Screen
The hidden sounds of Alabama
The section of the Tennessee River that forms the northern border of Muscle Shoals, Ala., didn’t always go by that name. Early Native Americans called it “The Singing River” and believed a river princess sang its soft melody...
White people nearly died
The 2004 tsunami that struck Eastern Asia was the sixth deadliest “act of God” in recorded history and quieted just fewer than 300,000 lives. The first major motion picture to tackle the subject, The Impossible, is about a group of white folks who get injured and ...
You’ll need a Haneke
Oh, hell no. Why you gotta do us like that, writer/director Michael Haneke? Is life not already emotionally dense enough that you have to go and drop Amour on us just to remind us how finite and precious this human experience is? This is the sort of film you don’t ...
Les swing and les miss
Two minutes in: You can do this, Ryan. Sure, a three-hour film version of a Broadway musical is a dry way to waterboard you, but people say Les Misérables is the best adaptation yet. Maybe this is the one that finally changes your mind...
Where you been, Laden?
That members of the U.S. Senate have spent more time discussing the fictional depiction of torture in Zero Dark Thirty than they spent discussing the actual torture the military was performing in the wake of 9/11 is yet more proof that “Congress” is the opposite of “...
Sherlock Homeless
Jack Reacher, the hero of Jack Reacher (in case you were confused), is a drifter with nothing to lose. We know this because that is exactly what Tom Cruise says he is while yelling at a bad guy on the phone, Taken-style. Reacher is novelist Lee Child’s 6-foot, 5-inch...
Cotillard’s coattails
Given that France is America’s go-to national punching bag for milquetoast xenophobic jokes, it is a testimony to her towering talent that Marion Cotillard is an Oscar-winning box office draw. Even reducing her physical presence by a third in her latest, Rust and ...
Antebellum antiheroism
Oh, Quentin Tarantino, you’ve really done it this time, haven’t you? Nobody really cared when you fantasized that Hitler didn’t end his reign of terror with one last murder (his own), placing therapeutic cinematic release into the hands of machine-gun toting Jews ...
