sunlit modernist house interior with two empty chairs facing a garden

Film

The Room Next Door: Almodóvar in English, Finally

Almodóvar's first English-language feature is the film he has spent his whole career preparing to make. A year later, the patience was worth waiting for.

Lena Ashworth·18 Jun·5 min

An Italian hillside town at dusk seen through the haze of an approaching storm

Film

La Chimera: Rohrwacher's Ghost Story

Alice Rohrwacher's 2023 film about a British grave-robber in 1980s Italy is the kind of quiet, strange, specifically rewarding film that the American art-house circuit was once built to deliver. It still can.

Lena Ashworth·15 Jun·5 min

A forest path at dusk with lanterns hanging unevenly from the trees.

Agatha All Along and the MCU's Last Competent Show

Jac Schaeffer's Agatha limited series did what Marvel's TV slate had mostly stopped doing: it knew what it was, and it finished.

Marcus Vell·14 Jun·7 min

An empty amphitheatre with a lone microphone stand centre stage

Music

Kendrick vs Drake: Notes on a Massacre

A year after 'Not Like Us' broke streaming records, changed halftime shows, and drove a superstar into the career wilderness, the question is no longer who won. The question is what the beef actually was.

Jules Okonkwo·10 Jun·5 min

A neatly tended garden with a high wall running along its far edge

Film

The Zone of Interest and the Sound as Argument

Jonathan Glazer's Holocaust film works by almost never showing us the Holocaust. Two years out, the sound design is still one of the most radical formal choices of the decade.

Lena Ashworth·5 Jun·5 min

A sunlit retirement-community atrium with potted palms and a woman reading alone at a table.

A Man on the Inside: Mike Schur, Ted Danson, and the Comedy of Late Life

Mike Schur's Netflix show placed Ted Danson inside a retirement community as an amateur investigator. The premise is a disguise for the comedy Schur has been moving toward for a decade.

Priya Nair·2 Jun·7 min

A Japanese elementary schoolyard under late-afternoon light with empty playground equipment

Film

Monster: Kore-eda's Tripled Narrative

Hirokazu Kore-eda's 2023 film, released in the US in late 2023 and on streaming through 2024, is a specifically disciplined three-act structural experiment. Also, quietly, one of the most important queer films of recent cinema.

Lena Ashworth·30 May·5 min

A rodeo arena at dusk with a single saddle laid across a fence rail

Music

Cowboy Carter: The Beyoncé Record That Became a Genre Argument

A year out, Beyoncé's country album is not a country album. It is a demolition project. An argument for Cowboy Carter as one of the most important genre interventions of the decade.

Jules Okonkwo·30 May·5 min

A weathered stone monument against a darkening English sky

Music

Songs of a Lost World: The Cure's Sixteen-Year Album

The Cure's first album in sixteen years arrived in November 2024. A year later, the wait was the point.

Jules Okonkwo·28 May·5 min

A New York skyline at twilight, one tower lit with a red neon strip

Film

The Apprentice: The Trump Film Nobody Watched

Ali Abbasi's Trump origin story arrived in American theatres three weeks before the 2024 election, flopped, and has barely been discussed since. The film deserved better.

Marcus Vell·20 May·5 min

A remote Alaskan ice road at twilight, a single vehicle's headlights cutting across

True Detective: Night Country and the Anthology Problem

Issa López's anthology season was the most divisive prestige TV of the year. Eighteen months out, the things it got right outweigh the things it did not.

Priya Nair·15 May·5 min

A child's suitcase left on an empty railway platform under a sodium lamp.

Film

Blitz: Steve McQueen's Crowded Home Front

Steve McQueen's first feature since Small Axe attempts a sprawling wartime mural of London. The mural mostly works. The boy at its centre is the reason it sometimes does not.

Lena Ashworth·14 May·7 min

A wide porch at dusk with two guitar cases leaning against a screen door.

Music

Tigers Blood and the Second Waxahatchee Record

Katie Crutchfield's follow-up to Saint Cloud did not need to do anything except be good. It is good in specific, deliberate ways, and those ways are the record's argument for itself.

Jules Okonkwo·14 May·7 min

A laptop glowing in a dim Tokyo apartment, its screen casting cold blue light across an unmade bed.

