What ‘Bridge of Spies’ Gets Right About America
A ten-year-old Steven Spielberg movie starring Tom Hanks may seem a strange inspiration to fight anti-immigration in 2026, but that’s exactly what Bridge of Spies provides.
political drama
3 Unsettling 2025 TV Shows You Shouldn’t Miss
Sci-fi philosophy, shocking history, and metafictional puzzles dominate these unsettling yet weirdly intriguing TV shows.
‘Zero Day’ Disconnects Our Worst Fears
Technological uncertainty and our fears about mishandling the truth run through the disconnected cables of the political cyber-thriller Zero Day.
French Political Thrillers Deliver Never-Ending Paranoia
In these two political thrillers from Henri Verneuil, neither is above faking out the viewer and both are obsessed with the architecture of the modern city.
The Thunderbolts Put Up a Fight for Teamwork
What Thunderbolts communicates about teamwork taps into one of the greatest social science mysteries of contemporary history: the nature of individual-group relation.
Dark Comedy ‘Patriot’ Illuminates Neoliberalism’s Dark Reality
The dark comedy Patriot illuminates how neoliberalism makes choices for us disguisedly, using entrepreneurial agency as a fig leaf to obscure manipulation.
The Best Film of 2024
Our Best Film of 2024 commemorates intriguing films, emerging voices and celebrated doyens searching for stranger narratives and new angles on existing legends.
Silent Film Restorations ‘The Craving’ and ‘Annie Laurie’ Radiate the Medium
Francis Ford was an important silent film actor and director, and not just for being John Ford’s brother. Star Lillian Gish had the clout to get what she wanted.
Satirical Miniseries ‘White House Plumbers’ Is an Uneven Glimpse into Proximity to Power
HBO’s satirical miniseries on the Watergate affair, White House Plumbers, entertains but struggles to find emotional and political footing.
One More Sad Song: Milos Forman’s Critique of America ‘Ragtime’ at 40
Milos Forman’s Ragtime reflects his jaundiced outsider’s perspective on America’s lures and traps and his mistrust of authority and structure.
‘Bridge of Spies’ Has a Lot of Fiction Going On
This case is based on fictions, on agreements that multiple governments are spying on one another, crafting and selling secrets, trading in human beings, and profiting from military-corporate-ever-unofficial deals.
‘The Conformist’ Is a Political Thriller Washed in the Hues of a Thousand Psychosexual Dreams
Bernardo Bertolucci’s magnificent drama The Conformist bridges the supreme elegance of the jazz age with Euro mod-chic.