Movie Reviews & Stories On Jan. 22 of this year, in an all-caps blog burst of audacious self-pity, Kanye West accidentally defined a cultural epoch. “WHY,” he asked, “WON’T YOU LET ME BE GREAT!!!&rdqu ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories There are two movies running side by side in Goodbye Solo. One of them, which is predictable enough to set my watch by, is about the unlikely friendship (read: one guy’s African, one’s Ame ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories The revelatory experience of first encountering Bruce Conner’s films produces that same “holy shit” mind shock you felt when you discovered the Ramones or the Stooges or Borges or Bu ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories Before Hunger started collecting awards last year, director Steve McQueen’s best-known work was the 1997 short video Deadpan, which restages the famous “falling house” gag from Buste ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories Slow though his films may be, Carlos Reygadas does not leave an audience wondering about intent. His opening shots are bold announcements—invitations to join him, cautions against proceeding fur ...   More

Books Patrick deWitt’s debut novel, Ablutions (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 164 pages, $23), perches at the back of a pitiful bartender’s mind as he observes his wretched regulars and struggles ag ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories Yes, you can go home again. Caveat visitor: You might not want to leave. Consider Mikey, the sad-sack protagonist of Azazel Jacobs’ wonderful, low-budget drama Momma’s Man. Unlike the relu ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories Alan Ball, upon whom some mischievous muse bestowed a Janus-faced capacity for both the ersatz ipecac of American Beauty (which he wrote) and the heartaching perfection of Six Feet Under (which he cre ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories Even the blandest, most benighted hamlet, if it happens to be the place where you first met the world, is myth and magic. It’s the map of a hidden self, for better or worse. Usually, somehow, wo ...   More

Movie Reviews & Stories In an alternate, perhaps less amusing universe, Mike Leigh has just directed a film in which two developmentally disabled middle-aged men become stepbrothers, learning to love each other and respect t ...   More