Party Like It’s 2009: The Playlist

▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube 5. Jason Derulo: “Whatcha Say” Speaking of Auto-Tune, this proudly synthetic debut single from the R&B singer Jason Derulo doubles down on vocal effects, prominently sampling Imogen Heap’s 2005 pitch-shifted a cappella tune “Hide and Seek” and heavily processing Derulo’s own voice to match hers. For better … Read more

With ‘Él,’ Buñuel Turns His Gaze to Male Pathology

A blasphemous black comedy, part noir, part case history, Luis Buñuel’s 1953 Mexican melodrama “Él” amply justifies its inadvertently self-reflexive American release title, “This Strange Passion.” One of the rediscoveries of last year’s Buñuel retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, “Él” opens for a week at Film Forum in a fine new 4K restoration. … Read more

Book Review: ‘Brother Brontë,’ by Mark Leyner

“Brother Brontë” is like that mythical sub sandwich with literally everything on it. There are tangential joy rides into Jazzmin Monelle’s other novels, such as “I Was a Teenage Brain Parasite” (one of the great wish-I’d-come-up-with-that titles) and “Ghosts in the Zapotec Sphericals” (which features a Borges-like protagonist, the blind director of the Biblioteca Nacional … Read more

A Ferocious Paul Mescal Stars in a Brutal ‘Streetcar’

“The sky that shows around the dim white building is a peculiarly tender blue, almost a turquoise, which invests the scene with a kind of lyricism and gracefully attenuates the atmosphere of decay.” Not bloody likely. Those stage directions from Tennessee Williams’s published script for “A Streetcar Named Desire” may amount to a mission statement … Read more