Film & TV
May 25, 2023
Did Junk Science Help Candy Montgomery Get Away With Murder?
Hypnosis played a critical role in the real-life case depicted in Max’s ‘Love & Death.’ But was it good science? Here’s what the experts say.
By Michael Hall![Michael Hall's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
Incisive criticism, features, and news related to Texans on the screen—and behind the camera
Film & TV
May 23, 2023
‘How to Create a Sex Scandal’: What You Need to Know About the New Docuseries
The Max docuseries debuting today sheds new light on my reporting for Texas Monthly.
By Michael Hall![Michael Hall's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
May 19, 2023
Maren Morris, Hero, Turned Tom Schwartz’s Sob Story Into a Country Song
The award-winning hitmaker is just as obsessed with ‘Vanderpump Rules’ as we are.
Film & TV
May 16, 2023
‘Hypnotic’ Is Robert Rodriguez at His Robert Rodriguezest
Hypnotic, the supernatural thriller starring Ben Affleck that opened on Friday, is Robert Rodriguez’s twenty-first movie. The lifelong Texan is more prolific than almost any of his ’90s indie-film contemporaries—Quentin Tarantino, whose Reservoir Dogs debuted about a year before Rodriguez’s El Mariachi, has only made ten!—and that’s including a
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Press Room
May 15, 2023
Max Announces Three-Part Docuseries ‘How to Create a Sex Scandal’
The Max Original, based on Texas Monthly reporting by Michael Hall, is set to debut May 23.
Film & TV
May 15, 2023
Shea Serrano’s New Sitcom, ‘Primo,’ is Peak Pocho TV
Based on his life growing up in San Antonio’s Southside, the show feels unencumbered by the weight of representation.
Film & TV
May 12, 2023
Tami Taylor, Mother of Texas
Connie Britton’s tough yet compassionate Friday Night Lights character remains one of our most inspirational depictions of Texas womanhood.
Film & TV
May 4, 2023
How Elizabeth Olsen and Holly Hunter Captured the Not-So-Quiet Desperation of Texas Women
What makes the Texas woman unique? What makes her distinct from the demure Southern belle or the rugged, rifle-toting frontierswoman of the American West? As the novelist and Texas Monthly contributor Sarah Bird suggests in her 2016 essay collection, A Love Letter to Texas Women, maybe
Film & TV
May 3, 2023
Last Time Hollywood Writers Went on Strike, Landry Killed a Guy on ‘Friday Night Lights’
The show’s infamous second season was shortened because of the strike, but that’s not the whole story.
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Texas Country Reporter
April 29, 2023
Confessions of a Nature-Documentary Filmmaker
For decades, Lubbock-based filmmaker Dale Johnson traveled the globe documenting the beauty, power, and fragility of the natural world.
Film & TV
April 28, 2023
Making ‘Love & Death’: Lesli Linka Glatter, Elizabeth Olsen, Jesse Plemons, and Patrick Fugit
The show's cast and director reflect on the HBO Max series, based on a 1984 story written in Texas Monthly.
Film & TV
April 28, 2023
HBO Max’s ‘Love & Death’ Needed a Home for an Axe Killer. They Chose Mine.
HBO Max turned my house into that of Candy Montgomery, played by Elizabeth Olsen. Then things got hyperreal.
Film & TV
April 21, 2023
A Radical New Eco-Thriller Film Asks: Does the Climate Crisis Justify Blowing Up an Oil Pipeline?
The movie uses a classic heist format to tackle the hot topic of climate change.
Film & TV
April 11, 2023
How ‘Hud’ Began Texas’s Love Affair With the Bastard
Paul Newman plays a brutish, morally repugnant monster in the classic anti-western. So why do Texans admire him anyway?
Film & TV
April 4, 2023
‘Blue Beetle’ Belongs in El Paso, No Matter What DC Brass Thinks
A new trailer reveals that the Mexican American superhero will live in a fictional city, breaking with canon. Comic book fans are not happy.
