Arts & Culture

Aubrey Plaza is a national treasure, but the movies still haven’t figured out what to do with her. Ingrid Goes West comes close, though, with its twisted, of-the-moment tale of an Instagram stalker who infiltrates the personal life of a social media celebrity. But for all its many virtues, it…

Once more, into the Brie — or, in this case, the Manchego. For the third time, now, for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, it’s the feast as improv proving ground, the sumptuous meal as arena of competitive discernment: Who can better parse and parody the particularities of some beloved British…

Whitney: Can I Be Me premieres on Aug. 25 on Showtime In the February 2016 issue of ESPN The Magazine, Danyel Smith penned a powerful essay on Whitney Houston’s chill-inducing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Super Bowl XXV, perhaps the pinnacle of national anthem performances. Smith frames Houston as…

The story beats of Patti Cake$, a socioeconomic-sermonizing comedy about a thick young white woman with huge hip-hop dreams and little prospects, are as predictable as the ticking of an egg timer, as generic and tinny as the pulses of a drum machine. I rooted not for Patricia Dombrowski (Danielle…

In one of two new action films Noomi Rapace leads this summer, she plays seven different women — sisters — in a dystopian future in which single-child policies are stringently and violently enforced because of food-and-resource shortages (let’s be honest: global warming). This is Netflix’s What Happened to Monday. In…

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There is a better, more touching movie hidden somewhere inside The Only Living Boy in New York, and you can often see it creeping in around the edges. It’s not to be found in the somewhat empty coming-of-age narrative at the film’s center, which follows Thomas (Callum Turner), a precocious,…

The Defenders premieres on Netflix on Aug. 18 Look, you don’t need to have watched Iron Fist to enjoy the brisk, brawling silliness of The Defenders, a team-up adventure that’s something like a surprising return on an investment you thought had soured. In fact, not knowing all the plot details…

In Steven Soderbergh’s hillbilly heist comedy Logan Lucky, the West Virginia prison where vault specialist Joe Bang (Daniel Craig) resides is pristine and peaceful. This is a high-security facility in a seemingly alternate world, a jail without racial tensions where the prisoners feast on edible food. While only a small…

Here’s what Patrick Hughes’ The Hitman’s Bodyguard has going for it: It’s exactly the movie it promises to be, but more so. It’s more wild, more hilarious, more giddily irresponsible — it’s the hard R action comedy that kids sneaking into it might imagine it’s going to be, minus ’70s…