​Look. I know I only update my blog about twice a year. This is my greatest shame. The plus side is, my lack of attention to the website means I’ve been busy with paid assignments, and I will have some exciting news to share on that front very soon.
 
So with that in mind, here’s everything I’ve been up to since May 2019 (oy)…

​I’m working on a podcast! That’s the biggest news. It’s a show about Father Coughlin, the fascist, anti-Semitic “radio priest” who seduced America during the Great Depression… from right outside my Michigan hometown. With our modern-day return to fascist demagoguery, conspiracy theories, and violent hate groups, the world Coughlin created seems to be coming back in style. I want to explore my personal obsession with him and investigate the lasting influence he’s left on our country.
 
I completed a pilot for the show with the good folks at Michigan Radio, and I’m currently shopping for institutional partners to turn it into a full series. Read more about it here. I also appeared on WDET’s Detroit Today to discuss Coughlin’s legacy with Stephen Henderson.
 
If you’d like to talk about ways we can partner on this, get in touch!

Last year I delivered my first professional talk, entitled “The Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide”. I delivered the talk at the Detroit Writing Room, a new venue in downtown Detroit for aspiring and professional writers to congregate; my talk was the first to be delivered at the location. The whole thing went well. I was glad to have attracted an engaged, curious, intelligent audience.
 
I also gave a similar talk to my alma mater, the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan, and journalism and film production classes at Huron High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
 
If you’d like to hire me to speak to your organization about freelance writing, film criticism, or public media, you know where this is going -- get in touch!

​In May 2019, I attended the Cannes Film Festival. It was my first-ever trip to the Croisette. You can read my review of the Brazilian competition feature Bacurau in The Economist; here are my other festival reviews of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse.
 
I also wrote this longread for Jewish Currents about the new films by Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, and what they tell us about the state of social realism in movies.

​In October 2019 I attended the Third Coast International Audio Festival, the world’s biggest gathering of audiomakers, in Chicago. I’ve covered the event many times before and it’s always a wonderful experience. This year I got to file a feature on the wonderful podcast Ear Hustle for The Economist.
 
I also profiled Third Coast’s outgoing executive director, Johanna Zorn (pictured above), for Michigan Alumnus magazine. Go Blue!

In September 2019 I partnered with the good people at Moment magazine to launch Chai Brow, a new weekly arts and culture column covering film, TV, books, and anything else I can think of from a contemporary Jewish lens. In 2020 we’ve transitioned the column to biweekly. It’s been a lot of fun sounding off on all kinds of stuff for them.
 
Read my columns on:
 

• The Israeli documentary Afterward
• The frustrations of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
• The best Jewish movies of 2019, Parts One and Two
• Tiffany Haddish’s Judaism and her Netflix stand-up special
• My hero Leonard Cohen’s final posthumous album, Thanks For The Dance
• The lost Jews of Disney+
• Jojo Rabbit’s muddled jokes about fascism
• Noah Baumbach’s masterful Marriage Story
• An interview with Lauren Greenfield, director of The Kingmaker
• The fleeting pleasures of Find Me, the literary sequel to Call Me By Your Name
• A preview of Jewish films at 2019’s Chicago International Film Festival
• The bonkers “Musicale Finale” of Transparent
• Jonathan Goldstein’s Heavyweight, a great podcast about a weird, neurotic Jew intervening in other people’s lives
• Netflix’s Israeli espionage series The Spy, a bizarrely serious role for Sacha Baron Cohen
• The importance of memory in HBO’s Chernobyl

My semi-weekly stint as a film critic for NPR continues. Reviews of:
 

