The title of “Wild Indian” is as much of a provocation as the movie itself. Set in the 1980s and the present day, with a prologue set centuries in the past, it’s about a couple of Ojibwe boys from a reservation who cover up the murder of a classmate, then carry guilt over their shared participation in…

Back in the day, the two big counterculture sci-fi novels were the libertarian-division Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, which made the word “grok” a thing for many years (not so much anymore; hardly even pops up in crossword puzzles today) and Frank Herbert’s 1965 Dune, a futuristic geopolitical allegory that was anti-corporate, pro-eco-radicalism,…

Can you put a price tag on a life? “Worth” delves into that question by telling the story of the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund. The fund was created by an act of Congress to ease the suffering of families who lost loved ones in the attack and (perhaps more importantly, from the government’s standpoint) keep them from…

Cinderella has survived a lot over the years, first the wicked stepmother and the midnight curfew and then hundreds of versions and adaptations in books, on television, and in film, undertaken by just about everyone, including Walt Disney, Julie Andrews, Jerry Lewis, Drew Barrymore, Anne Hathaway, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. She is going to survive…

She appears on stage in a red dress, crooning a song he had always kept to himself. He steps toward her slowly—an image from behind a shimmering curtain—as if he had never seen a human being in such a way before, and didn’t recognize the feelings he got from looking at her. The song wis…

One of the many ways in which I’m a fortunate person is that every year starting in 2015, the estimable scholar and critic Peter Cowie has invited me to participate in the Biennalle College panel. This enables me to see exciting new work executed on a fixed low budget, and to possibly be of service…