For This Season’s Oscar Contenders, Abandonment Is Survival
Awards season is notorious for bolstering films that feature the most abject suffering possible, but, remarkably, many of this year’s top dramas instead collectively showcase a more complex type of pain: the bittersweet relief of escaping from your dependents. The Oscars have often favored films that emotionally align their audiences with the neglected and abandoned […]
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Playing Sexy on TV Is No Small Feat
One of the year’s most stomach-clenching TV moments was a scene in a hotel bathroom in which a woman is searching for sunscreen. In the season two opener of HBO’s The White Lotus, Aubrey Plaza’s clamped-shut lawyer Harper decidedly does not want to be on a couple’s trip in Sicily with her husband’s finance-bro college […]
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Dave Chappelle’s Emmy Noms Show the TV Academy Isn’t Swayed by Social Media
In his incendiary Emmy-nominated Netflix comedy special The Closer, Dave Chappelle reminds his audience that Twitter may be an influential force, but it often reflects a distorted version of real life. Throughout the special, in which everything from the pandemic to police shootings is fair game, he jokes about the blowback he received from the […]
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This Year’s Award for Wacky Emmy Category Goes to… TV Movie
As more and more media conglomerates shift their business models to subscription streaming platforms, the borderlines between “film” and “television” continue to dissolve. Methods of distribution are no longer concretely disparate as studio-made feature-length films now often debut exclusively on streaming sites and many TV creators describe their shows as “10-hour-long movies.” These newly permeable […]
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Amber Ruffin, Ziwe, Desus and Mero and the New Vanguard of Late Night
I knew Ziwe Fumudoh had truly made it when she was both parodied and saluted on the latest season of Succession, an au courant satire ostensibly about the ouroboros that is media itself. The acid-tongued cringe comedian, who found an audience through YouTube and Instagram commenting on privilege politics before eventually landing a newsy late […]
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How TV Is Embracing Late-in-Life Coming-of-Age Stories
For as fecund as Peak TV has been during the past decade, the glut hasn’t exactly yielded boundless perfection. In between all the flavorless revivals, franchise extenders, true-scandal dramas and star-studded gimmicks, this season I found myself grasping for simple shows that radiated unaffected warmth and vulnerability. I wanted sincerity. I wanted quietness. I wanted […]
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Critic’s Notebook: The Sweet and Sour Legacy of ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’
“Have you ever seen Ellen’s talk show?” my elderly uncle asked me offhandedly a few years ago. “I really don’t like it. She seems mean. You know, mean-spirited.” In all honesty, unless it involves a British police procedural, my uncle couldn’t give a rat’s tushy about the goings-on of popular culture. Our conversation occurred many […]
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HBO’s ‘The Baby’: TV Review
The British horror comedy follows a childless millennial who suddenly finds herself in charge of a creepy tot.
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Critic’s Notebook: Chris Rock Kicks Off Comedy Tour With Uncharacteristic Vulnerability
In his first public appearance since Sunday's Oscar ceremony, the comedian bares his soul — but not about the topic on everyone's mind.
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Chris Rock Gets Standing Ovation at First Show Since Oscars Slap: “I’m Still Kind of Processing What Happened”
Chris Rock returned to the stand-up stage Wednesday in his first public appearance since Will Smith slapped him during the 2022 Oscars. Kicking off his comedy tour at the Wilbur in Boston, Rock walked out to two boisterous standing ovations that lasted roughly two minutes. As he attempted to get a word in, the comedian […]
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Amazon’s ‘Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls’: TV Review
The reality competition series follows Lizzo as she auditions plus-size backup dancers to join her on tour.
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Does the Academy Favor Male-Driven Stories for Its Top Prize?
The 2021 Oscar ceremony was an anomaly across the board, from the somber tone to the intimate setting to the detrimental choice of naming best actor as the final award of the evening. But the strangest sight of all was witnessing a spate of women gather on the dais to accept the best picture trophy. […]
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