'Synchronicity': Sci-Fi That Smells Like More Than It Is
It wants to be a Blade Runner-inflected noir, but Synchronicity does nothing with its femme fatale and is disappointingly repetitive of other, better films.
Arts
Is Netflix Chill? Kenyan Authorities Threaten To Ban The Streaming Site
Two weeks ago, Kenyans finally got access to Netflix. But we still don't know if they'll binge happily every after.
In 'Sweat,' Adapting To Change Is The Hardest Work Of All
Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage spent two years visiting Reading, Pa., to research her new play. Sweat explores how industrial decline affected workers in the former steel and textile town.
A Nightmare Artist Adrift In 'Deep Sea'
Serge Brussolo's hallucinatory 1992 novel The Deep Sea Diver's Syndrome follows a group of lucid dreamers whose slumbers produce a strange ectoplasm that can soothe and even heal people who see it.
'London Spy' Begins With A Romance Between A Clubber And MI6 Agent
The new BBC America show, written by author Tom Rob Smith, opens with a gay couple falling in love. Then one of them mysteriously disappears.
'Mojave': At Least The Desert Is Good-Looking
Mojave wastes a hirsute Oscar Isaac and a nice twangy guitar on an insufferable neo-noir about a Hollywood director followed a little too closely by a stranger.
'Aferim!' May Be Romania's 'Hateful Eight'
Critic Mark Jenkins finds parallels between Quentin Tarantino's snowbound revisionist Western and this story of a constable and his son in search of an escaped slave.
The Disappointment Invades In 'The 5th Wave'
Chloe Grace Moretz stars in this possible franchise-starter about a teenage girl pitted against an invading alien horde. You know, the usual.
Sundance Preview: Film Festival To Tackle Gun Violence
The Sundance Film Festival gets underway Thursday night in Park City, Utah. NPR explores the themes of the festival and which films are getting big buzz.
When 'Your Heart Is A Muscle,' Empathy Is A Revolutionary Act
Writer Sunil Yapa says his father taught him to have a global perspective from a very young age. Yapa's new novel was inspired by explosive global trade protests that took place in Seattle in 1999.