• The Sonata, a very dull horror movie that botches its classical-music hook.
• Just Mercy, the legal drama of the moment. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #1)
• Uncut Gems, my favorite Adam Sandler movie. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #2)
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a masterful romance. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #3)
• 21 Bridges, The Good Liar, and Last Christmas, three bizarre and wildly different examples of mediocre mainstream holiday fare. I actually kinda liked Last Christmas, so read that if you want a differing opinion.
• American Son, a Netflix adaptation of a troubling play on race.
• By the Grace of God, a delicate drama about recovering from systemic sexual abuse. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #4)
• Jexi, lazy millennial phone humor.
• The Death of Dick Long, the weirdest thing I saw in 2019.
• Hustlers, a whip-smart crime caper. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #5)
• Official Secrets, an earnest but thin Iraq War intelligence drama.
• Give Me Liberty, one of my favorite movies of the year, a work that expertly communicates the pain and the euphoria of living in America. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #6)
• Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, punchy teen horror based on the beloved books.
• The Nightingale, a brutally effective tale of sexual violence and colonialism. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #7)
• The Mountain, a strange and unforgettable mood piece about lobotomies.
• Ray & Liz, a devastating memoir of poverty. (Unforgivable Oscar Snub #8)
• Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, a documentary about the beloved author, reviewed only a few short months before her death.
• The Dead Don’t Die, dumb zombie anti-comedy.
• Ma, dumb horror.
• We Have Always Lived In The Castle, dull horror.
• Wine Country, a vacation for Amy Poehler and friends.

​I wound up doing a mini-media bliss to discuss Halloween horror movies. I appeared on Michigan Radio’s Stateside about horror movies with Michigan connections (discussed: It Follows, Evil Dead, The Crow, Don’t Breathe, Only Lovers Left Alive).
 
I was also interviewed for Washington Post’s The Lily to discuss my love of cult movies (tied to a discussion of Disney+’s planned Hocus Pocus sequel).
 
For my old friends at Current, in November 2019, I profiled Nanfu Wang’s chilling documentary One Child Nation, about the personal and political repercussions of China’s “One Child” policy. Still slightly unbelievable to me that it didn’t get an Oscar nomination.
 
For Detroit’s SEEN Magazine, back in February 2019, I wrote a critical appreciation of Troy, Michigan native Steven Yeun on the occasion of his barnstorming work in the film Burning.

***

That's all I have for now. I will be scaling back my freelance work going forward, but will still try to find occasion to post here. Hopefully it won't be another eight months before I do.

For NPR, I covered the fire at the Notre Dame cathedral from my perch in Paris. The web piece briefly led the entire NPR.org homepage. I also appeared on Morning Edition to discuss the piece with Steve Inskeep. You can listen below.

This spring I landed my first-ever magazine cover story. Michigan Alumnus let me profile Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez-Soto, who has been seeking asylum in the U.S. for ten years and recently completed a Knight-Wallace fellowship in Ann Arbor. The piece captured the attention of the National Press Club; Washington Post columnist and former Iran prisoner Jason Rezaian; and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, all of whom have advocated for Gutiérrez’s asylum.

I made my debut in Next Avenue, a site for Americans over the age of 50 put on by Twin Cities Public Television (TPT). I've published two pieces for them so far:

• A Q&A on the Oscars with my longtime mentor Bob Mondello, film critic for NPR’s All Things Considered (this piece was cross-posted on ReWire, TPT's sister site geared toward young professionals)
• A reported piece exploring why so many Americans over 65 shared fake news on Facebook during the 2016 election. The piece was cross-posted to PBS’ Facebook page and received over 700 comments, many of them some variation of "PBS is fake news".

In March I wrapped up a 5-month contract assignment as a part-time editorial staffer with my old stomping grounds at Current. Some stories I covered for them:

• Controversies over a Rhode Island PBS host with a history of blackface and an episode of Finding Your Roots featuring a 2020 Presidential candidate
• A showdown between Car Talk and the company that used to manage its vehicle donation program
• Breaking the news of WNYC President Laura Walker’s planned exit from the organization
• WLRN in Miami maps out its own future
• A new collaboration between public radio stations in the Delmarva Peninsula
• New public TV innovations in 360-degree video and local livestreaming
• New reporting initiatives covering immigrant communities at Minnesota Public Radio and expanding an investigative team at Colorado Public Radio
• Postmortem on an Arkansas public radio initiative that fell apart
• News on a planned PBS theme park

I also continued my work as an NPR film critic. There are a few reviews during this period I’m especially proud of:

• A dialogue with my friend and colleague Veronica Esposito regarding Girl, the controversial Belgian drama about a trans ballerina
• Breakdowns of every 2019 Oscar-nominated short film: Animated, Live-Action and Documentary
• Reviews of Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, JT LeRoy, Hail Satan?, High Life, Out of Blue, Ferrante Fever, Mapplethorpe, Dear Ex, The Image Book, All These Small Moments, and Buffalo Boys

And more's to come. Next week I head to the Cannes Film Festival -- my first time in Cannes -- so look for coverage of that coming soon. I'll be there as a correspondent for Jewish Currents, and may appear in other publications, as well.

