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Dyed-in-the-wool Marxists will note that this box set collecting seven of Groucho, Harpo, and Chico’s late-period movies is hardly definitive—their most anarchically funny work, Duck Soup and Animal Crackers, is missing. But we do have the two true classics they made with their most simpatico producer, Irving Thalberg, A Night at the Opera and A … Read more

“You’ll feel like you’re in Mexico!” it says on EBM’s website, which may explain why Dick and Lynne Cheney kept their visit short last March. For our part, we always leave with more than we came for. El Burrito’s boggling array of dried peppers, from ancho to pasilla, can lure anyone into the Mercado, and … Read more

D-Day turns sixty next month, bringing a barrage of notable World War Two movies on the DVD release front. We’re especially fond of this one, a very different proposition from what you’ll usually find in the genre. Directed in 1968 by John Boorman (at his creative peak, after Point Blank and before Deliverance), Hell avoids … Read more

Our only regret, really, is that it took us so long to finally check out this bustling Vietnamese spot, one of the reasons Nicollet Avenue earned the nickname “Eat Street.” Big portions, tasty dishes (love the chicken with ginger sauce), and nicely affordable: We splurged on one of the most expensive items on the menu—the … Read more

Best known for M and Metropolis, director Fritz Lang made this intriguingly offbeat 1933 thriller just before fleeing Nazi Germany—and small wonder he had to. Though the Nazis supposedly offered him a chance to run Hitler’s film industry, they couldn’t have liked the parallels Testament drew between its titular villain, an insane criminal genius, and … Read more

Cooing jazz chanteuse Diana Krall met pop-punk icon Elvis Costello at the 2002 Grammys, and so far two great things have resulted—their marriage, and an inspired, romantic collaborative album. Krall is known for giving new life to old standards. Girl In The Other Room, however, breaks that tradition as the first of her eight albums … Read more

East L.A.’s band of wolves have had a thirty-year career of remarkably high-quality work, though that hasn’t always translated into the mainstream success worthy of their talent, their 1987 monster-hit cover of “La Bamba” aside. And although it’s good news to us merely that they’re back with their first disc since 2002’s stellar Good Morning … Read more

For those who know Toots & the Maytals solely from “Pressure Drop”—the best cut on The Harder They Come, the greatest reggae collection ever—a whole world awaits. With Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley, and Bunny Wailer, Toots has kept on keeping on, even as public interest in reggae outside of Kingston, Jamaica, has dipped and doodled … Read more

For its eleventh year, the Walker’s annual celebration of female film directors kicks off with the apropos new documentary In the Company of Women, a look at the vital role of female filmmakers in the nineties’ independent-cinema explosion. Though it sometimes feels like a ninety-minute commercial for the Independent Film Channel (which funded it), it’s … Read more