Review | ‘Flora and Son’ is the scruffy, song-filled fairy tale we need right now

Review | ‘Flora and Son’ is the scruffy, song-filled fairy tale we need right now

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

Washington Post hardcover bestsellers

Washington Post hardcover bestsellers

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

In Craig Gillespie, unlikely heroes find an unlikely chronicler

In Craig Gillespie, unlikely heroes find an unlikely chronicler

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

Review | Janelle Monáe blossoms at the Anthem

Review | Janelle Monáe blossoms at the Anthem

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

Review | ‘The Creator’ aims for sentimental, lands at artificial

Review | ‘The Creator’ aims for sentimental, lands at artificial

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

Review | Laurel Halo’s ambient music deserves your undivided attention

Review | Laurel Halo’s ambient music deserves your undivided attention

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

Review | James Ellroy returns to L.A. with Hoffa, the Kennedys and Marilyn

Review | James Ellroy returns to L.A. with Hoffa, the Kennedys and Marilyn

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