Arts Review
We The Workers: A limited documentary about labour rights groups in China
By Richard Phillips, 14 January 2019
The main problem of We The Workers is not the director’s stylistic approach but the film’s uncritical attitude towards the political agenda of the labour activists.
Steins;Gate 0: A sequel to the popular time-travel anime series
By Matthew MacEgan, 12 January 2019
One of the top anime series of 2018, based on a 2015 video game of the same name, deals with a small group of friends who discover a way to time travel, with dangerous consequences.
Actors and stage managers strike against developmental work with Broadway League
By Katy Kinner, 11 January 2019
The National Council of the Actors’ Equity union announced a strike on Monday, calling for a new contract.
South Park episodes dramatize plight of Amazon workers, ridicule Jeff Bezos
By Ed Hightower, 9 January 2019
The two comic episodes, Unfulfilled and Bike Parade, sympathize with rebellious Amazon workers while depicting billionaire Jeff Bezos as a Talosian, an alien from Star Trek bent on the enslavement of humanity.
Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko: A novel of 20th century Korea and Japan—“History has failed us, but no matter”
By Sandy English, 7 January 2019
Pachinko describes the struggles of four generations of Koreans in Japan. The New York Times named it one of the 10 best novels of 2017.
Netflix’s The Innocent Man: The American injustice system
By Joanne Laurier, 5 January 2019
The six-episode documentary released in December is based on bestselling novelist John Grisham’s only non-fiction effort. The miniseries chronicles the wrongful incarceration of four men in the 1980s in Ada, Oklahoma.
“Life is forbidden to us … do you want to comply with that?”: The rediscovery of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s The Traveler in Germany
By Clara Weiss, 4 January 2019
Though written 80 years ago, The Traveler is not just a remarkable literary document of the Nazi period, but speaks immediately to the major political and historical questions of our time.
Clint Eastwood’s The Mule: The world’s oldest drug courier
By Kevin Martinez, 3 January 2019
Eastwood’s latest film fictionally dramatizes the potentially intriguing true story of Leo Sharp, an elderly World War II veteran and horticulturist who smuggled drugs for a Mexican cartel. However, it is a conformist and clichéd work.
Best film and television of 2018
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 31 December 2018
The film world in 2018 can be viewed and judged in different ways and by distinct standards.
Musical highlights of 2018
By Matthew Brennan and Hiram Lee, 31 December 2018
Many of the year’s best musicians refused to limit themselves to one “lane,” “border,” genre or supposedly separate culture.
Vice: A portrait of an American corporate-military gangster
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 29 December 2018
In regard to the Bush-Cheney administration, the WSWS pointed in the early 2000s to an unprecedented development, the “rise to the pinnacle of the American political system of elements of a gangster character.”
Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite: The unimpressive recent results of “women in film”
By Joanne Laurier, 24 December 2018
Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite belong to this year’s flood of “women” films. Many others have already disappeared without a trace.
Her photos shed light on history: The outstanding work of photographer Maria Austria (1915-75)
By Verena Nees, 22 December 2018
Her work deserves to be exhibited in one of Germany’s or Austria’s major museums, not least because she is the source of the only photographic record of the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family before deportation to Auschwitz.
French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix at the Metropolitan Museum in New York
By Clare Hurley, 20 December 2018
The powerful exhibition is the first major survey of the artist’s work in half a century. It brings together 150 paintings, drawings, prints and manuscripts that have rarely been shown together.
Nancy Wilson (1937-2018), an extraordinary singer who will be missed
By John Andrews, 19 December 2018
Nancy Wilson, a distinctive vocalist for more than 50 years, and the long-time host of NPR’s “Jazz Profiles,” passed away last week.
Russian television’s Trotsky serial: A degraded spectacle of historical falsification and anti-Semitism
By Fred Williams and David North, 19 December 2018
The eight-part mini-series, now available on Netflix, is an exhibition of the political, intellectual and cultural depravity of all those involved in its production. This comment was originally posted in November 2017.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma: Art and struggle
By Rafael Azul, 17 December 2018
Roma is a sensitive portrait of a family breaking apart in the broader context of a social crisis. It follows Cleo, a Mixtec Indian, as she performs her daily chores, which include caring for the family’s four children.
