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Could this be a subtle homage to wartime classics (read: Casablanca and The Third Man) that manages to stand on its own? Or is it a tired, nostalgic retread, the last refuge of an artistically fatigued director? Although it’s been six years since Soderbergh enjoyed a critical hit, word on the street is that he’s … Read more

Almodóvar’s latest film is another feast of color and homage (this time to Frank Capra and Mildred Pierce) and also his first set in the backwater province of La Mancha, where the filmmaker grew up. Penélope Cruz stars as a woman who is—guess what?—pushed to the edge of insanity by her husband’s murder. Turns out … Read more

In 1976, the Maysles brothers followed Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie around their dilapidated mansion, listening to these cousins of Jackie Kennedy Onassis ramble on about everything from fashion to philosophy to the vermin infesting their home. The resulting footage became Grey Gardens, a film whose status has ballooned from peripheral culthood into … Read more

Touchstone execs are hoping you’ll ignore Mel Gibson’s recent spate of troubles and concentrate instead on his newest fusion of religion and bloodletting. A heartwarming adventure timed to a holiday release, it’s the tale of a young warrior’s quest to save his family … all the while being tortured and mutilated (kind of like Christ). … Read more

Another holiday story comes loping in on its donkey—this one obviously hoping to reap a box-office triumph similar to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ but without that movie’s politics or gore (or big-name director). Shooting in many of the same locales as Passion, The Nativity Story seeks to tell the simple tale of … Read more

Here’s one of those big, fat books that seem designed to either shame you or make you feel daunted, if not entirely stupid. The title is a scold, really, masquerading as a title—is that “Must” truly necessary? And an idiot can do the math: Are you realistically going to find the time to read 1,001 … Read more

It’s been a banner year for what highbrows call sequential art, what with a new volume of the splendid and absolutely sui generis Kramer’s Ergot and Ivan Brunetti’s An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. The biggest revelation of all, though, might be Dan Nadel’s Art Out of Time, a beautifully designed collection … Read more

Having won the Pulitzer Prize by focusing on the miniscule in his phenomenal book The Ants, Wilson turns to the macro with The Creation. Long interested in the intersection of humans and nature, Wilson made a name for himself in 1975 with Sociobiology, a foundational text on evolutionary psychology that got him branded by some … Read more

Who better to host a holiday show than a man who looks like Santa? The bearded and barrel-chested Bill Holm explores holiday phenomena with MPR’s Heather McElhatton and a collection of other guests, including musician Charlie Parr and writer R. D. Zimmerman. From the small town of Minneota, Minnesota, Holm is all homegrown wholesomeness, except … Read more

“I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a ferris wheel,” the incomparable E. B. White once wrote. This was the man who gave us the little girl named Fern, Wilbur the pig, Templeton the rat, and Charlotte, a spider who happens to be one of the most wondrous creations in all … Read more