Film
Brilliant? Hatable? Annette Is Both (and Neither)
It remains to be seen whether future critics will see the film as contrarian triumph or empty provocation.
Eileen G’Sell
Eileen G’Sell is a poet and culture critic whose work focuses on gender, sexuality, and economic class. She is a 2023 winner of the Rabkin Foundation Prize in arts journalism and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.
Film
Ema’s Visuals Ignite the Screen, but Its Story Ultimately Flickers Out
Director Pablo Larraín doesn’t trust his own filmographic brilliance, and lets the story take over in the end.
Art
The Willful Jouissance of Hannah Wilke
Wilke’s joyful effusions were a reminder of the limitlessness of the body’s creative potential.
Art
QTPOC Artists Mine the Power of Intimacy
The Self Maintenance Resource Center is a living archive of personal, creative, and intellectual inspiration for artists.
Film
A Coming-of-Age Film That Sidesteps Cliché
Ena Sendijarević’s debut feature, Take Me Somewhere Nice, follows a young Bosnian refugee as she sets off to visit a native country she no longer knows.
Art
The Darker Side of Keith Haring
The exhibition “Keith Haring: Radiant Gambit” presents a more complicated — and certainly more interesting — take on an artist best known for his zippy visuals.
Film
The Art of Looking at, and With, Animals
Gunda and Stray reveal how difficult it is not to romanticize the lives of other animals.
Film
In Sound of Metal, There Are No Small Sufferings
Darius Marder’s Oscar-nominated film is less about the Deaf community than about the process of losing a sense inextricably tied to one’s identity.
Film
The Intoxicating Tilda Swinton Masters Almodóvar
Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film, The Human Voice, offers heady pathos and sumptuous visuals in equal excess.
Film
A Film That Tests Assumptions About Race, Rape, and Power
"Test Pattern" chronicles a biracial courtship and coupledom as a means of probing larger power asymmetries.
Film
9to5 Strikes at a Missing Piece of Feminist History
In the late 1970s and early ’80s, women office workers banded together in a labor movement that sprouted up in 25 cities across the country.
Film
Two Dramas Plumb the Depths of Women’s Midlife Chaos
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Time and My Little Sister are complicated films about complicated people.