Bodyguard: A political thriller in six episodes from the UK
By David Walsh, 15 December 2018
The series centers on a British Army veteran, David Budd, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Budd now serves as an officer with a branch of the police in charge of security for politicians.
The ignorant, repressive attack on Frank Loesser’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
By David Walsh, 14 December 2018
In the song, as it is generally performed, a man encourages a woman to stay the night and she expresses concerns about what her family and the neighbors will think if she does.
Wildlife: American dreams and discouragement
And Can You Ever Forgive Me?
By Joanne Laurier, 13 December 2018
Set in 1960 in Great Falls, Montana, Wildlife is a relatively somber look at postwar American life. Can You Ever Forgive Me? focuses on an eccentric forger.
Icebox: The US government locks up children
By David Walsh, 11 December 2018
Icebox focuses on a 12-year-old Honduran boy, Oscar (Anthony Gonzalez), forced by gang activity to flee his home country and head for the US, where an uncle lives.
Protest at Whitney Museum in New York calls for ouster of trustee who owns tear gas firm
By Sandy English, 10 December 2018
Warren B. Kanders is the chairman and founder of Safariland, a defense firm that produces the tear gas used in the police-military attack on migrant workers at the US-Mexico border crossing in San Ysidro on November 25.
Maria by Callas: A documentary on the life of the famed opera singer
By Joanne Laurier, 8 December 2018
Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas, about the legendary Greek-American opera soprano, has opened in the US.
A quarter-century since the release of Steven Spielberg’s film
The achievement of Schindler’s List
By David Walsh, 7 December 2018
Schindler’s List opened in movie theaters in the US in December 1993. A restored version is now playing in selected theaters. We are reposting today a review published in the International Workers Bulletin, a forerunner of the WSWS, in January 1994.
The Front Runner: An American political scandal
And Widows, Bohemian Rhapsody
By Joanne Laurier, 6 December 2018
Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner chronicles the downfall of Gary Hart, the leading contender for the 1988 Democratic Party presidential nomination, whose campaign was abruptly brought to an end by a sex scandal.
Submission: A college professor undone by sexual harassment allegations
By David Walsh, 4 December 2018
Given the film’s subject matter, the generally hostile or condescending treatment Submission received at the hands of the major film critics in March 2018 should not have come as a surprise.
“Well-paid journalists have become gormless cyphers of the propaganda of war”
John Pilger discusses his “The Power of the Documentary” film festival
By Richard Phillips, 3 December 2018
Veteran journalist and filmmaker John Pilger spoke with the WSWS last week about his film festival and the political issues confronting serious journalists today.
I object—Ian Hislop’s search for dissent: An exhibition that eradicates socialist ideas and revolutionary action
At the British Museum, London
By Paul Mitchell, 1 December 2018
Would-be satirist Ian Hislop had access to one of the world’s most magnificent collections, in the British Museum, but ends up producing an exercise in political, social and artistic emptiness.
Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci dies at 77
By Richard Phillips and David Walsh, 28 November 2018
Bertolucci will be remembered for valuable films he made in the 1960s and 1970s, including La commare secca (1962—English title, The Grim Reaper), Before the Revolution (1964), The Conformist (1970) and 1900 (1976).
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Only a fool “expects better” from humanity
By David Walsh, 26 November 2018
The Coens’ latest film is made up of six stories set in a mythical “Old West.” The thread connecting the various episodes is a generally nasty attitude toward humanity, and American humanity in particular.
Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide at the University of Michigan
By Joanne Laurier, 23 November 2018
Bernstein adapted his musical from Voltaire’s 1759 novella, an influential work of the Enlightenment that satirized established religion, government and philosophy.
Showtime’s Kidding with Jim Carrey: Everyone has a breaking point
By Ed Hightower, 20 November 2018
The often humorous drama follows beloved children’s television personality, Mr. Pickles, through personal and social tragedy.
Web television series Homecoming: Everything about America’s wars, corporate elite is “rotten” …
… And two much weaker series, Maniac and Wanderlust
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 17 November 2018
Homecoming, a compelling, disturbing 10-episode web television series, concerns itself with a facility in Florida that supposedly helps Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.
Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old: A devastating depiction of the horrors of war
By Paul Bond, 15 November 2018
Jackson’s documentary, assembled from footage shot in World War I and soldiers’ oral recollections, has resonated with millions of people.
David Hare’s political thriller Collateral: “War has entered the blood”
By David Walsh, 14 November 2018
The series begins with the shooting death of a south London pizza delivery man. The murderer, we soon learn, is a female British army captain, who believes she has killed an Iraqi “terrorist.”
The Hate U Give: Police brutality in America and its consequences
By Nick Barrickman, 12 November 2018
The film addresses itself to the phenomenon of police violence and its effect on a young African-American working class girl and her family.
House of Cards Season 6: The King is dead, long live the Queen!
By Joanne Laurier, 10 November 2018
The sixth and final season of House of Cards is now streaming on Netflix. The firing of lead actor Kevin Spacey along with the #MeToo and anti-Russia campaigns have had a considerable impact on the series.
Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind: A film 48 years in the making
By David Walsh, 8 November 2018
On November 2, Netflix released The Other Side of the Wind, a film directed by Orson Welles, who died in 1985. The footage was shot, with many breaks and delays, from August 1970 to January 1976.
Venom: Childish science fiction and superheroes abound
By Matthew MacEgan, 7 November 2018
The latest Marvel film from Sony serves up a dish of superficial characters and contrived drama for a big box office success.
HBO’s The Night Of: An intelligent, gripping legal drama
By Carlos Delgado, 5 November 2018
The 2016 miniseries, available on HBO’s online streaming service, is an indictment of a criminal justice system that is massively biased against the working class.
The Wife: A Nobel Prize winner exposed
By Benjamin Mateus, 3 November 2018
The Wife is being celebrated, in the context of the #MeToo movement, as further proof that brutish, overbearing men largely exist to crush talented, deserving women’s hopes and dreams.
What do Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life and Jesse Peretz’s Juliet, Naked have in common?
By David Walsh, 1 November 2018
Each is a relatively unpretentious, low-budget, “independent” film. Each follows a group of middle-class adults as they attempt to navigate certain complicated moral or emotional situations. Each film is slight.
Two short films: The Overcoat, based on the Nikolai Gogol story, and Detainment, about the Jamie Bulger murder case
By David Walsh, 29 October 2018
The Overcoat, directed by Patrick Myles, is based on the famed 1842 short story by Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Detainment treats the aftermath of the killing of a toddler on Merseyside, England in 1993.
Interview with photographer Tom Kiefer: “This work is part of the historical documentation of our country’s response to migration”
El Sueño Americano: Exhibition of migrants’ items seized and discarded by US border patrol
By Norisa Diaz, 26 October 2018
Kiefer worked as a part-time janitor at a US Customs and Border Patrol facility in Arizona for 12 years, collecting items thrown out by officials.
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s A Season in France: The human cost of the refugee crisis
By Joanne Laurier, 24 October 2018
Having assured his kids they will be welcomed in France, Abbas, a refugee from the Central African Republic, encounters the opposite: a horrible web of bureaucracy and personal abasement.
The Waldheim Waltz: A timely film about the World War II role of the former right-wing Austrian president
By Stefan Steinberg, 23 October 2018
The events surrounding Kurt Waldheim’s campaign and subsequent election in June 1986 played a major role in exposing the foul role played by Austria’s ruling elite during the Second World War.
Paul Greengrass’s 22 July: Neo-fascist mass murder in Norway
By Joanne Laurier, 18 October 2018
The Netflix fiction feature 22 July recreates the attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011, perpetrated by neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, during which he murdered 77 people, including 69 youth.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 6
The Trial and Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz—An early Stalinist frame-up on film and the Nuremberg tribunal against the Nazis
By Joanne Laurier, 16 October 2018
Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary The Trial treats the so-called Industrial Party Trial in the USSR in 1930. The last surviving Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) prosecutor is the subject of Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz .
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 5
Errol Morris provides Steven Bannon a platform (American Dharma), Werner Herzog celebrates Mikhail Gorbachev (Meeting Gorbachev) and other appalling developments
By David Walsh, 12 October 2018
Certain works either conceal critical features of contemporary life, falsify or are overwhelmed by them.
