Arts

‘The Lost King’ Review: A Royal Obsession

Sally Hawkins is a gift, to directors and audiences alike. When she smiles, it’s a face-splitting beam, so contagious that we would likely love her even if she were playing a murderer. And while her character in “The Lost King” is firmly tethered to a dead man, she didn’t kill him: She’s trying to dig … Read more

Attempts to Ban Books Doubled in 2022

Efforts to ban books nearly doubled in 2022 over the previous year, according to a report published Thursday by the American Library Association. The organization tracked 1,269 attempts to ban books and other resources in libraries and schools, the highest number of complaints since the association began studying censorship efforts more than 20 years ago. … Read more

‘What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?’ Review: What Goes Up

What happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears, judging by this spurious, somewhat cranky documentary by John Scheinfeld, is that the band faced the unforeseen consequences of its own bad decisions. In 1970, Blood, Sweat & Tears, the enormously popular nine-piece jazz-rock group, undertook a tour of Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland under the aegis of the … Read more

What Would Ben Franklin Say? Artists Weigh the Dream of Democracy

PHILADELPHIA — It’s just a few blocks on Arch Street between the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest art school and museum in the United States, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia, founded in 1976 to celebrate the achievements of African Americans from pre-colonial times to the current day. Yet rarely have … Read more

‘The Five Devils’ Review: The Scent of the Past

Vicky (Sally Dramé), the creepy kid at the center of “The Five Devils,” has a strange power: her sense of smell is so strong, she can track her mother, Joanne (Adèle Exarchopoulous), from dozens of yards away with her eyes closed; can detect the scent of chlorinated swimming-pool water and spilled coffee in the pages … Read more