King Richard Is an Unconventional Sports Biopic
The movie functions best as a clear-eyed tribute to the man who put Venus and Serena Williams on their path.
The Mystery of Pete Buttigieg
A new Amazon documentary asks where the U.S. transportation secretary’s unflappable demeanor comes from—and what it might accomplish.
The Personality Test in Your Closet
The novelist Haruki Murakami’s understated love letters to his T-shirts convey how we give life to our things and vice versa.
The Key to Julia Child’s Success Hid in Plain Sight
The chef’s almost mythical origin story can obscure a fundamental privilege she carried: She was American.
I Performed a Career-Highlight Show. Then Delta Hit.
A touring musician reflects on the crumbling, momentary resurgence, and near-instantaneous re-crumbling of live music.
What’s Lost When a Classic Anime Is Adapted by Netflix
The charm of the original Cowboy Bebop—and many other Japanese animated series—is not just in its style but in its storytelling.
The Gerontocracy Is the Villain of Succession
Logan Roy has a UTI. But as the show’s old men decline in health, they grow only more ruthless.
On SNL, Taylor Swift Stopped Time
The singer’s 10-minute performance of “All Too Well” was a dazzling reminder of how far she has come as an artist.
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Kristen Stewart, Diana Spencer, and the Ghost of Anne Boleyn
Does Spencer portray Princess Diana the person, or just the public image?
Loving Your Job Is a Capitalist Trap
Doing work that is fulfilling has become ubiquitous career advice, but no one should depend on a single social institution to define their sense of self.
The Problem With Emily Ratajkowski’s My Body
The model and actor’s new book of essays is a fascinatingly solipsistic portrait of the tension between empowerment and objectification.
What Will Become of America’s Veterans’ Halls?
Across the country, membership in the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars is declining, but the physical spaces they occupy still serve important purposes.
Belfast Is Kenneth Branagh at His Subtlest
The director’s latest film captures a young boy’s perspective faithfully—maybe too faithfully.
Hollywood Has Forgotten What a Good Action Movie Looks Like
Red Notice has A-list actors, globe-trotting set pieces, and a notorious art thief. Why is it so boring?
The Bleak Lessons of the Astroworld Nightmare
Concert catastrophes aren’t an inevitable side effect of mass gatherings, but the result of specific and often avoidable failures.
Emerson Didn’t Practice the Self-Reliance He Preached
How Transcendentalism, the American philosophy that championed the individual, caught on in tight-knit Concord, Massachusetts
Shallow Hal and the Never-Ending Fat Joke
The romantic comedy premiered 20 years ago. Its cruelties refuse to age.
Animals of the Future
Lizards’ feet are morphing, squid are shrinking, rats’ teeth are getting shorter. What’s in store for us?
Netflix’s Passing Is an Unusually Gentle Movie About a Brutal Subject
Rebecca Hall’s film about two Black women sharing a dangerous secret in 1920s America is as delicate as it is tense.