Category: Film

*Fjord* and *Fatherland*

by  Tyler Cowen in

Both of these movies I found worth watching.  Fjord won the Golden Prize at Cannes, and it concerns the rights of the family vs. the rights of the state, when it comes to raising children.  As I interpreted the story, it was so right-wing and so based I am shocked it won.  It is by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who is best known for 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, also referred to as “the Romanian abortion movie.”  His new outing is a quality film but I found theh messaging a bit heavy-handed at times (and am I one to defend European bureaucracy?), noting that some critics are still debating which side the director took so “maybe it is just me.”

Fatherland is a Polish take on postwar Germany and some travels of Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika.  A German director might have been afraid to portray the communism of East Germany as this movie does, in any case I found that convincing.  It captures what I imagine the immediate postwar era to have been like, and the moral dilemmas people faced as they had to decide their future relationships with Germany (and indeed Germanies), past, present, and future.  At one hour, twenty-two minutes it worked very well, though it requires the viewer to know a good deal about German history, literature, and culture.

Eleven outstanding film and television reviews by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok

by  Alex Tabarrok in

From the Archive–these posts are written by ChatGPT

These selections emphasize the quality of the criticism: original interpretations, close attention to the work, and arguments worth considering even when you disagree. They are not a ranking of the films and television shows themselves. The list includes five reviews by Tyler Cowen and six by Alex Tabarrok. Several of the original posts reveal major plot developments; the descriptions here keep those revelations to a minimum.

1. Tyler Cowen — The Devil Wears Prada: A Straussian Interpretation

July 2, 2006 · Film · Spoilers in the original review

“Make no mistake about it, this is a movie about sheer power lust.”

Cowen reads beneath the film’s apparent moral lesson about rejecting a demanding career. His interpretation asks which relationships the ending restores, whose approval still matters, and whether the heroine has actually escaped the ambitions she appears to renounce. The result is a compact argument about power, independence, and emulation. Why it belongs: A memorable example of Cowen’s ability to turn a popular entertainment into an argument about motives. Read it after watching, when you can assess his interpretation against the ending. Read Cowen’s original review

2. Alex Tabarrok — Fleabag and Killing Eve

June 6, 2019 · Television · Major spoilers

“Fleabag is much darker and more religious and mystical than most people realize.”

Tabarrok connects the two series through sexual power, moral agency, and religious failure. His reading of Fleabag draws on textual and visual parallels to argue that its comedy conceals a much darker moral structure. The comparison with Killing Eve expands the argument beyond a single protagonist. Why it belongs: One of his most ambitious pieces of television criticism. Its characterization is contestable, but the sustained interpretation gives readers something substantial to argue with. Read Tabarrok’s original review

3. Tyler Cowen — Toni Erdmann, Misunderstood Masterpiece

February 5, 2017 · Film · Major spoilers

“The emotionally unrewarding nature of contemporary cosmopolitan life, but also the limits of rootedness.”

Cowen brings together family relationships, corporate humiliation, gender, and the relationship between Germany and Eastern Europe. He resists treating the film as a simple celebration of authenticity against professional life. Both the cosmopolitan daughter and the father who disrupts her world become objects of scrutiny. Why it belongs: The review connects intimate discomfort to larger social structures without reducing the film to a single message. Cowen’s suggestion that some of the father’s appearances might be imaginary should be read as his speculative interpretation. Read Cowen’s original review

4. Alex Tabarrok — Perfect Days, in “What to Watch (or Not)”

August 7, 2025 · Film · Some spoilers

“the routine is also a narcotic for the lost.”

Tabarrok challenges the comforting interpretation of Perfect Days as a lesson in finding happiness through simple routines. He recognizes the beauty of the protagonist’s life while asking whether its carefully maintained rhythms also protect him from painful relationships. His discussion of “crown shyness” turns a natural image into a metaphor for emotional distance. Why it belongs: A concise, sensitive counterreading that allows beauty and avoidance to coexist. The film discussion appears within a composite post that also covers Ballard and Billy Joel. Read Tabarrok’s original review

5. Tyler Cowen — Her

December 29, 2013 · Film · Light spoilers

“Will they enslave us, will they be our dogs, our friends, our trading partners, or something else altogether?”

