New York mag’s ‘The Year in Culture’

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
‘McCarthy’s last two books have been lamentations for lost worlds. In No Country for Old Men, he mourned the disappearance of morality, while in The Road he mourns the disappearance of, well, everything, creating a postapocalyptic novel that successfully marries Beckett with Mad Max. It’s both a serious meditation on the purpose of life and the best end-of-the-world horror flick you’ve ever seen.’

The Queen
‘The year’s best movie—directed by Stephen Frears from a witty and elegant script by Peter Morgan—is a quasi comedy of grand manners with the world’s least likely heroine: the stuffy Elizabeth II, who can’t even bring herself to make a public statement of grief on the occasion of Diana’s untimely death. As the monarch whose features barely bestir themselves, Dame Helen Mirren (in the performance of the year) uses one of the most expressive faces in film to signal the teensiest signs of tension between the monarch and the human being.’