Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Upon news of Dolly Parton’s death last week, flags across the country were lowered to half-mast. A petition circulated to rename the Nashville airport in her honor, and social media read like a greatest-hits reel of the charisma and musical acumen that made her universally beloved. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry are joined by three fellow...

In May, two low-budget movies from début filmmakers opened in theatres and quickly made box-office history. “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which together have grossed nearly a billion dollars, defied conventional industry wisdom and inaugurated the burgeoning genre of “Gen Z horror.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are j...

During her tenure as The New Yorker’s television critic, Emily Nussbaum famously railed against ranking the year’s best shows; she once wrote a piece entitled “I Hate Top Ten Lists.” But naming her favorite series of all time is an easier prop...

In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation applies in the culinary realm. The two discuss specialty ingredients that appear on menus for only the briefest of moments, out-of-print cookbooks that go for hundreds of d...

When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to resurfacing beloved cult classics, Vinson Cunningham talks with Hanif Abdurraqib, a contributing writer for The New Yorker and a diehard fan of the Camp Lo project. Abdurraqib d...