Henry Wong

I am a senior culture writer at Esquire magazine, covering film, television, music, and art. I have also written for the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Evening Standard. 

Esquire •

In 'Bones and All', Timothée Chalamet Steals Hearts (and Dines on Them Too)

All good romance movies need a meet-cute, the moment when our heroes bump into each other for the first time and fall head-over-heels in love. In Luca Guadagnino’s latest film, Bones and All, which is out in cinemas now, Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) meet in a supermarket aisle. She’s shoplifting, he’s feeling peckish. When Maren gets into a fight with a fellow shopper, Lee takes the man outside, and then, in a nearby building, kills and eats him. It is an irresistible entré
Esquire •

‘Aftersun’ Won’t Let You Forget About Paul Mescal

Aftersun is good for instant soothing, but even the most high-quality lotion probably won’t do too much to fix a serious sunburn. Only time will heal that. In the moment, on your hotel bed, you’re left with something very red and painful. In Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, which is out now in cinemas, the protagonist is also suffering from some scorching days in the heat, though relief, even years later, remains elusive.

We are somewhere in Turkey, sometime in the ‘90s; the giveaways are the gadget
Esquire •

Emily Blunt Goes Wild in ‘The English’

The English is about the English, but it’s also about the Russians. And Europeans. Anyone, in short, who has settled in America’s West, where BBC and Amazon’s sweeping six-part series is set. We learn all this in the opening voiceover from the first episode, and it’s a helpful signpost for how this show proceeds: one where you’re immersed in an unfamiliar habitat, and forced to pick up, and adjust to, local customs immediately. The English also refers to an Englishwoman, singular: Cornelia Locke
Esquire •

Jennifer Lawrence Makes an Unconventional Buddy Movie With ‘Causeway’

The prologue to Causeway allows Jennifer Lawrence to be something she is not usually allowed to be on screen: quiet. Lawrence plays Lynsey, an American soldier who’s suffered a brain injury while in Afghanistan, and is returning to her hometown in New Orleans. But before that, she must adjust to everyday life, outside of a war zone with the help of a very patient carer Sharon (Jayne Houdyshell). She learns how to move her body, she starts to drive again, she does some vague memory games (not muc
Esquire •

Will Sharpe Brings the Mess to ‘The White Lotus’ Season 2

When The White Lotus debuted last year, it swiftly became everyone’s favourite privilege-bashing-whodunnit. Mike White’s acerbic drama, in which rich hotel guests wreak havoc in Hawaii, was as layered as it was niche; skewering Gen-Z college students, colonial-tinged tourism, clickbait journalism. It won critical praise and, perhaps more importantly, the internet’s attention. Memes were shared; Jennifer Coolidge enjoyed a career renaissance. Inevitably, it also became a shorthand for that unease
Esquire •

House of the Dragon's Fabien Frankel Is Standing up for Criston Cole

Imagine you are Fabien Frankel. You are introduced as the swoonworthy, floppy-haired knight, Criston Cole, in one of this year’s most anticipated television shows, House of the Dragon. People fall for your character as quickly as Dragon’s ostensible lead, Princess Rhaenyra, does. A not insignificant portion of the internet begins to tweet thirstily for you. And then, halfway through the season, your character, rebuffed, turns on the princess, shifting from a knight in shining armour to, well, a
the Guardian •

‘Less high school, more horror film’: why is teen drama so miserable now?

If our school days are the happiest of our lives, I’m worried for the Euphoria teens. In the season two opener, the kids of East Highland saw a drug dealer being murdered with a hammer by another drug dealer named “Ashtray” (because he ate discarded cigarettes as a child). One girl celebrates New Year’s Eve by hiding under a urine-soaked towel in a bath, and the school’s toxic jock is beaten up so brutally his face has to be stitched back together. As Rue – Euphoria’s enigmatic lynchpin played b
Design Week •

How Ukrainian designers are supporting a country in crisis

On the first day of Russia’s assault of Kyiv, Ukrainian designer Alexandra Doroguntsova and her partner decided to stay in the capital city. After waking to news of the invasion, they looked out of the high-rise building – where they live with their baby – and saw endless traffic over the horizon.

