Latest in Reviews

In their final debate Thursday night, Joe Biden and Donald Trump offered few surprises, which may have been the biggest surprise of all. With just 12 days to go before the election, the meet-up in Nashville was a far cry from the train wreck that was last month’s first debate. Yet, for all the muted microphone hype…

For at least some of us who lived through the counter-culture/psychedelic era of the late '60s and early '70s, Timothy Leary was one of the most annoying or, at least, equivocal figures of a time that hardly lacked for colorful characters. The most famous utterance of this often articulate, madly attention-seeking…

Two of the most engaging and beguiling talkers—and, oh yes, two of the better writers—of the last century share the spotlight in Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation. Good friends in real life—both were from the South and gay, had difficult upbringings, made it big with early works that were made into popular…

Donald Trump may have been twirling like a rabid squirrel over on NBC, but on the unique night in America's challenged democracy, Joe Biden's town hall on ABC was a display of a candidate in control of himself, the facts, the Constitution, and plans for the future. As George Stephanopoulos wrapped up the night, he…

There are certain films that you just know are Canadian after five minutes — they're milder, softer, more congenial and eager to please than their south-of-the-border counterparts would be — and that's what makes The Kid Detective, despite its twisty ending, such a mild piece of cheese. The film premiered — where…

"See the whole board," a chess-instructing Martin Sheen's President Josiah Bartlet tells Rob Lowe's Sam Seaborn in HBO Max's A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote. Originally uttered in 2002's “Hartsfield's Landing” episode of the multiple Emmy winning political drama, the Aaron Sorkin penned words hang…

At the time, in November 1970, it must have seemed like an ideal match, a meeting of renegade titans: Orson Welles, the long-ago boy genius of theater and films who never got a job directing in Hollywood after 1958, and Dennis Hopper, whose out-of-nowhere smash with Easy Rider in 1969 made him the boy wonder of the…

There are moments, watching Disney-Pixar's latest release Soul, in which the ambition of the Emeryville-based animation house astounds in ways it hasn't quite achieved in years. Moments of abstract expression that feel entirely unique to its new film, and yet wholly in keeping with the DNA that has made Pixar the…

Besides moderator Susan Page losing control early and that fly on Mike Pence’s head, if there is anything everyone can agree on about Wednesday’s first and only vice presidential debate of the 2020 campaign, it is that the 2024 campaign has begun. Between Sen. Kamala Harris and incumbent Mike Pence, one or both of…

Most of the time, Joe Biden is so middle of the road that they should name that yellow line after the former vice president – regardless of whether he wins the election next month. "There’s not one single syllable I’ve ever said that could lead you to believe that I was a socialist or a communist," Biden declared in…

Red, White and Blue, the third and final installment of Steve McQueen's Small Axe quintet of films about racial issues specific to Great Britain being world premiered at the New York Film Festival, zeroes in on the ordeal of a young black Londoner set on helping to definitively break the color barrier at London's…

In the wise words of George W. Bush, "well that was some weird shit." The first of three debates between incumbent Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was a fierce fracas that left most of the rules and portions of reality behind almost from the jump. "Will you shut up, man?" Biden exclaimed to the…