Arts and Culture
Rocketman (Elton John) and Pavarotti, about the operatic tenor: Two lives in music
By Joanne Laurier, 7 June 2019
Rocketman is a generally entertaining, fantastical tribute to the music of Elton John, one of the world’s most popular musical artists. Ron Howard has made a documentary about legendary Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti.
All Is True: Kenneth Branagh’s vision of William Shakespeare’s final days
By David Walsh, 5 June 2019
The treatment, unfortunately, is largely leaden and relies on contemporary upper-middle class preoccupations to make sense of—or fail to make sense of—the life of an early 17th century artist.
XY Chelsea: A deeply flawed portrait of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning
By Jean Shaoul, 4 June 2019
The film charts Manning’s life following Barack Obama’s unexpected commutation in January 2017 of her vindictive 35-year-term jail sentence.
Amazing Grace: A film about American singer Aretha Franklin’s most popular album
By Matthew Brennan, 3 June 2019
Amazing Grace, a concert film currently showing in select theaters around the US, captures the two-day recording of singer-pianist Aretha Franklin’s 1972 gospel concert album of the same title.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Terry Gilliam’s latest tribute to non-conformism
By David Walsh, 31 May 2019
Gilliam has famously been attempting to make a film inspired by Don Quixote, the 17th century novel by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, for decades.
Director of Boyz n the Hood, Higher Learning and other films focusing on the African-American working class and poor
Film director John Singleton dead at age 51
By Nick Barrickman, 29 May 2019
At his best, Singleton’s work shows warmth and concern for his films’ struggling and imperfect characters.
The end of Game of Thrones: Spectacle versus art
By Gabriel Black, 27 May 2019
Game of Thrones’ final season was met with a widespread public backlash critical of its simplistic and misanthropic ending.
Knock Down the House and the Democratic Party politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
By Genevieve Leigh, 25 May 2019
Knock Down the House reviews the election campaigns of several Democratic Party primary candidates in the 2018 congressional elections, focused on Ocasio-Cortez in New York City.
The author asks: Is America unredeemable? Rachel Kushner’s novel The Mars Room
By Sandy English, 22 May 2019
Rachel Kushner’s new novel centers on the grim conditions in a women’s prison and draws connections between them and the general state of American society.
Avengers: Endgame: A waste of time, money and talent
By Josh Varlin, 20 May 2019
Endgame is more of a business enterprise than a work of art or cultural artifact.
The Eyes of Orson Welles: A markedly political approach to the American filmmaker …
… and John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky (about John Lennon’s 1971 album Imagine )
By Joanne Laurier, 17 May 2019
A generally left-wing figure shaped by the Great Depression and the impact of the Russian Revolution, filmmaker Orson Welles (1915-1985) was artistically demanding and for the most part found Hollywood nightmarish.
Doris Day, prominent postwar American actress and singer, dies at 97
By David Walsh, 15 May 2019
Her most compelling performances came in films such as Young Man with a Horn (1950), Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and, above all, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956).
San Francisco Board of Education to decide on the fate of historic murals said to be “offensive”
By Toby Reese, 13 May 2019
A “Reflection and Action Group,” dominated by identity politics, has recommended removing murals at George Washington High School. The action would erase a striking work that treats important issues in US history.
Wild Nights with Emily: American poet Emily Dickinson undone by gender politics
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh, 10 May 2019
By concentrating almost exclusively on Emily Dickinson’s supposed sexual relationship with her sister-in-law, filmmaker Madeleine Olnek and her collaborators recreate the poet in their own petty, self-absorbed image.
Clergy: An uncompromising film about the hypocrisy and corruption of the Catholic Church in Poland
By Stefan Steinberg, 8 May 2019
Wojciech Smarzowski’s latest offering was released in Poland in the autumn of 2018 and broke several box office records.
Red Joan: A British spy story skirts some issues
By Fred Mazelis, 6 May 2019
The film is loosely based on the case of Melita Norwood, arrested in 1999 and accused of passing classified information to the Soviet Union.
Documentary about the brutal 2014 disappearance of teachers’ college students
The 43: A state massacre and cover-up in Mexico
By Rafael Azul and Don Knowland, 4 May 2019
The documentary on Netflix exposes the role of the military in the 2014 disappearance of 43 rural teaching students and the government’s cover-up of this atrocity.
