If you're coming to “ Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry ” hoping for a primer on the music sensation, you’ve come to the wrong place. Filmmaker R.J. Cutler’s two hour and 20-minute...
“Speak, Okinawa,” by Elizabeth Miki Brina (Knopf)
Elizabeth Miki Brina’s “Speak, Okinawa” is a masterful memoir in which Brina examines the complex relationship she has with her interracial...
“Kill Shot: A Shadow Industry, a Deadly Disease,” by Jason Dearen (Avery)
Lower back pain. Spinal stenosis. Cataracts. All those conditions are treated with drugs manufactured by compounding...
Rick Holmstrom, "See That Light” (LuEllie Records)
Mask up, plug in and rock out to a stripped-down sound. That's the recipe for success on “See That Light,” the new solo album by Rick...
Billie Holiday has always been a monster of a role. Diana Ross tackled her on film and Audra McDonald did it on stage. Now it's time for Andra Day — a singer and actress perfectly named to play...
In Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” Anthony, 80, in the grip of dementia, is a captain ready to go down with the ship. Overhearing his daughter and son-in-law contemplating a nursing home, he curses...
Alice Cooper, “Detroit Stories” (earMUSIC)
Who says you can’t go home? Alice Cooper, one of Detroit’s most famous sons, does it on new album “Detroit Stories,” producing a masterpiece of...
Philip B. Price, "Oceans Hiding In Oceans” (Signature Sounds)
The title is apt. Pandemic lockdown transformed Winterpills frontman Philip B. Price into a one-man band on “Oceans Hiding In...
An air of mystery surrounded Rosamund Pike in “Gone Girl” but there's no mistaking her in “I Care a Lot.” Sporting designer suits and a bob cut so sharp that you tremble for her stylist, Pike's...
The great recession didn’t just eliminate jobs, it also erased an entire town. Six months after U.S. Gypsum closed its doors in Empire, Nevada, a company town since 1948, its zip code was retired...
“Ticking Clock: Behind the Scenes at 60 Minutes,” by Ira Rosen (St. Martin’s Press)
Long-time multi-award winning producer Ira Rosen has written a sometimes sad, often funny, always...
“The Echo Wife,” by Sarah Gailey (Tor Books)
In Sarah Gailey’s, “The Echo Wife,” Evelyn is a brilliant scientist, revered in the scientific community for the work she has done in cloning....
“How to Avoid Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” by Bill Gates (Knopf)
Watching Bill Gates in the news over the years, his demeanor usually is that of an...
Edie Brickell and New Bohemians, “Hunter and the Dog Star” (Thirty Tigers)
The renaissance for Edie Brickell and New Bohemians continues on “Hunter and the Dog Star,” the band's second...
It’s often the case that movies based on true stories offer a glimpse of the real-life characters at the end. In “The Mauritanian,” the story of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mohamedou Ould...
There's a tiny oasis on the west coast of Florida where the men wear Tommy Bahama from head to toe and women of a certain age stroll around poolside in tube tops and full jewelry.
Forces of revolution and oppression collide and entangle in Shaka King's blistering “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a potent and vividly acted drama about the FBI's subversion and assassination of...
Pentatonix, “The Lucky Ones” (RCA Records)
There's a new Pentatonix album, which leads to the question, “Didn't we already have Christmas?” And the answer: Yes, this isn't a Christmas set,...
“ Minari ” could not be more personal. Filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung based the film on his own childhood in the 1980s, when his Korean American parents moved to Arkansas to start a farm. And it’s the...
“The Four Winds,” by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s Press)
It’s 1921 in Texas, and 25-year-old Elsa Wolcott is considered by her own parents to be an ugly, unmarriable spinster. Elsa’s family...
Sia, “Music — Songs from and Inspired by the Motion Picture” (Monkey Puzzle/Atlantic)
Whatever your thoughts on the new movie “Music,” there can be no argument about the music in it: It's...
Jeremy Atherton Lin’s “Gay Bar” (Little, Brown & Co.)
Part memoir and part anthropological exploration, Jeremy Atherton Lin’s “Gay Bar” takes readers on a grand, cross-continental adventure...
“Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon,” Colin Bryar and Bill Carr (St. Martin’s Press)
This book reads like a how-to guide, which perhaps is by design — Bryar...
“Unfinished,” by Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Ballantine)
Priyanka Chopra Jonas’s memoir, “Unfinished,” is a moving story of her rise to fame — and of her life before anybody knew her name....