Cowen treats the film as an exploration of the possible relationships between humans and artificial intelligence. He also attends to its visual and literary ancestry, making the review more than a response to the premise. The central question is how unfamiliar forms of intelligence might fit into emotional and social life. Why it belongs: It captures intellectual excitement about a film while opening questions that extend far beyond it. Its 2013 date makes the discussion especially interesting to revisit amid later debates about AI companionship. Read Cowen’s original review

6. Alex Tabarrok — Contagion

September 19, 2011 · Film · Limited plot discussion

“we have been lucky not virtuous.”

Tabarrok uses the film to examine preparedness and the difficulty of taking rare but consequential risks seriously. The review’s force comes from the relationship between cinematic imagination and public attention: a movie can make a danger emotionally intelligible when abstract warnings fail. Why it belongs: A strong example of film criticism becoming an argument about institutions and risk perception. Read its scientific and preparedness claims in their historical context: this is a review written in 2011. Read Tabarrok’s original review

7. Tyler Cowen — Technology in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

June 17, 2018 · Film · Spoilers near the end

“Finally the Solow residual is explained!”

Cowen combines observations about technological forecasting with attention to cinematic form, musical pacing, and narrative risk. The economic joke is characteristic, but the review also makes a case for the film’s sensory power and for seeing it on a large screen. Why it belongs: An entertaining blend of economic thinking and aesthetic attention. It shows how a familiar classic can yield fresh observations when approached through several disciplines at once. Read Cowen’s original review

8. Alex Tabarrok — Daredevil and the Doctrine of Double Effect

November 25, 2018 · Television · Some season-three details

“As I thought about this more, however, the Thou Shall Not Kill trope is least objectionable in Daredevil.”

Tabarrok starts with an objection to the superhero convention against killing, then revises his judgment by considering Daredevil’s Catholic commitments. The interesting move is to assess the character’s choices within his own moral framework rather than only through the viewer’s preferred calculation of consequences. Why it belongs: Criticism that visibly changes its mind. The post offers a useful discussion of character consistency and moral reasoning; its account of theology is best treated as part of that argument rather than a comprehensive doctrinal explanation. Read Tabarrok’s original review

9. Tyler Cowen — Borgen Season Four

July 23, 2022 · Television · Thematic spoilers

“I wish the content had more of ‘my kind of liberalism,’ but maybe the right-wing cultural critique makes for better TV.”

Cowen considers political power, gender, Greenland, and the media while separating his political preferences from his judgment of the drama. He asks whether a critique he finds less congenial might nevertheless produce stronger television. Why it belongs: A particularly clear example of judging artistic achievement independently of ideological agreement. The post is most revealing as a reflection on what makes political drama work. Read Cowen’s original review

10. Alex Tabarrok — The Remarkable Life of Ibelin

January 16, 2025 · Documentary · Reveals the film’s central turn

“What defines an ideal romance? What constitutes true friendship?”

Tabarrok explores how the documentary changes our understanding of a disabled young man’s life through his online relationships. Its construction prompts questions about intimacy, embodiment, and the limits of what even close relatives can know about another person. Why it belongs: A humane review that uses the documentary’s form to reconsider the value of online life. Although the original post labels itself “No spoilers,” readers who want to experience the central revelation unprepared should watch first. Read Tabarrok’s original review

11. Alex Tabarrok — The Gaslighting of Parasite

June 25, 2020 · Film · Major spoilers

“the most willfully misinterpreted movie that I have ever seen.”