Michigan State University performs stirring rendition of Babi Yar, Dmitri Shostakovich’s anti-fascist symphony
By Nancy Hanover, 1 May 2019
Shostakovich’s masterpiece was performed by the Michigan State Symphony Orchestra, the University Chorale, the State Singers, noted baritone Mark Rucker and conductor Christopher James Lees at Detroit’s Orchestra Hall on April 27-28.
Unexpectedly restrained: Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone’s Dogman
By Emanuele Saccarelli, 27 April 2019
Dogman, which has now opened in the US, is a serious attempt to deal with a difficult, and in this climate not especially promising subject—a notorious and horrific murder in Rome in 1988.
Some films from the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival—Part 1
Paper Flags, Tehran: City of Love and Belmonte—Alienation, loneliness and other problems
By David Walsh, 26 April 2019
Paper Flags, Tehran: City of Love and Belmonte—three films from France, Iran and Uruguay, respectively—were screened at the recent San Francisco film festival.
How Did Lubitsch Do It?: Joseph McBride’s engaging study of filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch
By David Walsh, 24 April 2019
Lubitsch, born in Berlin in 1892, first directed silent films in Germany and, after his move to Hollywood in 1922, directed silent and then sound films in the US. He is best known today for his American movies of the 1930s and 1940s.
An interview with film historian and biographer Joseph McBride, author of How Did Lubitsch Do It?
By David Walsh, 24 April 2019
David Walsh recently spoke to Joseph McBride, the author of a new study of filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch, famed for The Marriage Circle, Trouble in Paradise, Design for Living, The Shop Around the Corner, To Be or Not to Be and other films.
The stagnation of American poetry: The Best American Poetry 2018
By James McDonald, 20 April 2019
For the most part, these are eminently safe poems, carefully dressed, peer reviewed and scrupulously attentive to contemporary cultural regulations of taste.
The burning of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris
By Alex Lantier, 17 April 2019
The inferno was caused by a horrific breakdown of fire safety in restoration work, for which the French government and ruling elite bear the responsibility.
Freep Film Festival 2019 in Detroit—Part 1
Glimpses of social life: The Feeling of Being Watched, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool and Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts, among others
By David Walsh and Helen Halyard, 17 April 2019
The Detroit film festival organizers made an obvious effort to program works oriented toward contemporary reality and recent social history, including many of their difficult and painful aspects.
Chicago symphony musicians strike defies aristocratic principle
By Kristina Betinis, 13 April 2019
As CSO strike enters sixth week, a right-wing pressure campaign is being mounted to try to force the musicians to make concessions on their pensions.
Ash is the Purest White: Finding one’s way in “the new ‘capitalist’ China”
And Working Woman from Israel
By David Walsh, 13 April 2019
Jia Zhangke has demonstrated a concern with the fate of workers and others whose lives have been turned upside down by the full integration of China into the global capitalist economy.
Emilio Estevez’s The Public: The homeless refuse to freeze to death
By Joanne Laurier, 11 April 2019
A group of homeless people in Cincinnati resist being thrown out of a public library onto the streets on an especially frigid night.
Flint, a play at the University of Michigan: Stuck, unfortunately, in the quagmire of racial politics
By Joanne Laurier, 10 April 2019
José Casas’ drama is a response to the horrendous Flint, Michigan water crisis, which began in April 2014. As a result, the city’s poisoned population has suffered disease, death and untold misery.
“Tarrafal Never Again!” exhibition in Lisbon exposes horrors of Portugal’s fascist concentration camp
By Charles Hixson and Paul Mitchell, 9 April 2019
The museum exhibition includes photographs of the arid, isolated prison, Portuguese government dossiers detailing the lives and deaths of individual prisoners under the most wretched conditions, and moving testimony from survivors.
Netflix’s Trigger Warning with Killer Mike: Provocation and pessimism from the Atlanta rap artist
By Nick Barrickman, 8 April 2019
With Trigger Warning, rapper Michael “Killer Mike” Render combines occasional flashes of insight and intellectual courage with a tendency to resort to mere shock tactics or juvenile behavior.
Jordan Peele’s horror film, Us: “Us” and them
By Kevin Martinez, 6 April 2019
Director Jordan Peele’s latest horror film tells the story of a vacationing family stalked by their doppelgängers. The results are murky, pretentious and strangely unaffecting.
