World
Was the Civil War Inevitable?
Out of guilt or amnesia, we tend to treat wars, in retrospect, as natural disasters: terrible but somehow inevitable, beyond anyone’s control. Shaking your fist at the fools who...
Who Wants a Second Helping of “The Wedding Banquet”?
It takes a while for “The Wedding Banquet,” Ang Lee’s 1993 hit romantic comedy, to get to the big event of the title, but it’s worth the wait. The...
Pictures from Where the Senses Encounter the World
Against this cultural backdrop, Cig Harvey’s work captures a lesser-understood—or even displaced—beauty. While others take photographs, Harvey, I’m convinced, takes something else. This “something else” can be defined by...
The Powerful Films of the L.A. Rebellion
In the nineteen-seventies, U.C.L.A.’s Ethno-Communications program, founded to increase minority enrollment, attracted a critical mass of young Black filmmakers. They quickly began to make a widely varied range of...
“Sinners” Is a Virtuosic Fusion of Historical Realism and Horror
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the bloodstream, along comes a new horde of vampires, in Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” to taint it with yet...
Gjelina Imports the Fantasy of L.A.
Is Gjelina, with its three locations, a chain now? It’s certainly more than just a restaurant. Lett left the Gjelina Group in 2019, selling his stake back to the...
“The Handmaid’s Tale” Reflects the Exhaustion of Liberal Feminism
You almost forget that Elisabeth Moss can smile. The lead actor on Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” now in its sixth and final season, spent much of her screen time...
“A Minecraft Movie” Is a Tale of Two Cinematic Universes
I’ve never played Minecraft in my life—but then I’m not a Christian, either, and have always delighted in the distinctly Mormon cinematic universe of Jared Hess, the director of...
The Evolution of a Folk-Punk Hero
Patrick Schneeweis was never the voice of a generation, but perhaps he was the voice of a tendency. To a small but fervent and far-flung community of listeners, he...
Two Young Pianists Test Their Limits
When, last month, the preposterously gifted twenty-year-old pianist Yunchan Lim played Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts, in Costa Mesa, California, the crowd responded...
