There’s a photo I remember seeing not too long ago. It was taken in Irpin, one of the suburbs of the Ukrainian city of Kyiv. The first thing I noticed was a Ukrainian soldier staring downwards, a look of numb shock on his face. What he’s looking at is a dead family. A mother and her children. They had been hit in a mortar attack, and as far as anyone could tell, the mortar was fired by Russian forces who were intentionally targeting civilians.  The photographer was Lynsey Addario. Consider that she was in an active war zone. She likely wore a helmet and a kevlar vest. That offered her a degree... Read More

Mark my words, in the next week people are going to accuse Martin Scorsese and his film, Killers of the Flower Moon, of being racist. Sexist. Glorifying violence. Exploiting the experiences of Indigenous people. And most annoying of all, of being “woke.” This has happened to Scorsese for decades. He was accused of blasphemy with The Last Temptation of Christ,* accused of glorifying violence and the underworld with GoodFellas, and accused of glorifying violence/risky sex/drug use with The Wolf of Wall Street. The number of bad takes are seemingly endless. It’s okay if Scorsese’s work is... Read More

Judas and the Black Messiah is streaming on HBOMax Just imagine it. A few years after the horrors of World War II, you’re born. Living in the suburbs of Chicago, radio and television tell you — endlessly — that you live in the greatest country in the world. A bastion of freedom and justice. A place where, by virtue of hard work and cleverness, you can become anything you can imagine. Initially, you want to be a centerfielder for the Yankees. Life has other plans, and you find yourself cooking breakfasts for other kids in your neighborhood. You think you have to. Hell, who else will? As you... Read More

I’m Thinking of Ending Things is streaming on Netflix The movie isn’t the problem. I’m the problem. Nobody ever said art was easy, right? Making art can be something that goes beyond difficult. It can go to a place that feels like self-flagellation, as if you’re hurling your entire body against a brick wall. All in service for…what, exactly? The slim possibility that your artwork manages to escape into the wild, a viewer sees it and thinks, “Ah, I see what you’re doing. Good work.” Art is a two-way street. It requires both an artist and a viewer of the art.* I get it, and I’m... Read More

There are a lot of people extremely angry at Adam McKay’s new film Vice. It’s not surprising, considering the film a) is about some of the most well-known people in recent history and b) is political. If you’re reading this, you probably have an opinion about Vice-President Richard Cheney, whether you think he was a tough government operator who did what was necessary, or you think he was a major player in Hell’s demonic hierarchy. The political aspects make things even trickier. We’ve talked before about how at this moment in history, virtually everything is polarized. One of the problems... Read More