J. Oliver Conroy

New York

Deputy US opinion editor, The Guardian. Feature/profile writer and critic. Work in the Examiner, NY Mag, &c. Newsletter: https://t.co/VfdaWsgzkc

Articles

Mortality vs. millionaire: The devotions of Bryan Johnson

2 weeks ago | washingtonexaminer.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Becoming a multimillionaire opens exciting new avenues for hedonism. You can consort on yachts with models half your age, wash down Kobe beef with unpronounceable scotch, or collect rare wines — or wineries. Not Bryan Johnson: The 47-year-old former tech entrepreneur goes to bed at 8:30 every evening for a perfect night’s sleep.
The tentacles of Squid Game’s success

Jan 23, 2025 | washingtonexaminer.com | J. Oliver Conroy

In 2021, Netflix’s miniseries Squid Game immediately established itself as one of the most upsetting television series ever made — and one of the best. The South Korean show’s new second season is a needless and unsatisfying, if sometimes interesting, coda to one of the most important television series of the streaming era.
Adapting troubled history: Review of Say Nothing on Hulu

Dec 5, 2024 | washingtonexaminer.com | J. Oliver Conroy

In 2018 the journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, a writer at the New Yorker who is particularly adept at using true crime as a vehicle for probing intellectual questions, published Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.
Rivals has as much fun as TV can have

Nov 14, 2024 | washingtonexaminer.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Based on a novel by the British romance writer Jilly Cooper, whose bestselling Rutshire Chronicles were dubbed “bonkbusters” by the British press in the 1980s, Rivals is salacious but smart. Co-produced, somewhat improbably, with Disney+, the Hulu series is an unabashedly pulpy new eight-part comedy-drama about greed and libido among the upper classes of Margaret Thatcher-era England.
Saturday Night captures the chaos but not the magic

Oct 17, 2024 | denvergazette.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Jason Reitman’s new film, Saturday Night, dramatizes the behind-the-scenes chaos of the making of the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. The movie, timed to release shortly before the show’s 50th anniversary, is an odd, if entertaining, duck — a bit inside-baseball for SNL fans and a bit of nostalgia for a time when the famous comedy sketch show felt countercultural and revolutionary, rather than a milquetoast product of a certain kind of establishment liberalism.
A film about facing yourself: Review of A Different Man

Sep 26, 2024 | washingtonexaminer.com | J. Oliver Conroy

A Different Man is a noir-inflected black comedy about the adage, popularized by Truman Capote and attributed to Teresa of Ávila, that more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. Indie filmmaker Aaron Schimberg’s third feature depicts an odd and volatile love triangle between two men with facial deformities and a woman who admires them both. The film is dazzling and dark fun even as it ultimately fails to live up to its full potential.
Good vibes, murder, and a monkey make for a satisfying Carl Hiaasen adaptation

Sep 5, 2024 | gazette.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Pity poor Florida: hurricanes, alligators, drug lords, strip malls, scammers. But Floridians also have Carl Hiaasen, the former Miami Herald reporter who has spun the eccentricities of his home state into a dozen and a half beloved comic crime novels. Now Bill Lawrence, the co-creator of Ted Lasso, has adapted Hiaasen’s novel Bad Monkey into a 10-part Apple TV+ series starring Vince Vaughn, Rob Delaney, and Natalie Martinez, plus lots of shots of glowing Gulf sunsets.
A hit man for all seasons

Jun 13, 2024 | denvergazette.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Director Richard Linklater thrives at documenting the offbeat and odd, and his new movie Hit Man is no exception. A twisted rom-com about what happens when you’re too good at pretending to be someone else, the film is loosely based on the true story of a Houston psychology teacher who pretended to be a contract killer for police sting operations.
Review of Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt

Jun 6, 2024 | gazette.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Felt to be old-fashioned, racist, and unbankable, Westerns fell out of favor in Hollywood for many years. Fortunately for those who’ve carried the torch and kept their My Darling Clementine Blu-rays clutched tight, the tide of taste seems to be turning. The biggest cause, or bellwether, is probably the popular TV melodrama Yellowstone — dubbed “Succession for red states,” though it has far greater viewership.
John Mulaney’s talk show of the weird

May 9, 2024 | washingtonexaminer.com | J. Oliver Conroy

Everybody’s in LA, John Mulaney’s six-part Netflix live talk show, loosely about Los Angeles, is a lesson in the promise and peril of taking artistic risks.