Film

Cloud and Kurosawa's Quiet Fury at the Platform Economy

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2024 thriller about a Tokyo reseller whose customers track him to a mountain cabin is the closest his cinema has come to an argument about the economy we are actually living inside.

Lena Ashworth·12 May·8 min

An empty flight simulator cockpit seen through a rain-streaked observation window.

The Rehearsal Season 2 and the Aviation Problem

Nathan Fielder returned in April 2025 with six episodes about cockpit communication and commercial aviation safety. The premise sounds like a joke. It is not a joke.

Priya Nair·12 May·7 min

A small Helsinki bar interior with yellow lamps reflecting on empty wooden tables

Film

Fallen Leaves: Kaurismäki's Deadpan Romantic

Aki Kaurismäki's 2023 film, out of retirement and better for it, is one of the shortest great films of the decade. An 81-minute case for the romantic comedy as serious cinema.

Lena Ashworth·9 May·5 min

A 1970s Rio de Janeiro living room seen through a doorway, a family photograph propped beside an empty chair.

Film

I'm Still Here and the Political Film Brazil Needed Built

Walter Salles's adaptation of Marcelo Rubens Paiva's memoir won Brazil its first Best International Feature Oscar in March 2025. The win matters. The film matters more.

Marcus Vell·8 May·8 min

A pumpjack silhouetted against a flat Texas horizon at dusk.

Landman and the Sheridan Factory at Paramount

Taylor Sheridan's Landman arrived in November 2024 as his fifth active series for Paramount. The show is good enough in places and overextended everywhere, and the overextension is the company strategy.

Priya Nair·8 May·7 min

A black Buick Grand National GNX parked at night on a Compton side street, street lamp overhead, the paint catching the light.

Music

GNX and the Kendrick Lamar Surprise-Release Argument

Kendrick's surprise-dropped November record is the victory-lap album that also functions as a genealogy lesson. Both registers are doing specific work, and both work.

Jules Okonkwo·6 May·7 min

A backstage mirror framed by old bulb lights, a single feather headpiece resting on the counter.

Film

The Last Showgirl and the Patience of Pamela Anderson

Gia Coppola's third feature hands Pamela Anderson a role that asks almost nothing performative of her, and asks everything else. The restraint is the thesis.

Lena Ashworth·6 May·7 min

A law-firm conference room at dusk, an empty chair pulled back from a long polished table.

Matlock Uses the Oldest Procedural in the Book to Argue About Being Invisible

Jennie Snyder Urman's CBS reboot smuggled a revenge thriller and a grief story inside a network legal procedural. Kathy Bates held the whole thing together across nineteen episodes.

Priya Nair·5 May·7 min

A windblown Orkney coastline at dusk, a single figure standing small against the grey sea.

Film

The Outrun and the Recovery Film Told in Weather

Nora Fingscheidt's adaptation of Amy Liptrot's memoir arrived in autumn through Sony Pictures Classics. It is a recovery film that keeps reaching past the recovery, out into the weather on the islands.

Lena Ashworth·4 May·7 min

An empty concrete lot behind a row of Philadelphia rowhouses at night, a single streetlight leaning sideways.

Dope Thief and the Patient Criminal Serial

Peter Craig's Philadelphia crime serial dropped on Apple TV+ in March with Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura as the leads. It is patient, specific, and the best adult crime drama the service has aired.

Marcus Vell·2 May·7 min

A lone figure in a stage spotlight rendered as a motion-capture outline, the crowd fading into black.

Film

Better Man and the CGI Monkey Problem

Michael Gracey's Robbie Williams biopic cast its subject as a CGI chimpanzee and posted one of the worst wide-opening results of the year. The film is still better than its box office.

Marcus Vell·2 May·7 min

A cassette tape lying on a swampy wooden dock at dusk, its ribbon uncoiled across the boards.

Music

Alligator Bites Never Heal and the Year Doechii Stopped Waiting

Doechii's Top Dawg mixtape landed in August 2024, won Best Rap Album at the 67th Grammys, and did the specific thing most debut-tier rap records cannot do: hold the weight of a dozen genre switches without buckling.

Jules Okonkwo·24 Apr·7 min

A linoleum hallway in a Texas high school with an open locker door catching afternoon light.