CNCO, “Déjà Vu" (Sony Music Latin)
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and a covers album is the most earnest form of vocal flexing. What better way to prove you’re not a...
Foo Fighters, “Medicine at Midnight” (Roswell/RCA)
“Medicine at Midnight” is what happens when the Foo Fighters embrace grooves instead of riffs. Who asked for that? No one, really. But we...
“Malcolm & Marie," at least, looks the part.
Shot in slinky black-and-white, with John David Washington and Zendaya playing a sharply dressed couple just back to their stunning, modernist...
The year is 2021. A frightened, angry crowd lines up outside a medical center, desperate for a cure for a terrible virus. “He pushed in front!” someone shouts.
Religion and horror are hardly novel bedfellows, but writer-director Rose Glass crafts something fresh of the construct in her promising debut “ Saint Maud.” The film follows the psychological...
“Blood Grove,” by Walter Mosley (Mulholland Books)
Walter Mosley’s Los Angeles detective, Easy Rawlins, has always invited comparisons to the original hard-boiled Southern California...
Aaron Lee Tasjan, “Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!” (New West Records)
Aaron Lee Tasjan is a one-man music encyclopedia who can enthrall audiences with a New York Dolls cover or 10-minute talking...
“Mike Nichols: A Life,” by Mark Harris (Penguin Press)
Inspiration and talent don't always travel together. How many young men and women electrified by director Elia Kazan's Broadway...
“Land of Big Numbers,” by Te-Ping Chen (Mariner Books)
A Chinese tech company recently made headlines for its use of “smart” cushions in office chairs to monitor its employees’ workplace...
“Wild Swims,” by Dorthe Nors (Graywolf Press)
“Hygge” is the Danish word for a sense of coziness and comfort that is supposedly characteristic of that Scandinavian country. In her latest...
“We Could Be Heroes,” by Mike Chen (Mira)
In Mike Chen’s “We Could Be Heroes,” Jamie and Zoe each wake up alone in an unfamiliar apartment. Neither has any memory of who they are or how...
Arlo Parks, “Collapsed in Sunbeams" (Transgressive)
The first full-length album by Arlo Parks delivers on the promise of the intriguing pieces that have led some to tag her already as the...
There’s a kitchen-sink full of Serious Drama Cliches in the new Justin Timberlake film “Palmer,” about a high school football star turned convict who must help the young gender fluid boy with the...
The actors Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth have been friends for 20 years and that is plainly evident watching them play longtime lovers in the wrenchingly beautiful film “Supernova.”
Even before the pandemic, “The Little Things” would have been a throwback.
Star-laden thrillers, with studio scale and high-priced craft, are one of those genres that's been mostly squeezed...
“Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause,” by Ty Seidule (St. Martin’s Press)
Few authors can say they have lived their story with quite the same...
Emmet Cohen, "Future Stride” (Mack Avenue Records)
Stride provides a starting point on jazz pianist Emmet Cohen's new album. The opening cut, “Symphonic Raps,” is a New Orleans ragtime tune...
Ani Di Franco, "Revolutionary Love” (Righteous Babe Records)
Pioneering folkie activist Ani Di Franco is a standout instrumentalist whose guitar could kill fascists. Alas, on “Revolutionary...
“Tropic of Stupid,” by Tim Dorsey (William Morrow)
“Tropic of Stupid,” the 24th novel in Tim Dorsey’s series featuring obsessive-compulsive psychopath Serge Storms, finds the anti-hero and...
“Let Me Tell You What I Mean,” by Joan Didion (Alfred A. Knopf)
Back in 1968, Joan Didion identified a problem with the mainstream media.
“Every Waking Hour,” by Joanna Schaffhausen (Minotaur)
The push-pull relationship between Boston police detective Ellery Hathaway and FBI Agent Reed Markham took a big leap last year in “All...
Ramin Bahrani, the Iranian-American filmmaker, started out small, with the simple story of a pushcart vendor, a Pakistani immigrant selling coffee and doughnuts in New York, in 2005’s “Man Push...
Border tensions are boiled down to two families in “ No Man’s Land,” an uneven independent thriller with some redeeming qualities. Its heart, and homages to classic Westerns, are in the right...
Moon Taxi, “Silver Dream" (BMG)
Moon Taxi have a new album with a dozen songs, but you may be forgiven for losing track of them.
One unmemorable, formulaic tune bleeding into another...