I will be back in the U.S. for the month of June, and am tentatively scheduled to deliver a talk on freelance writing survival skills in Detroit on June 11. The talk will be held at the soon-to-open Detroit Writing Room, and will be the first event in the space. An Eventbrite page will post soon with ticket info. If you're in the area and want to attend, please stop by!

As always, if you want to get in touch with me, please use my site contact form. I am always looking for more paid writing and editing opportunities.

​It’s been a depressing year for film criticism. More publications shuttered; more giants in the field lost paid opportunities to write; more outlets cut back on serious, thoughtful discussion of the arts in favor of rushed, facile coverage of whatever’s trending that week.
 
We, all of us, have to adapt or die. So I’ve done my best to adapt.
 
Rather than restrict myself to the same kinds of dwindling chance to just write 600-word movie and TV reviews, I’ve tried to forge new pathways in 2018. I developed new contacts, polished off a different set of skills, and tried to develop my voice beyond arts writing. I’ve appeared on the radio, embarked on a reporting fellowship, found a new social media audience, written new kinds of features with cross-coastal and international bylines, and developed new analytics tools for media organizations. I’ve tried to make myself a multi-hyphenate, because I’m not confident I could survive as a writer otherwise.
 
That’s not to say I feel at peace with my economic situation – no one in the media landscape ever is. In 2019 I’ll keep maneuvering into new channels of work, always conscious of the fact that the old channels can disappear at any moment. There are big things ahead: I’ve got several long-term projects in the works, including a podcast that I desperately want to finish, and I will be spending the majority of the year in Europe. It’s a scary world out there for writers and aspiring creatives. It’s up to us to tame it.
 
Some of my 2018 highlights:

​In fall 2017 I briefly lived in the Bay Area, where I visited the offices of Kanopy, the free arthouse streaming service for libraries and universities. There, the Kanopy team and I began a series of conversations that led this year to my appointment as their “Film Critic in Residence.” I got to attend the Venice and New York Film Festivals, posting my reactions to new films on Twitter and Letterboxd and linking them to films in Kanopy’s library. And if you were a Kanopy user, you also got my email recommendations in your inbox.
 
I’m really excited for where this partnership will lead. Kanopy is, in my view, one of the few bright spots in the modern streaming economy, especially now that FilmStruck is dead. They have direct lines to public libraries and universities across the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand: it’s a potent, powerful network of curious people who love film and culture. Some of the libraries were even excited to engage with my “Film Critic in Residence” project on social media.

Even though I’ve been writing for NPR for eight years, you wouldn’t have heard me on the radio at all before last winter. That seemed like a missed opportunity to me. So one of my goals for 2018 was to hone my radio voice, and NPR and WBUR’s “Here & Now” gave me the opportunity to do just that. I filed several radio reviews for the daily news program, plus a two-way from the Venice Film Festival (as I crouched under my San Servolo hotel blanket, sweating like a pig, to chat about Errol Morris).
 
I hope to keep doing pieces for “Here & Now” into the new year, and I’m also engaged in a more long-term audio project: writing, producing and hosting my own podcast miniseries that has nothing to do with movies. Instead, it’s a personal narrative piece about Michigan history, religious conflict and American fascism. I’m thinking about the show as “a Detroit holy war.” I started work on it nearly a year ago, when I barely knew anything about how to make podcasts, and have been educating myself in the art of audio storytelling all year in-between my paid projects (no small feat).
 
I hope to finally finish the show in 2019. At least, that’s my goal. Please hold me to it. (Some funding from any interested public radio/podcast organizations would be nice! Email me, folks!)

Listen to me on "Here & Now":

• “The 15:17 to Paris” and Hollywood’s history of casting real-life veterans
• “Godard Mon Amour” and male auteur egos
• “The King” and Elvis as a metaphor for America
• Venice!

​This year I made a switch from reviewing most of my movies in Chicago to reviewing most of them on the road in-between my other work. Certainly being in Chicago had had its advantages, the most obvious of which was the chance to see almost every big movie in advance screenings reserved for the press. But that also opened up new problems with time management, because even though I typically only review one film per week, I would feel compelled to see movies just because they were screening and not because I was being paid to see them, even when doing so meant I was diverting my attention away from actual paid assignments.
 
