Lady Liberty’s Labours: James Gray’s The Immigrant

How do you make it in America? Work. Work hard. Work harder. So goes the mantra upon which (until recently) the world’s greatest economy and dominant culture was built. But while work will supposedly set you free, what will it cost? Or, at what point does making it—to that ever-moving, unattainable finish line—mean breaking yourself? […]

No(body) Does it Better: Spike Jonze’s Her

“Walk us through this idea of falling in love with your software,” BBC host Emily Maitlist asked Spike Jonze during his award season push for Her (2013). Jonze, rarely the prickly sort, carried himself with the same nice-guy passive aggression as Joaquin Phoenix’s sweet-but-distant Theodore Twombly, a wordsmith for a future Los Angeles startup that […]