A TV Star Wants You to Read More: A Conversation with Kail Lowry

Vanessa Ogle: You’ve written memoirs and even a children’s book, but most know you from reality TV, your podcast empire, and social media. Why is it important for you to still make space for literature in a world where social media can be more profitable?
Kail Lowry: For me, I felt like I was spending too much time on social media. I was doomscrolling for a long time. I didn’t really feel like I could be present in anything I was doing because I was so busy making content or consuming content.

Tom Cruise, Misunderstood Übermensch: On Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger

I’ll say this for Digger — it made me think. Specifically, it made me think about two things: 1) just how condescending Alejandro G. Iñárritu is being towards his audience; and 2) whether Tom Cruise is simply too great a movie star to be a great actor as well. In an attempt to honor the spirit of this ultimately unpleasant film, I’ll begin by pretending to answer the first question, until I can’t, at which point I’ll begin to answer the second, until I can’t, at which point I’ll simply give up and point to the world outside . . .

The Greatest Action Movie of the 2020s: On Na Hong-jin’s Hope

No beating around the bush here, since the film itself doesn’t: Na Hong-jin’s Hope is extraordinary. Is it also ridiculous, bloated, and a bit overlong? Sure, yes, who cares. Is it trolling its audience with its last-act alien shenanigans? Possibly, though a sequel is (hopefully, eventually) on the way. Is it given to dangling important threads in front of its audience, only to distract them with the equivalent of a piano falling on someone’s head? Absolutely. But none of this matters.

The Millennials Who Can’t Stop Thinking About Themselves: On Meaghan Oppenheimer’s Tell Me Lies

The title of Hulu’s dark melodrama, Tell Me Lies, is an imperative. To read it is to put yourself in the willfully self-deluded position its ensemble of preternaturally beautiful late-aughts undergraduates occupy; like Lucy, Bree, and Pippa, like their male counterparts, Stephen, Evan, and Wrigley, we invite, nay, we demand, our share of falsehoods, comforting, harmful, scandalous as they may be. Viewers begin the show from the self-deluded vantage it explores.

Are the Movies Actually Back?: On a Summer at the Cinema

The hottest, driest summer on record is coming to an end, and all through the digital ether the call is going out: “THE MOVIES ARE BACK. THE MOVIES ARE BACK.” This month marks my first year as film critic at The Metropolitan Review, so perhaps it’s time to editorialize and examine the claim. Are “the movies” indeed “back”? Are young people about to witness a renaissance the likes of which no generation has seen since those rolling New Waves of the ’60s?

A Modern Age Failure: On Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey

There is a scene, early in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 masterpiece Le Mépris, that surely contains the ultimate cinematic statement on Homer’s Odyssey. An American producer has asked the film’s screenwriter protagonist to help rewrite an adaptation of The Odyssey helmed by the great German director Fritz Lang (playing himself, beautifully). The writer comes to meet Lang in the studio and watches a few rushes for the proposed film.

The Spielberg Century: On Disclosure Day

If it seems odd to call Steven Spielberg a 21st-century filmmaker, that’s surely because Steven Spielberg has had an odd 21st century. On the surface there’s been little consistency to his choice of projects. Yet look closer, and some themes emerge. There are the weird one-offs (The Adventures of Tintin), hokey throwbacks (War Horse, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), a remake (West Side Story), and weird vanity projects (The BFG, Ready Player One).

A Metropolitan Review Film Chronicle: Two Young Writers On Michael and Backrooms

After an eight-year hiatus from feature films, actor and comedian Mike Myers shocked audiences around the world with a surprise return in 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, playing a fictional record executive who rejects the titular song for its length and perceived radicalism. Myers’ appearance remains one of the more bizarre facts of his late career, given that his character is wholly made-up and the struggles presented on-screen for Queen are entirely fake, which does raise the question of whether he simply wandered onto set and started messing around.

Wishin’ and Hopin’ (and Dyin’): On Curry Barker’s Obsession

Obsession is a nifty little horror movie. Genuinely disturbing, and exhausting, it seems destined to become a midnight movie classic, if we still have that kind of thing anymore. That the film was made for a pittance (less than $1 million) and has just become the least expensive movie since 2009’s Paranormal Activity to top the box office is an obvious victory for buzzy little movies, and a hopeful sign that audience interest can still accrue somewhat naturally around a tiny film like this. Of course, it’s still 2026, so said film must almost inevitably be a horror film and some kind of conversation piece.

Will Cinema Get Brave Again? On Kristoffer Borgli’s The Drama

They’ve been calling Kristoffer Borgli this year’s enfant terrible, and I can’t be bothered to figure out why. I’ve been avoiding all The Drama drama. I’ve fully opted out. Deep within my brittle bones I’ve grown more than fatigued by the cinematic discourse du jour. I’ve started to feel its weight, like a particularly evil germ, haunting my digestive tract.

The Ungraspable Oz: On the Great American Film

Christmastime in Las Vegas: tinsel on the slot machines, Santa hats on the pit bosses, short days, vivid winter sunsets, balmy nights. Tourist shortages have recently put the city in a nervous mood, as Americans increasingly choose to gamble from the safety of their couches, but you wouldn’t know that making your way through the crowds that fill the plush lobbies and malls and casino floors of the Wynn and the Venetian and the Flamingo, crowds of staggering variety: couples and families from Tel Aviv, from Dubai, from Shenzhen, all there to experience the most American of cities, that strange neon bloom in the desert built on mob money and defense money and the fantasy of hitting it big.

Was 2025 Hollywood’s Turning Point? On Oscar’s Season, 28 Weeks Later: The Bone Temple, and The Moment

Oscars Season is upon us, and consistent readers can probably guess which films I favor for the biggest awards. One Battle After Another certainly seems like a lock for Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay — and as our greatest working director, Paul Thomas Anderson deserves to finally be recognized by the Academy. So you’ll get no complaints about that from me.

What Three Films Tell Us About 2025: On Bugonia, Ella McCay, and Peter Hujar’s Day

I want to take advantage of the ramp-up to Oscar season — a wonderful time, during which my inner child will always be excited, no matter how pessimistic I’ve become over the years. I believe in being candid, so I’ll admit this serves a dual purpose: (1) allowing me to get to a few films from 2025 which I still have yet to review, and (2) allowing for time, since movies are usually released much later here in London than in the States, and several enticing films (Sirât, Resurrection, Sound of Falling, The Moment, The Secret Agent) haven’t even hit theaters.