I know a lot of critics will have the mindset that they should see everything that comes out, regardless of whether it’s been made with craft and promise or not. I don’t really agree. For working professionals who have to make a living when we’re not watching movies, carving out most evenings and afternoons just to see something that clearly holds its audience in contempt is an unreasonable demand on our time. And being able to discern the movies of the year that actually deserved our time (like, say, “The Rider”) from the ones that didn’t (“Tomb Raider”) is something every critic should just have a second sense for, anyway.
 
Anyway, so I’ll miss having easy access to films, usually on less than a week’s notice so that I’m ready for most anything NPR wants to assign me. That’s the tradeoff for the freedom of mobility. But I’m good at finding workarounds. Under my new system there are three principal ways I’m able to review films:
 
First, thanks to staggered release patterns, I can see many of the big studio movies in Paris, where I'll primarily be based, days or even weeks before they open in the US. This has led to, ahem, unusual situations… where, for example, I had to attend the 10:00 AM Wednesday matinee of “Fifty Shades Darker” with a bunch of middle-aged French housewives in order to file a review for NPR 32 hours later. And it can also lead to discombobulation: “Under the Silver Lake” and “High Life” opened wide in France this year, so many months will have passed in-between the time I saw them and my ability to write about them for American outlets. I do have to pay full-price for the tickets, but even this will be alleviated in the coming year because I plan to sign up for the Paris equivalent of MoviePass, which (unlike our MoviePass) still lets you see essentially unlimited movies at most area theaters. The downside is with foreign-language films, which only get French-subtitled releases in Paris, not English-subtitled ones.
 
Second, I can request online screeners of films and watch them on my laptop. Obviously this sucks because I lose the theatrical experience completely, but actually this aspect of the job isn’t any different from what it was like in Chicago. It’s the same handful of studios that don’t bother to book theatrical screenings of their releases anywhere but New York and Los Angeles, so their trade-off is they make it very easy for critics to request online screeners. When I place my bids for what I want to review, I pay special attention to who the distributor is, because that will usually determine whether I can get an online screener for it. My radar is on for anything from IFC, Kino Lorber, Oscilloscope, Magnolia, Cohen Media Group, and a handful of other boutique outlets. Luckily, these films tend to be of pretty high quality, or at least interesting enough to withstand 600 words of scrutiny. The inverse of this is I tend to avoid anything from a studio-fronted boutique like Sony Pictures Classics, Fox Searchlight and Focus Features, because the big boys don’t like digital screeners and they’re more likely to wait several weeks or months after the US rollout before releasing one of their films in France. Their loss. Netflix is good with advanced screeners, and I’ve made quite a bit of my income from churning through their endless content mills, but their sheer volume of new stuff frightens me so I can’t bring myself to do a Netflix movie every week.
 
Third, I try to binge as many of the big movies as I can at film festivals before their formal release. This year that strategy worked out pretty well for my Venice and New York visits. It’s how I was able to review “Vox Lux” and “At Eternity’s Gate,” and the strategy also let me build a bank of 2019 releases in my brain so I can pitch them later (“3 Faces,” “Ash Is Purest White,” “The Nightingale,” “Sunset”). Watching a movie at a festival is also, in my experience, the best way to experience something, because that’s where you’ll find the most engaged audiences. Of course, festivals are a massive drain on time and resources, and I have to string together two or three different piecemeal assignments from different outlets just to break even on a festival trip. So they’re a lot of work, but if you see enough films, that work can hopefully morph into an investment down the line.

​I won a fellowship this year, through the Rias Berlin Commission, to travel to Germany and the EU with a group of about a dozen American broadcast journalists. We traipsed from Brussels to Cologne to Berlin, interviewing journalists and politicians and bonding over our shared curiosity for the most pressing issues currently facing Germany, Europe and the world. Then I got a few extra days on the end to report a story on the only NPR station outside of America and travel to Munich.
 
If you’re a journalist, you should apply for this fellowship! They offer it twice a year and for some bizarre reason can never attract enough people. I don’t know why. But check it out.

​Did you expect a film critic would also be into digital media analytics? This year I earned my Master’s in Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. As part of my coursework I served as an analytics consultant for two of the biggest public radio stations in the country: KQED in San Francisco and WBUR in Boston.
 
Here is my wrap-up report on some of the work I did at KQED in 2017.
 