Major retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City
“Andy Warhol—From A to B and Back Again”: The artist who wasn’t there
By Erik Schreiber, 30 March 2019
A recent retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art provided an occasion to re-examine Warhol’s work and evaluate what it means for American and global art.
In defense of To Kill a Mockingbird: The 1962 film about racism in theaters this week
By Joanne Laurier and David Walsh, 28 March 2019
Fathom Events, TCM and Universal Pictures are screening To Kill a Mockingbird in select cinemas this week. The Robert Mulligan movie is based on Harper Lee’s 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same title.
This Giant Beast That Is the Global Economy: Why the lack of seriousness?
By Joanne Laurier, 26 March 2019
An Amazon Prime original, This Giant Beast That Is the Global Economy is an eight-episode documentary series that purports to make sense of a complex global situation.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 9
Three Turkish films (A Tale of Three Sisters, Daughters of Two Worlds, Oray)—Hoping for a better life
By Bernd Reinhardt, 25 March 2019
Three films at the Berlinale exude a humanistic spirit of enlightenment and dialogue. They suggest that everyone, regardless of their ethnic, religious or cultural background, has the right to a better life.
Don McCullin at Tate Britain in London
Veteran photographer calls on young people to chronicle today’s “social wars”
By Paul Mitchell, 23 March 2019
“There isn’t a city in England you can’t go to and find some poverty and unhappiness and tragedies.”—Don McCullin
Season 5 of animated series BoJack Horseman addresses #MeToo campaign, with mixed results
By Josh Varlin, 22 March 2019
The show is too savvy to be a simple #MeToo parable about its protagonist’s fall from grace, although the anti-democratic campaign does find reflection.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 8
Increasing pressures on Chinese filmmakers
By Stefan Steinberg, 21 March 2019
In February, the deputy director of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department declared that the country’s filmmakers “must have a clear ideological bottom line and cannot challenge the political system.”
Captain Marvel: Money, feminism, militarism and previously “independent” filmmakers
By David Walsh, 20 March 2019
The production and release of Captain Marvel, the new science fiction adventure from Marvel and Disney, has a number of remarkable features, but none of them involve the film’s drama, action or characters.
Legendary “Wrecking Crew” drummer Hal Blaine dead at 90
By Hiram Lee, 19 March 2019
Drummer Hal Blaine died March 11, one month past his 90th birthday. Blaine was an incredibly prolific studio musician who appeared on countless recordings during the 1960s and 1970s.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 7
German films: Economic and social tensions on the rise
By Bernd Reinhardt, 16 March 2019
The pursuit of naked profit interests and government-imposed austerity dominate an ever broader swath of life. Some of the German films at this year’s Berlinale point to the consequences.
“This is not just about Tchaikovsky, it’s about culture as a whole”
Chicago Symphony Orchestra musicians strike to defend pensions
By Kristina Betinis, 12 March 2019
CSO players and supporters demand funding for the arts, not wars.
What lies behind the campaign against famed conductor Daniel Barenboim?
By Clara Weiss, 12 March 2019
A central concern of the drive in Berlin against Barenboim must be his longstanding criticism of Israeli occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people.
Actor Bruno Ganz, prominent on stage and screen for more than 40 years: an obituary
By Sybille Fuchs, 9 March 2019
On February 16, Swiss-born actor Bruno Ganz, aged 77, died of cancer at his home on Lake Zurich. Ganz was one of the leading figures in the contemporary German-speaking theatre and film world.
André Previn, versatile composer, conductor and pianist, dies at 89
By Fred Mazelis, 7 March 2019
Previn was often compared to Leonard Bernstein, for the breadth of his achievements and his insistence on appealing to a broad public.
Why is there so little media skepticism about Leaving Neverland and its allegations against Michael Jackson?
By David Walsh, 6 March 2019
Leaving Neverland consists principally of two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, detailing their claims that singer Michael Jackson sexually abused them over the course of many years, in the 1980s and 1990s.
On the Basis of Sex and Ruth Bader Ginsburg: The manufacturing of a “living legend”
By Ed Hightower, 2 March 2019
The two-hour biopic—a tedious cinematic effort—seeks to rally a core constituency of the Democratic Party: upper-middle-class women.
Behind the racist backlash against Green Book
By Hiram Lee and Andre Damon, 26 February 2019
Its central crime, the critics declare, is the view that racial prejudice is a social problem that can be solved through education, reason and empathy, and that racial hatred is not an essential component of the human condition.