“Finally the night came, and the bombing and sirens started,” she recalls. “We spent half of the night with the baby in the carpark under the building. At sunrise, I decided to just leave because it w
the Guardian •

Squid Game: the hellish horrorshow taking the whole world by storm

What if winning playground games could make you rich? That’s the basis of Squid Game – the South Korean show currently at number one on Netflix around the world – where debt-ridden players sign up to compete in six games for a cash prize of 45.6 billion won (around £28m). The small print: if you lose, you get killed. In the first episode, a game of Grandma’s Footsteps (known as Red Light, Green Light in South Korea) leaves bodies piled high as the shell-shocked winners proceed to round two. It’s
Design Week •

Graphic design is helping UK basketball courts bounce back

“A basketball court is a blank canvas,” Gareth Roberts says. “As long as the lines are on there, you can do pretty much anything.” Roberts is a basketball player turned designer – he used to play for England’s under 18 team before pursuing a career in packaging design. Four years ago, he founded Project in the Paint, with the aim of revamping local courts and engaging people with the sport. “Design impacts the way people react,” he adds. “And you can play on that knowledge with basketball.”

Whi
Design Week •

Stefan Sagmeister: “The latest negative tweet does not mean that we are living on the brink”

Stefan Sagmeister is trying to think long-term at the moment. The 24-hour news cycle – aided by platforms like Twitter – means it’s easy to only see “democracy in peril, ubiquitous conflicts and an overall outlook of doom”, he tells Design Week.

“As you know, short term media like Twitter and hourly news create an impression of a world out of control,” the designer says. But the opposite is true, according to Sagmeister, pointing to a global rise in literacy rates, fall in hunger and increased
Design Week •

Wolff Olins reflects on London 2012 ten years on

Just before Wolff Olins launched its brand for the London 2012 Olympics, the studio refreshed its website in anticipation of a “a little bit of traffic”, recalls global CEO Sairah Ashman. The consultancy had perhaps underestimated the amount of attention it was about to receive –⁠ within half an hour, its website crashed. It was just the start of a backlash so extreme that some of its designers had to be rehoused.

The design process leading up to that point had been exciting if a little unusual
Design Week •

Behind the scenes with Brompton’s design team

When Brompton founder Andrew Ritchie was designing the prototype for his folding bike, he only had to look opposite his flat for naming inspiration: South Kensington’s Brompton Oratory. Since those days in the 1970s, the bike brand has notched milestones far and wide: full-time production at its first factory in West London, a Brompton World Championship held in Barcelona in 2006, and a store opening in Kobe, Japan in 2011.

Though it has remained a British brand with offices in London, the desi
The Telegraph •

Seven things no one tells you before you become a bomb disposal expert

During his ten year career in the British Forces, Andy Torbet served in the Army's Underwater Bomb Disposal Team, helping to disarm explosives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now an adventurer and cave diver, he spoke to Telegraph Men about his high-pressure former career and how it helps him approach journeys into unknown worlds... 1. Forget everything you’ve seen in the movies There’s never a red or a blue wire. And there’s never a clock – who would put a clock on a bomb? Your go-to response is ‘blow
the Guardian •

Only Murders in the Building to Cooking With Paris: the unsung TV heroes of 2021

“The sci-fi murder mystery doctor dramedy Earth needs now!” That was the US marketing blurb for Resident Alien, a plucky attempt to turn the show’s audacious genre-mashing into a marketing angle. While it certainly has a lot going on – an alien crash-lands in small-town Colorado and attempts to evade detection by hijacking the identity of a big-city doctor – it only took a few episodes for me to realise why I was enjoying it so much. This story of a fusspot out-of-towner clashing with the rhythm
Design Week •

How Summer of Soul’s visuals were designed as a love letter to ‘Black Woodstock’

When people think of seminal music festivals that took place in 1969, it’s likely Woodstock, with its promise of peace, that first springs to mind. But two months prior, Harlem Cultural Festival – which sought to promote black music following the civil rights movement – presented an equally starry line-up in New York. Only one of these festivals has infiltrated popular culture so far.

