The Smiths were a band offering cold comfort to the lovelorn, and a relationship begun out of shared admiration for Morrissey’s morose reflections on emotional failure is surely born under the sign of doom. And “relationship,” that weasel word meaning e

Like a lot of horror films, The Skeptic (out on DVD) is more interesting for what it says about contemporary society than for its depiction of the supernatural. Timothy Daly stars as Bryan Becket, a hardheaded rationalist who inherits a haunted house.

Facing Ali, the documentary by director Pete McCormack (out Dec. 29 on DVD), is a well-made examination of the career of world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali. It’s also an insightful look into the sport of boxing, told by a gamut of professionals, in

The death of a child is a devastating turn for parents and can sometimes devastate their marriage. Blind Date imagines the estranged parents of a five-year old (who died in a car accident for which they feel responsible) working through their problems w

911 was born in conspiracy, the plot by Al Quaeda to strike against the symbols of American global domination in the most dramatic way. Little wonder that before the shock could even be absorbed, conspiracy theories purporting to explain the real conspi

One of the most brilliant animated films of recent years wasn’t produced in a big studio, with dozens of animators and programmers. Nina Paley made it instead in her home studio with over the counter software, assembled by force of imagination from

To all appearances, Joel is a successful entrepreneur whose American dream of developing his own line of food flavor extracts has come true. But at home, Joel (Jason Bateman) is a frustrated man. Once his wife, Suzie (Kristen Wiig), dons her sweat pants

Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s deathless detective, has been recreated on screen in every decade, for every generation. Whether the Morton Downey Jr. portrayal, out in theaters this month, stirs anticipation or apprehension depends on your confid

East Germany, the so-called German Democratic Republic, was never a nation as much as a prison. Held together under the pressure of outside force, the moment the Soviet thumb pulled back in the fall of 1989, East Germany began to collapse. The

On their honeymoon, Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a couple from New York City, toured the National Gallery in Washington. Herb was already fascinated by art history and studied the subject in his off hours. For Dorothy, it was a new experience, setting the co

More than any non-fiction book or documentary, the television show “Flipper” brought the benign intelligence of dolphins to public attention; ironically, the rising affection for the ocean mammals resulted in an industry that captures and conf

So far humanity has ducked several man-made bullets, especially nuclear war, but luck may be running low. Especially troubling is the likely convergence of several problems, including rising population, petroleum depletion, economic demands from rising

Monty Python’s Flying Circus forever marked British comedy and their influence reverberated far beyond the island kingdom. In the documentary “Monty Python Conquers America,” Judd Apatow, Carl Reiner and other funny Yanks discuss how Pyth

I don’t know about you, but for me, comedy and Canada aren’t words that go together like hand and glove or horse and carriage. They are such reasonable and unassuming people, those neighbors to the north. If I would imagine a homegrown Canadian comedy

The Right has criticized Barack Obama for taking his time deciding what to do about Afghanistan. Of course, intelligent reflection and thought itself is anathema to the dittoheads of talk radio. Especially in light of the unfree and unfair election just

Nowadays tattoo art is often like alternative rock in ProTools era—more people than every can execute it, but much of the product is paint by numbers and off the rack. Not unlike rock’n’roll, the American tattoo originated in subcultures far from poli

During the age of confusion called 1960s, the songs of Leonard Cohen were a source of poetic gravity. For me he was the greatest poet to emerge from the era’s music, and while not the most influential, certainly the most consistent. The aura of having

During the 1930s, in the lowest years of the Great Depression, a handful of criminals entered American folklore for robbing banks at a time when bankers were even less popular than today. The History Channel documentary “Crime Wave: 18 Months of Mayhem”

In Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road, the world has all but stopped turning. The Pulitzer Prize-winning story never explains the ecological catastrophe that rapidly overwhelmed the Earth and destroyed civilization, wiping out the larger part of humanity

What strikes me most about You Weren’t There: A History of Chicago Punk 1977-1984 is the feeling that I was almost there. The similarities between the punk scene that began to stir in Milwaukee by the end of ’77 and the topic of Joe Losurdo and Christ

The 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing brought many recollections and documentaries of an adventure that held the world spellbound. The History Channel also aired “Moonshot,” a “fact-based drama” drawn from interviews with participants an

Seldom has contemporary society been satirized so brutally, or so well, as in Fight Club (1999). Working from the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, director David Fincher’s midnight black comedy poked savage fun at corporate consumer society along with its disc

Guilio Andreotti’s face, rimmed with long acupuncture needles in the opening scene of Il Divo, suggests Hellraiser rather than anyone who could have been Italy’s prime minister not once but seven times. Then again, Andreotti was no ordinary politician b

Whether literally or metaphorically, many places are haunted by ghosts of the past. Although the History Channel series “Haunted Histories: America’s Most Haunted Places’ (out on DVD) hedges its metaphysics a little, it learns toward the proposition th

Earthbound explorers were the astronauts of the 19th century, going boldly into the unknown. They were heroes of their day and Dr. David Livingstone was a superstar among them. A British anti-slavery activist as well as an adventurer, Livingstone held t