Film & TV
April 4, 2023
The Best Books, Films, TV, Art, and More Coming to Texas This Spring
We have seven words for you: Owen Wilson in a Bob Ross wig.
Texas History
March 20, 2023
What Is Left to Say About Waco? ‘Waco: American Apocalypse’ Doesn’t Even Try
Netflix’s new docuseries revisits the 1993 standoff between David Koresh and the federal government without any agenda—or real purpose.
Film & TV
March 16, 2023
In ‘Swarm,’ the Beyhive Is Out for (Literal) Blood
The new Beyoncé-inspired, must-watch TV show explores what happens when fan culture goes too far.
Film & TV
March 15, 2023
Eva Longoria Is a Flamin’ Hot Movie Director
The Corpus Christi native’s directorial debut is a self-assured, joyful ode to inclusivity and snack foods.
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
March 14, 2023
Why 1980 Was the Year Texas Went Worldwide
The current Yellowstone-fueled “Westerncore” aesthetic is little more than a cultural blip compared to what Dallas and Urban Cowboy unleashed in 1980.
Film & TV
March 7, 2023
When Texas Took Over the Oscars
Forty years ago, a crop of films led by ‘Terms of Endearment’ and ‘Tender Mercies’ reimagined the way we see Texas.
Film & TV
March 6, 2023
How Christy Carlson Romano Lost Her Disney Money and Founded an Empire
Ren Stevens and Kim Possible led the early aughts star to the role she was always meant to play—content strategist—in the place she was always meant to live.
Film & TV
March 3, 2023
Jonathan Majors Has Arrived
With two blockbusters hitting theaters in the span of a few weeks, the newly minted A-lister is doing Cedar Hill proud.
Music
February 10, 2023
Chanda Dancy, a Fearless Houston Violinist, Is Breaking Boundaries in Hollywood
The film composer behind the scores for ‘Devotion’ and ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’ has never bought into the rigid rules of classical music.
Film & TV
February 8, 2023
This Twentysomething Texan Is Already an Award-Winning Film Director
Katherine Propper’s student films have won awards at major film festivals. How does she do it? By knowing the rules of filmmaking—and breaking them.
By Michael Hall![Michael Hall's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
February 1, 2023
Three New, True Stories From the Texas-Mexico Border
The El Paso–born wrestler Cassandro, Edinburg High School mariachis, and a Matamoros teacher all shone at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Film & TV
February 1, 2023
In ‘Magazine Dreams,’ Jonathan Majors Builds Himself Up to Fall Apart
The Texas-raised actor returned to Sundance for the premiere of his latest film—a brutal, impressive character study of a troubled bodybuilder.
By Cat Cardenas![Cat Cardenas's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
January 31, 2023
The Year’s Most Fascinating Documentary Won’t Be at the Oscars
Margaret Brown’s remarkable ‘Descendant’ deserved to take its case for reparations to an audience of millions.
Film & TV
January 25, 2023
Kandy Kaye Horn Was Unknown When She Ran for Governor. A New Documentary Only Deepens the Mystery.
With ‘The Baroness From Kaufman County,’ two Austin filmmakers help the East Texas philanthropist tell her story the way she sees it.
Film & TV
January 20, 2023
How Well Texas Cities Would Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, Ranked
The HBO series ‘The Last of Us’ spent its first act showing us how Austin would handle people-eating monsters. Houston, on the other hand . . .
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Texas Icons
January 17, 2023
What Does It Mean to Be a “Texas Actor”?
Jonathan Majors and Tommy Lee Jones don’t just have their home state in common.
Texas Icons
January 17, 2023
In the Decades Since Farrah’s Iconic Poster, Texas’s Beauty Standard Has Evolved
Fawcett set the standard in the 1970s—blond, thin, and smiling. Thankfully, that’s changed.
By Mimi Swartz![Mimi Swartz's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
January 5, 2023
‘Yellowstone’ Is Set in Montana. But the Show’s Music Comes Straight From Texas.
The TV sensation, largely set elsewhere, leans on Texan artists from Uncle Lucius to the Panhandlers to set an authentic Western tone.
