Glen Weldon

Love, Simon is only the latest in a surprisingly long line of films that have explored what it's like to come out in high school. Here's some of the smaller, quirkier films that paved the way.

Come for the rom-com elements, familiar and dutiful though they are. Stay for the film's sensitive, specific and closely observed coming-out storyline, which feels new — and important.

The website The Awl and its sister site The Hairpin are shutting down. The two sites always valued lively, thoughtful writing — even as the media landscape shifted around them.

NPR's Kelly McEvers and Pop Culture Happy Hour's Linda Holmes and Glen Weldon sit down to talk about this era of TV and movies, many of which are catering to Gen X nostalgia — from Stranger Things to the latest Star Wars film.

The the new show from Amazon takes place in late 1950s New York. Midge Maisel's life falls apart and she has to figure out what she's good at. So she goes from housewife to stand-up comic.

Amazon Studios is bringing an ongoing Lord of the Rings prequel series to television. The deal includes an option for "a potential additional spin-off series." Tom Bombadil, call your agent.

The culture of comedy is one in which women have had little recourse to address sexual misconduct. The now-public allegations facing Louis C.K. suggest this may be changing.

The series, about an ex-spy chafing against his imprisonment in a sunny, seaside village, was one of the first shows to end with a finale that sharply divided viewers.

Len Wein created Wolverine, the Marvel superhero, as well as Swamp Thing. He and artist Dave Cockrum revamped the X-Men, expanding the roster with new recruits like Colossus, Nightcrawler and Storm.

The new, 10-episode Amazon series isn't a grim-and-gritty reboot, exactly — but its dark-ish tone will surprise some fans of Ben Edlund's superhero spoof.

Over the years, Hollywood filmmakers have used solar eclipses as devices to mark moments of irrevocable transformation for their characters.

TV and movie producers are looking to the shelves for inspiration: a number of popular shows and films this year started as books.

We check back in on Issa Rae's HBO comedy series Insecure as it kicks off its tighter, more assured second season. Plus, What's Making Us Happy this week.

Coulton recruited writer Matt Fraction and artist Albert Monteys to tell a time-fractured tale of corporate greed and internet trolls.

This episode we talk Atomic Blonde, a stylish and visceral spy thriller set in 1989 Berlin. It co-stars Charlize Theron and a really impressive wig.

The third episode of Game of Thrones' seventh season, "The Queen's Justice," featured a long-awaited meeting, a long-awaited reunion, and a long-dreaded goodbye to the show's best character.

We discuss Luc Besson's big-budget, bonkers-bananapants would-be blockbuster Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which looks unlikely to bust any blocks.

Foray voiced a wide variety of animated characters, and she brought the same genial humor and warmth to them all — except one.

The "surprising" success of the raunch-com Girls Trip didn't particularly surprise us; we talk about precisely where this "out-of-nowhere" hit came from.

Using excerpts from letters and diaries, historian and critic Bill Goldstein follows writers Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot through the tumultuous literary year of 1922.