The Current Cinema

Love and Physics

By David Denby

“Interstellar,” an outer-space survivalist epic created by the director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan, with whom he co-wrote the screenplay, is ardently, even fervently incomprehensible, a movie designed to separate the civilians from the geeks, with the geeks apparently …

Books

Table Talk

By Louis Menand

Washington, D.C., is a two-industry town. In theory, the people in government work their side of the street, passing laws and implementing policies that reflect the will of the electorate, and the people in the press work their side, reporting and opinionating on the laws and policies …

Books

Briefly Noted

Us, by David Nicholls (Harper). In his best-selling novel “One Day,” Nicholls followed the will-they, won’t-they journey of two young characters struggling with love and early careers. This new book is a thematic sequel, concerned with the disintegrating marriage of a middle-aged …

A Critic at Large

Better All the Time

By James Surowiecki

In the summer of 1976, Kermit Washington was in trouble. He was a power forward in the N.B.A., and had just finished his third season with the L.A. Lakers. He had been a highly touted player coming out of American University, where he averaged twenty points and twenty rebounds a

The Theatre

The Lover

By Hilton Als

Witty rarely, if ever, plays as sexy. Onstage and off, wits base their identity on language and seduce through talk, not through silent-movie friction. Poor Henry (Ewan McGregor), in Tom Stoppard’s 1982 play, “The Real Thing” (in a Roundabout Theatre Company revival, at the American …

Pop Music

Looped In

By Sasha Frere-Jones

For some musicians, the link between persona and material is as short as a wick. With Taylor Swift or Frank Sinatra, songs and singer line up and suggest a single human being, with the music presented as evidence of lived experience. Other musicians, like actors, create things that …