Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episodes
The Year of the Broken Mirror
18 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many of this year’s most talked-about releases were, in some sense, diagnostic: from Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “O...
“Wake Up Dead Man” and the Whodunnit Renaissance
11 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We all know the formula: it begins with a dead body, and quickly introduces a motley crew of outlandish characters, each with a motive for murder. The...
Does “Hamlet” Need a Backstory?
04 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since it was penned more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” has been in production nearly continuously, and has been adapted in...
After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few an...
In “Pluribus,” Utopia Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
20 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Vince Gilligan’s new show, “Pluribus,” opens with an unconventional apocalypse. A benevolent alien hive mind descends on Earth, commandeering th...
The Guilty Pleasure of the Heist
13 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On October 19th, a group of masked men broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and made off with some of France’s crown jewels. Suspects are now in ...
Critics at Large Live: Padma Lakshmi’s Expansive Taste
06 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Padma Lakshmi is unquestionably a woman of taste. As a host of the beloved food-competition series “Top Chef” and the star of the culinary docuser...
Why Horror Still Haunts Us
30 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Horror movies are big business: this year, they’ve accounted for more ticket sales in the U.S. than comedies and dramas combined, bringing in over a...
In the Dark: Blood Relatives, Episode 1
28 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On August 7, 1985, five family members were shot dead in their English country manor, Whitehouse Farm. It looked like an open-and-shut case. But the N...
Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
23 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Generative A.I., once an uncanny novelty, is now being used to create not only images and videos but entire “artists.” Its boosters claim that the...
I Need a Critic: October, 2025, Edition
16 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the latest installment of the Critics at Large advice series, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz answer listeners’ questions ab...
How the Trad Wife Took Over
09 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” has hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-tradi...
One Paul Thomas Anderson Film After Another
02 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of his three-decade career, the director Paul Thomas Anderson has dramatized the nineteen-seventies porn industry (“Boogie Nights”...
What's Cooking?
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In contemporary cookbooks—and in the burgeoning realm of online cooking content—there’s often a life style on display alongside the recipes. Sam...
“The Paper,” “The Lowdown,” and the Drama of Journalism
18 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the past twenty years, more than a third of all American newspapers have shuttered; trust in media institutions is now at a historic low. And yet w...
Why We're All In on Gambling
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, it was announced that Polymarket—a site where you can bet on basically anything, from the likelihood of a government shutdown to the winn...
Our Fads, Ourselves
04 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—...
How to Watch a Movie
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twenti...
Les Américains à Paris
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nineteenth-century Americans regarded Paris as a libertine paradise: a smorgasbord of food and fashion, of night life and sex. Today, the pull toward ...
How Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compel...
Late Night's Last Laugh
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two weeks ago, when Paramount cancelled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” insiders in Hollywood and Washington alike deemed the move suspiciou...
“Eddington” and the American Berserk
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ari Aster’s wildly divisive new movie “Eddington” drops audiences back into the chaos of May, 2020: a moment when the confluence of the COVID-19...
“Materialists,” “Too Much,” and the Modern Rom-Com
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Audiences have been bemoaning the death of the romantic comedy for years, but the genre persists—albeit often in a different form from the screwball...
Why We Travel
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular...
The Diva Is Dead, Long Live the Diva
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The word “diva” comes from the world of opera, where divinely talented singers have enraptured audiences for centuries. But preternatural gifts of...
Why We Turn Grief Into Art
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Yiyun Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow” is a bracingly candid memoir of profound loss: one written in the wake of her son James’s death by s...
Our Romance with Jane Austen
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though Jane Austen went largely unrecognized in her own lifetime—four of her six novels were published anonymously, and the other two only after her...
“Mountainhead” and the Age of the Pathetic Billionaire
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong’s latest work, a ripped-from-the-headlines sendup of tech billionaires called “Mountainhead,” is arguab...
Lessons from “Sesame Street”
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Sesame Street,” which first aired on PBS in 1969, was born of a progressive idea: that children from all socioeconomic backgrounds should have ...
The Season for Obsessions
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There’s arguably no better time for falling down a cultural rabbit hole than the languid, transitory summer months. On this episode of Critics at La...
The Grand Spectacle of Pope Week
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the weeks since Pope Francis’s passing, the internet has been flooded by papal memes, election analysis, and even close readings of the newly app...
I Need a Critic: May 2025 Edition
08 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In a new installment of the Critics at Large advice hotline, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz field calls from listeners on a vari...
How “Sinners” Revives the Vampire
01 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The vampire has long been a way to explore the shadow side of society, and “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s new blockbuster set in the Jim Crow-era Sou...
War Movies: What Are They Good For?
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly as long as we’ve been waging war, we’ve sought ways to chronicle it. “Warfare,” a new movie co-directed by the filmmaker Alex Garla...
“The Studio” Pokes Fun at Hollywood’s Existential Struggle
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The tension between art and commerce is a tale as old as time, and perhaps the most dramatic clashes in recent history have played out in Hollywood. O...
