Film
Yorgos Lanthimos’s Surreal Films Are Terribly Awkward, Tender, and Triumphant
Five films that inspired Lanthimos’s Oscar-nominated The Favourite portray humans who seem to be putting on their bodies and native tongues for the very first time.
Review
Art
Examining the Underbelly of US Culture: Gun Violence, White Supremacy, and Greed
Sandow Birk’s investigation of US culture and politics is unusual in that its own explicit politics are not overly didactic — a difficult line to walk successfully.
Film
An Intimately Filmed Portrait of a Willfully Fragmented and Mutable Persona
GLUE is a 50-minute portrait of the director Oisín Byrne’s friend and longtime collaborator, a quick-witted and acid-tongued cross-dresser who refuses to adhere to a fixed identity.
Film
Velvet Buzzsaw Hacks Through Every Art World Cliché
That writer and director Dan Gilroy tackles a subject so incredibly ripe for mockery but goes for the easiest, most tired clichés is quite disappointing.
Books
A Colossal Mural Chronicles 375 Million Years of Bird Evolution
Artist Jane Kim painted a 2,500 square-foot "Wall of Birds" mural at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.
Art
In 1972, Snow Monkeys Were Sent to a Texas Desert. Do They Still Remember Snow?
Curious if the monkeys' memory of snow remained decades later, artist Shimabuku brought a pile of it to the desert.
Film
Never Look Away Is a Reductive, Tedious Copy of Gerhard Richter’s Life
It is easy to see why this movie would rankle Richter, who has said the director "managed to abuse and grossly distort" his biography.
Film
An Animated Masterpiece by the Unsung Co-Founder of Studio Ghibli
Before 2016, Isao Takahata's Only Yesterday was considered the “lost” Ghibli film.
Books
How John Berger Restores Our Relationship to Art
A new biography on Berger reveals a writer who to this day speaks most eloquently and passionately to our frustrations, fears, hopes, and desires.
Art
Rediscover One of the First Artists Who Choreographed Dance for Film
A stunning exhibition of Sara Kathryn Arledge makes a strong case for her as an overlooked artist deserving reevaluation and rediscovery.
Film
In Midnight Traveler, a Refugee Family Documents Their Journeys
For over two years, Hassan Fazili's family filmed each other as they journeyed through Europe, documenting each step of their search for a safe place.
Books
An Eerie Book Fuses Snippets of Text with Found Imagery
In Guestbook: Ghost Stories, Leanne Shapton suggests that hauntings occur when the past’s bony fingers grasp at the present, touching us like a ghost might.