Best of BordoLines: Movies and TV, 2023-2025
From my first, barely read stack (on “1883”) to the one that took flight (on “A Complete Unknown”), I’ve loved writing about the intersections of Movies/TV, politics, and feminism. Here’s a selection.
Dr. Mel, Cassie, and “The Pitt”
“I’m neurodivergent so I think it’s [her portrayal of Dr. Mel King] really coming from me. I have severe ADHD. So we’re on the same spectrum now as autism, which was I think for all ADHD people was like, ‘Ohhhhh.’ And then all autistic people are like, ‘That’s why we got along with them.’ [B]eing on the same spectrum, it just feels, it felt right anyway…
A Complete Fiction: Suze Rotolo and the Woman Problem of “A Complete Unknown”
This is not a movie review. This is about mythology. This about how the male gaze seduces us with pleasure, and hides itself behind art. This is about the eclipse of real women. This is a protest song.
The Male Id as “Sexual Liberation”: Watching “Last Tango in Paris” in 1973 and 2025
Pauline Kael was my idol when I first saw Bertolucci’s “Last Tango in Paris” in 1973. I loved her irreverence, her disdain for the intellectual snobbishness of other critics, the zingy but literate way she put words together, and perhaps most of all her fierce and often funny anti-Puritanism.
Shame, Sex, and the Female Body (Published in “The Metropolitan Review”):
A Tom Ripley For Our Times
“Really, I don't mind too much if they take liberties with my plots, because they're trying to do something quite different from a book, and I think they have a right to change the story as much as they wish. I couldn't write a book with the idea in my mind that it was going to be a film. That would be like thinking of a statue when you're painting a pi…
Anora, Anora, Anora!!
Sean Baker’s “Anora” invites our capacities for feelings, not judgment, to accompany one young, female sex worker through a few roller-coaster, genre-defying weeks in her life. Like all of Sean Baker’s films, it refuses an ending that tells us what to think. It doesn’t tie things up and lead us to a morally unambiguous conclusion but to the perfect, emo…
“Barbie” and the Oscars: Let’s Get More Precise About the “Snub”
It’s been years since I’ve seen the term “misogynist” deployed so intensely and repeatedly, both by people enraged at the Academy for leaving Greta Gerwig off the list of nominated directors, and by critics challenging the outcry (as in “misogynist” said with rolled eyes.) That right there should tell you it’s not a very useful word in the context of th…
“The Bear” is Not a Comedy
“One of the most persistent questions in television was seemingly answered last night, as the win for Outstanding Comedy Series went not to the reigning champ but to Hacks.”
Three Lolitas
To my delight (and amazement), I was elected in 2023 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“Succession” and Reality
Sunday’s Succession episode, “America Decides,” marks an eerie full circle moment for the HBO series as it prepares to close its fourth and final season. Almost seven years ago the cast and crew had their pilot table read on Election Day 2016; that evening, many of the team members gathered at the home of series executive producer
TV Watch: “The Diplomat” and “Happy Valley”
It isn’t just the fact that they both could use a hair-cut
Your work is truly fantastic--consistent, incisive, clever, insightful. So glad you started this Substack, and I know I'm not alone. And love this review.
Regarding Last Tango in Paris, it was recently on television. I taped it and started watching, for the first time since it came out. At that time, I also read Kael's review, and was excited about seeing the movie in a theater. But watching it then, I did not understand what all the excitement was about.
This time, I was so appalled by the scene when they first encounter each other in the empty apartment, that I could not watch the rest of it. I had seen Bertolucci's movie The Conformist a few years before, and was struck by it, notwithstanding the influence of THC. So Last Tango in Paris disappointed me then, and disgusted me, the little that I saw of it, this time around.
It is not unheard of for filmmakers to make trouble for their performers, but this really seems below and beyond.