Books & Culture
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Critic’s Notebook
The Delicious Anticipation–and, Yes, Release—of “Heated Rivalry”
The show, a sexy romance between two closeted hockey players, began on a small Canadian streaming platform, but has become a huge, unexpected hit.
The Front Row
“Dead Man’s Wire” Is a Tangle of Loose Threads
In dramatizing a real-life hostage crisis from 1977, Gus Van Sant teases out enticing themes that remain undeveloped.
Persons of Interest
The Gospel According to Emily Henry
How the best-selling author of “People We Meet on Vacation” channelled her love of rom-coms—and her religious upbringing—into a new kind of romance novel.
The Theatre
In Tracy Letts’s “Bug,” Crazy Is Contagious
A Broadway revival arrives at a moment when paranoia plots are everywhere.
The Lede
What “The Pitt” Taught Me About Being a Doctor
It’s as if the show’s creators absorbed every important conversation in health care today—and somehow transfigured it into good television.
Goings On
Dances of the Georgian Court and Countryside
Also: Bang on a Can and St. Vincent in Richard Foreman’s “What to Wear,” the celestial folk of Cassandra Jenkins, Jennifer Wilson and Richard Brody on comfort in the cold weather, and more.
Open Questions
Is Life a Game?
In “The Score,” the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen argues that play is the meaning of life.
The Current Cinema
The Zealous Voyagers of “Magellan” and “The Testament of Ann Lee”
In two historical bio-pics, the directors Lav Diaz and Mona Fastvold employ bold formal devices to hold their protagonists at a compelling remove.
Postscript
Béla Tarr’s Unbroken Visions
In muckily deliberative masterworks such as “Sátántangó” and “The Turin Horse,” the Hungarian director monumentalized the process of decay and the passage of time.