Film & TV
December 29, 2022
Ten Notable Performances From Texan Actors in 2022
From ‘Stranger Things’ to the Sex Pistols, from the Houston suburbs to the outskirts of Texas City, these were the actors who got our attention.
Art
December 27, 2022
The Best Texas Art, Movies, Music, and TV of 2022
This is the year that returned Beyoncé to our ears and Beavis and Butt-head to our screens.
Art
December 21, 2022
The Best Books, Film, TV, Art & More Coming to Texas This Winter
From Bruce Springsteen to Ballet Austin, there are plenty of ways to break out of the winter doldrums this season.
Film & TV
December 8, 2022
The Ballad of Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and the Boy From Huntsville
Somewhere inside every story—including the one in which the Duke and Duchess of Sussex chose to step back from the royal family, as told on Netflix’s ‘Harry & Meghan’—lies a Texan.
News
December 1, 2022
Who Was Robert Abel, the Former NASA Engineer Suspected in the Texas Killing Fields Murders?
A new Netflix docuseries revisits the string of murders near League City. Texas Monthly interviewed Abel in 1999.
Film & TV
November 24, 2022
‘Devotion’ Makes a Case for Dozens More Movies Costarring Glen Powell and Jonathan Majors
There’s potential for the two to be an iconic duo, a new generation’s Robert Redford and Paul Newman.
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
White Hats
November 16, 2022
Walkers and Lone Rangers: How Pop Culture Shaped the Texas Rangers Mythology
Texas’s elite police force has long played the hero in film and television, although the reality is far more complex.
Film & TV
November 11, 2022
In 1974, “Texas” was the Dirtiest Word in ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’
John Bloom, a.k.a. Joe Bob Briggs, discusses his 2004 opus on the making of the slasher classic and the New York bias against a Texas original.
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
November 11, 2022
‘Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me’ Is a Horror Film About Fame
Multiple times throughout the documentary, Gomez repeats that she no longer craves stardom. But what the singer wants instead remains unclear.
Film & TV
November 11, 2022
‘Love Is Blind’ Is Ludicrous, But So Is Marriage
Season three of the Netflix reality series wrapped up in Dallas, but between the gossipy fun and the occasional eye roll, there is insight into the nature of twenty-first-century relationships and marriage.
Film & TV
October 28, 2022
How Gen Z Women Found Their Joker in ‘Pearl’
The titular character of director Ti West’s latest horror movie, ‘Pearl,’ is a young Texan who’s had it with the people and society that keep her repressed.
Film & TV
October 19, 2022
‘Halloween Ends’: Stabbing Around in the Dark
David Gordon Green’s rebooted horror trilogy concludes with another search for meaning, yet again, in senseless murder.
Film & TV
October 18, 2022
The ‘Creed III’ Trailer Sent a Chill Down Our Texan Spines
The ninth installment in the Rocky franchise puts honorary Texan Michael B. Jordan and official Texan Jonathan Majors in the ring, and we are here for it.
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Film & TV
October 17, 2022
Is Megan Thee Stallion Funny? A Texas Monthly Investigation
We know she’s a savage and a big ole freak, but is the Houston hometown hero funny? On ‘Saturday Night Live,’ we found out.
By Dan Solomon![Dan Solomon's Profile Photo]()
Tacos
October 7, 2022
Things to Do Instead of Watching “Mexican Week” on ‘The Great British Bake Off’
If you’re a ‘Great British Bake Off’ fan, good news: you’ve freed up an hour this week. Here are a few ideas on how to spend it.
Film & TV
October 6, 2022
‘Walker: Independence’ Tries Reinventing the Western, With Familiar Results
The CW drama is set in nineteenth-century Texas but strives for twenty-first-century relevance.
Film & TV
September 30, 2022
Robert De Niro Wants You to Analyze His Personal Archives at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center
The legendary actor was feted at a glamorously hammy gala celebrating the Center’s collection, which is a treasure trove of film history that every good fella should study.