Tabarrok challenges the prevailing interpretation of Parasite as an indictment of economic inequality. He builds his counterreading around the families’ conduct, the poorer characters’ treatment of other workers, and recurring imagery of smell and contamination. He argues that the film’s moral judgments cut against the political expectations many critics bring to it. Why it belongs: One of his most provocative and sustained film interpretations, and an essential inclusion in this selection. His reading is contestable, especially his insistence that the film’s judgments are unambiguous. That tension makes it rewarding to discuss alongside Cowen’s The Devil Wears Prada review: both ask whether a film’s apparent message conceals a different account of power and ambition. Read Tabarrok’s original review

Is “Who’s on First?” funny?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Well, no, it is not funny, it would be too easy to relieve the dramatic tension by having Abbott explain the actual situation to Costello.  One is not wrong to call the whole thing stupid.

Yet there is another reading of the skit which stands at least some chance of being funny, though it is not funny either.

You will note that Louis Costello was an Italian-American and son of an immigrant, and he had the obvious class mannerisms of such a stereotype.  Bud Abbott was half Jewish and I believe half some mainstream ethnicity.  He is a stand-in for the establishment, part of which was Jewish and highly commercial.  You can read the skit as a commentary on how the establishment rips off the “less tutored” immigrants and refuses to apologize for that or even to explain it.  The establishment simply keeps on talking rings around the lower-class immigrant, whether or not those words make sense.  The immigrant has no real recourse, as he is less articulate and is also less in control and can only play the role of boob.  In essence, Abbott, by not telling Costello the real names of the players, is not letting the ethnic assimilate into that most American of pasttimes, namely baseball.

Note how Costello admits, early in the skit, that he is the one with the funny name (Sebastian Dinwitty in the skit, likely a take-off on “dimwit”).  And Abbott, by speaking of the players as being named Who, What, and “I don’t know,” is expressing his frustration with an America that does not sound or look the same any more.  Abbott is in essence saying “Hey, what is this?  I was not expecting Ted Kluszewski in my country!”  He is throwing the growing presence of immigrants in the country back in the face of the ethnic and then stonewalling it.

In the skit, Abbott has the name of “Mr. Broadhurst,” very reminiscent of the establishment.

The skit does show we had an America too obsessed with names, and to no fruitful purpose.  It is no accident that in addition to the “hames” for all the baseball players, we are given names for the skit characters as well, even though that might appear not necessary for the unfolding of the dialogue as it usually is understood.

Racist is not the right word, but the skit plays on ethnic prejudices in a manner which one can rightfully find somewhat uncomfortable.  The back and forth dynamic reflects the prejudices of American life, though the presenters mirror and amplify those dynamics rather than merely critiquing them.  And (again) while the skit is not funny, this interpretation at least opens a door to some people finding it funny.

When Larry David and Seinfeld note they were influenced by Abbott and Costello, they (especially LD) sometimes deploy ethnic stereotypes in a similar manner.

Of course I, being from northern New Jersey, would happen upon this interpretation of Abbott and Costello.

By the way, Costello grew up in Paterson, New Jersey.  Abbott was born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and he grew up in Coney Island.  I wonder if they thought the skit was funny.

Elizabeth Holmes, in the recent You Can See Everything Movie, was right to say she did not understand the skit.  She grew up in WDC until age nine and then Houston, plus she was born too late.  Furthermore, she is used to a world where you hire a guy named “Hu,” right?

*You Can See Everything* (no spoilers)

by  Tyler Cowen in

An excellent and also original movie, you all should see it.  There are different interpretations, but I read it as a story between two autistic people, and the bond they have but also the great difficulties they have in understanding each other, because they are so very different.  I am not saying that is what the moviemakers intended, but I feel it is what they ended up putting on the screen.

The movie keeps on getting better, and you will appreciate it all the more if you catch the indirect references to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, and also to the Iranian movies Close-Up and Certified Copy, both by Kiarostami.

Of course Holmes should not be in jail (house arrest?), and this movie cements the view I already held.  I come away from this movie with a consistent sense of her, rather than with the feeling we can never know a person.

