Culture

‘The Body’: The Radical Empathy of Buffy’s Best Episode

As the WB show turns 20, a look at how it dealt with grief in season five

• Sophie Gilbert
• 4:53 PM ET

Kong: Skull Island Is a Likable Near-Miss

Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts’s Vietnam-era reimagination of the giant ape is just good enough to make you wish it were better.

• Christopher Orr
• 12:35 PM ET

Inside France’s Most Controversial Film of the Moment  

The debate around the new French arthouse drama This Is Our Land says a lot about the rise of the country’s far-right.  

• Boyd van Hoeij
• 11:22 AM ET

Personal Shopper Is an Unusual Postmodern Ghost Story

Olivier Assayas’s new film stars Kristen Stewart as a grief-stricken Parisian fashionista who moonlights as a medium.

• David Sims
• Mar 8, 2017

Exit West and the Edge of Dystopia

Mohsin Hamid’s striking, lyrical new novel explores how lives can be upended in the blink of an eye.

• Sophie Gilbert
• Mar 8, 2017

The Game of Thrones Live Experience Lets Fans Bask in the Highlights

The composer Ramin Djawadi leads a concert tour that’s less a musical showcase than a rewind through the HBO drama’s six seasons.

• Spencer Kornhaber
• Mar 7, 2017

We Sell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live

Joan Didion’s South and West: From a Notebook is a 1970s-era artifact that has found its proper home in the anxious world of 2017.

• Megan Garber
• Mar 7, 2017

When Saturday Night Live Loses Alec Baldwin

The show’s current Donald Trump impressionist is signaling his imminent departure, and there doesn’t seem to be a backup plan.

• David Sims
• Mar 7, 2017

The Bachelor Gets Political

The show’s seasonal The Women Tell All special could be read as a cocktail-dress-clad invocation of current events.

• Megan Garber
• Mar 7, 2017

The Peculiar Power of a Zadie Smith Sentence

Dissecting a line from the author’s story “The Embassy of Cambodia,” Jonathan Lee questions his own myopia as a novelist.

• Joe Fassler
• Mar 7, 2017

Chance the Politician

The rapper is spending his good will—and $1 million in ticket sales—on Chicago Public Schools.

• Spencer Kornhaber
• Mar 6, 2017

John Legend on Underground and the Importance of Empathy

The musician and executive producer of the WGN historical drama discusses the contemporary relevance of telling marginalized stories.

• Vann R. Newkirk II
• Mar 6, 2017

Where Saturday Night Live Loses Its Political Power

The show feels less urgent whenever it presents members of the Trump administration as brainless simpletons.

• David Sims
• Mar 6, 2017

What the Instagram of the 1970s Reveals About Los Angeles

A new retrospective looks at a group of young photographers who infiltrated academic slide libraries with radical images of a changing city.

• Laura Bliss
• Mar 6, 2017

The Lucky Ones Is No Ordinary Coming-of-Age Novel

Julianne Pachico’s remarkably inventive debut navigates what it means to grow up wealthy amid the reality of conflict in Colombia.

• Amy Weiss-Meyer
• Mar 6, 2017

Quieter Than 1984, but No Less Terrifying

Kingsley Amis’s 1976 alternate-history masterpiece The Alteration is an overlooked—but timely—novel about the dangers of authoritarianism.

• Jason Guriel
• Mar 5, 2017

Food Critics and the Oscars: The Week in Pop-Culture Writing

Highlights from seven days of reading about arts and entertainment

• The Editors
• Mar 4, 2017

The Atlantic’s Week in Culture

A roundup of our recent writing on arts and entertainment

• The Editors
• Mar 3, 2017

Table 19 Doesn’t Know Whether to Be Nasty or Nice

Jeffrey Blitz’s ensemble rom-com about a group of outcasts at a wedding is unfortunately staid and irritating.

• David Sims
• Mar 3, 2017

In Get Out, the Eyes Have It

Jordan Peele’s fantastic film relies heavily on the sense of sight to amplify its racial horror.

• Lenika Cruz
• Mar 3, 2017