Amelia Merrill

In recent years, “resistance” has become more of a marketing term than a movement — it signifies popular defiance of political leaders that usually does not involve violence, risk-taking or living underground. Resistance has become a hashtag, a commodified experience divorced from many anti-war and anti-fascist efforts of the past.
Julia Mintz’s documentary “Four Winters,” which was delayed by COVID but opens theatrically in New York on September 16, eschews this simplification of the concept...

With guest Mia Merrill, we discuss the 2022 Emmy nominations for the Drama categories, including who we're rooting for, who's the most handsome Supporting Actor, and which shows have the best vibes.

With guest Mia Merrill, we discuss the 2022 Emmy nominations for the Comedy categories, including our love for Abbott Elementary, cheers for What We Do in the Shadows, and surprise at a couple snubs.

Don’t Make Me Go achieves the rare feat of showing its hand too often and still not earning its final twist. Hannah Marks’s road movie full of awkward but sweet father-daughter bonding premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this week before heading to Prime Video next month; the summer-set film sees its duo traversing the United States but was all shot in Auckland, New Zealand.
Also a coming-of-age story, the film is full of obvious references to an eventual heartbreak as Maxwell (John Cho) s...

Finding your mother-in-law annoying is a tired trope drenched in misogyny. Finding your Jewish mother annoying, though also a trope, has the potential to reflect deeper familial nuances. Still, stereotypical Jewish mothers often pop up on our screens, with no other purpose than to nag at burdened protagonists.
In “Attachment,” a new queer horror film from Jewish Danish breakout Gabriel Bier Gislason playing at the Tribeca Festival, both tropes get spun o...

Éric Warin and Tahir Rana’s film Charlotte, about the life and work of German- Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon, premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival before receiving a wide release this spring. The animated film stars Keira Knightley as Salomon and follows her from her adolescence in Berlin to her years hiding from the Nazis in southern France.
Despite a star-studded cast and animated recreations of Salomon’s work that burst to life onscreen, Charlotte falters in its ...

The "Big Nose" debacle serves as a potent reminder to stop equating artistic depiction with moral or cultural endorsement.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a film as jam-packed as its title suggests. The sci-fi flick starring Michelle Yeoh tackles immigration, discrimination against Asian Americans and homophobia in manners both hilarious and heartbreaking. Critics and moviegoers have praised the film for offering audiences a journey into the multiverse without relying on tired existing intellectual property (like Marvel movies), and Yeoh’s perfo...

Successful athletes help a state maintain soft power, and perhaps no leader knows this better than Vladimir Putin.
Ivan Kuliak wasn’t a very well known gymnast before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After racking up domestic accolades as a junior elite athlete, he made headlines worldwide at the World Cup in early March, when the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) announced that Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials would be banned after the conclusion of ongoing competitions....

Mickey: The Story of a Mouse asks a lot of questions. Why is the character of Mickey Mouse so iconic, and why is his simple, three-circle image so powerful the world over? What role does Mickey Mouse play in the development of not only American popular culture, but also of propaganda and cultural mythology? Are we going to talk about Walt Disney’s controversial views on utopian society, or the people his company displaced in an attempt to create that society? Of course not. Those questions wo...

When Millie (Ana Scotney) gets a fancy internship at a fancy New York architecture firm, she becomes the envy of her friends, school, and community. She gets featured in commercials and brochures for her school, her hair straightened out to something almost unrecognizable. She gets a spot on the local news as her best friend and rival, Carolyn (Jillian Nguyen), tries to reassess her own architecture work, which she believes Millie has copied. And she gets plastered on a huge billboard in the ...

I grew up near my paternal grandparents, and would spend St. Patrick’s Day with my Nana as it often coincided with my school’s spring break. We’d dress in green head-to-toe, with shamrock pins and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons; Grandad, ever the curmudgeon, would wear a button reading “Honorary Irish.” Nana was proud to be “one hundred percent Irish” and would tell me how she and her sister were the only members of her family left who were — everyone else had passed away or married people of o...

George Anthony Morton has straddled two worlds his whole life: Parent and child. Incarcerated and free. Former drug dealer and classically trained painter. As an adult in his hometown of Kansas City, he tries to fit back into his old life, to joke with his siblings and bond with his nephew, without being sucked back into a vortex of manipulation and guilt. It’s not just that his family has trouble tr...

Though dramaturgs, agents, literary managers, and, of course, playwrights have worked non-stop through the two years of the pandemic, many new-play development opportunities have stalled. The industry has been in a sort of time warp when it comes to developing new works, with premieres planned for 2020 and 2021 still falling victim to calendar reshuffles. Elsewhere, familiar homes for emerging writers, like the Lark in New York, have shuttered, further exposing gaps in support for early- and mid-career playwrights. Enter the Black List: In January, the popular screenwriting and television writ

Since its 2017 premiere, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s period comedy “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has had a polarizing reception among Jewish viewers. The story of an affluent housewife (Rachel Brosnahan) who embarks on a career as stand-up comic after her husband leaves her, “Maisel” has received plaudits for the performances of its cast members, its highly stylized, whimsical costume and scenic design, and the quirky, fast-paced humor central to all Sherman-Palladino offerings (most notably “Gilmo...

This week the editors talk to a giant in the field, New York Theatre Workshop artistic director Jim Nicola, who in June will leave the Off-Broadway powerhouse he’s run since 1988. In a wide-ranging conversation, he talks about the highlights and challenges of his momentous years producing work by everyone from Ivo van Hove to Aleshea Harris, about the dangerous temptations of enhancement money, and about his hopes for the theatre he leaves to the next generation (his successor has not yet been announced).