Matthew Schmitz

Amidst a war involving the world’s foremost nuclear powers, Pope Francis has been a lonely voice for peace. For his pains, he has been criticized by commenters on left and right and by leaders in both Russia and Ukraine. Yet he has continued to speak. There is a great deal at stake in whether the . . . . Continue Reading »

Anti-Christian vio­lence is on the rise in Israel. Jewish extremists have attacked Christian sites six times since the new year, compared to nine such attacks in the whole of 2021 and thirteen in 2020. At the Protestant cemetery on Mount ­Zion, Jewish youths desecrated more than thirty graves, . . . . Continue Reading »

In November 2022, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice came out against gay marriage. “I find it disappointing how much time and resources went into fighting for inclusion in the deeply flawed and fundamentally violent institution of civil marriage,” Chase Strangio wrote on . . . . Continue Reading »

Benedict XVI believed that his work was done. Three days after announcing his resignation, he gave a speech on the struggle that had defined his pontificate. It concerned the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, in which he had taken an important part. On one side stood the “true . . . . Continue Reading »

She Said, a film that follows two New York Times reporters as they hunt Harvey Weinstein, debuted in October to rave reviews. Variety described it as “tense, fraught, and absorbing.” The Washington Post deemed it “engrossing, even galvanizing.” The New York . . . . Continue Reading »

In the summer of 2020, HBO removed Gone with the Wind (1939) from its streaming service. The move came in response to an op-ed by John Ridley, screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave (2013), which charged that the film “glorifies the antebellum south,” “romanticizes the . . . . Continue Reading »

In 1891, Charlotte ­Perkins Gilman announced the extinction of the Angel in the House. Gilman, author of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” was one of many feminist writers who had struggled to eradicate this image of meekness and domesticity, which defined what it meant to be a respectable woman in the . . . . Continue Reading »

What Éric Rohmer said of one of his characters could be said of him as well: He was committed to “redoing all of ­Rousseau in reverse.” His films are anti-­romantic. They reject romantic notions of liberation and autonomy. They critique the cult of romantic love. They warn against a romantic . . . . Continue Reading »

Readers of John Cheever’s stories, most of which appeared in the New Yorker before being collected in a Pulitzer-winning book in 1978, regarded the author as “the Ovid of ­Ossining,” the artist who showed the riches and wonders of suburban life. Alert to the transcendent in the . . . . Continue Reading »

In the mid-1940s, Hollywood began to make a new kind of crime film. Combining sex and violence, lust and greed, the “noir” was distinguished by the darkness of its themes and photography. Double ­Indemnity (1944) was, as a critic noted in the New York Times, “the first of the . . . . Continue Reading »