In these dispatches I often talk about themes naturally arising or not arising at all between films. Well, the throughline between these trio of titles couldn’t be clearer: They all thoroughly contemplate death and mortality. Two of the films are from veterans while a third one is a filmmaker’s feature directorial debut—though to be sure

Audience members attending the main stage performance on closing night of the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival are in for a serious treat. At 7 pm on Saturday, September 5th, Golden Globe-winning actress, director, and playwright Regina Taylor will perform her own one-woman show, Exhibit, at the festival, aiming not only to involve theatergoers directly in

In this first dispatch from Locarno is a trio of films one might call “elusive.” They all capture weighty, human subjects: sensuality, war, and disaster—with a visual and sonic approach that’s difficult to grasp and, sometimes, even harder to love. They are all formally provocative works, made to push the audience to its breaking point.

Almost exactly 13 years ago, when I was still a freelancer for this site, I wrote a piece about how FX’s hit “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” owed a great debt to “Seinfeld” in its comedic embrace of characters that could politely be called misanthropic. The quartet of characters at the center of one of

Rarely has an animated show felt more like an extension of its creator’s personality than Netflix’s “Alley Cats,” a Ricky Gervais production from top to fuzzy bottom. It’s a disheartening reminder of how far the once-creative star of “The Office” and “Extras” has fallen, becoming almost a parody of himself with his “edgy” humor and

In this excerpt from his book The Otherworld: The Mythic Dimensions of Christophe Gans, author and RogerEbert.com contributor Scout Tafoya gets into the French director’s parallels to the great Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and the video games that inspired his work. First person POV camera was de rigueur in Japanese games by the time Team

After an unlikely beginning as a series of NBC Sports TV commercials in 2013 and a spectacular, awards-spangled run on Apple TV as a beacon of mental health positivity and Capra-esque optimism, “Ted Lasso” ended on a near-perfect note. The Season 3 finale in May 2023 leaned into the time-honored rituals of TV finales, with

The events of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” occur today: August 4, 2026. Like so many dates in science fiction, this one probably seemed far away when it was chosen, but once it was finally upon us, it passed like all days. This morning, I re-read the story, which is sent

We all know Chicago is a sports town that has been home to legends on a variety of basketball courts, football and soccer fields, hockey rinks, and so forth. Add to that the putting green occupied by Windy City golfers, of whom there have been an increasing number in recent years. I am not a