Film

Film Review: A Sexplanation

Director Alex Liu opens his documentary with a quote from the actress Marlene Dietrich: “In America, sex is an obsession; in other parts of the world it’s a fact.” Over the followi…

Film

Film Review: We Burn Like This

When an angry man throws a beer bottle from his truck and yells “Go back to your own country!” at young roommates Rae (Madeleine Coghlan) and Chrissy (Devery Jacobs), it’s unclear …

Music

Music Review: Home, Before and After

Regina Spektor's songs have always been quirky, insightful tales that mix the mundane with the marvelous. “Ghost of Corporate Future” from her 2004 album Soviet Kitsch follows a …

Music

Music Review: Tiyo's Songs of Life

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El was born in 1932 in Pennsylvania. After serving as a tank operator in the Korean War, he played tenor saxophone at R&B clubs. He became involved in small-tim…

Film

Film Review: Costa Brava, Lebanon

Mounia Akl's film tackles an important and underdiscussed aspect of an important subject. How do you persist as people, as a family, when the world seems to be falling apart around…

Film

Film Review: Karmalink

Billed as a “Buddhist sci-fi mystery,” Jake Wachtel’s film follows two working-class Cambodian kids who, driven by dreams of a missing golden Buddha statue and a temple they’ve nev…

Books

Book Review: All For Love

Matt Kahn’s new book, All for Love, is both poetic and practical. The poetic part appears in definitions and descriptions. For example, conversation is defined as “a dance of shari…

Books

Book Review: Worth the Risk

During the past two years, the never-ending news cycle focusing on the dangers of the world led many to hunker down in their desire to remain “safe.” Kristen Lee observes in her ne…

Books

Book Review: Around the World in 80 Spiritual Places

Defining spiritual places is the first order of business, a task made joyful by the abundance of landscapes, locales, buildings, and sites to choose from. A highlight of the book’s…

Books

Book Review: Hoodoo for Everyone

How do you conjure up empowerment and reclaim agency when you have no power? These questions are the origin story of hoodoo, a folk magic created hundreds of years ago by enslaved …

Music

Music Review: Breaking the Thermometer

Breaking the Thermometer by Leyla McCalla is an ambitious and rewarding project that intersects music, politics, journalism, and personal history. A vocalist and multi-instrument…

Music

Music Review: Les Racines

Vieux Farka Toure's new album, Les Racines, was recorded in Bamako, Mali, in his home studio, which is named after his father, the eminent African blues guitarist Ali Farka Touré. …