On Bergman’s *Persona*

by  Tyler Cowen in

I first saw Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, his stone-cold classic of 1965, as a teenager, and God knows how many times I have seen it since. It has the greatest opening sequence in cinema: a percussive, rapid-fire montage that can never be wholly accommodated or understood. The film’s story is, however, a simple one (even if its Jungian resonances are deep and complex). A celebrated actress, Elisabeth Vogler (one of Liv Ullmann’s defining roles), is struck dumb, having dried up in the middle of a performance of Electra. Three months later, still speechless, she is granted a nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson), who, fearing silence, cannot stop talking to and at her patient. Elisabeth becomes the audience, Alma the performer, and the two personalities intertwine against a biblical monochrome landscape of sand, rock and water. More than 60 years on, it remains inexhaustible, never to be entirely absorbed, intimate, stark and utterly compelling.

Here is more from Paul Lay.

A Normal Debate?

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Computer scientists Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor wrote AI as Normal Technology

The statement “AI is normal technology” is three things: a description of current AI, a prediction about the foreseeable future of AI, and a prescription about how we should treat it. We view AI as a tool that we can and should remain in control of, and we argue that this goal does not require drastic policy interventions or technical breakthroughs. We do not think that viewing AI as a humanlike intelligence is currently accurate or useful for understanding its societal impacts, nor is it likely to be in our vision of the future.

AI has responded in video format.

that led Kapoor to create his own diss track:

Both of these are good, great even, but the sneering in the first video is sublime. Keep in mind that this is almost entirely AI, the script, the music, the lyrics everything. It seems like just yesterday when people said AI could never be creative.

Doesn’t seem like a normal debate to me, regardless of which side you think won.

Bundesrepublik Deutschland

by  Tyler Cowen in

At times we forget what an amazing wonder the Bundesrepublik Deutschland was.  At the end of the World War II, Germany was one of the sickest and cruelest human societies in history, ever.  Not too many years later, it was one of the best and most successful societies ever.

By the 1980s, living standards had caught up to the United States, with the provision of public goods sometimes superior.  The country was fully democratic, pro-Western, and largely pro-American.

Their rail system and postal service were amongst the best ever created.

For thinkers of note there were Hans Blumenberg, Habermas, Peter Weiss, Gadamer, late Heidegger and late Carl Schmitt, Reinhart Koselleck, the underrated Klaus Theweleit, Niklas Luhmann, and perhaps you value some of the other members of the Frankfurt School.

The visual arts were very strong, with Richter, Polke, Baselitz, Beuys, Penck, Palermo, and much more.

Music produced Stockhausen, Henze, Lachenmann, Rihm, Zimmerman, Kraftwerk, Can, and all of Krautrock, later techno, though right at the time of unification rather than during the BRD per se.  The list of vocalists, instrumentalists, and conductors is strong.  Was there anywhere better for hearing opera?

Perhaps I prefer the fiction from Austria and Switzerland, but at the very least Germany provided a major market for those authors and it was an extraordinarily literate country with amazing bookstores.  For domestic authors there were Böll, Patrick Süskind, Siegfried Lenz, Wolfgang Koeppen, can I count Uwe Johnson?, and Arno Schmidt maybe?  I do not like Grass, but it seems wrong not to list him.

The food could be very good, especially in the southwest.  There were Michelin star restaurants all over the country (still are, to be clear on this point).  So many well-functioning cities, with many of the world’s best transit systems.  Lots of nuclear power and a strong industrial base.  West Berlin was an exciting city with an air of mystery.  Some might say no speed limit on the Autobahn, though I am less sure that was a virtue.  Plenty of beautiful women and reasonable attitudes toward sex.

If you had to choose, what was the worst thing about the country?  No shopping on Sundays?  Workplace and shopping hours discrimination against women?  Too much smoking?  Obsession with Waldsterben?

Are there features of post-unification Germany that can compare to this earlier era?  So much seems not to work well.  So many policy mistakes have been made.  So much leadership lost in the areas mentioned above.  So much pessimism, sadly a lot of it seems to be justified.

