The New Republic

Within the first few minutes of David Fincher’s anxious new political drama “House of Cards,” we meet Zoe Barnes, an enterprising young journalist working at the fictional Washington Herald. She’s in a face-off with a seasoned editor, begging him: “Move me online.” She wears a hoodie and jeans; he’s sporting a suit. "I’ll go underground. Back rooms. The urinals. I’ll win over staff members on the Hill.”  READ MORE >>

Every couple of years a movie comes along that exposes the sorry state of contemporary film criticism. I’m not talking about the Jackass franchise or anything starring Danny McBride. I mean the sort of sentimental claptrap that sends otherwise sensible people into raptures of moral self-satisfaction. Dances with Wolves or Crash, for example, both of which rode white liberal guilt like a hobbyhorse all the way to the Oscars. READ MORE >>

Side effects: It’s a curious term, suggesting an assured central purpose, with some collateral consequences—like you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs? Or is it possible that “side effects” is a delusional escape clause, that all effects are part of each other? A side effect may make you ill; but you were sick already. READ MORE >>

James Franco, that jack of all media, is on yet another artistic mission: The star of the soon-to-be-released Disney film Oz: The Great and Powerful is hell-bent on bringing gay sex into mainstream Hollywood cinema. Adding to an already considerable oeuvre of gay-themed projects such as Sal, Howl, Milk, and The Feast of Stephen, Franco and co-director Travis Matthews’s Interior. READ MORE >>