John Podhoretz

JOHN PODHORETZ: Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, your congregation, Shearith Israel, has been present in New York City continuously since what year?

In 1892, Sholem Aleichem wrote a poem called “Shlaf, Mein Kind.” “Sleep, My Child.” It went like this: Sleep, my child, my beautiful dear one, Your mama sits beside your cradle, Singing a song and weeping… Your father is in America. They say that in America Everyone is happy, And...

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice , made in 1969, tells the story of two couples, best friends who are navigating the changing mores of the 1960s in Los Angeles. Bob and Carol (played by Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) have gone semi-hippie; they go to New Age retreats, smoke weed, and have decided to practice radical truth-telling. Bob tells Carol he's had a one-night stand with a Berkeley master's student but it was only physical; she says she's okay with it because he was honest. Bob gets offended that she doesn't care. Then Carol sleeps with her tennis instructor; Bob gets jealous but is assuaged by an offer of free tennis lessons.

Every day for 10 years, Epstein spent an hour on Dr. Goldbaum’s couch in deep Freudian analysis. Finally, it was decided that Epstein had had many breakthroughs and that the psychoanalysis had been successful. They said their heartfelt goodbyes, and Epstein left Dr. Goldbaum’s office, supposedly forever.

“Mrs. Grundy” was the term first applied more than two centuries ago to a certain type of social and cultural enforcer, the sort who took it upon herself to intimidate others through her severe disapproval of behavior or ideas she considered improper. Mrs. Grundy has ever been the exemplar of busybody-ish intrusion for the purpose of ruthlessly enforcing conventional priggery.

It's not often that you can use the word "silly" to describe a movie, but when you can, you might be talking about something special, something inspired. I don't mean a movie that embarrasses itself by making a complete hash of its subject, causing you to roll your eyes and shake your head. I mean a movie that wants to be silly and still hold your attention and entertain you. It's a fiendishly tough thing to pull off. A deliberately silly movie is a high-wire act. It has to evoke the real world to get us involved in the story it's telling and then create its own bonkers reality—and once it does so, it needs to keep topping itself in the silliness department because otherwise it will run out of gas.

If you told me a decade ago that antisemites would be increasingly dominant within the Democratic Party, I would have said you were nuts. And yet here we are.

Christopher Nolan does something extraordinarily nervy in his overwhelming new film, The Odyssey . He has made as faithful a version of Homer's poem as could possibly be made in the course of a three-hour running time—all while turning its worldview inside out.

It's now unquestionable: Spider-Man is the most popular character in the history of pop culture. Peter Parker and his adventures have resulted in the sale of more than 360 million comic books since his creation in 1962. In 2002, the original Spider-Man picture with Tobey Maguire was the first movie to make $100 million in its first weekend in America. Brand New Day , the fourth to star Tom Holland since Homecoming in 2017, followed in the original's footsteps by setting the all-time domestic weekend record with $360 million.

There is a Canadian director no one has ever heard of, and just in the past three years he has made three of the most interesting and unexpected pictures of our time. His name is Matt Johnson, and the three movies are Blackberry from 2023, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie from 2025, and Tony , just out this weekend. Blackberry , which I thought was the best film of that year, tells the story of Research in Motion, the firm that made the Blackberry mobile device.