In Cronenberg's latest sci-fi nightmare, human bodies are evolving and surgeons are bringing brand new organs out into the spotlight... in public, as performance art. It's unsettling. It's meaningful. And it's hilarious.

As an action movie, Top Gun: Maverick is compelling entertainment. As art, it exists more as a celebration of Tom Cruise, exalting a version of reckless masculinity and whiteness that I might have hoped we'd left behind.

Before diving fast and furious into a review of Top Gun: Maverick, I should probably provide some personal history about me and Maverick.

Looking Closer has a new Twitter account! Also: Here are my first impressions of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, a link to the latest Arts & Faith movie list, and one of the reviews of The Northman I've been most looking forward to.

Arcade Fire's seven-track tapestry of anxiety, alienation, and disillusionment sounds epic, but it can be a bit disillusioning itself in its obvious sermonizing.

Like Jacques Doillon's Ponette and John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish, Céline Sciamma's new film is about very young children living with loss and grief. And, like those films, it casts an unforgettable spell. Don't miss it!

With full respect for arguments to the contrary, I'm of a mind to say that Robert Eggers's The Northman, while very clearly in the category of "Not My Kind of Movie," is a complex and meaningful film that deserves heavy cautions, the raising of certain concerns, and considerable praise. Viewer discretion is very forcefully advised.

In this edition of The Weekender, a miscellany of podcast highlights, insights on faith and race, a prayer worth memorizing, and a memorable TED Talk.

The greatest films are becoming the most difficult to see in a theater. Memoria — the third transcendent cinematic experience I've enjoyed in 2022 — is, like the others, one that moviegoers will have to seek out on their own, and they're unlikely to ever see it on a big screen.

One of my favorite records of 2021 won the Album of the Year award: Jon Batiste's We Are.

You are arriving at the summit of my 2021 Music Mountain. These are my fifteen favorite albums of 2021

After a few "Weekenders" away, here are a few highlights from the last few weeks.

It has finally begun! On January 20, Looking Closer's look back at favorite recordings of 2021 has begun! Keep watch for Part Two and Part Three, coming soon.

This isn't an easy song to sing along with. It shouldn't be. But it represents a meaningful anger, a broken heart, a soulful lament, a rage expressed in love for those who have been wronged.