Peter Keough

Arts Feature: Best Movies (With Some Disappointments) of 2023

December 23, 2023
Posted in , ,

Our demanding critics choose the best films (along with some disappointments) of the year. And there is plenty of disagreement.

Read More

October Short Fuses — Materia Critica

October 1, 2023
Posted in ,

Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Read More

May Short Fuses — Materia Critica

May 1, 2023
Posted in ,

Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Read More

Book Review: Advertisements for Democracy — Norman Mailer’s Anti-Fascist Eloquence

April 9, 2023
Posted in , , ,

Guns, anti-Semitism, paranoid conspiracy theories — it never gets old.

Read More

Film Review: “Pacifiction” — Paradise Misplaced

March 16, 2023
Posted in , ,

A lot seems to be going on beneath the surface, but the surface itself is so beguiling, with the scenery, sea, and sunsets rapturously shot on digital cameras by cinematographer Artur Tort, and with the alternately lulling and agitating soundtrack, that the urgency tends to lapse.

Read More

Film Review: Director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Color Bind — Restored

February 18, 2023
Posted in , ,

Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s marvel universe explored in Three Colors.

Read More

Doc Talk: Making Reparations, Restoring a Reputation, Redrawing Identities

January 19, 2023
Posted in , ,

Reviews of the cogent and well-crafted The Big Payback, the comprehensive if conventional Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space, and No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, which expertly balances whimsy and gravity, though the version of the film shown by PBS has been heavily censored.

Read More

Book Review: How “The Waste Land” Was Won

December 21, 2022
Posted in , ,

Poet and professor Jed Rasula makes the case for The Waste Land‘s lasting revolutionary impact in his engaging and insightful, if occasionally discursive, study.

Read More

Doc Talk: Two New Documentaries about Political Terror Hit Close to Home

December 7, 2022
Posted in , ,

Two powerful films about fending off violent threats, xenophobic and fascist.

Read More

Book Review: Exile, Violence, and Cunning — Two Russian Authors After the Invasion of Ukraine

November 25, 2022
Posted in , ,

“It’s easy to see why we have such a lousy life and such great literature.”

Read More

Recent Posts