Comment on this storyComment StarSolidStarSolidStarSolidStarHalf(3.5 stars) In “Flora and Son,” Eve Hewson plays the feisty, irrepressible title character, a single mom living in Dublin with 14-year-old Max (Orén Kinlan), a grumpy troublemaker who largely ignores his mother when they’re not lobbing vulgarities at each other in their cramped apartment. Of course, it’s Ireland, so the … Read more
Comment on this storyComment 1 TOM LAKE (Harper, $30). By Ann Patchett. Over the course of a summer, a woman tells her three daughters the story of her affair, at 19, with an actor on the cusp of stardom. 2 THE LAST DEVIL TO DIE (Pamela Dorman, $29). By Richard Osman. Looking for the murderer … Read more
The ‘Dumb Money’ director’s knack for portraying outsiders has roots in his own self-made path to Hollywood September 27, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT Craig Gillespie, an Australian American film, television and music video director, often centers his stories on unlikely protagonists. (Philip Cheung for The Washington Post; Grooming by Sussy Campos; Styling by Rhonda … Read more
Comment on this storyComment In 1966, David McCallum was in the midst of his first bout of stardom thanks to his starring role as the Russian spy Illya Kuryakin on the NBC prime-time series, “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” when Capitol Records came calling. McCallum, who died of natural causes on Sept. 25 at 90, is … Read more
Comment on this storyComment A large, white drape that had been concealing Janelle Monáe’s stage fluttered to the ground as the house lights dimmed, signaling the singer’s grand entrance. The detailed set resembled a reclaimed amphitheater, with clusters of bright flowers and other greenery evoking bountiful growth. It was an apt backdrop: Monáe is cultivating … Read more
Comment on this storyComment StarSolidStarSolidStarOutlineStarOutline(2 stars) The boldest thing about “The Creator,” a mash-up of mostly familiar sci-fi and war-movie tropes, is the filmmakers’ choice of a villain: the United States of America. Set some 40 years in the future, director and co-writer Gareth Edwards’s movie imagines an American campaign of mass destruction against New … Read more
Comment on this storyComment As a onetime speechwriter for Maynard Jackson, the first Black mayor of Atlanta, playwright Pearl Cleage knew for years that she eventually wanted to pen a piece about her former boss. But having put words in his mouth on the campaign trail, she had no plans to do so onstage. “I … Read more
Somewhere between Brian Eno’s finest hours and whatever algorithmic junk sounds Spotify wants you to stream while you do your math homework, our shared understanding of ambient music seems to have split in two. Over here, it’s like expensive perfume — an art-music of effervescence and intentionality that somehow contends with Eno’s 1978 maxim that … Read more
Comment on this storyComment A shut door is a key plot point in Lauren Yee’s “King of the Yees,” but the Signature Theatre production draws us right in to the play’s profound yet funny world. The visions we encounter there — a fairy-tale quest involving whiskey, a kung fu-evoking news bulletin, an FBI operation that … Read more
Comment on this storyComment The troubled specter of Marilyn Monroe haunts James Ellroy’s latest novel, “The Enchanters,” but its real star is Freddy Otash, the notorious Los Angeles police officer and private investigator who’s said to have inspired Jack Nicholson’s character in “Chinatown.” The fictionalized Otash plays the morally gray, unreliable narrator of a story … Read more