69th Berlin International Film Festival—Part 2
Midnight Traveler—“Sometimes life takes you through hell”
By Verena Nees, 22 February 2019
The film provides an authentic and moving portrayal of people just like us, who just happen to live in the wrong country at the wrong time.
The Progressive Revolution: Modern Art for a New India
Modern Indian art at the Asia Society Museum in New York
By Josh Varlin and Evan Cohen, 20 February 2019
The Progressive Artists’ Group brought together remarkable artists whose works express the democratic and anti-imperialist sentiments of millions as the British Raj ended.
Prazdnik (Holiday): Film about social inequality in Russia attracts mass audience
By Clara Weiss, 18 February 2019
The film is a poignant indictment of social inequality and has been subject to a campaign of Russian government censorship.
The 2019 Grammy Awards: The music industry’s love affair with itself
By Matthew Brennan, 14 February 2019
The now ubiquitous and mandatory theme of every awards show—identity politics—was on heavy display Sunday.
At St. Ann’s Warehouse Theater in Brooklyn
The Jungle: A makeshift society within the global refugee crisis
By Owen Mullan, 13 February 2019
Playwrights Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson have created a thoughtful treatment of one of humanity’s most acute social crises.
Velvet Buzzsaw: The horror of the art world
By David Walsh, 12 February 2019
Dan Gilroy is one of the more interesting American filmmakers currently working.
Woody Allen sues Amazon for failing to distribute his latest film and other breaches of contract
By David Walsh, 9 February 2019
Amazon’s refusal to distribute Allen’s film and honor its contract with him is a brazen act of censorship that is the direct product of the #MeToo witch hunt.
Fire in my mouth: New York Philharmonic premieres oratorio on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
By Fred Mazelis, 6 February 2019
The hour-long work probes an infamous example—in New York City in 1911—of capitalist exploitation and the sacrifice of workers’ lives on the altar of private profit.
The Land of Steady Habits: Postcrash American disillusionment
By David Walsh, 5 February 2019
The film follows Anders Hill, who has recently quit his job on Wall Street and divorced his wife of several decades, Helene. The events unfold in southwest Connecticut, in New York City’s affluent suburbs.
Leyla McCalla’s Capitalist Blues: Keeping one’s eyes open
By Matthew Brennan, 2 February 2019
Trained as a classical cellist, McCalla’s eventual decision to pursue folk-based music and song-writing led her to the rich New Orleans music environment where she has been a fixture for much of the past decade.
Vanity Fair: A new television adaptation of the great 19th century novel
By David Walsh, 1 February 2019
William Makepeace Thackeray’s work, a remarkable social satire and picture of life, is set during and after the Napoleonic Wars, with the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815 playing a role in the events.
Beautiful Boy: Part of the truth about drug addiction
By Joanne Laurier, 30 January 2019
The movie deals with the subject of drug addiction—a national public health emergency and social crisis, and the source of immense suffering.
Critic-at-large Wesley Morris on the Academy Awards
Why does the New York Times keep pushing pernicious racialism?
By David Walsh, 28 January 2019
The New York Times critic-at-large Wesley Morris published an article January 23 headlined “Why Do the Oscars Keep Falling for Racial Reconciliation Fantasies?”
100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus
Including an interview with Bauhaus student Wilf Franks
By Barbara Slaughter and Stefan Steinberg, 25 January 2019
This year marks the 100 anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus movement in Germany, which played a key role in the development of progressive art and culture in the twentieth century.
The 2019 Academy Award nominations: Filmmaking, money and identity politics
By David Walsh, 23 January 2019
The 91st awards ceremony will be held February 24 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles.
Leeds’ Opera North commemorates end of World War I—Part 2
Silent Night, Songs of Love and Battle, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Last Days, Not Such Quiet Girls
By Barbara Slaughter, 23 January 2019
Opera North staged a week of performances November 30-December 7 to commemorate the end of World War I. Included were two new commissions by the company and the British premier of Silent Night.
Leeds’ Opera North commemorates end of World War I—Part 1
Silent Night, Songs of Love and Battle, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, Last Days, Not Such Quiet Girls
By Barbara Slaughter, 22 January 2019
Opera North staged a week of performances November 30-December 7 to commemorate the end of World War I. Included were two new commissions by the company and the British premier of Silent Night.
