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Matthew Barney’s experimental five-part series has become the toast of the museum crowd, while flying beneath the radar of the average moviegoer. You may have seen his name in the gossip columns, since he just had a child in September with Icelandic diva Bjork. (And you thought your mom and dad were weird.) Their couplehood … Read more

In 1952, nobody expected any staying power out of Singin’ in the Rain. In fact, it was thrown together hastily out of old songs to cash in on Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s previous An American in Paris. That’s why the movie is set in the early days of Hollywood—to go along with music that … Read more

Roman Polanski’s best movies—Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion, Chinatown—are all about dread and mistrust. But up until now he’s never made a film about the part of his personal history that very likely caused that rare affinity with dark material, namely his childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Second World War. He’s wanted to film it … Read more

Jean Luc-Godard’s biggest popular success has been praised in some quarters as the greatest European artwork of the 20th century. We wish we liked it that much. To us, the film’s narrative weaknesses overpower its good points, and what others call iconoclastic genius, we call stubborn mulishness. Still, warts and all, Godard changed the direction … Read more

Jennifer Aniston gets some kind of prize, perhaps a case of Turtle Wax, for being the first cast member of Friends to successfully anchor a drama on the big screen. Maybe it helps that Good Girl seems like a mild comedy on the surface. But there’s a shark under the waters. Director Miguel Arteta and … Read more

There are many ways to recognize a music snob, but probably the easiest is his insidious way of insisting that a band’s best work is invariably its earliest, least accessible stuff. In the case of New Order, of course, that early ouvre was Joy Division, the maudlin proto-gothic outfit from Manchester, England. We loved that … Read more

Originally got out in 1995 and now re-released, The Thrill of It All box set hits all the high points of the Roxy canon. Early records had a more jagged sound thanks to Brian Eno’s synth experiments, but when he split to pursue tape-loop electronica, singer Bryan Ferry was left at the helm. His interests … Read more

We’re not in the camp of those who idolize the Replacements’ earliest work—they’re like tomato soup, and had to cool down before we could stomach them. But it’s remarkable to listen to the increasing sophistication of Paul Westerberg’s writing, culminating in the whisky melancholy of “Within Your Reach” and “Unsatisfied.” The Twin/Tone albums chart the … Read more

Even amid the ferment of punk and indie rock in the early 1980s, Camper Van Beethoven didn’t quite sound like anyone else, crossing R.E.M.-style jangle-pop with ska and surf rhythms and traditional European string melodies. Not that they made a big deal out of it. Laid-back, laconic, and tongue-in-cheek was their way, and especially on … Read more

Launched in 1997 by Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man), Oz showed other theater and film vanguards that the path to creative freedom on the small screen led to HBO. The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire soon followed. Oz follows the lives (and untimely and/or gruesome deaths) of the prisoners in Oswald Penitentiary’s experimental … Read more