I also produced detailed analytics reports for each of my Kanopy social media projects.
 
I’m available for more news analytics consulting upon request.

• Find more ways to encourage and support emerging writers and critics
• Finish my podcast
• Get on the radio more
• Embrace new opportunities, whatever form they may take (new publications, full-time work, etc.)
• Finish a book proposal and try to find an agent
• Learn French better

Want to ask me about freelancing, film criticism, moving abroad or the digital media world? Want to hire me? Get in touch!

It's the end of the year, and time to catch up on my output for the last six months. Because apparently I only do these posts twice a year now.

I've been writing for NPR since 2011, but had never actually produced a piece for air... until now. For Here & Now, a nationally syndicated midday news program produced by Boston's WBUR, I talked about the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar and shared some of my (totally wrong) picks for what would make the shortlist. I predict you'll be hearing more from me soon.

My biggest and most rewarding personal challenge of 2017 was teaching myself how to produce, host and edit a podcast. By coincidence I wound up crafting the 100th episode of "The Pub," Current's show about public media. I posed the question: should public media employers be more willing to pay relocation fees for new hires, and what kind of talent are they missing out on when they don't?

The best advice I can give about the experience is: Don't try editing sound in GarageBand. Spring for Adobe Audition or something even nicer. Your full head of hair will thank you.

During a fall sojourn in the Bay Area, I hosted a live Q&A in San Francisco with the director and subjects of the documentary California Typewriter, which I reviewed favorably for NPR.

​It was a great experience, and I hope to develop my skills as a live-event emcee in the future. Contact me if you have a film event that needs moderating!

By far the coolest thing I got to do this year was cover the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for IndieWire. In early July I trekked to the Czech Republic resort town to interview honoree James Newton Howard and take a deep dive into how European cinema is wrestling with the most pressing issues on the Continent.

Also, there was a lot of sausage.

I've been writing for Michigan Alumnus for years, and I'm so excited they've recently begun to post their bigger stories online (with a spiffy site redesign, too). The magazine gives me the space to tackle bigger, more ambitious features than I get to write for my usual outlets.

This year I wrote about recent U-M Flint graduate Amir Hekmati, a Marine veteran who was kidnapped and held as a prisoner of the Iranian government for nearly five years until he was released as part of the larger nuclear deal between our two countries. Amir returned home to Flint just as our eventual president was publicly disparaging his family's religion, and just as his hometown was wrestling with a gigantic, self-made public health crisis. To me, Amir's story -- from service to imprisonment to release -- circled many of the larger problems America has had to confront about itself over the last few years. Though he wouldn't grant me an interview owing to his ongoing lawsuit with Iran, I tried to do him justice all the same.

On a lighter note, I also got to write my first-ever music feature, about Ann Arbor funk band Vulfpeck. These guys have become a cult sensation without signing to a major label, and their music-world pranks (like a spat with Spotify) have made national news.

In December, "A Prairie Home Companion" as we know it ceased to exist. Before that happened, I wrote a feature on how the show (which had already been without Garrison Keillor for a year) has progressed under its new leadership. Chris Thile already had an uphill battle with this property; now his challenge has increased tenfold. We may need another update in another year.

A new hopeful PBS show is like "StoryCorps" meets "Finding Your Roots." Thomas Allen Harris spoke to me about embracing family history with "Family Pictures USA" and shooting the pilot in Detroit for the 50th anniversary of the city's civil unrest.

I reviewed Errol Morris's new docu-drama hybrid for Vulture, episode-by-episode. You can find links to full coverage here.

As always, I continued my frantic, insane one-a-week pace of film reviews. All reviews for NPR unless otherwise noted.

• Downsizing: Alexander Payne's smarmy satire about people who shrink themselves for a better life was like a tiny gag reflex. I coughed up so much bile watching this thing that WBEZ's Milos Stehlik called me a "terrible critic" on air. Milos and I have been friendly before, so I think this was performative on his part, but I can't be sure. (12/21/17)
• Birdboy: The Forgotten Children: A hand-drawn Spanish animated feature destined for all the smart, surly teens dying to cast off their Disney childhoods. (12/14/17)
• I, Tonya: Tonya Harding might be America's ultimate rehab project, but this crackling and disarmingly funny biopic goes a long way toward livening her public image. Plus, reviewing this was a nice reward for being forced to usher all of my sister's ice shows when we were little. (12/9/17)
  
• Wonder Wheel: A strong candidate for the worst screenplay Woody Allen has ever written, the director's first post-Weinstein release is not the one to make the case for continuing to take this man seriously as an artist. But at least he gave my editor, Glen Weldon, the chance to make a legendary headline pun. (11/30/17)
  

I haven't updated in a while. Much to share.

