Why We Still Love Lucy After All These Years
The I Love Lucy cast insisted that the show didn’t intend to take on world-changing progressive issues, but it was far more subversive than they let on.
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‘The Railway Children’ Shows the World Needn’t Be Beastly
Lionel Jeffries’ film version of Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children is rich with a charm rooted in a bedrock of social awareness as hard as Charles Dickens.
We Need a Reality Check on Unreal Christmas Rom-Coms
It's time Christmas rom-coms move beyond the twin swaps, the dead spouse who comes back as an angel, the bad blind date, etc., and instead, turn to real-life stories for healthy models of lasting love forged in the fires of the holiday.
Robert Altman’s Quirky ‘Popeye’ Boasts a Can Full of Geniuses
Robert Altman's busy, mobile style perfectly captures and mirrors E.C. Segar's rowdy, rambunctious Popeye comic.
‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ Can Help Children Cope with COVID-era Death
As the COVID-19 pandemic upends our families, communities, and way of life, children, especially, struggle with loss. Rachel Shukert's Netflix series, The Baby-Sitters Club can help.
Buster Keaton’s Last Silent Masterpieces: ‘The Cameraman’ and ‘Spite Marriage’
Buster Keaton was aware that the camera can be a catalyst of violence, especially stereotypical violence, for audience consumption -- and that it could also evoke the shared joy of cathartic laughter.
A Family Visit Turns to Guerrilla Warfare in ‘The Truth’
Catherine Deneuve plays an imperious but fading actress who can't stop being cruel to the people around her in Hirokazu Koreeda's secrets- and betrayal-packed melodrama, The Truth.
Buster Keaton’s ‘The Cameraman’ Casts Light on MGM’s Tyranny
The Cameraman is Keaton's last great film, a jubilant, chaotic, and overactive silent romantic comedy that, intentional or not, doubles as a vision of the precarity of celebrity, independence, and artistry in the brutal Hollywood system.
Reflections and Refractions: ‘Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents’
The contributors to Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents identify nuance; frequently framing themselves and their parents through multiple lenses.
In Defense of Enjoying Tom Hooper’s ‘Cats’
Critics and audiences have made much fun of Tom Hooper's Cats. The laugh is on them.
In Nickelodeon’s ‘Rocko’s Modern Life’, Corporations Steal Our Souls to Enchant Their Commodities
In a society of things, social responsibility requires a recognition of the influence of commodities upon our most foundational spiritual experiences. Nickelodeon's animated series, Rocko's Modern Life, puts it simply.