A new documentary film, Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not be Televised), hopes to shed light o
Design Week •

Sebastian Conran: “What I got from my father is there has to be a big idea”

I was six when my father gave me my first work bench. And I can remember for my 21st birthday, he gave me £500 to spend on tools at Buck & Ryan tool shop on Tottenham Court Road. I still have those tools. One of the things was an engraver, and I engraved all the spanners, and sometimes I find a spanner that is now 44 years old.

He didn’t take me to football matches, but he took me to factories — to actually see the factory being built and the factory building stuff. He had this factory in Thetf
Design Week •

These 200 infographics aim to provide an answer for everything

Can a single book provide the answer for everything? That’s what the latest project from the team at slow journalism magazine Delayed Gratification sets out to do. Over 200 infographics, An Answer for Everything takes on questions from UFOs to mass veganism. As a Venn diagram on the opening page sets out, the book exists at the intersection of questions, data and design.

The team (Rob Orchard, Marcus Webb and the magazine’s art director Christian Tate) had been planning the book for some time,
Evening Standard •

Extraordinary photos show the life of an east London legend

But Markovitch turned out to be the subject of the Usborne's next exhibition. Now he's the subject of his photo book, I’ve Lived In East London For 86 ½ Years.

Markovitch had never once left England and was part of the fabric of the east London. As Usborne explains, Markovitch - after living in London for eighty years - had 'witnessed a continual cultural transformation that we could only imagine'.

The book - along with images and quotations that have not been printed before - charts Markovitc
Design Week •

How the Tokyo 1964 Olympics sparked a design renaissance in Japan

On 1 October 1964, Japan’s Shinkansen – colloquially known as the bullet train in English – opened for service between Tokyo and Osaka, shortening a six-hour trip to around just four. Less than two weeks later, visitors arrived in the country for the most international-facing Olympics in history. This impressive (though admittedly tight) turnaround is emblematic of the “new Japan” presented at the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games, according to Japan House London director of programming Simon Wright.

Th
Culture Whisper •

Everybody Wants Some!! film review

Everybody Wants Some!! film review Everybody Wants Some!! film review

Richard Linklater’sis a film about boys who show off to each other and to the camera. For the film’s first half hour, the gun show rolls around (again and again) and hazes the audience into its world of beer kegs, easy sex and 80s cologne. It’s like the best party you never really wanted an invite to.

In his first film since 2014’s Boyhood, Linklater turns his focus to boisterous college students living in an 80s baseball fr
The Telegraph •

Meet Brett Smitheram, the Sherlock of the Scrabble board

Before the age of 16, Brett Smitheram had never played a game of Scrabble. So when he first encountered the game at a school Scrabble club, he had no way of knowing that everything was about to fall into place like a triple word score. Within a couple of months of that teenage introduction, Smitheram was playing adult tournaments at a national level. By 20, he had qualified for the world championships in Melbourne. It didn't go to plan – “I’d never flown before and it taught me the value of prep
Evening Standard •

The return of the drinks trolley in stylish London homes

Mad Men may be over but the 1960s is having one last stand and this time it’s taking place in our living rooms. The drinks trolley is back.

Online furniture store Swoon Editons has seen a rise of 230 per cent in the sales of drinks trolleys in the last quarter alone. The first edition of its Kenzi trolley sold out in less than ten hours.

Expect that trend to continue next year. Swoon is launching three new trolley styles in the first half of 2017.

Trolleys have a lot going for them. More of u
the Guardian •

Charity challenge for speedy students: how to ace jailbreak

The rules of jailbreak are simple; you have 36 hours to travel as far from your university as you can, without spending any of your own money. It’s not an excuse for a holiday, though – it’s all for charity.

With thoughtful preparation, a little luck and some lateral thinking, you can make the most of those 36 hours and your sponsorship. We asked students who’ve done it for their best pieces of advice.

In 36 hours, you might be in Singapore’s business district or on an Australian beach, so pac