torn up and apart
Nov. 20, 2023
The Posters and Me Watching the angry, silent, futile proxy war.
happy birthday welcome home
Dec. 6, 2021
There’s No Better Place to Be a Sociopath Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve dares you to make it in New York.
The Measureless Influence of Stephen Sondheim There was very little he thought a musical could not do.
The Exquisite Pleasure of a Dead-End Job The dirty deeds, office drama, and pay irregularities of a starter job.
oscars 2021
Mar. 26, 2021
book excerpt
Jan. 22, 2021
Mike Nichols’s Heartburn After directing Nora Ephron’s divorce movie, his own breakup — and breakdown — turned out to be around the corner.
Joan Micklin Silver Had the Movie Career Almost No Woman Was Allowed to Have And yet it was not the career the pathbreaking director of Hester Street and Crossing Delancey deserved.
The 50-Year-Old Mystery of Why NBC’s Progressive Drama The Senator Got the Axe Hal Holbrook’s short-lived series still tells us a lot about today’s politics.
reasons to love new york
Dec. 8, 2020
Farewell to La Caridad 78, a Holdout From the Old Upper West Side The food felt like the good old days and the bad old days of an entire neighborhood — versions of the past that can be challenging to tell apart.
reasons to love new york
Dec. 8, 2020
Farewell to La Caridad 78, a Holdout From the Old Upper West Side The food felt like the good old days and the bad old days of an entire neighborhood — versions of the past that can be challenging to tell apart.
Hugh Grant Got the Undoing Ending He Wanted The actor on the original, more ambiguous finale: “I got paranoid. I thought, Is this all about a second series? ”
friday night movie club
Nov. 11, 2020
The Endless Rewards of Rewatching Citizen Kane Do you need to see Citizen Kane to enjoy Mank ? No, you don’t — you need to see Citizen Kane , period.
Nerding Out With David Fincher The director talks about the decades-long journey behind Mank , his dense, bitter look at Hollywood history, political power, and the creative act.
How The Undoing Became Fall’s Biggest Inadvertent Time Capsule The HBO drama series, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant, may be New York City’s last big television production of the pre-COVID days.
The Boys in the Band Play OnThe pioneering gay drama, long dismissed as a relic of self-hatred, is now a Netflix film that remains brilliantly uncomfortable.
close reads
Sept. 8, 2020
The Mod Squad, Kojak, Real-Life Cops, and Me What I relearned (about well-meaning liberalism, race, my late father, and my young gay self) rewatching the TV cop shows of my 1970s youth.
the industry
Sept. 1, 2020
What If the Movie Studios Decide They Don’t Need Theaters After All? The paired fates of Mulan and Tenet may have far-reaching implications for the industry.
senator joe
Aug. 13, 2020
How Hollywood Studios Are Scrambling to Make TV Studios are racing to figure out how to film before we run out of new shows.
movie review
July 2, 2020
The Hamilton Movie Swings Open the Doors of Broadway The Disney+ version of the musical is in-your-face at a moment when nothing is allowed to be in your face.
gone with the wind
June 10, 2020
The Absolutist Case for Problematic Pop Culture As HBO Max temporarily removes Gone With the Wind, we should all cast a skeptical glance at gestures that cost nobody a dime and change nothing.
remembrances
May 28, 2020
Larry Kramer’s Inheritance An intergenerational conversation about what he meant and means.
the longest lives
May 26, 2020
Our Fragile Gerontocracy Old people have never been so powerful — or, now, so vulnerable.
close reads
Apr. 22, 2020
I Read Woody Allen’s Memoir So You Don’t Have To First off, there are two short passages that will forever change the way I think about him. I cannot unread, unhear, unknow them. I wish I could.
How Can Broadway Recover From This Pandemic? Lower ticket prices? Reconfiguring the theaters for social distanced entertaining? When will the tourists return?
vulture recommends
Apr. 1, 2020
Introducing Six Degrees of One Kevin Bacon Movie , a New Quarantine Game We asked our film writers to start with Mystic River and work their way through five more titles … ending on another Kevin Bacon movie.
vulture recommends
Mar. 20, 2020
oscars 2019
Feb. 25, 2019
The Oscars Made Progress This Year (But Green Book Was Still a Bad Choice) You will pry the right of an Oscar voter to support a 1986-style quasi-liberal brotherhood-of-man movie out of their cold dead fingers.
The Matrix Built Our Reality-Denying WorldIt gave all of us — including Alex Jones, flat-earthers, lizard-people conspiracists, even Rachel Maddow — a new way to see (or not see) everything.
hollywood signs
Jan. 22, 2019
Oscar Nominations: The Academy Is a House Divided Finally, the Oscars look like America: in total disagreement with itself.
The Best Movies You Can’t See (Yet) The 2018 Black List is a look inside the minds of Hollywood’s next great screenwriters. We turned five of their scripts into comics.
hollywood signs
Nov. 27, 2018
Who Was Green Book For? A particular kind of movie about black and white America may have, at long last, run its course.
hollywood signs
Sept. 30, 2018
The Matt Damon Kavanaugh Sketch Proves How Hard It Is to Do Politics on SNL Now Not long ago, an event like the Kavanaugh hearing two days before the season premiere would have seemed heaven-sent. Things work differently today.
Thanks for the Good Times, Neil Simon He was a comedy king and the most commercially successful Broadway playwright in the history of the form.
hollywood signs
July 23, 2018
Disney Should Know the Difference Between James Gunn and Roseanne In firing Gunn, Disney’s equating the merely tasteless with the actually dangerous.
hollywood signs
Mar. 5, 2018
The Oscars Were a Mess, But They (Eventually) Found a Message It was awkward and overcalculated, but in its unscripted moments, a theme emerged. (Thanks, Frances McDormand.)
Is It Possible to Predict Best Picture in Our Politically Charged Moment? What will win? And why would it win? This year, it feels like anything could happen.
hollywood signs
Jan. 8, 2018
The Globes Were the Season-Two Premiere of Hollywood’s Anti-Trump Resistance It wasn’t the most suspenseful or funny show, but it felt cohesive, a glimpse not just at women, but at a community of women working in unison.
how to win an oscar
Nov. 26, 2017
To Win an Oscar in 2017, You Have to Make the Movie That Speaks to the Moment But between Trump, Harvey, and everything else, good luck guessing which moment to speak to.
New York Still Doesn’t Like Trump, But We Made Him We didn’t vote for him. But we know that, on some level, he is ours.
hollywood signs
Oct. 3, 2017
Jimmy Kimmel Is Scaring Politicians Better Than Anyone Else on TV He’s the most unlikely spokesman for a nation baffled and frustrated by Trump and the Republican Congress in 2017.
how movies are made now
Oct. 2, 2017
Why Is Great Screenplay Writing So Hard to Judge? If directors are always heroes and writers are always hacks, how is it possible to figure out if a script is good?
the culture business
Aug. 30, 2017
Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ Is a Pure Piece of Trump-Era Pop Art The song is an anthem that turns the abrogation of personal responsibility into a posturing statement of empowerment.
We’re Approaching a Major Turning Point in Trump-Era Pop Culture Trump parallels in movies and TV will soon be intentional instead of just coincidental.
hollywood signs
May 30, 2017
Why Is the Edward Albee Estate Afraid of a Black Virginia Woolf ? And should playwrights get a posthumous say in who performs their work?
hollywood signs
May 1, 2017
Will Hollywood Learn Anything From Get Out ’s Success? Over the last two months, the movie has messed with the industry’s head, and with America’s.
More Articles