English Teacher: Brian Jordan Alvarez's Quiet Workplace Argument

Brian Jordan Alvarez's FX comedy arrived on Hulu in September 2024 and renewed quickly. The show is doing more than its loose register suggests, and the workplace logic is the reason.

Priya Nair·22 Apr·7 min

A dusty velvet theatre curtain partly drawn to reveal a single microphone stand on an empty stage.

Music

Mahashmashana and the Long Father John Misty Project

Josh Tillman's sixth Father John Misty record arrived in late November on Sub Pop. It is the longest the project has sounded and, in a specific way, the least defended.

Jules Okonkwo·22 Apr·7 min

A French country kitchen with copper pots on a wooden table, bowls of prepared ingredients

Film

The Taste of Things: Tran Anh Hung's Culinary Romance

Tran Anh Hung's 2023 film, released theatrically in February 2024, is the best film about food and cooking since Babette's Feast. It is also a deeply disciplined romance in disguise.

Lena Ashworth·22 Apr·5 min

A dressing-room mirror ringed with bulbs, one reflected face smiling too wide in the glass.

Film

Smile 2 and the Sequel That Actually Sharpens

Parker Finn's follow-up to his 2022 hit arrived through Paramount in October. It takes the original's thin premise and pushes it into something stranger, harder, and more formally specific.

Marcus Vell·18 Apr·7 min

A London rooftop at Christmas, string lights reflecting off a wet balcony railing above an empty street.

Black Doves and the Spy Show That Refuses to Pick a Tone

Joe Barton's six-episode Netflix spy series arrived in the Christmas release slot in December 2024 and did the thing most genre television cannot do: hold a comic register and a grief register in the same frame without either one winning.

Priya Nair·17 Apr·8 min

A taped prizefighter's fist held low against a gas-lit London street at night, shadows long on wet cobblestones.

A Thousand Blows Finds Steven Knight a Frame Large Enough for His Obsessions

Steven Knight's Victorian boxing drama dropped on Disney+ and Hulu in February 2025. Six episodes in, the show's interest in three parallel hustles is what makes the frame hold.

Priya Nair·14 Apr·7 min

A restaurant table for two at night, two half-finished drinks and an unlit candle between them.

Nobody Wants This and the Rom-Com That Trusts Its Leads

Erin Foster's Netflix series arrived in September with a tidy ten-episode run and an audience the streamer did not appear to expect. The show's virtue is its willingness to let the romance breathe.

Priya Nair·12 Apr·7 min

A bustling South London street market with colourful stalls and a pastel evening sky

Film

Rye Lane: South London Technicolor

Raine Allen-Miller's 2023 debut is the rare contemporary British romantic comedy that actually commits to its register. Specifically a London film in a way very few London films are.

Priya Nair·12 Apr·4 min

A lake house window at dusk, a silhouette inside holding a wine glass, reflection on the glass catching the last daylight.

Film

Companion and the Case for the Small Sci-Fi Thriller

Drew Hancock's debut strips its premise to a weekend-house structure and one central idea. The discipline is the film's argument, and the argument lands cleanly.

Marcus Vell·8 Apr·6 min

A pair of oversized combat boots photographed from above on a worn wooden dock, with ripples on dark water below.

Reacher S3 Proves the Formula Still Clears the Bar

Amazon's third Reacher season adapted Persuader across eight episodes in February 2025 and did the specific thing the show exists to do. The formula holds, and the reasons it holds are worth marking.

Marcus Vell·7 Apr·7 min

An empty dance floor at dawn, ribbons of light bleeding across a polished black surface.

Music

In Waves and the Long Wait for the Jamie xx Follow-Up

Jamie Smith's second solo record landed in September on Young, almost a decade after In Colour. It is the sound of a producer who has been DJing for nine years and finally decided to write the album the nights were asking for.

Jules Okonkwo·2 Apr·7 min

A suburban backyard at golden hour, two Adirondack chairs facing each other across a glass-topped table with two coffee cups.

Shrinking Season Two and the Grief Comedy Apple Kept

The second season of Apple's therapist comedy deepens rather than complicates, which is the correct instinct for the show and an increasingly rare one on contemporary prestige TV.

Priya Nair·25 Mar·7 min

An empty wrestling ring lit from above, the ropes slack and the canvas marked with scuffs from an earlier event.

