American Surrealist
A tribute to David Lynch (1946–2025).
Benjamin Kerstein
· 8 min read
Art and Culture
A collection of 778 posts
Shakespeare Versus the Girlboss
Jodi Picoult’s latest novel is a ham-fisted expression of cultural rage, embodying the most anodyne values of corporate human-resources departments.
Marilyn Simon
· 14 min read
A Perfectly Charming Chinese Girl
Against long odds and in the face of exclusionary casting, Anna May Wong bequeathed us an extraordinary cinematic legacy.
Thomas Doherty
· 11 min read
Unmasked and Anonymous
A brief history of Bob Dylan on screen.
Benjamin Kerstein
· 18 min read
Ghosts of Electricity
The magisterial incomprehensibility of Bob Dylan’s ‘Visions of Johanna.’
Thomas Larson
· 9 min read
Printing the Legend: A Review of A Complete Unknown
The naysayers are dead wrong about James Mangold’s remarkable new film about Bob Dylan and the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s.
Ronald Radosh
· 15 min read
Moral Permission to Murder
Dostoevsky and the case of Luigi Mangione.
Julia Friedman, David Hawkes
· 6 min read
The Eerie Beauty of ‘Flow’
Gints Zilbalodis’s beautiful dystopian story feels like the start of a new era in cinema, or at least the invitation to one.
Roy Wayne Meredith III
· 5 min read
Savage Entertainment
A new version of Tinto Brass and Bob Guccione’s notorious 1979 film ‘Caligula’ provides a valuable record of one of the most fascinating disasters in cinema history.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 30 min read
Megalopolis: Bloated, Outré—and Brilliant
Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, it’s chaos alright—but it’s a dazzling chaos.
Ralph Leonard
· 8 min read
Decline and Folly
‘Megalopolis’ and the rise and fall of Francis Ford Coppola.
Oliver Jia
· 14 min read
The Baby Gate. A Memoir.
So that’s how a fatherhood ends. A few UPCs, like those you find on packs of toilet tissue, delivered via email.
Steve Salerno
· 23 min read
‘Bright Lights, Big City’ at Forty
Jay McInerney’s debut novel was the first work of fiction to explore yuppie culture, and its success changed American publishing.
Kevin Mims
· 16 min read
All Hail the New Flesh
For all its decorative asides about predatory male sexuality, ‘The Substance’ is most coherently understood as a morality tale about the folly of feminist illusions.
Charlotte Allen
· 11 min read
Sonny Side Up
Al Pacino’s personal life has been a bit of a train wreck, but his new memoir leaves no doubt that acting has been the most important thing in his life.
Kevin Mims
· 21 min read