1. WHAT MOVIE THIS REVIEW IS ABOUT James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour, written by Donald Margulies, based on Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky, featuring Jesse Eisenberg and Jason Segel. Financed by […]
The Strawberry Criterion: Trainwreck
If it takes a kind of genius to strike gold, then consider Judd Apatow a genius. In the fifteen years since the cancellation of Freaks and Geeks, that altar before which all unduly cancelled TV shows […]
The Strawberry Criterion: Purity
The first mention of birdwatching in Purity, the fifth novel from Jonathan Franzen, occurs less than five pages from the beginning, in a short aside about the title character’s mother. Then surprisingly, for nearly 500 pages, […]
The Strawberry Criterion: The Last Man on Earth
The Last Man on Earth, whose first season finale aired two Sundays previous, on FOX, theoretically could be–and arguably should be–sued for false advertising, for the high concept bait-and-switch it perpetrates at its own expense. […]
My 2014-2015 NBA Playoff Predictions
In less than an hour, the Washington Wizards will tipoff against the Toronto Raptors in what will likely be the least interesting series in the very interesting 2014-2015 NBA Playoffs. Both teams, after playing consistently […]
The Strawberry Criterion: To Pimp A Butterfly
Musicians faced with great expectations have a tendency to disappear up their own asses. Either out of courage or cowardice, albums like Low, In Utero, Kid A and Yeezus consciously subvert the sound for which their predecessors won acclaim, garnering in those […]
The Strawberry Criterion: Chappie
Editor’s Note: The following review of Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie was written by the fictional robotic star of Chappie, Chappie. All opinions expressed are his own. The Strawberry Criterion: Chappie Chappie good movie, no? Chappie like. Chappie seen it. […]
Leave Jonathan Franzen Alone
The first sentence of “Father Away,” Jonathan Franzen’s essay about spreading the ashes of David Foster Wallace off the coast of Masafuera, ingeniously ends with the word “lobsters.” Over the course of seven clauses, Franzen semantically ferries […]
The Strawberry Criterion: 50 Shades of Grey
Boredom isn’t particularly titillating. If a simple imperative exists for both fucking and filmmaking, it can summarily be expressed as, “Don’t be boring.” This principle applies doubly so to making films about fucking. A great force of […]
baby pictures of famous dictators 