film criticism
Director Paweł Pawlikowski’s austere account of the writer Thomas Mann’s 1949 homecoming puts art, political idealism, and family loyalty on trial.
Julia Loktev’s six-hour portrait of exiled TV Rain journalists headlined a festival program along with a tale set in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s corrupt provincial Russia and Emmanuel Marre’s understated study of collaboration under Nazi occupation.
Once again, critic A.S. Hamrah sheds perceptive light on our cinematic malaise.
Cinema reviewing exists as a respected profession only as long as the traditional role of the critic is honored.
Informative new books look at a pair of tumultuous periods in American history — the Second World War and the Cold War — when Hollywood rode a particularly rocky political roller coaster.
With a good critic like Peter Rainer, the opinion itself is the least interesting part of the review. It’s the contextualizing of the opinion. And the choice of words on paper.
Arts Commentary: From the Editor’s Desk — By Popular Demand, 2024
Back in February of 2024 I began to write a weekly column for the newsletter on Substack. A few readers have asked that I post these opinion pieces in the magazine. Here is a selection of my favorites.
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