School: BBC documentary reveals impact of education cuts
By Tom Pearce and Paul Mitchell, 21 January 2019
In the documentary, we witness the distress resulting from teacher shortages, large class sizes, dilapidated buildings and insufficient support for children with special needs, all in pursuit of “balancing the budget.”
Bird Box and Hold the Dark: Looking at things in the face or not
By Joanne Laurier, 19 January 2019
Netflix began streaming Bird Box on December 21 and, a week later, reported that the film had the largest seven-day viewership, 45 million accounts, of any of its original productions.
An exhibition of the great 17th century Dutch painter
Frans Hals Portraits: A Family Reunion at the Toledo Museum of Art
By David Walsh, 17 January 2019
The Dutch “Golden Age” produced a host of extraordinary artistic figures, including most prominently Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), Hals (c. 1582–1666) and Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675).
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden—Short stories by American author Denis Johnson
By Sandy English, 15 January 2019
Johnson (1949-2017) wrote convincingly and often movingly about the painful personal conundrums that people found themselves in, particularly as social conditions declined in the US in the 1970s and beyond.
We The Workers: A limited documentary about labour rights groups in China
By Richard Phillips, 14 January 2019
The main problem of We The Workers is not the director’s stylistic approach but the film’s uncritical attitude towards the political agenda of the labour activists.
Steins;Gate 0: A sequel to the popular time-travel anime series
By Matthew MacEgan, 12 January 2019
One of the top anime series of 2018, based on a 2015 video game of the same name, deals with a small group of friends who discover a way to time travel, with dangerous consequences.
Actors and stage managers strike against developmental work with Broadway League
By Katy Kinner, 11 January 2019
The National Council of the Actors’ Equity union announced a strike on Monday, calling for a new contract.
South Park episodes dramatize plight of Amazon workers, ridicule Jeff Bezos
By Ed Hightower, 9 January 2019
The two comic episodes, Unfulfilled and Bike Parade, sympathize with rebellious Amazon workers while depicting billionaire Jeff Bezos as a Talosian, an alien from Star Trek bent on the enslavement of humanity.
Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko: A novel of 20th century Korea and Japan—“History has failed us, but no matter”
By Sandy English, 7 January 2019
Pachinko describes the struggles of four generations of Koreans in Japan. The New York Times named it one of the 10 best novels of 2017.
Netflix’s The Innocent Man: The American injustice system
By Joanne Laurier, 5 January 2019
The six-episode documentary released in December is based on bestselling novelist John Grisham’s only non-fiction effort. The miniseries chronicles the wrongful incarceration of four men in the 1980s in Ada, Oklahoma.
“Life is forbidden to us … do you want to comply with that?”: The rediscovery of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s The Traveler in Germany
By Clara Weiss, 4 January 2019
Though written 80 years ago, The Traveler is not just a remarkable literary document of the Nazi period, but speaks immediately to the major political and historical questions of our time.
Clint Eastwood’s The Mule: The world’s oldest drug courier
By Kevin Martinez, 3 January 2019
Eastwood’s latest film fictionally dramatizes the potentially intriguing true story of Leo Sharp, an elderly World War II veteran and horticulturist who smuggled drugs for a Mexican cartel. However, it is a conformist and clichéd work.
Best film and television of 2018
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 31 December 2018
The film world in 2018 can be viewed and judged in different ways and by distinct standards.
Musical highlights of 2018
By Matthew Brennan and Hiram Lee, 31 December 2018
Many of the year’s best musicians refused to limit themselves to one “lane,” “border,” genre or supposedly separate culture.
Vice: A portrait of an American corporate-military gangster
By David Walsh and Joanne Laurier, 29 December 2018
In regard to the Bush-Cheney administration, the WSWS pointed in the early 2000s to an unprecedented development, the “rise to the pinnacle of the American political system of elements of a gangster character.”
Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite: The unimpressive recent results of “women in film”
By Joanne Laurier, 24 December 2018
Mary Queen of Scots and The Favourite belong to this year’s flood of “women” films. Many others have already disappeared without a trace.
Her photos shed light on history: The outstanding work of photographer Maria Austria (1915-75)
By Verena Nees, 22 December 2018
Her work deserves to be exhibited in one of Germany’s or Austria’s major museums, not least because she is the source of the only photographic record of the hiding place of Anne Frank and her family before deportation to Auschwitz.
French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix at the Metropolitan Museum in New York
By Clare Hurley, 20 December 2018
The powerful exhibition is the first major survey of the artist’s work in half a century. It brings together 150 paintings, drawings, prints and manuscripts that have rarely been shown together.