One year after hitting our fundraising goal, I was able to present the first annual Kavi Shekhar Pandey Arts Writer Scholarship on April 23, at the Michigan Daily's annual commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor. Shekhar's family was there with me, and I gave a brief speech. 

You can read more about the event and scholarship efforts here. And, if you are feeling generous, you can donate here.

I made my New York Times debut in two pieces for its streaming-guide website Watching. First, a rundown of every recent Best Documentary Oscar winner available online; and second, a guide to Arrival​.

While I was at IndieWire, I wrote a piece (3/7/17) on the then-looming WGA negotiations and whether it seemed likely the writers would strike over a new contract. The disputes were resolved before a strike could happen. But in the interim I appeared on the March 13 episode of The Frame, an entertainment news program out of KPCC in Southern California, to discuss the story.

Steve Bannon used to be a filmmaker, and two of the documentaries he executive-produced were made for public TV. One actually aired on PBS. When President Trump's federal budget request proposed to zero out all funding to public broadcasting, Current assigned me to investigate his chief strategist's public TV history and see how his past could connect to the White House's present. (4/19/17)

Catching up on the last five months of my film reviews for NPR. Surprisingly for the first leg of the year, there was quite a lot worth discussing:

• Violet: A Flemish BMX teen grapples with death in this uncompromising vision, which I first saw in Ghent in 2014. (5/11/17)
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2: No longer fresh, the sequel settles for a cool mixtape.  (5/4/17)
• Obit: A thoughtful documentary about the journalists who chronicle death for a living. I interviewed the director, Vanessa Gould, for Tribeca last year. (4/27/17)
• My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea: A snarky, back-of-the-class animated indie disaster movie. Giddy fun. (4/13/17) 
• Graduation: The new film from the Romanian cinema renaissance is a complex drama about a father's moral duty to family, self, and country. (4/6/17)
• The Zookeeper's Wife: It's yet another "Holocaust movie," this one starring Jessica Chastain - but this one creates some strange (likely unintentional) parallels between Jews and animals. (3/30/17)
• I, Olga: A chilling Czech bio-drama about a young woman who murdered civilians in a truck attack, released the same week as a similar attack unfolded in London. I also interviewed these directors, at Berlinale 2016. (3/23/17)
• Beauty and the Beast: I was not a fan of the latest Disney remake, which CGIs its way out of the source material and is more concerned with nostalgia than wonder. NPR readers were not happy with me. (3/16/17)
• The Last Word: Shirley MacLaine signs on for a round of pointless hero-worship as an unpleasant old woman who commissions her own obituary in advance. Rewatch The Apartment instead. (3/2/17)
• My Life as a Zucchini: A lovely French-Swiss stop-motion feature about a little kid making friends in a group foster home. I recommended parents bring their "smart kids," which did not sit well with the blog Acculturated. "Apparently, what passes for kids’ movies according to NPR and Hollywood’s elites now includes a steady diet of adult content such as murder-suicides, 'puppet nudity,' drugs, and child abuse," they wrote, angry that arthouse movies can't "let kids be kids." If only the world were that simple. (2/23/17)
• A Cure For Wellness: A modern take on the H.P. Lovecraft mad-doctor-in-a-castle horror tales. The atmosphere is stronger than the bloated story. (2/16/17)
• Fifty Shades Darker: It's not really a movie; more like Hollywood-sanctioned erotica. But I had to review it anyway. (2/9/17)
• I Am Not Your Negro: This propulsive documentary about James Baldwin's unfinished book arrived at precisely the moment we were most primed to hear his words again. (2/2/17)
• I Am Michael: A biopic about Michael Glatze, the gay activist turned fundamentalist preacher, that convincingly renders the ideological chasm he chose to cross. (1/26/17)
• The Founder: The all-American story of Ray Kroc, a man who poached a great idea and then became an insufferable rich asshole. I ate a McDonald's burger for the first time in a decade (a Royale with Cheese in Paris) for research. (1/19/17)
• A Monster Calls: Not just another teen tearjerker, this fantasy film about a beast who helps a young boy cope with his mother's cancer has a maturity and sophistication. (1/5/17)​

And one bonus one: the new xXx for Uproxx(xXxXx). (1/20/17)

On the TV side, I investigated Series 4 of Sherlock for Vulture.