Gossip, Then and Now
03 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Gossip, an essential human pastime, is full of contradictions. It has the potential to be as destructive to its subjects as it is titillating to its p...
Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with tec...
Critics at Large Live: The Right to Get It Wrong
20 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1939, reviewing the beloved M-G-M classic “The Wizard of Oz” for The New Yorker, the critic Russell Maloney declared that the film held “no t...
Our Modern Glut of Choice
13 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For many of us, daily life is defined by a near-constant stream of decisions, from what to buy on Amazon to what to watch on Netflix. On this episode ...
How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills
06 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“The Pitt,” which recently began streaming on Max, spans a single shift in the life of a doctor at an underfunded Pittsburgh hospital where, in th...
In “Severance,” the Gothic Double Lives On
27 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Severance” is an office drama with a twist: the central characters have undergone a procedure to separate their work selves (“innies,” in the...
The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine
20 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” which aired in October of 1975, was a loose, scrappy affair. The sketches were experimental, almost ab...
How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers
13 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A few years back, novels classed as “romantasy”—a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”—might have seemed destined to attract only ni...
David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
David Lynch, who died last month at seventy-eight, was a director of images—one whose distinctive sensibility and instinct for combining the grotesq...
The Splendor of Nature, Now Streaming
30 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 1954, a young David Attenborough made his début as the star of a new nature show called “Zoo Quest.” The docuseries, which ran for nearly a de...
The New Western Gold Rush
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Westward expansion has been mythologized onscreen for more than a century—and its depiction has always been entwined with the politics and anxieties...
The Elusive Promise of the First Person
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The first person is a narrative style as old as storytelling itself—one that, at its best, allows us to experience the world through another person’...
Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms
26 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Talbot, writing in The New Yorker in 2005, recounted that when animators at Pixar got stuck on a project they’d file into a screening room ...
Critics at Large Live: The Year of the Flop
19 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year, high-profile failures abounded. Take, for example, Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project “Megalopolis,” which cost a hundred and for...
After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
12 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few an...
The Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Artists owe a great debt to ancient Rome. Over the years, it’s provided a backdrop for countless films and novels, each of which has put forward its...
Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of a grou...
The Value—and Limits—of Seeking Comfort in Art
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fundamental features of art is its ability to meet us during times of distress. In the early days of the pandemic, many people turned ...
Critics at Large Live: Julio Torres’s Dreamy Surrealism
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the comedian Julio Torres came to America from El Salvador, more than a decade ago, his fantastical style has made him a singular presence in th...
Help, I Need a Critic!
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The art of advice-giving, championed over the years by such figures as Ann Landers and Cheryl Strayed, has lately undergone a transformation. As tradi...
A Controversial Trump Bio-pic and the Villains We Make
10 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“The Apprentice,” a new film directed by Ali Abbasi, depicts the rise of a young Donald Trump under the wing of the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. The...
“The Substance” and the New Horror of the Modified Body
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In “The Substance,” a darkly satirical horror movie directed by Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore plays an aging Hollywood actress who strikes a tech-in...
The Fate of the Finance Bro
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From classic eighties films like “Wall Street” to Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel “American Psycho,” the world of finance has long provided a...
Sally Rooney’s Beautiful Deceptions
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Almost immediately after the publication of Sally Rooney’s “Normal People,” in 2018, Rooney-mania hit a fever pitch. Her work struck a cord amon...
Was Abraham Lincoln Gay . . . And Should We Care?
12 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The writer Carl Sandburg, in his 1926 biography of Abraham Lincoln, made a provocative claim—that the President’s relationship with the Kentucky s...
The Trap of the Trad Wife
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hy...
Tarot, Tech, and Our Age of Magical Thinking
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Until recently, tarot, astrology, and spiritualism—practices often shorthanded simply as woo-woo—were the stuff of dusty psychic parlors and seven...
The Irresistible Myth of Las Vegas
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Cities have always been romanticized, but few of them have embraced—or actively engineered—their reputations as thoroughly as Las Vegas. On the se...
Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and the Unstable Hierarchy of Pop
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“ ‘BRAT’ summer”—so named for the Charli XCX album that’s become the soundtrack of Kamala Harris’s Presidential run—has given pop fans...
Why We Want What Tom Ripley Has
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her 1955 novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Patricia Highsmith introduced readers to the figure of Tom Ripley, an antihero who covets the good l...
The Kamala Harris Vibe Shift
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The announcement of Kamala Harris’s Presidential run has set off one of the most pronounced vibe shifts in recent memory. On this episode of Critics...
From Vanity Fair’s “Dynasty”: Can Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood Dream Last?
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Critics at Large is off this week. In the meantime, enjoy a recent episode from Vanity Fair’s “Dynasty,” hosted by the executive editor Claire H...
Alice Munro’s Fall from Grace
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In an essay published earlier this month, Andrea Skinner, the daughter of the lauded writer Alice Munro, detailed the sexual abuse she suffered as a c...