Mr. McMahon and the Documentary That Its Subject Agreed To

Chris Smith's six-part documentary arrived on Netflix in September and did the specific job the genre rarely gets to do. It let its subject speak, and then it outlasted him.

Marcus Vell·14 Mar·7 min

A dim stone corridor with two figures in long dark robes walking away from the camera, high windows catching pale daylight.

Dune: Prophecy and the Prequel Series Problem

HBO's six-episode Bene Gesserit prequel arrives with a specific set of inherited problems and a few genuine pleasures. The question is whether the pleasures can sustain a second season.

Priya Nair·11 Mar·7 min

A wooden cabin viewed through trees at dusk, one window lit orange against the surrounding dark.

Film

Wolf Man, Whannell's Domestic Horror Bet

Leigh Whannell's follow-up to The Invisible Man arrived in January through Blumhouse and Universal. It is a smaller, stranger film than the one the marketing sold, and the smaller film is the better film.

Marcus Vell·5 Mar·7 min

A cracked apartment-door peephole with warm yellow light leaking through onto a turquoise wall.

Film

One of Them Days Gets a Working Friendship Right

Lawrence Lamont's debut landed in January 2025 with SZA and Keke Palmer centred inside a rent-day comedy that remembered how buddy pictures actually move.

Jules Okonkwo·4 Mar·7 min

A small marble statue of a Greek god wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses against a plain pink background.

Kaos: The Netflix Myth Show That Needed a Second Season

Charlie Covell's Greek-myth reworking arrived on Netflix in August 2024 and was cancelled a month later. The show deserved better, and the cancellation revealed something specific about Netflix's renewal math.

Priya Nair·4 Mar·7 min

Three chairs arranged around a narrow apartment kitchen with a single lamp on the table.

Film

His Three Daughters: Azazel Jacobs's Chamber Grief

Azazel Jacobs built a three-hander around a Manhattan apartment, three sisters, and a dying father in the next room. The film is much better than Netflix's release pattern suggested.

Marcus Vell·20 Feb·7 min

A suburban kitchen at night, a pair of yellow eyes reflected faintly in the window above the sink.

Film

Nightbitch and the Limits of Literal Metaphor

Marielle Heller's adaptation of Rachel Yoder's novel arrived through Searchlight in December, and the thing it cannot decide is how much of the dog to show. The indecision is the film.

Lena Ashworth·18 Feb·7 min

A backstage corridor lit by a single fluorescent fixture, gaffer tape on the floor, a clock reading 11:20.

Film

Saturday Night and Jason Reitman's Real-Time Origin Story

Jason Reitman's compressed account of the ninety minutes before the first SNL broadcast is the rare backstage film that trusts the chaos to be its own argument.

Lena Ashworth·4 Feb·7 min

A circus-tent silhouette in heavy black against a deep red field with a single spotlight beam cutting across.

Film

Terrifier 3 Confirms Damien Leone's Commitment to a Very Specific Bit

Damien Leone's third Art the Clown picture opened wide in October 2024 and outgrossed the usual horror release pattern by a factor most distributors would not have underwritten. The craft is why.

Marcus Vell·2 Feb·7 min

A close-cropped hand resting on a guitar fretboard, the fingers caught mid-chord in dim amber light.

Music

Nilüfer Yanya's My Method Actor and the Uses of a Third Record

Nilüfer Yanya's third record arrived in September 2024 as the specific consolidation work a third album is supposed to do, and the consolidation has produced the strongest writing of her career.

Lena Ashworth·28 Jan·7 min

A wooden chess set on a cluttered desk, one knight piece tipped on its side beside a half-finished cup of tea.

Ludwig and the Patient Craft of the BBC Cosy Crime

The BBC's Ludwig, broadcast across six episodes in September and October, is the closest a mainstream British commission has come in years to the register the genre was built on.

Priya Nair·28 Jan·7 min

A translucent plastic disc floating above a soft pink gradient, lit from below in cool blue.

Music

Magdalena Bay's Imaginal Disk and the Slow Return of the Album

Magdalena Bay's second full-length arrived in August 2024 to a slow critical build and a fanbase already waiting. Five months on, the album is the strongest argument for the form in current pop.

Jules Okonkwo·12 Jan·7 min