Portside

Netflix and A24’s Beef is astounding, anti-ambient TV.

The poet W.D. Ehrhart, veteran of both the Marines and Vietnam Veterans Against the War asks seriously, how can people like Henry Kissinger claim a lifetime of “no regrets”?

Paisley Currah’s Sex Is as Sex Does raises questions about efforts to achieve equal recognition under laws that sanction repression and inequality.

Making art in all its everyday glory: In their latest movie together, Michelle Williams and director Kelly Reichardt paint a portrait of an artist who’s a real and wonderful piece of work.

In order to get as many people as possible to buy their products, food companies often employ labeling which is misleading. A high number of commonly purchased items are actually other, less attractive, cheaper, or lab-created foods in disguise.

Paramount Plus' 1950s-set series 'Grease: Rise Of The Pink Ladies' is filled with progressive Gen-Z values. Their struggles derive from not only the misogyny they come up against, but the discrimination they face thanks to their cultural identities.

Schools may be in trouble, assesses Vermont poet Ann Fisher, but not the fault of students who create their own “precipitation” despite “all the measured wisdom/ we’ve provided.”

Dylan, writes reviewer Foye of this new coffee table-size book, "is sweeping out the ashes from the cave of a long career. He is casting a light on the Jungian shadows of popular song, examining both mechanics and metaphysics."

Iranian American screen polymath Payman Maadi (who made such an impact in films such as Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation) is Samad, a cop waging an apparently unwinnable war on drugs in the Iranian capital. Having rounded up a vast community of addicts living and dying within a hellscape of giant concrete pipes, Samad and his deputy, Hamid (Houman Kiai), treat their captives like cattle, stripping and humiliating them, herding them from one overcrowded prison space to the next.

Alon Shaya believes food can help people connect; sharing a meal is a powerful tool against the rising hate against Jewish people and everyone else. “Through cooking, you can share these stories with the goal of stopping prejudice and ending hate."