The Rise of CliffsNotes Cinema
Oversimplified literary remakes miss the point of the works they are adapting.
Culture
Why Justin Bieber Played YouTube Onstage for Thousands of People
The pop star transformed the normal act of browsing your laptop into something interesting—and unsettling.
The New Age of Performance Anxiety
With the rise of screen culture, all the world has stage fright.
Where Did ‘Let Them’ Come From?
Years before Mel Robbins published her best-selling self-help book, a struggling writer posted a poem with a similar message.
Why Did This Progressive Evangelical Church Fall Apart?
In her new book, Eliza Griswold examines the forces that led to one congregation’s collapse.
When Victimhood Takes a Bad-Faith Turn
Wronged explores how the practice of claiming harm has become the rhetorical province of the powerful.
Spit
A short story
A Horror Movie About Befriending the Rich and Powerful
Blink Twice, Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, is a stylish thriller about being intoxicated by wealth.
A Bloodier, More Mediocre The Crow
After years of gritty comic-book movies, a reboot of the gothic ’90s antihero lands with a thud.
Who’s Normal Now?
At the convention, Democrats are working to reclaim the flip side of weird.
Emily in Paris Doesn’t Need a Makeover
Netflix’s silliest show is the epitome of guilty-pleasure viewing. It should probably stay that way.
What Gena Rowlands Knew About Marriage
The late actor mined the many contradictions of romantic love in her work, and never more brilliantly than in A Woman Under the Influence.
When Is It Okay to Not Finish a Book?
How to decide to put down a book—without all the angst
Someone Is Watching. Is It God, or Your Boss?
Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation captured anxieties about the emerging surveillance state—and how it makes workers past and present feel at their job.