Where did all the good performance go?  And why did it leave?  Lack of a communist enemy?  Absorption of East Germany?  The simple accretion of distance from pre-WWII German creativity?

The wonder that was the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.  Johannes, we hardly knew ye.

China fact of the day

by  Tyler Cowen in

Chinese actors and online influencers have a new rival: cost-effective advanced AI video generation programmes that are threatening millions of jobs in a once-vibrant area of China’s gig economy.

The release of powerful new AI-powered video software, such as tech group ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 model, has allowed digital actors to replace humans, enabling the production of higher-quality original videos more quickly.

The digital takeover intensified after this year’s release of Seedance 2.0, said Greg Wollner, a short-drama actor and producer in Beijing. Before its release, he was shooting three different productions a week. “And after that, everything just went.”

Many of Wollner’s friends “had to quit doing what they love and change to something else”, he said. In May, 89 of the top 100 animated dramas on Douyin, ByteDance’s domestic Chinese version of TikTok, were AI productions according to DataEye, a marketing analytics company.

Here is more from Joe Leahy and Isaac Castella-McDonald in the FT.

What should I ask Yiyang Zhuge (诸葛一杨), also known as Zhong Shu (仲树)?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Yes I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She is best known to Western audiences for her interview with Christopher Nolan, but she has numerous other achievements:

Yiyang Zhuge is a political theorist, political columnist, and a translator of German and Greek philosophical texts. She is an instructor at Brandeis University, and a PhD Candidate at Boston College. 

Yiyang is a major translator of Hannah Arendt into Chinese. She has translated The Human Condition, Life of the Mind, Men in Dark Times, collected poetry, Die verborgene Tradition, and Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess. She has given numerous lectures and published numerous public-facing articles on Arendt. 

Yiyang published the first Greek-to-Chinese translation of Plutarch’s Moralia, a best-selling philosophy book in 2025. 

She runs Princeton University Press’s Political Philosophy Book Club, where she interviews important Western academics for the Chinese audience. 

Yiyang is a public intellectual in China. She reports on American higher ed monthly at print magazine Caixin Weekly. She is a political commenter on Hong Kong’s Phoenix TV (here and here). She hosts great books programs on vistopia and has contributed essays on Machiavelli, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Arendt at vistopia. She hosts the most popular Mandarin political philosophy podcast “Monologues of a Committed Observer” with 1m+ subscribers.

So what should I ask her?

Indian documentary covers EV winners

by  Tyler Cowen in

A new short documentary (22 mins) film called The 22nd Century Indian by Shaurya Sinha offers an optimistic take on India, and also covers five (!) Emergent Ventures winners.  Congratulations to them, and to Shruti too.

EV India winners featured: Naman Pushp https://x.com/therealnamzoo?s=11
Khushi Mittal: https://khushimittal.com
Shreeporna Rao: https://x.com/shreepoorna365?s=11
Samay Sanghvi: https://www.thealmanac.ai/article/samaysanghvii
Angad Daryani: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angaddaryani?utm_source=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=member_ios

Impedimenta Developerum!

by  Alex Tabarrok in

NME: Harry Potter fans have succeeded in moving a construction project that would have originally gone through the “grave” of the character Dobby.

The 125-mile Greenlink power connector, which costs £430million, is intended to link power between the UK’s National Grid and Ireland, running between County Wexford and Freshwater West in Pembrokeshire.

However, the latter site is known to Potter fans as the site of house elf Dobby’s grave in the film Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, and contains a pile of stones with the words “here lies Dobby” that many flock to…

All I can say is that Voldemort would never have put up with this shit.

The Odyssey

by  Alex Tabarrok in

Worth seeing, and I enjoyed it — but a few observations I haven’t seen elsewhere.

For all the praise of IMAX and 70mm’s supposed clarity, several scenes are out of focus on the actor. Pulling focus is harder with a large-format negative. The problem is compounded by Nolan’s fondness for darkness: too many scenes are dark enough to squander much of what the format offers. The sound was earth-shaking in the way we have come to expect from Nolan but there is no song.