Mack the Knife—Brecht’s Threepenny Film: The famed “play with music,” and the controversies surrounding it, brought to life
By Sybille Fuchs, 11 October 2018
Joachim A. Lang’s film deals with the failed attempts of left-wing German dramatist Bertolt Brecht in 1930 to make a film based on his successful play The Threepenny Opera (1928).
Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born: It’s true, the artist must have “something to say”
By Joanne Laurier, 10 October 2018
Starring Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born is a film about a rising star and a declining one in the music business.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 4
Damien Chazelle’s First Man: Reduced in space—and opera singer Maria Callas, the Afghanistan war, small-town America
By Joanne Laurier, 8 October 2018
Damien Chazelle’s First Man—which opens in the US October 12—focuses on US astronaut Neil Armstrong and his role in Apollo 11, the first manned mission to the moon.
“I am a poet who has the ability to sing his poems” – Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)
By Paul Bond, 6 October 2018
Aznavour grew up with a love of music and theatre and leaves a legacy of some 1,200 songs, innumerable recordings, and some notable film appearances.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 3
Icebox and Twin Flower: The US government locks up children—and, in Italy, an African refugee finds a kindred spirit
By David Walsh, 4 October 2018
At the recent Toronto film festival, several films took up the global issue of the horrendous treatment of immigrants and the desperate conditions facing refugees.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018
An interview with director Daniel Sawka and actors from Icebox: “As inequality grows, there’s always scapegoating of immigrants”
By David Walsh, 4 October 2018
The WSWS spoke to the director of Icebox and several actors about the question of immigration and the Trump administration policies.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 2
Capernaum, Screwdriver, Rosie, The Public and Black 47: Socially critical films from the Middle East, Ireland and the US
By Joanne Laurier, 1 October 2018
Film writers and directors live in this world too. There must be those who reject upper-middle class triviality and self-involvement.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 1
An intriguing film festival—above all, Mike Leigh’s Peterloo
By David Walsh, 28 September 2018
The recent Toronto International Film Festival screened some 340 films (including 255 features) from 74 countries.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018
An interview with Mike Leigh, director of Peterloo: “You don’t run out of steam if what you do … is to literally hold the mirror up to nature”
By David Walsh, 28 September 2018
The WSWS spoke to British filmmaker Mike Leigh in Toronto.
Why is HBO’s Game of Thrones so popular?
By Sandy English, 26 September 2018
Game of Thrones, which premiered in 2011, is a complex and well-acted drama for the most part, but lacks resonance or genuine substance in relation to the big problems faced by its audience.
There was far more to Leonard Bernstein than mere charisma
By Fred Mazelis, 25 September 2018
New Yorker music critic Alex Ross claims that Bernstein’s legacy is being exaggerated.
Toronto International Film Festival 2018
Fahrenheit 11/9—Filmmaker Michael Moore clings to the Democratic Party
By David Walsh, 21 September 2018
Despite various criticisms of leading Democrats and the American liberal establishment as a whole, Moore urges his viewers to retain—or perhaps regain—confidence in the Democratic Party.
Hal: A documentary about American filmmaker Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Shampoo, Coming Home)
By David Walsh, 18 September 2018
Hal Ashby (1929-88) was an American film director, generally underrated or unrecognized today, responsible for a number of valuable or, in some cases, provocative works in the 1970s.
Operation Finale depicts the 1960 capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina
By Fred Mazelis, 15 September 2018
The film is long on suspense but rather short on history and insight.
Bisbee ’17: The deportation of Arizona copper miners is a “still-polarizing event”
By Joanne Laurier, 10 September 2018
In July 1917, 1,200 striking copper miners in Bisbee, Arizona were illegally kidnapped, loaded in cattle cars and dumped in the southwest New Mexico desert. This episode is the subject of Bisbee ’17.
Leave No Trace: An Iraq War veteran looks to leave the world behind
By Kevin Martinez, 6 September 2018
From director Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, 2010) comes the story of an Iraq War veteran with PTSD living in the woods near Portland, Oregon with his teenage daughter.
Olen Steinhauer’s The Middleman: An American uprising, darkly imagined
By James Brookfield, 5 September 2018
At the outset of The Middleman a group of approximately 400 Americans scattered throughout the country suddenly disappear from their day-to-day lives without telling friends and family.