The Changing World of Nature Documentaries
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1954, a young David Attenborough made his début as the star of a new nature show called “Zoo Quest.” The docuseries, which ran for nearly a de...
From The New Yorker Radio Hour: Emily Nussbaum on the Beginnings of Reality TV
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Reality television has generally got a bad rap, but Emily Nussbaum—who received a Pulitzer Prize, in 2016, for her work as The New Yorker’s TV cri...
Summer Obsessions
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There’s arguably no better time for falling down a cultural rabbit hole than the languid, transitory summer months. On this episode of Critics at La...
The Therapy Episode
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, as our culture has embraced therapy more widely, depictions of the practice have proliferated on screen. On this episode of Critics a...
Is Travel Broken?
13 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular...
The Many Faces of the Hit Man
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Hit Man,” a new film directed by Richard Linklater, is not, in fact, about a hit man. The movie follows Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), a mild-manner...
The Rising Tide of Slowness
30 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, in the realms of self-improvement literature, Instagram influencers, and wellness gurus, an idea has taken hold: that in a non-stop w...
The New Midlife Crisis
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From John Cheever’s 1964 short story “The Swimmer” to Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling 2006 memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” our culture has lon...
Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and the Benefits of Beef
16 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The rap superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been on a collision course for a decade, trading periodic diss tracks to assert their superiority—b...
Our Collective Obsession with True Crime
09 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past several years, true crime’s hold on the culture has tightened into a vice grip, with new titles flooding podcast charts and streaming ...
Why the Sports Movie Always Wins
02 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From “Raging Bull” to “A League of Their Own,” films about athletes have commanded the attention of even the most sports-skeptical viewers. Th...
“Civil War” ’s Unsettling Images
18 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Civil War,” Alex Garland’s divisive new action flick, borrows iconography—and actual footage—from the America of today as set dressing for ...
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” and the Art of the Finale
11 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the turn of the millennium, HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has slyly satirized the ins and outs of social interaction. The series—which fo...
Why We Want What Tom Ripley Has
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In her 1955 novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Patricia Highsmith introduced readers to the figure of Tom Ripley, an antihero who covets the good l...
Kate Middleton and the Internet’s Communal Fictions
28 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
News of Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis arrived after months of speculation regarding the royal’s whereabouts. Had the Princess of Wales, who ha...
Is Science Fiction the New Realism?
21 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Science fiction has historically been considered a niche genre, one in which far-flung scenarios play out on distant planets. Today, though, such plot...
The New Coming-of-Age Story
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, the bildungsroman, or novel of education, has offered a window into a formative period of life—and, by extension, into the historical...
Why We Love an Office Drama
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The office has long been a fixture in pop culture—but, in 2024, amid the rise of remote work and the resurgence of organized labor, the way we relat...
The Politics of the Oscar Race
29 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The campaign for an Oscar is just that: a campaign. In the weeks and months leading up to the ninety-sixth Academy Awards, actors and directors have b...
How Usher, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift Build Their Own Legacies
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Usher Raymond sang through decades of hits while twirling on roller skates, making a case for himself as on...
The Painful Pleasure of “Wretched Love”
08 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As much as contemporary audiences relish a happily ever after, some of the greatest romances of all time are ones that have turned out badly. In this ...
Why We Can’t Quit the Mean Girl
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If some of us have managed to avoid mean girls in life, we’ve had no such luck in art. The “mean girl”—a picture of idealized femininity who u...
From In the Dark: The Runaway Princesses
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The wives and daughters of Dubai’s ruler live in unbelievable luxury. So why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed’s family keep trying to run away? The...
What Is the Comic For?
25 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special, “The Dreamer,” has drawn criticism for its targeting of trans and disabled people–the latest in a string...
The Case for Criticism
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz turn their attention to the art—and purp...
Can Slowness Save Us?
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, in the realms of self-improvement literature, Instagram influencers, and wellness gurus, an idea has taken hold: that in a non-stop w...
Portraits of the Artist
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hollywood’s obsession with stories about creative types has resulted in familiar tropes—namely that of the tortured artist, whose fanatical devoti...
From The New Yorker Radio Hour: a Conversation with Dolly Parton
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After six decades as an icon in country music, it’s hard to imagine Dolly Parton had anything to prove. But when she was inducted into the Rock &a...
The Year of the Doll
21 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the highest-grossing movie of 2023, Barbie, a literal doll, leaves the comforts of Barbieland and ventures into real-world Los Angeles, where she d...
George Santos and the Art of the Scam
14 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the weeks since George Santos was expelled from Congress, his story has been funnelled straight into the entertainment pipeline, from a memorable s...
Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms
07 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Margaret Talbot, writing in The New Yorker in 2005, recounted that when animators at Pixar got stuck on a project they’d file into a screening room ...
The Past, Present, and Future of the Period Drama
30 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
From Merchant Ivory’s classic adaptations of E. M. Forster novels to the BBC’s beloved rendition of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the...