Joaquin Phoenix plays a shattered soul who makes his way as a thug-for-hire in director Lynne Ramsay's brutal and unsparing new crime film. Justin Chang calls the movie "superior art-house pulp."
For many poor families in America, eviction is a real and ongoing threat. Sociologist Matthew Desmond estimates that 2.3 million evictions were filed in the U.S. in 2016 — a rate of four every minute.
Prine keeps his earthiness alive on his first album of new songs in 13 years. Critic Ken Tucker says The Tree of Forgiveness features simple folk arrangements and a jaunty tone.
Critic Kevin Whitehead remembers the late musician, who was known for his animated piano recitals and group improvisations, and who sometimes used his forearm to play dense clusters on the keys.
Book critic MAUREEN CORRIGAN reviews Meg Wolitzer's new novel about a young feminist who meets a feminist icon, and confronts their generational differences.
Author Robert Kuttner says the decline of social contracts in Western democracies has led to the rise of right-wing populism. His new book is Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
Writer-director Chloé Zhao's new film tells the true story of a Lakota cowboy recovering from a serious rodeo accident. Critic Justin Chang says The Rider has "a bone-deep authenticity."
In 2016, Brady Jandreau was thrown from a horse while riding in a rodeo. The horse stepped on the Lakota cowboy's head, crushing his skull.
Doctors told him that he wouldn't ride again — and he considered giving it up — but couldn't. "I knew what I had to do and I knew what I was going to do," Jandreau says. "The rest was up to faith and my connection with the animal."
Todd Purdum's new book, Something Wonderful, is about the creative partnership and strained personal relationship behind such hit shows as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and The Sound of Music
Three teenage girls make a pact to lose their virginity after senior prom — and three parents embark on a hysterical odyssey to stop them — in Kay Cannon's raunchy new sex comedy.
The Algeria-born French pianist combines serious improvising with a playful attitude on his solo recital album. Critic Kevin Whitehead says Solal pulls listeners along "like a great storyteller."
Stevens, who played Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey, now plays a young man who's grown up thinking he has schizophrenia on Legion, an FX drama that's a spin-off of the Marvel Comics X-Men series.
Four years ago, Eels founder Mark Oliver Everett decided to take a break. After 25 years of making music, he says, "I got to the point where if you do any one thing too much in your life, it catches up to you and makes it clear that you need to do something else."
Near the beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a big black monolith appears in an African desert, leaving a group of prehistoric ape-men standing there baffled. And that was pretty much the reaction that greeted the film itself when it premiered 50 years ago this week.
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright describes herself as an "optimist who worries a lot." And lately, it seems, there has been much to worry about.
Yunte Huang's new book chronicles the lives of the "original Siamese twins," who were brought to America in 1829 and forced to perform in a freak show. They later married and fathered 21 children.
Bochco, who died Sunday, created numerous series, including Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. TV Critic David Bianculli looks back on Bochco's impact, then we listen to his 1989 Fresh Air interview.
Spielberg's new action-adventure is set in future world where people use virtual-reality goggles to escape a dreary city. Critic Justin Chang calls it both "spectacular — and spectacularly empty."
New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick explains the connection between the Mueller Investigation and efforts by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to influence U.S. international policy.
Sara Saedi was two when her parents fled Iran to California. Her new memoir describes her 18-year-long path to citizenship, and the lingering anxiety of being undocumented.