Young Euro Classic 2018—a display of boundless musical virtuosity and symphonic poetry
By Verena Nees, 3 September 2018
The 20 nearly sold-out concerts by international youth orchestras struck a clear musical counterpoint to the xenophobic and nationalist policies of the global political elites.
Growing poverty in cities and growing wealth at the top
A review of The Divided City by Alan Mallach
By Debra Watson, 31 August 2018
The research presented in The Divided City discredits the claim that promotion of upscale urban downtowns will bring improvement to the lives of workers in post-industrial urban America.
100 years since the birth of American filmmaker Robert Aldrich
Including an interview with film historian Tony Williams
By David Walsh, 31 August 2018
Robert Aldrich, an important postwar American film director, was born a century ago on August 9, 1918 in Cranston, Rhode Island. He died in December 1983.
How well-deserved is the great success of Crazy Rich Asians?
By Nick Barrickman, 29 August 2018
A great deal of fanfare has surrounded the opening of the film, due principally to the fact that Crazy Rich Asians is the first major Hollywood picture since The Joy Luck Club (1993) to feature an all-Asian cast.
Disney stands by firing of James Gunn, director of Guardians of the Galaxy
By Tim Avery, 29 August 2018
The Walt Disney company has remained firm in its decision to dismiss director James Gunn over tweets unearthed by right-wing provocateur Mike Cernovich.
Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette on Netflix: The disorienting, unfunny impact of identity politics on comedy
By Ed Hightower, 27 August 2018
Australian comic Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, Nanette, has become a huge success. Great claims, unsupported by the reality of the hour-long program, have been made for it.
One of the greatest musical figures of the 20th century
The centenary of Leonard Bernstein—Part 2
By Fred Mazelis, 25 August 2018
There was no one else who combined Bernstein’s genius as a composer, conductor, educator and pianist.
One of the greatest musical figures of the 20th century
The centenary of Leonard Bernstein—Part 1
By Fred Mazelis, 24 August 2018
There was no one else who combined Bernstein’s genius as a composer, conductor, educator and pianist.
Musicians’ group calls for shutdown of the German secret service
By Dietmar Henning, 23 August 2018
On Tuesday, the musicians group’ “Lebenslaute” concluded a two-day protest against the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), as the German secret service is called.
Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who Is America?” on Showtime: Scattershot satire, with hits and misses
By Carlos Delgado, 22 August 2018
Cohen conducts “prank” interviews intended to ridicule and humiliate his subjects. Some of them are more deserving than others.
Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind: “It’s too late to be sane. Too late.”
By Joanne Laurier, 21 August 2018
Robin Williams (1951–2014) was an exceptional comic whose ability to create personalities and move among them seemed at times almost supernatural. He contained within himself an apparently infinite number of human types.
Darling in the FranXX: Japanese anime series about fighting for the survival of humanity
By Matthew MacEgan, 20 August 2018
This 2017 Japanese anime series tells the story a group of teenaged pilots who rebel against authoritarianism and seek to create a world in which humans can live happily.
Aretha Franklin (1942-2018)—A tribute to the Queen of Soul
By Hiram Lee, 18 August 2018
Legendary soul singer Aretha Franklin died August 16 at the age of 76. She was a major figure, one of the great performers of the second half of the twentieth century.
Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman: The illogic of racialism
By David Walsh, 16 August 2018
Lee’s new film takes as its point of departure the infiltration in the late 1970s of the racist Ku Klux Klan by a black police officer, Ron Stallworth, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Acoustic Classics—the new old songs of Rodney Crowell
By Hiram Lee, 15 August 2018
On his new album Acoustic Classics, country singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell revisits a selection of his songs in new stripped-down all acoustic recordings.
Jazz goes country—the music of Charles Lloyd and Lucinda Williams
By Hiram Lee, 7 August 2018
Vanished Gardens, a new collaboration between jazz musician Charles Lloyd and country singer Lucinda Williams, is a seamless and enjoyable blend of multiple genres of music.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story—“Do good anyway. … Think big anyway. … Build anyway”
By Joanne Laurier, 6 August 2018
Alexandra Dean’s documentary focuses on 1940s Hollywood movie star Hedy Lamarr’s recently uncovered career as an inventor of technology that paved the way for secure Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth.