Nancy Wilson (1937-2018), an extraordinary singer who will be missed
By John Andrews, 19 December 2018
Nancy Wilson, a distinctive vocalist for more than 50 years, and the long-time host of NPR’s “Jazz Profiles,” passed away last week.
Russian television’s Trotsky serial: A degraded spectacle of historical falsification and anti-Semitism
By Fred Williams and David North, 19 December 2018
The eight-part mini-series, now available on Netflix, is an exhibition of the political, intellectual and cultural depravity of all those involved in its production. This comment was originally posted in November 2017.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma: Art and struggle
By Rafael Azul, 17 December 2018
Roma is a sensitive portrait of a family breaking apart in the broader context of a social crisis. It follows Cleo, a Mixtec Indian, as she performs her daily chores, which include caring for the family’s four children.
Bodyguard: A political thriller in six episodes from the UK
By David Walsh, 15 December 2018
The series centers on a British Army veteran, David Budd, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Budd now serves as an officer with a branch of the police in charge of security for politicians.
The ignorant, repressive attack on Frank Loesser’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”
By David Walsh, 14 December 2018
In the song, as it is generally performed, a man encourages a woman to stay the night and she expresses concerns about what her family and the neighbors will think if she does.
Wildlife: American dreams and discouragement
And Can You Ever Forgive Me?
By Joanne Laurier, 13 December 2018
Set in 1960 in Great Falls, Montana, Wildlife is a relatively somber look at postwar American life. Can You Ever Forgive Me? focuses on an eccentric forger.
Icebox: The US government locks up children
By David Walsh, 11 December 2018
Icebox focuses on a 12-year-old Honduran boy, Oscar (Anthony Gonzalez), forced by gang activity to flee his home country and head for the US, where an uncle lives.
Protest at Whitney Museum in New York calls for ouster of trustee who owns tear gas firm
By Sandy English, 10 December 2018
Warren B. Kanders is the chairman and founder of Safariland, a defense firm that produces the tear gas used in the police-military attack on migrant workers at the US-Mexico border crossing in San Ysidro on November 25.
Maria by Callas: A documentary on the life of the famed opera singer
By Joanne Laurier, 8 December 2018
Tom Volf’s Maria by Callas, about the legendary Greek-American opera soprano, has opened in the US.
A quarter-century since the release of Steven Spielberg’s film
The achievement of Schindler’s List
By David Walsh, 7 December 2018
Schindler’s List opened in movie theaters in the US in December 1993. A restored version is now playing in selected theaters. We are reposting today a review published in the International Workers Bulletin, a forerunner of the WSWS, in January 1994.
The Front Runner: An American political scandal
And Widows, Bohemian Rhapsody
By Joanne Laurier, 6 December 2018
Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner chronicles the downfall of Gary Hart, the leading contender for the 1988 Democratic Party presidential nomination, whose campaign was abruptly brought to an end by a sex scandal.
Submission: A college professor undone by sexual harassment allegations
By David Walsh, 4 December 2018
Given the film’s subject matter, the generally hostile or condescending treatment Submission received at the hands of the major film critics in March 2018 should not have come as a surprise.
“Well-paid journalists have become gormless cyphers of the propaganda of war”
John Pilger discusses his “The Power of the Documentary” film festival
By Richard Phillips, 3 December 2018
Veteran journalist and filmmaker John Pilger spoke with the WSWS last week about his film festival and the political issues confronting serious journalists today.
I object—Ian Hislop’s search for dissent: An exhibition that eradicates socialist ideas and revolutionary action
At the British Museum, London
By Paul Mitchell, 1 December 2018
Would-be satirist Ian Hislop had access to one of the world’s most magnificent collections, in the British Museum, but ends up producing an exercise in political, social and artistic emptiness.
Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci dies at 77
By Richard Phillips and David Walsh, 28 November 2018
Bertolucci will be remembered for valuable films he made in the 1960s and 1970s, including La commare secca (1962—English title, The Grim Reaper), Before the Revolution (1964), The Conformist (1970) and 1900 (1976).
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs: Only a fool “expects better” from humanity
By David Walsh, 26 November 2018
The Coens’ latest film is made up of six stories set in a mythical “Old West.” The thread connecting the various episodes is a generally nasty attitude toward humanity, and American humanity in particular.
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