• Episode 1: Fairly entertaining. (1/1/17)
• Episode 2: Fun enough. (1/8/17)
• Episode 3: Not good. (1/15/17)

 Happy 2017 to the world. In the final month of last year I continued to churn out stories at a furious rate. Though I didn't complete a Top Ten list for any outlet, I've compiled a Letterboxd ranking of the films that mattered most to me this year. There is only a granular difference in the rankings of any of my top 15 films; I will be equally delighted no matter which you make the time to see.

Here's to a new year of continued writing opportunities.

For Vulture, I reviewed every episode of the odd, fascinating, and wildly inconsistent surprise Netflix show The OA. They can all be found on the site's series page here.

For Current, I filed dispatches from the 2016 Third Coast conference in Chicago, which gathered together audio producers of every stripe. Because it happened to fall immediately after the election, the atmosphere was a nonstop strain of what-now.

• Public radio's biggest politics reporters (Bob Garfield, Sam Sanders, Maria Hinojosa, Zoe Chace) discussed their efforts covering the election and how they can hope to approach the new state of America.
• The weekend's award winners centered around mothers, trauma, and personal narratives.
• NPR announced it would shortly begin distributing the Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante.
• Julie Snyder, executive producer of Serial, shared her insights into the podcast's first and second seasons.
• In my wrap-up report, we see how big money may (or may not) be changing the face of podcasting as we know it.

At Vulture (and later reblogged at Slate, so choose your favorite), I argue the sports-recovery narrative of boxing movie Bleed For This cheats its audience by concluding that serious medical injury is just another problem that can be solved by "believing in yourself."

This piece prompted an interesting Twitter debate with someone in the public TV/documentary system. I have Storified the exchange.

My weekly reviews for NPR, from mid-October to now.

• The Eyes of My Mother: Horror through a new lens. (12/1/16)
• Moana: Disney does right by its princess. (11/23/16)
• Manchester by the Sea: A gorgeous meditation on loss and rebuilding. (11/17/16)
• Arrival: Language will give us hope, give us life. (11/10/16)
• Gimme Danger: Iggy and the Stooges brought Ann Arbor cool to the world. (10/27/16)
• Keeping Up With the Joneses​: Like watching a terrible sitcom cast watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith. (10/20/16)

I've been busy for the last three months. In addition to my work with the Chicago International Film Festival, I've been churning out stories for several places: some old haunts of mine, some brand-new. Consider this my most up-to-date work portfolio.

I've started a new regular series for NatGeo where I interview documentary filmmakers. Below, Q&As with:

• Gurukulam directors Jillian Elizabeth and Neil Dalal, on life in an Indian ashram (7/8/16)
•  Nuts! director Penny Lane, on that time a fake doctor got a nation hooked on goat gonads (7/15/16)
• Indian Point director Ivy Meeropol, on the likelihood of a Fukushima-like nuclear disaster unfolding in New York (7/29/16)
• The Eagle Huntress director Otto Bell, on a teenage girl who became a champion eagle hunter in Mongolia (8/4/16)
• Garnet's Gold director Edward Perkins, on following an eccentric adventurer into the Scottish Highlands in a search for buried treasure (8/15/16)

For Current, I profiled Chris Thile, the bluegrass prodigy and new host of A Prairie Home Companion, as he made his pilgrimage to the Land of the Butter Queen to assure Minnesotans he would do right by their public radio institution. (9/13/16)

For Oscilloscope Musings, I take a deep dive into Jon Shenk's 2011 climate-change documentary The Island President and consider the most effective way to make an "issue doc." (8/3/16)

In August I was inducted into the Chicago Film Critics Association, a tremendous honor. I hope to make my fellow critics proud. Below, I keep up with the current culture:

