Not Worth The Subscription: Pechman’s Debut Flips Through The Familiar Pages Of Coming-Of-Age Stories
Since the dawn of the Gutenberg press, the literary world has been plagued with hucksters, hypesters, dilletantes, gatekeepers, and wannabees. But that has never diminished the dreams of those aching to be adjacent to genius and maybe even one day seeing their own words laid out in print. That vision powers Magazine, a butter knife deep literary scene satire and coming-of-age story that never truly draws blood.
The year is 2011, Blackberry is still a thing, and Nora (Lily McInery) arrives at the offices of Platen (think The Paris Review) for a coveted internship. Rolling into New York City without a trust fund to fall back on (she’s surviving on scholarship award money), Nora is a bright-eyed contrast to the inborn cynicism that pervades the rest of the staff. Joining bestie-in-waiting Tabitha (Lukita Maxwell) and the delightfully sad lack Leonard (a winning Daniel Zolghadri), Nora and her fellow interns forge an easy alliance even if they’re all secretly competing for a full time job at the magazine. The thing is, job openings aren’t frequent, so it’s all about proving their longtime utility to the hardnose editors, including Thomas (Joshuah Melnick), with whom Nora begins an innocently complicated relationship. Meanwhile, keeping the ship in order is editor-in-chief Mickey (a perfectly smug Jake Lacy) who largely ignores his underlings unless it’s to get Gay Talese on the line (a reference surely no one this movie is aimed for will understand).
Playing like a little sister companion to Mile End Kicks (complete with needle drops including Sky Ferreira and The Strokes), the film follows a similar trajectory. Alexandra Pechman’s debut traces the arc of a young woman navigating a creative industry, only to learn to never judge a magazine by its cover. As Nora learns the ins-and-outs of getting a publication to print, from poring through the submission pile to fact-checking, she realizes it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Just like Grace Pine, as Nora searches for “my people,” she suffers heartbreak, encounters hard truths, and eventually finds herself in a cutthroat scene that, even today, isn’t especially receptive to women.
The problem is that Magazine isn’t particularly revelatory about the incestuous nature of arts communities. Pechman’s depiction of uneven power dynamics, craven social climbing, and the normalization of bad behavior could equally be applied the worlds of music, cinema, and beyond. The specificity of its early aughts setting winks at a bygone era when bylines actually mattered before everything became listicles, but the fact that writing doesn’t pay is as true now as it was then.
Saddled with numerous montage sequences, one gets the feeling that even Pechman struggled with what quite to say about the world of literary journals, if they matter, or how their influence and stature has changed in fifteen years. In fact, we’re never really quite sure why Nora wants to work at Platen in the first place, other than its supposed sterling reputation. The second half appearance of new intern Greer (an utterly charming Ruby Cruz) breathes some much needed life into Magazine, but not enough to keep from the picture from dragging its way to the finish line.
“Always know when to leave the party” is the advice Mickey gives to Platen’s interns. It’s what amounts to the film’s largest kernel of wisdom too. Indeed, trying to make it is all about knowing when to shoot for your shot and when to stick on the sidelines before fading into the night. Magazine never commits in either direction, leaving the film standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, waiting for someone to come to the rescue.
Reviewed on September 11th at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival (51st edition) – Discovery. 105 Minutes.
★★/☆☆☆☆☆
