When I teach film, I often use clips from Baz Luhrmann movies as examples of formal techniques — montage, say, or framing. His use of the structure of filmmaking to communic...

In “The Great Gatsby,” out Friday, Carey Mulligan plays the impeccably bobbed Daisy. You too could look like her if you had diamond headbands and hours to spend with a fla...

Country crossover star Taylor Swift has carved out a niche penning maddeningly infectious songs about approximately a zillion relationships, most of them unrequited or over. G...

During this year’s Super Bowl, Ram Trucks ran an ad using Paul Harvey’s late-’70s “So God Made a Farmer” speech. Harvey’s voice echoed across pictures of lush crop...

Our long national nightmare is over! And by “long” I mean four months, and by “national” I mean “personal,” and by “nightmare” I mean “not having anything go...

Sunday starts National Herb Week, begun by the International Herb Association, which exists. Holly Poole-Kavana, an herbalist and owner of Little Red Bird Botanicals in Columb...

In “At Any Price,” out Friday, Dennis Quaid plays a Midwestern farmer with a rebellious son, a zillion acres of land and corn. Lots and lots of corn. He joins the crowded ...

Ever feel like ditching it all? Cutting the ties that bind you to work and student loans and that faucet that just won’t stop dripping and getting a new identity and heading...

As the tens of longtime readers of this column know, I keep track of the movies I see each year using my office wall and Post-it notes. The Movie-Ranking Wall of Stickies (mot...

The cherry blossoms have departed, leaving D.C. residents bereft of trees to freak out about. Enter Arbor Day. The holiday, which falls on the last Friday in April (that’s t...

For the record, when Henry-Alex Rubin’s phone buzzed during this interview, he didn’t move. It wouldn’t have looked good if he did, seeing as how his film “Disconnect,...

I am about to absolve you of something. Are you ready? It’s OK if you don’t like “To the Wonder.” The film, which opened last week, was directed by Terrence Malick, wh...

In “Disconnect,” opening Friday, Jason Bateman’s character essentially has an emotional affair with his phone, which rips his family apart. Still, he fares somew...

Chadwick Boseman delivers a crowd-pleasing performance in “42.” Which was a problem. The crowd was supposed to boo. While filming the biopic, in which the Howard Universit...

There goes Danny Boyle again, venturing deep into the mind of another main character. It’s what the director did with “Trainspotting,” “127 Hours” and “Slumdog Mil...