Movies

• Under the Shadow: The superior Babadook. (NPR, 10/6/16)
• The Dressmaker: A confused dark comedy with pretty costumes. (NPR, 9/22/16)
• Operation Avalanche: Hidden-camera moon goof. (NPR, 9/15/16)
• The Light Between Oceans: Beauty in a moral dilemma. (NPR, 9/1/16)
• Southside With You: The movie version of a plaque. (NPR, 8/25/16)
• Morris From America: An African American in Heidelberg. (NPR, 8/25/16)
• Sausage Party: A filthy Pixar parody, but a surprisingly funny one. (NPR, 8/11/16)
• The Tenth Man: An enticing little nugget from Jewish Buenos Aires. (NPR, 8/4/16)
• Equity: Wall Street equality with Wall Street morality. (NPR, 7/28/16)
• Don't Think Twice: Fake scenes, genuine emotion. (NPR, 7/21/16)
• Ghostbusters: A sharp rebuke to the Slimers of the world. (NPR, 7/14/16)
• Equals: Dystopian YA come to sterilized life. (Uproxx, 7/13/16)
• Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You: Are there still too many Archie Bunkers? (NPR, 7/7/16)
• ​The Purge: Election Year: All concept, no execution. (7/1/16)
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople: Mild, not wild, Kiwi hijinks. (NPR, 6/23/16)

TV

• Vice Principals: Dull, mostly mirthless little-boy humor. (Vulture, 7/17/16)

“Hedi” with director Mohamed Ben Attia (3:30 PM, New Directors Competition)

A dependable worker and good son, Hedi has spent his life doing exactly what’s expected of him. But when he meets a free-spirited dancer at a beach hotel a week before his arranged marriage, Hedi is ready to give up everything he knows. Can he keep up with what the “new Tunisia” holds for him? Produced by the Dardenne brothers (Rosetta), this social-realist drama follows one man’s struggle to find his place in a maelstrom of social change. 

“In the Last Days of the City” with writer-director-producer Tamer El Said (5:45 PM, World Cinema)

This requiem for a lost Cairo follows Khalid, a filmmaker trying to piece together footage of his ailing mother, his neighborhood, and his colleagues on the sidelines of an approaching revolution. In this profound, melancholic portrait, workers’ strikes alternate with Islamist marches and building demolitions, while prophetic conversations hint at the political and social upheaval on the horizon. For Khalid and his compatriots, life will never be the same.

“The Last Laugh” with writer-director-producer Ferne Pearlstein (8:30 PM, Documentary)

Can the Holocaust be funny? In this witty and moving documentary, spanning decades of humor on the most taboo of subjects, button-pushing comics like Mel Brooks and Sarah Silverman discuss why and how they joke about the genocide of their own people, from “Springtime for Hitler” to stand-up zingers. Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors and Jewish community leaders try to decide when they can laugh and when they draw the line.

“Samuel in the Clouds” with director Pieter Van Eecke (6:15 PM, Documentary Competition)

On one of the highest ski slopes in the world atop a Bolivian glacier, Samuel has tirelessly worked for decades as a lift operator. Every day he walks miles up the mountain to cater to tourists from all over the world. But now the glacier is melting, and with it, an entire way of life. More than a vivid snapshot of climate change, Samuel in the Clouds is a sublime, haunting study of a man who longs for a sacred past.

“The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki” with writer-director Juho Kuosmanen (8:30 PM, New Directors Competition)

This fresh spin on the underdog sports film, winner of a top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, centers on Olli Mäki, a champion Finnish boxer in the 1960s. After winning the lightweight title in his early 20s, the mild-mannered Mäki becomes an unlikely cultural figure when he’s given the opportunity to go head-to-head in the ring with an undefeated American champion. The film’s inventive style mimics a vintage black-and-white newsreel.

“Malaria” with writer-director Parviz Shahbazi (8:45 PM, World Cinema)

A young woman elopes with her boyfriend to Tehran. To cover her tracks, she tells her father she’s been kidnapped. With her family in hot pursuit, the couple takes up with a band of bohemian street musicians and forms an elaborate plan for a more permanent escape. Mixing real-life on-the-streets footage with a tense lovers-on-the-run drama, Festival alum Parviz Shahbazi crafts a lively look at the cultural clashes that exist deep within Iranian society.

My latest NPR reviews: Finding Dory and Taika Waititi's Hunt For The Wilderpeople.

This is not my first Pixar joint for NPR -- I also reviewed their past two efforts, Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur. (I'd put Dory somewhere in the middle of those two. They haven't lost their magic completely yet, but there are some warning signs.)