Amelia Merrill

Filmmaker Matías Piñeiro has added to his Shakespearean-inspired filmography with Isabella, which is as much a meditation on Measure for Measure as it as an adaptation of it. Complete with warm yet striking colors, a circular timeline of events, and the meandering sounds of life in both the city and the countryside, Isabella is an aesthetically pleasing film that offers more substance with what it omits than with what it includes.

Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’s documentary Boys State begins by juxtaposing two ideologically opposite campers at the Texas outpost of the American Legion’s Boys State gathering. We first meet Steven Garza, a soft-spoken idealist with a far-reaching view of civility who’s not afraid to shake hands (remember that?) with campers across the aisle. Then there’s Robert, who cashed out his Bitcoin earnings for new cowboy boots and spouts Texas conservative talking points so absentmindedly—pro-gun,...

Anna Winger is accustomed to the German limelight. A Massachusetts native, she’s made her television career in Berlin with the Cold War spy series Deutschland 83 and its follow-ups. While the series has brought her critical acclaim across the titular nation, learning that Unorthodox, the Netflix series she co-created with Alexa Karolinski, was nominated for eight Emmy Awards last week still came as a surprise.
Unorthodox, which follows Esty Shapiro (Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie n...

Most of us have spent quarantine in various states of undress, watching our bank accounts dwindle and begging our motivation to return from the war. Shira Haas, in contrast, has spent quarantine becoming an international star, a burgeoning icon of dramatic acting praised for everything from the power of her facial expressions to the timbre of her emotion-laden singing voice.
Already known for indie flicks and the breakout Israeli series Shtisel, which has gained popularity since landing on U....

On June 24, Netflix released Athlete A, a documentary from Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk that joins the plethora of films, podcasts, and TV specials about Larry Nassar, USA Gymnastics (USAG), and the web of journalists who exposed their crimes. Athlete A offers an efficient summary for viewers unfamiliar with the story, beginning with the Indianapolis Star’s award-winning 2016 story about USAG’s policy of not turning complaints of child sexual abuse over to authorities. After three women called t...

Israeli actress Shira Haas has shot to stardom in the midst of our world’s unusual circumstances. From supporting roles in the Holocaust drama The Zookeeper’s Wife and Natalie Portman’s directorial debut A Tale of Love and Darkness, Haas found herself starring in a miniseries that gained popularity at the beginning of worldwide lockdown. In March, as we hunkered down for months of social distancing, many tuned in to Netflix’s four-part series Unorthodox, loosely based on Deborah Feldman’s 201...

You may recall Mary Kay McBrayer’s article “The 19th-Century Nurse Who Was Secretly a Serial Killer,” about cold-blooded caregiver Jane Toppan. Ahead of the release of her book America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster, we talked to the writer, editor, and podcaster from her home in Atlanta about true crime, mental health, and how her love of horror movies led her to Jane.
Narratively: Your book reads almost like historical fiction. Why did you choose to fr...

Films about conversion therapy and its survivors have been popular in recent years: 2018 brought both Desiree Akhavan’s The Miseducation of Cameron Post, where a group of teens escapes a conversion therapy camp, and Joel Edgerton’s Boy Erased, based on Garrard Conley’s memoir of conversion therapy in Arkansas. Conversion therapy has also been the focus of many documentaries, often with an eye toward the experiences of (former) Christian fundamentalists. Pray Away, as the title indicates, expl...

In 2018, Luca Guadagnino released his long anticipated take on Suspiria, a cult classic giallo originally made by director Dario Argento in 1977. Guadagnino’s film runs one hour longer than Argento’s and offers much more backstory: He designates the protagonist, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), as a runaway member of the Ohio Mennonite Church; he features the violence and disruption of Cold War domestic terrorism in the background of many scenes; he expands the world of dance, integrating it w...

When the Oscar nominations were unveiled last Monday, the Academy sang a tale as old as time: only men were nominated in the Best Directing race, a few films that received mixed reviews by critics (i.e. Joker and Jojo Rabbit) garnered a boatload of nominations, and the only black actor nominated for their work played an enslaved woman. Many fans expressed outrage online, but many had already resigned themselves to the disappointment that the old guard Academy has come to represent.
To those w...

I didn’t think that this week’s episode of One Day at a Time would tug on my heartstrings when I saw that it was about romance. As gratifying as the reunion between Penelope and Max was, and as cute as the teenage couples on the show continue to be, I felt a little overwhelmed with the amount of romantic developments this season. Fortunately, “Moonlight” turns the rooftop proposal trope on its head for an episode full of warmth and healing that brings the Alvarez family back down to earth.
Sc...

This story is part of a larger special issue on playwriting training.
A college degree is not a requirement for writing a play. Plenty of playwrights have found inspiration, resources, and a creative cohort outside academia. But before facing the dreaded question other writers in this issue are tackling—to MFA or not MFA, to put it simply—most writers do obtain a bachelor’s degree, whether it’s in theatre, creative writing, or an entirely unrelated field.
Some people know exactly what they wa...

The latest episode of One Day at a Time, “Perfect,” begins with some classic Alvarez family antics. Attempting to call out Elena on her fight for gender equality, Alex cheekily suggests that he should be honored with a quinceañera for his upcoming birthday. The Alvarez ladies, of course, run with it, picturing a grand “quinceañero” with dancing, evening wear, and all eyes on Penelope: “You think it’s a special day for you, but really, it’s about what a great mom I am,” Penelope says. Then Ale...

This is it! I thought, like the show’s theme song lyrics, as the credits rolled on the fourth episode of the new season of One Day at a Time. “One Halloween at a Time” is ODAAT at its finest, finally settling comfortably in to its new home on Pop TV. The episode combines costumes and comedic timing with tense and dramatic plot developments, as we learn that someone in the extended Alvarez crew is pregnant.
As Halloween approaches and everyone tries to figure out the best couple’s costume, Lydi...

Okay, let’s just jump in: this episode of the family sitcom One Day at a Timeis all about masturbation, complete with a variety of euphemisms for the term provided by Penelope’s therapy group (or sang and danced by Lydia). It’s sort of like a bottle episode in that the A, B, and C plots are all about masturbation and what the different members of the Alvarez crew think about it: good, bad, ugly, sinful, great, just for single people (which is somehow the moral of the story, but more on that l...