Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story Review: Lizzie Borden Deserved a Messier Portrait
Lizzie Borden has survived in American folklore because the case never quite settles into one shape. She can be murderer,...
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Funda has a studio, an exhibition approaching, and almost no usable time in which to become an artist again. Motherhood has swallowed the practical conditions that once made painting possible: sleep, privacy, concentration, even the confidence to leave her daughter with somebody else. When Nazlı enters the household and Mavi accepts her, the change is immediate. Funda sleeps. The studio is cleared. Work can resume. The danger in Not a Stranger grows from that relief. That makes the Turkish thriller considerably sharper than its familiar nanny premise suggests. Nazlı arrives carrying all the genre's expected warnings, but the series understands...

Lizzie Borden has survived in American folklore because the case never quite settles into one shape. She can be murderer, victim, curiosity, folk demon, tourist attraction, or simply the woman attached to a crime nobody ever managed to close. Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story seems almost offended by that uncertainty. It gives us an answer early, gives us a motive soon after, and then spends eight episodes trying to convince us that explanation is the same thing as understanding. The fourth season of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s anthology begins behind a stage curtain, with a toy piano marked “LIZZIE,”...

A child staring at a phone while adults insist that the real world is waiting outside can become a painfully familiar sermon. Woodo walks directly toward that setup, then has the good sense to soften it. Foxy arrives in the Village from the city convinced that her summer has been downgraded. Her phone is familiar, portable, predictable. The countryside is full of geese, strange animals, awkward encounters, and people who seem far too enthusiastic about fresh air. The game could have turned this into a simple opposition between technology and authenticity. Instead, Tiny Monks Tale builds something gentler around the...

The most convincing feeling in Tiny Fugitives is the panic of realizing that the place where you are happiest has an expiration date. Jacob Udell and his best friend Charness call their lives “10 for 2”: ten months spent waiting for the two months when Camp Fineman gives them friends, confidence, and a version of themselves they actually like. It sounds melodramatic because they are kids. That is also why it works. Jacob’s life away from camp gives the phrase weight. At school, he imagines himself standing before his classmates and convincing everyone that camp is so wonderful even his...

The funniest thing about South Park calling itself South America is how quickly the joke stops being about geography. Trey Parker and Matt Stone turn the rename into an institutional gag, one aimed at the corporations and public bodies willing to adjust language when political power demands it. Then the premiere moves somewhere less obvious. “South American Biker Gangs” spends most of its time with children on e-bikes, furious middle-aged cyclists, a police department that would rather wait for Grand Theft Auto VI, and a town discovering that moral panic is much easier once somebody else has been designated the...

Roosevelt wants France managed. De Gaulle wants France recognized. Somewhere between those two positions, De Gaulle: Liberté discovers the war film it actually wants to be. Antonin Baudry’s second half of his Charles de Gaulle epic spends surprisingly little time treating German occupation as its central dramatic problem. The Nazis remain the physical enemy, obviously, and people are still being arrested, shot at, hunted, and sent into battles they may not survive. Yet the film’s sharper conflict concerns legitimacy. Who gets to speak for France? Who gets to decide what France will look like after liberation? Can a country be...
Lizzie Borden has survived in American folklore because the case never quite settles into one shape. She can be murderer,...
Read moreDetailsThe most convincing feeling in Tiny Fugitives is the panic of realizing that the place where you are happiest has...
Read moreDetailsThe funniest thing about South Park calling itself South America is how quickly the joke stops being about geography. Trey...
Read moreDetailsTwelve missing hours give Forgotten Island its best structural device, but the trick works because Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado...
Read moreDetailsFour episodes into its second season, Blood of My Blood has discovered that a wedding vow is a lousy shield...
Read moreDetails"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" has become the highest-grossing movie in domestic box office history, surpassing "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" after the J.J. Abrams film had held the record for a decade. Sony's Tom Holland vehicle crossed the threshold this week with a running North American total of $936.7 million,...
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The opening episode of the BBC's nature documentary series Mammals takes us into the nighttime world inhabited by many furry ...
Read moreFunda has a studio, an exhibition approaching, and almost no usable time in which to become an artist again. Motherhood has swallowed the practical conditions that once made painting possible:...
Lizzie Borden has survived in American folklore because the case never quite settles into one shape. She can be murderer, victim, curiosity, folk demon, tourist attraction, or simply the woman...
A child staring at a phone while adults insist that the real world is waiting outside can become a painfully familiar sermon. Woodo walks directly toward that setup, then has...
The most convincing feeling in Tiny Fugitives is the panic of realizing that the place where you are happiest has an expiration date. Jacob Udell and his best friend Charness...
The funniest thing about South Park calling itself South America is how quickly the joke stops being about geography. Trey Parker and Matt Stone turn the rename into an institutional...
Roosevelt wants France managed. De Gaulle wants France recognized. Somewhere between those two positions, De Gaulle: Liberté discovers the war film it actually wants to be. Antonin Baudry’s second half...
Mountains invite a peculiar kind of arrogance. Stand far enough away and they become objects, shapes on maps, measurements waiting to be surpassed. Come close and the language changes. Snow...
Railway simulation has always carried a curious cultural problem. British commuter lines, German high-speed systems, and American regional rail all operate under different assumptions about distance, signaling, labor, and routine,...
Laughton University is arranged like an argument before it becomes a battlefield. Farrah and her protesters have the student union, Clay Saunders has a speaking event built around his warnings...
A woman can reject marriage, demand a profession, defend another woman’s right to practice medicine, and still believe that a wealthy merchant remains beneath her because he was born into...
A child staring at a phone while adults insist that the real world is waiting outside can become a painfully...
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