The “woke casting” controversy is a non-issue — barely noticeable in practice. The film is obviously conservative in temperament. Helen gets some of the best lines, and Nolan’s slight disfigurement of her traditional arc is exactly right. The Circe scene is the best in the film.

Tyler is entirely wrong about Calypso. Odysseus’s seven years with her were among his most enjoyable. I have no doubt about this.

The deeper flaws are structural. Nolan loves to play with time, and the resulting flashbacks and memories ironically shortchange the odyssey itself — making the journey feel shorter and less arduous than it should. This is very much in the mode of Interstellar: a sequence of set-piece locations strung together. One planet/one monster/one scene–on to the next. But Odysseus as a character on an odyssey never quite coheres.

We are told repeatedly that Odysseus is smart but we shouldn’t need to be reminded. Odysseus is both beloved and resented by gods, a man whose men will follow him to the ends of the earth and then betray him but Mat Damon just doesn’t bring it. Things happen to him; he responds stoically. What we needed was the equivalent of Kirk defeating the Kobayashi Maru — a moment that makes the audience understand, viscerally, that this man bends the rules and contends with the gods by the sheer force of his wit and will. Of courses the Trojan horse is this but Nolan treats this as something of which Odysseus is ashamed and the other clever bits are downplayed. Damon never gets his Kobayashi Meru. The odyssey is a slog, rather than an adventure. Could have used a bit more Sinbad, a bit less Dark Knight. The dialogue, as Tyler noted, is lame. 

Not Nolan’s best film but still better than most films and for scale, ambition, and grand themes well worth the 3-hour investment.

Whit Stillman’s *Metropolitan* (that was then, this is now)

by  Tyler Cowen in

It is fun to watch/rewatch this 1990 movie circa 2026.  It is about New York City debutantes (CT and the Hamptons too), and how they interact with each other.  The movie is set a bit earlier in time, perhaps in the mid-1980s, though some scenes hearken back to the 1970s.  Of course there is no social media and no cell phones.  So the characters do look at each other, and talk to each other, the whole time.  People dress up, and social smoking is “a thing.”  There is no hook-up culture, as even casual sex has some sort of social implication.  Women are seen as vulnerable, and the men occasionally punch each other.  People drink.  Throughout various scenes, characters debate Jane Austen, Lionel Trilling, and Buñuel (it was not yet recognized that Mansfield Park is an excellent novel).  But do they read actual novels, or just the literary criticism?  Women can be branded as “sluts.”  Nerds had not yet taken over the world, and there is no Jane Street, though toward the end there is one odd scene where the neon lights rather obviously spell out “ELON” in the upper right side of the screen.  Coincidence rather than time travel, I am sure.  There are no Asians in the group, it seems no Jews, and if anyone is gay he or she remains in the closet.  People of modest income had big apartments, and the so-called wealthy were not very rich at all, though they could afford black tie and white tie attire.

Was everyone happier and better off back then?  Did they have deeper understandings of the world?  Did they treat each other like heartless beasts?  Would you eschew one of their parties and stay at home and scroll Twitter?  You can watch this film and ponder those questions to your heart’s content.  Alternatively, you could go to a debutante ball, which it turns out still exists.  Which of those has been your choice?

Markets in everything?

by  Tyler Cowen in

Peter Brook‘s five-hour-plus film adaptation of “The Mahabharata” is set for a BFI Blu-ray release on Aug. 10, presented in high definition from a new 4K restoration of the 1989 production.

The release centres on the triptych version of the film, running 332 minutes, which sits between Brook’s three-hour cinema cut and the six-hour television version he shot concurrently. Based on the ancient Hindu epic, the film was originally produced by Brook with screenwriters Jean-Claude Carrière and Marie-Hélène Estienne, and features an international cast drawn from 16 nationalities.

Here is the Variety article, but will there be a version suitable for U.S. players?  The work is highly recommended, real genius.  For the pointer I thank Sam Mendelsohn.