brokeback mountain

Ang Lee's "gay cowboy movie" is too quiet and intimate to shoulder the expectations gay-rights advocates want to thrust upon i...

u2

Bono's recent interview with Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes stirred up all my mixed emotions about U2's "resurgence" in the 21...

2005: the year people stopped caring about movies

Patrick Goldstein in the Los Angeles Times distills Hollywood's paranoia about "The Slump" -- the year-long box-office slide...

john simon

Richard Schickel has a great piece on critic John Simon's new books on film, theater, and music. He and Simon both have valuable things...

hating 50 cent

A movie as execrable as Get Rich or Die Tryin' is probably best handled by utterly ignoring it. But I couldn't help myself.

harry potter and the goblet of fire

My review of the new Harry Potter film is up on Screen International .

what's worse: the dodgers or the sports coverage of them?

Great piece in the Los Angeles Times ' opinion section (now called Current) about the piling-on mentality of the Times ' sports wri...

barry lyndon

Of Stanley Kubrick's studio films, Barry Lyndon is the least celebrated. After seeing a terrific print at the Aero in Santa Monica, I c...

jarhead: better than you've heard

When I saw Jarhead before its release, already the disappointed buzz was building. I think it has its flaws, but it's a much smarter an...

being fair to bush

It's easy to made snide comments about the Bush administration, but in the spirit of fairness, we should also take into consideration th...

the lost doonesbury strips on harriet miers

It could be my political slant, of course, but Garry Trudeau has done terrific work in the last couple years, methodically shellacking the B...

dangerdoom

The hottest MC and the hippest DJ came together for a little irreverent fun, and the results are the very stellar The Mouse and the Mask .

consumables

In bite-sized form, here are my reviews of Shopgirl , Capote , Good Night, and Good Luck and many other wonderful pop-culture items. I call...

calvin and hobbes

A genuinely funny comic strip stands above the medium's mediocrity so easily that there's a tendency to overrate any brief flicker o...

paul zimmerman: football for non-dummies

Dr. Z, longtime NFL writer for Sports Illustrated , is a hero of mine for his ability to blend the personal anecdote with the objective anal...

animal collective

My review of Animal Collective's new album Feels appears in the Phoenix New Times .

who is rodrigo garcia?

A very nice, very funny, very smart man with a great new movie called Nine Lives . I talked to him about it for the LA Weekly .

life lessons from robert christgau, part one

Robert Christgau has been writing about music at the Village Voice for over 30 years now. His body of criticism is an inspiration to anyone ...

how to write an appreciation; or, remembering august wilson

When someone well-regarded in the arts dies, he or she usually receives both an obituary and an "appreciation" from most publicati...

a history of violence

David Cronenberg's A History of Violence has been praised as a searing indictment of America and its gun-crazy culture. I disagree .

starbucks, now 35 percent less evil

It's easy to lump Starbucks into the same category as Wal-Mart or McDonald's -- evil corporations out to destroy the planet while fa...

believe the hype

"Believe the Hype" is my biweekly column for the Black Table that takes a closer look at a movie, album, book, or television show...

a true muslim woman, yes or no?

Muslim women living in America have an unenviable choice -- dress and act like any other Western female (and lose your cultural identity) or...

lord of war

My piece on Lord of War .

constant gardener

No, you're not wrong for thinking that The Constant Gardener is a tad overrated. And Anthony Lane will explain why .

we'll know where when we get there

This is an experiment into seeking out the best writing on the arts, culture, what have you. Often, I'll agree with the point of view, b...