In a year defined by the newly lurid visibility of men’s problems, I was most moved by two series—Dying for Sex and Andor—that offered remarkable performances by women.

With remote locations and characters in exile, some of 2025’s biggest movies gave up on depicting social relations.

Vince Gilligan’s new show imagines a world devoid of any kind of aesthetic experience that isn’t blandly generalizable.

A far from exhaustive guide to the books that our critics dissected, debated, and most admired this year.

A remarkable retrospective shows how Asawa’s art practice emerged from the broken rhythms of daily life, overlapping with family and with community.

The movie starring Paul Mescal makes the life of Shakespeare a melodrama.

Her memoir frequently shows an indifference toward truth, falsity, and meaning. In that way, it’s an artifact of our age.

Life After Cars dares to imagine how different, and enriching, a car-free world could be.

Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is a record of fleeting impressions, irritations, and reflections from the edges of exhaustion.

The author knew recognition of her works would take time—and planned accordingly.

His letters are almost exhaustive accounts of daily life—every good meal, every conversation, every dalliance.

Efforts to surveil and undermine activists went far beyond infamous operations such as Cointelpro.

The Mars craze is a case study in twisting evidence and defying facts.

George Clooney stars as a mega-celebrity who has sacrificed his family life for career success.

What We Can Know imagines a collapsed society, devoid of art and ravaged by rising waters.

With stars Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys and a strong premise, the new Netflix show should be good. So why does it feel so stale?

The new movie about Lorenz Hart evokes a hallowed showbiz past.

Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification is premised on the idea that we created a technological marvel and then corporate greed ruined it. But what if that is not the case?

A new book recovers the origins of a movement recently championed by Sam Bankman-Fried.

Histories of the epidemic tend to focus on coastal cities, but the response was very different in the middle of the country.