Arts Reviews

The constant parade of shocking and disturbing revelations from the Epstein files has been going on for a considerable time now. It shows no signs of coming to an end. Just when we all think that we’ve seen the worst of it, another 10,000 documents enter the public domain. Even though the stories have been widely disseminated, the details of the abuse of young women by the wealthy and powerful remain just as distressing – and scandalous – no matter how many times they are repeated. At some point in the future, Hollywood – or a streaming service, or AI, or however we get our entertainment by then – will

Last June, Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy nepo baby currently running for the open seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District, called out the television mini-series, Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr & Carolyn Bessette. Executive producer Ryan Murphy was, Schlossberg declared, exploiting this couple’s courtship, marriage and death, and “profiting off of it in a grotesque way.” On a key point, Jack can rest easy. Love Story, now airing on FX/Hulu, treats his uncle John F. Kennedy Jr. reverently. Elizabeth Beller, Bessette’s biographer, praises the show for “honoring the legacy of everyone involved.” If JFK Jr. had a single physical flaw – I am grasping at straws here – it was a head

Few connoisseurs of the image are unfamiliar with the great French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927). But his name is, unfortunately, unfamiliar to the lay person. This is a shame: his gloriously detailed, sharply focused black-and-white images of late 19th- and early 20th-century Paris evocatively conjure the shadows and lights of the boulevards, parks and alleyways of the Belle Époque. His astonishing close-ups of finely crafted architectural details are as striking as his sometimes surreal views of storefront windows and food-stall displays. Whether training his bulky large-format view camera on scenes interior or exterior, he reveals an aesthetic sensibility exquisitely sensitive to the world around him. His close-ups of architectural details

Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you probably know the macabre legacy of Martin Scorsese’s early masterpiece Taxi Driver. Released 50 years ago this month, the tale of the eponymous cabbie Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro, still has something potent to say about what can happen when a brooding loner finds himself adrift amid the menace and jammed chaos of New York’s streets with a .44 Magnum for company. Perhaps one of the reasons Taxi Driver resonates with so many people is because of this human void that lies at its center. At one time or another, we’ve all felt as alone as Travis Bickle. Fortunately, most of us are

This year marks the anniversaries of two of David Bowie’s most compelling and powerful albums: 1976’s Station to Station and 2016’s Blackstar. Given that they are often – rightly – described as Bowie’s crowning artistic achievements, amid severe competition from his other releases, they also have the intriguing fillip that both were originally released in January: a fortunate time for the musician, who was born on January 8, 1947, even if it was also the month in which he finally departed this Earth. Yet the comparisons between Station to Station and Blackstar, which came out 40 years apart, are far more pervasive – and persuasive – than the serendipity of

Is music getting worse? Rick Beato is a musician, producer and critic with more than five million YouTube subscribers. His answer would be: yes, pretty much. In a recent video, he compares the 2026 Grammy Song of the Year nominees to those of 1984. There are a few bright sparks among the slate of new songs, but Beato regards most of them as derivative, unoriginal and unlikely to be remembered past the end of the awards show. In contrast, 42 years on, all the 1984 nominees – Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long” among them – are firmly embedded in