Most girls with wide noses, goofy grins, or hair that won’t behave (much less cascade) don’t dream of making it as an actress. But unconventional beauty Lili Taylor is exceptional in that regard, and in many other ways, too. Her gift for inhabiting the essence of her characters–who quite often turn out to be crazy–is … Read more
French/Austrian director Michael Haneke forces the viewer to take the point of view of a stalker in this dazzlingly complex thriller, which topped many a critic’s list for 2005. Daniel Auteuil–and Juliette Binoche–star as a middle-class Parisian couple whose lives are disrupted by a series of increasingly personal surveillance tapes sent to them anonymously. Each … Read more
Inspirational and occasionally outlandish, this Anthony Hopkins vehicle is a satisfying throwback to old-style, crowd-pleasing cinema. Reuniting with director Roger Donaldson, who took him to great heights in the underrated Bounty, Hopkins plays Burt Munro, the feisty New Zealander who came to America in the 1960s, intent on breaking the world’s land-speed record with his … Read more
We would have given you decidedly long odds on the chances of us falling for a dandified, self-absorbed porcelain rabbit, yet the latest story from the Newbery Award-winning novelist Kate DiCamillo (whose "See How Far You Get" we published last June) has as much darkness and light, terror and love, and real human warmth and … Read more
We used to champion Steven Soderbergh for his versatility and, even more so, the utterly spastic subversion that he wrought with the little-seen Schizopolis. But then he kept inserting Julia Roberts into his films, and, by the time of Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve, seemed to have coasted off, down Easy Street. Now he appears to … Read more
Robinson’s Gilead is one of the truly great and revelatory novels of the last decade. This is a quiet and almost impossibly elegant meditation on life, faith, doubt, and death–issues Robinson tackles with graceful prose that never feels labored and is suffused with gentle yet devastating shocks of wonder. Gilead has the potential to change … Read more
If the wild West still exists anywhere in North America, it’s along the Rio Grande, the border between the U.S. and Mexico. This film, the second directed by Tommy Lee Jones, who also stars as rancher Pete Perkins, explores the emotional and geographical terrain along that great divide. A Mexican man, Melquiades Estrada, is shot … Read more
Ayelet Waldman is perhaps best known for having set off a bit of a moral brushfire when she announced in an essay in the New York Times that her love for her husband, the writer Michael Chabon, trumped her feelings for the couple’s children. While that strange business didn’t exactly paint the most attractive portrait … Read more
Literary magazines have long occupied a sort of members-only, marginal status in the world of publishing. Many of these things are butt-ugly, deadly earnest, and, where not subsidized by universities or literary organizations, marked for extinction from the get-go. What a marvel it is, then, to have Minneapolis-produced Conduit delivered to our door “when least … Read more
Along comes the smokin’ hot younger sister to Azia, the reigning diva of Eat Street. Though it’s housed inside Azia, Anemoni has its own distinctive lime-green vibe, as well as a deejay spinning seven nights a week. The stunning raw seafood offerings include traditional sushi and rolls, but that’s not why you go. You go … Read more