Screen Time
The weight mother! bears
Darren Aronofsky's title character is the divine feminine, Mary, and Spirit; she's a little bit Gaia and a whole lot of the Feminine Principle.
Logan Lucky's criminals and why we root for them
In Ocean's 11, the thieves' sheer coolness reeled us in. It's a harder sell when the heroes day-drink themselves to sleep.
The myth of white innocence in Detroit
Kathryn Bigelow's film lays bare our assumptions about guilt and race.
Speaking truth to power in Beatriz at Dinner and Fargo
The characters Beatriz and Gloria model resistance against powerful, immoral blowhards.
The Leftovers and the end of meaning
In three seasons, the show offered many different perspectives on how faith is made, formed, and lost.
Why I find The Handmaid's Tale surprisingly comforting
Resistance might not achieve its outer aims. Nevertheless, its inner life persists.
Red-state noir, blue-state noir
In both S-Town and Big Little Lies, there’s human depravity everywhere.
White moral infantilism and some help avoiding it
Several recent films and shows portray people of color with a complexity that James Baldwin once assumed was impossible for pop culture.