Review

Film Review: Benny Safdie’s “The Smashing Machine” Grapples with Pain, Power, and Self-Worth

October 2, 2025
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This is far from a conventional sports drama: it is a study of a man’s struggle for sense of personal worth and relevance

Children’s Book Reviews: Invitations to Read and Learn

October 2, 2025
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Two new non-fiction books offer important information for young readers — about the fight for reading and learning about their bodies.

Concert Review: Junction Trio Journeys Through the Demanding Sonic Terrain of John Zorn

October 1, 2025
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The Junction Trio offered the coolest show in town — an afternoon of experimental music that highlighted their virtuosity as individual players and as a unit.

Book Review: “The Endless Week” Offers a Brave, Inside-Out Internet Novel Experience

September 30, 2025
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“The Endless Week” is a brave, uneven, at times brilliant swathe of prose. Experimental? For certain. Perhaps the only way to write an Internet novel is by looking from the inside out.

Book Review: Barrymore Shadows — “Too Fast, Too Short” Does Justice to the Life of a Nepo Orphan

September 30, 2025
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Jennifer Ann Redmond’s sympathetic approach to Diana Barrymore’s disastrous life is valuable because it rejects the poor-little-rich-girl tropes. She was more than a debauched debutante or fallen starlet.

Book Review: “Matisse at War” — The Makings of a Spy Thriller

September 30, 2025
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All in all, this is a crisp, entertaining, and, so far as I can see, an accurate account of the last acts in Henri Matisse’s career.

Visual Arts Review: Immersed in Memory and Flight: Andrae Green’s “Paradise/Mash-Up” at the BCA

September 29, 2025
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For the artist Andrae Green, where land and sea meet is not a line, but an immersion.

Classical Music Album Review: Estonian Festival Orchestra and Paavo Järvi Celebrate the Music of Arvo Pärt

September 28, 2025
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Arvo Pärt’s ubiquity in concert halls and on disc for much of the last fifty years suggests that he’s got plenty to say to our cultural and historic moment.

Theater Review: “The Hills of California” — The Power of Family Matters

September 27, 2025
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The play eventually packs a wallop, but it drags its feet at the start.

Concert Review: Do the Reggae Tour — Two Icons, One Uplifting Night

September 27, 2025
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The cross generational Do the Reggae Tour suggested that reggae’s creative trek was far from over.

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