The best film of 2019 is a fairy tale about 1969. The film ends with words of beginning. The film elides the end of five lives by giving viewers the ending they deserve. The film ends with the start of the title card: “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood.” The film is
Martin Scorsese's “The Irishman” is an Irishman without wit, charm, charisma, comedy, tragedy, or drink. He reeks not of whiskey, but of AirWick®. He induces the phantom smell of pine, so as to lessen the stench of piss. He looks like a man—an old man—who stinks, who bears the odor of infirmity and incontinence, who absorbs
The gust of wind. The glare of ice. The glint of metal. Between the elements outside and the forces inside, between the opening of a door that dilates like an iris and the turning of a camera that acts as an eye—between panning the room and focusing on a stranger with his back to the
When a member of the military pulls rank on a ranking member of Congress, when he politicizes his service by admonishing a public servant, when he acts as if the ribbons pinned to his jacket are more legitimate than the pin every congressman wears, when he uses his uniform to command attention—and attempts to commandeer
He came to the Lone Star State as the leader of all 50 states. He came as the man who had finished first in America’s second-largest city. He came to Dallas in 1963 as he had come to Chicago in 1960, like a bronze warrior for peace. He left as the first president to have
Despite the adage about Carnegie Hall, the rule about practice does not apply to that musician of language known as Tom Friedman. Because Friedman, whose walrus mustache makes him look like a king among burghers and the in-house philosopher of Burger King, also looks like a 19th-century soldier in a 21st-century world. He looks like
When a politician weakens the dollar and strengthens the price of gold, when his policies undercut the American farmer and enrich America’s strongest foe, when he goes against the grain in so many ways, angering the friends of liberty while befriending the enemies of freedom, critics call him a genius. When another politician leaves his
The invisible hand of self-interest is the right hand of moral sentiments. The charity we give, the alms we perform, the deeds we do, all this depends on the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. To do otherwise is to see the overly sentimental surrender to the overtly sinister. To see
What the Greeks mythologized one man sought to materialize. Blinded by the vanity of his head and the certainty of his heart, this child of the South owed his faith to the North’s southernmost institution. From the burning but flourishing bush of the Presbyterian Church, to flourishing under the God of Princeton University, this man
By approving the rules on an impeachment inquiry, by having each member of the House of Representatives vote on this resolution, by revealing the number of votes in favor of this resolution, by recording the names of each voter, by entering each vote into the Congressional Record, by making the votes accessible in print and
