Arts & Culture
Deep in the heart
In News of the World, the new Tom Hanks picture, there’s plenty of ferocious action and a good deal of impressive speechifying, but much of what’s best in it occurs in quiet moments in which […]
Film
Arts & Culture
Delivered by cinema
This past year of “streaming in place” provided at least some much-needed respite from the multiple miseries, large and small, of the times in which we find ourselves. There was, however, little that was “normal” […]
Arts & Culture
Land of milk
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, an offbeat western that’s probably slipped under most people’s radar, strikes me as one of the most odd and rewarding American movies of the year. A whole range of peculiarities are […]
Arts & Culture
Small-screen signposts
It almost goes without saying that moviegoing in this highly fraught year continues to be mostly a matter of “streaming in place.” Be that as it may, perhaps a little more could be said, and […]
Arts & Culture
One nation under influence
Since teaching her last class at Chico State in June 2018, Janja Lalich—professor emerita of sociology and a preeminent expert on cults—has not eased her way into retirement. “I’m actually way too busy,” she told […]
Arts & Culture
‘We’ll give it our best shot’
In these many weeks of sheltering in place, with movie-going and -viewing being a matter of streaming in place, I’ve found that while “the movies” in general matter a good deal less to me, the […]
Arts & Culture
Streaming cinema
Even before the shelter-in-place shutdown, I hadn’t been inside a movie theater much at all in 2020. Part of the reason for that was simply that I was seeing quite a lot of really good […]