Separated: Children at the Border highlights the horrific human costs of the bipartisan war on immigrants
By Meenakshi Jagadeesan, 3 August 2018
The latest PBS Frontline documentary shows the effect of family separations and traces the roots of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?—A new documentary about Fred Rogers and his television program
By Hiram Lee, 2 August 2018
Fifty years after the debut of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on US public television, a new documentary explores its history and influence.
Annie Swynnerton—a Victorian artist rediscovered but misinterpreted
An exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery
By Paul Mitchell and Margot Miller, 31 July 2018
Until the end of this year, the Manchester Art Gallery exhibition Painting Light and Hope is showing 36 paintings of forgotten Victorian artist Annie Louisa Swynnerton (1844-1933), a native of the city.
Unexpectedly restrained: Matteo Garrone’s Dogman
Based on a horrific 1988 murder in Rome
By Emanuele Saccarelli, 30 July 2018
Dogman is a serious attempt to deal with a difficult, and in this climate not especially promising subject.
The anniversary of Grenfell Tower: Some musical reappraisals
By Paul Bond, 27 July 2018
The video accompanying Lowkey’s song, “Ghosts of Grenfell 2,” ends with powerful shots of survivors and local residents holding banners demanding answers from the political elite and companies responsible for manufacturing and overseeing the fitting of Grenfell Tower’s flammable cladding.
David Byrne’s American Utopia: Fighting difficulties with false cheerfulness
By Matthew MacEgan, 27 July 2018
The album is intended to be the musical component of a larger multimedia project entitled Reasons to Be Cheerful, which is an attempt at spreading “positivity” in the wake of the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency.
Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You: A “ladder-climber” in the corporate world
By Matthew Brennan, 25 July 2018
The film is a dark comedy written and directed by Boots Riley, artist, political activist and rapper from Oakland, California. He is best-known as a longtime member of the music group The Coup.
A reply to a comment on the obituary of Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peries
By Pani Wijesiriwardane and Gamini Karunatileka, 24 July 2018
Our basic objective was to examine Peries’s general contribution to Sri Lankan cinema and how he came to be known as its father.
A new film version of Fahrenheit 451: A frightening future world where firefighters set fires
By David Walsh, 23 July 2018
Ramin Bahrani, the Iranian-American filmmaker, has directed a new version of Ray Bradbury’s well-known novel, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953.
Actress Scarlett Johansson attacked for representing a “group to which she doesn’t belong”
By David Walsh, 18 July 2018
There is nothing positive or progressive about Johansson’s announcement that she is withdrawing from Rub & Tug, a film project about a transgender massage parlor owner with underworld connections.
After 63 years, US reopens Emmett Till murder case
By Trévon Austin, 16 July 2018
The Department of Justice has reopened its investigation into the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who was murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi.
Season two of The Handmaid’s Tale: Out of steam and it shows
By Ed Hightower, 16 July 2018
The familiar problem of having run out of something to say pervades the second season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
HBO’s Succession: Why are these dreadful people allowed to decide what we see and hear?
By Joanne Laurier, 13 July 2018
The HBO television series, Succession, is a sharply drawn portrait of a family that runs a global media conglomerate.
Emmanuelle Seigner, Roman Polanski’s wife, calls invitation to join movie Academy “insufferable hypocrisy”
By David Walsh, 11 July 2018
In her open letter, Seigner angrily writes, “This proposal is one insult too many. I cannot remain silent any longer. You offend me while claiming to want to protect women!”
Punk bassist Steve Soto dead at 54
By Josh Varlin, 10 July 2018
Soto was best known for his work with the seminal hardcore punk band Adolescents.
Killing Eve: A television series about a soulless psychopath and her pursuer
By David Walsh, 7 July 2018
A slightly bored British intelligence officer takes on a new, more “exciting” assignment, pursuing a female assassin.
The Case of Sobchak: A film by, about and for the Russian oligarchy
By Clara Weiss, 6 July 2018
The documentary amounts to an appeal to the Kremlin, Washington and the liberal intelligentsia, to make peace and negotiate an orderly transition from the Putin presidency.
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