Film, TV & Streaming

Kids today just don’t get it. Back in the TV dark ages, stations would actually sign off between midnight and 5AM, cartoons were on Saturday morning, and the occasional holiday special were what marked the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Just the sound of the announcement that there was a special program about to start was Pavlovian. These days, of course, kids can watch all of these specials on-demand, which makes them less of an event. Back then, they were, without a doubt, special.Of course, time has not always been kind to the delights of our youth, and the classic Christmas specials are no exception. Each one, even where they retain their charms, has a moral—whether intended or accidental—that if you consider it from a modern perspective sort of ruins it, or at least reveals the differences between the era of its creation and the place we are in American culture today. Just please: don’t let these foibles detract from the overall goodness of these TV holiday artifacts. This list is meant with nothing but love.

I have a few thoughts on these Golden Globe nominations, including: In what world am I living where eight men are nominated for their film scores, and somehow not included is the young luminary Mica Levi, whose music for Natalie Portman vehicle Jackie was one of the most jaw dropping…

I was fortunate enough this year to be at both Sundance and Cannes, so it was something like agony for me to watch the litany of critics and commentators who spent the summer and early fall complaining about the year in film — all while movies such as Manchester by…

For Thanksgiving we tallied up the ten best Turkey-Day Sitcom episodes, and there were a surprising number of good candidates—but the November holiday of gluttony has nothing on Christmas, the holiday for which it seems sitcoms were made. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so sang Andy Williams (probably in a special televised right after some of the sitcom eps on this list), and TV embraced that to the utmost.So while you’re wrapping presents, baking cookies, stringing popcorn and cranberries, or whatever Christmassy thing it is you do to prepare for the big day, check out these ten holiday episodes—because sappy sentimental sitcoms are one of the reasons for the season.

In this, the harrowing year of 2016, I could jump into the Oscars talk. I could pick groundbreaking films that reminded me time and again that movies are alive and more vital than ever, like the heartbreaking Moonlight, the soul-stirring Queen of Katwe, the force-of-goodness 13th, the subtle and sweet…

Whenever I tell someone I’ve been binging on Hallmark Christmas movies all day, there’s a certain amount of apology involved. “I know, they’re the worst,” I’ll concede, before the other person has had a chance to say anything. “The one I watched this morning was a real winner.” Usually whomever…

In a profile early this year, the novelist Dana Spiotta told the New York Times, “That’s seductive, being paid attention to.” Several of the films below — those that seduced me — feature pivotal scenes, whether in diners, at picnic tables or at kitchen tables, of one character raptly listening…

Controversial opinion: Lists are a great way to both organize and digest horrifically large amounts of information. And they’ve never been more relevant than this, the Lord’s year, 2016, in television. There’s just too damn much, and nobody could possibly watch it all — except maybe Scott Bakula on a…

Here’s a promise few movies can make. If you sink two hours into Collateral Beauty now, it’s guaranteed that for the rest of your life, when conversation stalls, you can save the night by asking, “Did you ever see that movie where Will Smith plays an ad executive so shut…

Watching Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s mesmerizing sci-fi arthouse stunner, Evolution, I thought of the paintings of surrealist Rene Magritte — a few in particular: The Collective Invention (1934) and The Human Condition diptych (1933, 1935). The former features a creature — the bottom limbs of a woman and the body of a…

Pablo Larraín is having a good year. The Chilean director, Oscar-nominated a few years ago for his 2012 political drama No, has just released Jackie, featuring a striking Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s assassination. He is also about to release Neruda, a complex,…

In the pantheon of American First Ladies, Jacqueline Kennedy was no Eleanor Roosevelt. She didn’t push for policy, didn’t relinquish her pillbox hat to walk among the needy, didn’t travel to foreign countries as an ambassador and certainly didn’t advise her husband on matters of war. Jackie Kennedy’s role was…

The cussedness of La La Land is almost enough to recommend it. Damien Chazelle’s sumptuous tribute to romantics trying to keep lit the fire of a guttering culture is defiantly old-fashioned in form and style. It is, among other things, a throwback to the great MGM musicals of the Gene…

The first thing to say about Rogue One is that it might be the most visually splendid Star Wars movie to date — with its mist-covered mountains, its tsunamis of dust and fire, its X-wing fighters blazing through rainswept nights. I’ve never been a big fan of director Gareth Edwards…

Incorporated comes on like the kind of TV show you think you have to pay close attention to. There’s more consideration of climate change in the tense Syfy dystopian thriller than in all four-and-a-half hours of this fall’s presidential debates. As the series opens, stern white titles on a black…

One reason why Isabelle Huppert makes suffering so compelling onscreen is her sheer … well, “unflappability” isn’t quite the right word. It’s a kind of ironic distance, perhaps: The actress can convey curiosity, bewilderment and coolness all at once, even as she deals with the most agonizing of circumstances. But…

Miss Sloane opens with a clever gambit: Jessica Chastain’s face fills the screen in a tight close-up as she talks about strategy, breaking the fourth wall. From its opening minutes, the audience is put at the mercy of a charismatic figure and forced to piece together what she might represent…

Look, Shia LaBeouf was approximately the 27th worst thing in that last Indiana Jones movie, and his intense-yet-distracted turns in the Transformers series aren’t legit strikes against him. Would you have turned down all that money to be posed by Michael Bay for a couple months every few years? Now,…

It’s December, which means it’s time to curl up in front of the TV in a fetal position and pray for 2017. Since this year has been Satan’s masturbatory fantasy, we deserve to glue our eyelids open and soak in the sweet, sweet escapism. And on January 1st, fortified by…

In October, 200 coffee shops across the United States and Canada were made into Luke’s Diner for a day to promote the new revival of Gilmore Girls. No special signings or souvenirs — just the regular drink in a commemorative sleeve, served by the usual barista in a branded apron,…

Here’s a recurring nightmare I’ve had since seeing Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother: I’m parking my car — I don’t even have a car — on a desolate street in broad daylight. As I put change in the meter, a man walks close beside me, then closer and…

Nice girls play by the rules. They turn their shoulders inward and nibble on the ends of their slim fingers, nervous about all those difficult thoughts in their heads. And their hair is always perfect and feathery like a baby bird on a collector’s plate. If this description sounds angry,…