Breaking Bad ended in 2013 with a clear, unambiguous statement about what television had been doing wrong for a decade. Nobody listened. In the years that followed, streaming platforms flooded the market with antiheroes. Morally compromised protagonists, men of violence with sympathetic backstories, brilliant criminals the audience was invited to root for, all of them…
There is a version of Morgan Freeman that never existed. A young, hungry, dangerous Morgan Freeman. The kind of actor who would have made Taxi Driver. The kind of actor who would have burned through the screen in Raging Bull. The kind of actor who could have played Michael Corleone with the same quiet menace…
One night you’re kissing Halle Berry on the Oscar stage. The next, nobody can quite remember what you’ve been doing for the last ten years. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s the Adrien Brody story, one of the most jarring vanishing acts in modern Hollywood history. Not a scandal. Not a breakdown. Not a public meltdown…
There is a moment in almost every Jesse Plemons performance where you realize something is wrong. Not wrong in the way that a scene going badly is wrong, but wrong in the way that a room feels wrong when you cannot immediately identify why. The furniture is in the right place. The lighting is normal….
There’s a concept in neuroscience called “use it or lose it.” The brain is plastic—constantly reshaping itself based on what we ask it to do. Practice a skill, and the neural pathways strengthen. Neglect it, and those pathways atrophy. It’s why concert pianists have enlarged motor cortex regions, and why stroke patients can relearn movement…
We have a story we tell about Sam Rockwell, and like most stories we tell about actors we admire, it is mostly about us. The story goes like this: Sam Rockwell is a chameleon. A shape-shifter. A prestige actor of extraordinary range who disappears so completely into his roles that you forget you’re watching the…
In 1999, Office Space gave American audiences one of the most beloved comic characters in the history of workplace cinema. Milton Waddams — soft-spoken, stapler-obsessed, perpetually aggrieved, perpetually ignored — became an instant cultural touchstone. His mumbled threats. His relocated desk. His Swingline stapler, red and irreplaceable. His quiet, almost inaudible insistence that he would…
There is a particular kind of greatness that destroys itself in the act of achieving itself. The painter who captures light so perfectly that the painting seems to glow from within, and in doing so, makes you forget there was ever a painter. The writer whose prose is so transparent that you move through it…
The Most Chilling Detail in They Live Has Nothing to Do With Aliens The aliens in They Live are not conquerors. This is the detail that most people miss, and it is the detail that makes John Carpenter’s 1988 film not just a piece of science fiction but a precise diagnosis of how power actually…
How Robert Pattinson Spent a Decade Burning Down His Own Career to Save Himself When the final Twilight film premiered in 2012, Robert Pattinson stood at a crossroads that few actors ever face. He was twenty-six years old, internationally famous, and wealthy beyond most people’s wildest dreams. The franchise had grossed over $3.3 billion. He…
