Amelia Merrill

In 2020, it’s not easy to get a new job or a promotion. This lamentation isn’t just an impression; it’s a reality affecting multiple industries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. But even before COVID-19, many fields had already redefined the parameters of the entry-level job, which once promised a foot in the door but now may ask for years of relevant experience for little more than minimum wage. Although the issue is widespread, this slope feels even more slippery in theatre, where ge...

Almost every horror movie ends with one person left to face the villain alone for one final showdown—andusually, this last one standing is a woman. This phenomenon is so common, it even has a name: The Final Girl. What is it about this character that makes her special? Is she a symbol of female empowerment, or a victim of regressive attitudes? Here’s our Take on the evolution of this trope, from the slasher movies of the '70s and '80s through modern variations in films like The Witch, Us, and It Follows. We'll look at what this archetype symbolizes, and how some recent subversions have caused

Like most Sofia Coppola films, there are a million little things that build the world of On the Rocks, rather than a neon sign pointing to the film’s thesis: There are endless takeout coffee cups. There’s too many books on the shelves for Laura (Rashida Jones) and Dean (Marlon Wayans) to have read them all. There’s the baseless communications jargon of Dean’s job that perfectly captures the vapidity and vagueness of so many business ventures. And there’s the creeping sense that while you might...

“Seeing cows makes me so sad,” Gam-hee declares as she pokes at a plate of beef in her friend Young-soon’s apartment. She can handle the chickens roaming the apartment complex’s backyard, regardless of their fates, but seeing the cartoon-like, large eyes of cows in the countryside makes her feel guilty. There’s a lot of talk about meat in Hong Sang-soo’s The Woman Who Ran—how to cook it, how often to eat it, whether you should actually eat it at all, and who cooks it better, Young-soon (Seo Y...

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...