Just moments earlier, he was an infatuated new husband, and she his “gentle love.” Now, in Act III, Scene 3 of “Othello,” he vows to kill her. What has happened? Why does Othello, the great Black general, the savior of Venice in a war with the Ottomans, resolve to murder Desdemona, the pearl of the … Read more
It is the sort of buzzy production that was once a staple of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” with its Oscar-nominated lead man, Paul Mescal, has people clamoring for tickets to BAM’s production this month. The excitement recalls a period when the performing arts center consistently drew crowds to … Read more
Earlier this month Sasha Stone watched the Oscars alone at her home in a town outside Los Angeles. For someone who has spent more than two decades as one of the premier chroniclers of awards season, it was a notably unglamorous way to take in the ceremony. But she was thrilled that “Anora,” the frantic … Read more
Parked underneath an overpass, a hit man looks out the window, surveying a bleak American landscape. The nation is, in a word, screwed. “There’s a plague coming,” Jackie (Brad Pitt) declares early on in “Killing Them Softly.” It’s 2008, and on radios and televisions, a young senator from Illinois is promising a new era of … Read more
‘Broken Rage’ Stream it on Amazon Prime Video. The director Takeshi Kitano’s “Broken Rage” might be the most original action film I’ve ever seen. A witty parody of the genre, it follows an older Japanese hit man named Mouse (Kitano), who’s forced by detectives to inform on a gangster by becoming the goon’s bodyguard. Mouse … Read more
When Wes Anderson was just starting out and wanted to reshoot some scenes for his 1996 debut “Bottle Rocket,” the rookie director got a shock. Columbia Pictures had sent all the movie’s props off to a store, which had then sold them for next to nothing. So when he made his next movie, “Rushmore” (1998), … Read more
Contains spoilers about past episodes but not the Season 2 finale. In “Severance,” the Apple TV+ series about a shadowy company where some employees have their consciousness split into two parts, with the “innie” doing all the work and the “outie” remembering none of it, the office is sparse and lifeless. The show reinforces that … Read more
A Dopey movie makes us grumpy. ‘Snow White’ Directed by Marc Webb, this fairy-tale reimagining sees Snow White (Rachel Zegler) rescuing the seven dwarfs as they rebel against the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). From our review: In an essay pegged to Disney’s unhappy 2019 live-action version of “Aladdin,” the critic Aisha Harris wrote in The … Read more
Robert E. Ginna Jr., a founding editor of People magazine, a book editor and a film producer whose 1952 Life magazine article provoked a frenzy by validating the idea that flying saucers might exist and could have visited Earth from outer space, died on March 4 at his home in Sag Harbor, N.Y. His death … Read more
‘The Assessment’ Review: Meticulously Planned Parenthood