Alissa Wilkinson

Senior culture reporter and critic at Vox. Author of "Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women" (Broadleaf, 2022) and hard at work on "We Tell Ourselves Stories" (Liveright, 2024ish).

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The 25 best movies of 2022

The greatest films from a tumultuous year.

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Of course Glass Onion is a blast. But it cuts deeper than Knives Out, too.

Rian Johnson’s murder mystery follow-up takes on the self-styled founder class, with riotous results.

Some Beatles, some Agatha Christie, some stuff all his own.

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The very human, very troubling stories we tell ourselves about crime

I’m safer now in New York than nearly any other year I’ve lived here. Why don’t people believe it?

People keep asking me if I’m safe in my home, so I wrote about it.

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“But while art doesn’t tell us what to do, it does shape how we imagine the world. It gives us images and narratives by which to justify our choices and live our lives. It confirms our desires and tells us how to go about getting what we want. It gives us permission to live a certain way by showing us what it looks like to live that way.”

— Alissa Wilkinson (via)

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“A culture built on spectacle can only get more spectacular, coaxing us to always look at it, to never tear ourselves away, to gorge ourselves on it. The impossible trick is to just say nope.”

— Alissa Wilkinson

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I haven’t posted here in six years, but I might start again!

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Not-Quite-Fall Behind

Here's some of the stuff I've been up to that's made it out into the wide world.

Spent the first week of August in Santa Fe, New Mexico, teaching at the Glen Workshop, which is hosted on the campus of St. John's College. It was my seventh time there, and it was lovely.

I reviewed the Guatemalan film Ixcanul for RogerEbert.com.

For Vulture, I covered a whole mess of book-to-film adaptations still to come out this year.

I wrote about Stranger Things and the re-enchantment of the world for Christianity Today.

I reviewed Ben-Hur, Kubo and the Two Strings, Equity, Sausage Party, Star Trek Beyond, Pete's Dragon, and Don't Think Twice for Christianity Today as well.

My first PS Picks column for Pacific Standard, which appeared in the most recent print issue, finally made it to the web.

I was interviewed about my working habits by the lovely folks behind Upwrite.

I participated in this excellent event with three of my favorite writers, slash people.

I spoke to the good folks at MEL about God at the movies for their podcast.

I also nearly finished my book draft! Just a bit more to go. Stay tuned for more on that, and a few outstanding pieces before the fall rush hits.

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Sign outside our new local bagel joint (at Prospect Lefferts Gardens)

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Summer "Vacation" Roundup

A couple weeks' worth of work! Who needs summer break?

I really enjoyed writing these over the past couple of weeks:

At The Washington Post, in a series on the end of America in fiction, my take on Left Behind's vision of the end.

At RogerEbert.com, the "new American wanderers" in Preacher, Outcast, True Detective, and Cormac McCarthy--and how they connect to both the Old Testament and American visions of the West.

Also at RogerEbert.com, an interview with French director Anne Fontaine about her film The Innocents.

At Christianity Today, a look at The Fits through the lens of my strange youth in the world of Bill Gothard.

At Rolling Stone, I contributed to two lists: the 25 Best Pixar Movie Characters and the 40 Greatest Animated Films.

And I was on two in-depth podcasts: Talk Easy and The Village Church.

Finally, I wrote a mess of reviews:

Finding Dory (Christianity Today)

Parched (RogerEbert.com)

The BFG (Christianity Today)

The Purge: Election Year (Christianity Today)

The Secret Life of Pets (Christianity Today)

Genius (Christianity Today)

Fathers and Daughters (RogerEbert.com)

Ghostbusters (Christianity Today)

Five films from the BAMcinemaFest lineup: Little Men, Joshy, Kate Plays Christine, Morris From America, and Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (Christianity Today)

And finally, if you haven't yet, get your ticket to hear me, Emily Nussbaum, A.O. Scott, and Wesley Morris in Brooklyn in a couple of weeks. If I wasn't part of the event I'd be jumping at the chance to attend. Don't miss it. 

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This is when I miss book reviewing

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I made a tiny friend today (but he's not coming home with me) (at Erv's)

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Mostly horror, some religion: a publishing roundup

Biweekly update time!

An essay on the uniquely female body horror of Rosemary's Baby and Black Swan, for Oscilloscope's "Musings" blog.

A long essay on what makes Hamilton so successful, for Books & Culture.

Review of the Israeli film Tikkun, about a yeshiva student who dies and then comes back, for RogerEbert.com.

A little feature on UnREAL for Rolling Stone.

An irritated assessment of what makes Now You See Me 2 so bad, for Christianity Today.

A review of David Dark's Life's too short to pretend you're not religious, posted to Medium.

Also, the CT Entertainment newsletter format has been in flux, but it's now set. (You can subscribe here.) So here's where you can find the elements of that over the past two weeks:

Capsule review of The Conjuring 2.

Capsule review of Genius.

The June 3 newsletter, which includes capsules of Popstar and Me Before You.

The June 10 newsletter (including some musings on horror and Frank Peretti, and a bunch of links).

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Was in the middle of training for my fifth half-marathon last August when flu and then pneumonia knocked me back hard. First race on the long road back. (Just a four-miler.) (at Central Park)

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Good things en route

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Roots, X-Men, Newsletters, and True/False

It's rare for all my clips to be in one place, these days -- but when life takes over (especially moving from one apartment to another, especially in New York City), pitching falls by the wayside. So everything I published in the last two weeks is in Christianity Today:

I started writing our rebooted weekly CT Entertainment newsletter. For a while, that newsletter has just been a collection of things related to entertainment CT published over the past week. Now it will be released on Fridays, and will contain some commentary, short reviews (by me) of films and TV shows coming out that week, and a few links for things worth reading over the weekend, with a (non-exclusive) eye toward the places where pop culture, art, and religion bump into one another. Here is my introduction, and here is the second edition. You can sign up to get it in your email here.

I put the apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse, which I'm practically obligated to do, having just written a book on the topic.

I interviewed British actor Malachi Kirby, who plays Kunta Kinte in the new Roots premiering today on the History Channel. He's an outspoken Christian and had a pretty interesting story about his audition process.

In March, I went to the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, which is the premiere nonfiction festival in the country and was way better than any film festival deserves to be. I sat down for an hour with festival co-director David Wilson and his friend Dave Cover, who pastors The Crossing in Columbia, a church that partners with the festival. They talked and I listened, and the result was amazing. It's now been published at CT's "Local Church" vertical.

There's a lot of O.J. Simpson on TV right now, and I wrote about it.

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Happy fam

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I think we're home