AMC's decision to show its new six-hour miniseries The Little Drummer Girl over three consecutive nights is a smart strategy. This spy story, based on the bestselling novel by John Le Carré, begins at such a deliberate pace that it takes almost two hours before the central story line — the actual spy mission — is set in motion.
Steve McQueen's new film centers on four women who come together to pull off a $5 million robbery. Critic Justin Chang says as gripping as it is, Widows never feels like mere escapism.
A new video series by New York Times reporter Adam Ellick explores Russia's role in spreading fake news, dating back to the '80s conspiracy theory that the AIDS virus was created by the U.S. military.
The Walking Dead actor plays a South Korean playboy who may or may not be murdering his girlfriends in Burning. "To this day, I'm the only one who knows who Ben really is," Yeun says of the character.
President Trump has a penchant for breathing new life into expressions with troubled pasts, like "America first" and "enemy of the people." It's not likely his uses of those phrases will survive his presidency. But he may have altered the political lexicon more enduringly at a Houston rally two weeks before the elections, when he proclaimed himself a "nationalist" and urged his supporters to use the word.
Sandi Tan was 19 when she wrote and starred in a film directed by her 40-year-old mentor. Then her mentor disappeared with the film footage. Twenty years later, Tan chronicles the mystery in Shirkers.
Billionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes has long been regarded as one of Hollywood's most eccentric and prolific playboys. A few years back, writer and film critic Karina Longworth stumbled onto an online message board, listing women Hughes had had sexual relationships with — just a list of names, no other information.
"In each of these names there's a whole life and a whole story," says Longworth, who hosts the film podcast You Must Remember This.
Take Meg Wolitzer's novel (now also a film) called The Wife, about a brazen case of literary ghostwriting, and cross it with Patricia Highsmith's classic Ripley stories, about a suave psychopath, and you've got something of the crooked charisma of John Boyne's new novel, A Ladder to the Sky.
You may be shocked by what's living in your home — the bacteria, the fungi, viruses, parasites and insects. Probably many more organisms than you imagined.
"Every surface; every bit of air; every bit of water in your home is alive," says Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "The average house has thousands of species."
In The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, film makers Joel & Ethan Coen gleefully embrace the conventions and clichés of the genre, but to strangely melancholy — even troubling — effect. Justin Chang has a review.
Janet Reitman of The New York Times Magazine says counter-terrorism strategists failed to adequately address right-wing domestic extremism — which enabled the movement to become even more dangerous.
The trio of three country-music stars who make up Pistol Annies — Miranda Lambert, Ashley Monroe and Angaleena Presley — mix humor with righteousness and drama on their new album.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez's novel, The Shape Of The Ruins, centers on the 1948 assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the years of violence that followed and the conspiracy theories surrounding his death.
Author Andrew Delbanco says the 1850 law paved the way for the Civil War by endangering the lives of both escaped slaves and free black men and women in the North. His book is The War Before The War.
Director Lee Chang-dong's film centers on two young men and the woman who brings them together. Critic Justin Chang calls Burning the most absorbing — and enigmatic — new movie he's seen all year.
Religion scholar Elaine Pagels lost her young son to terminal illness and her husband a year later in an accident. Her new book combines memoir and biblical scholarship to reflect on loss and faith.
In the age of blockbuster art exhibitions, a small show sometimes makes just as big an impression as a large one. That's what happened to critic Lloyd Schwartz on a recent trip to New York.
Amazon Prime Video's new drama series stars Julia Roberts as a therapist who's working with a soldier returning from Afghanistan. Critic David Bianculli binged all 10 engrossing episodes.
Critic David Edelstein says the story behind the The Other Side Of The Wind — how Welles made it and what happened to it after his death in 1985 — is more fun than the completed film itself.
