Arts & Culture

The Leftovers airs Sundays on HBO If you don’t have religion, you should at least have The Leftovers. HBO’s rapturous drama hasn’t found much of an audience during its brief time on Earth, but those who listen to its sermon long enough tend to convert — nothing else on television…

It’s April 1992, and ABC commentator Judith Miller’s voice has an exasperated tinge as she reports to her audience that not one of the officers who beat Rodney King on that infamous videotape has been found guilty of any charges. Soon, riots break out in Los Angeles. Thousands of stores…

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation is one of the best films I’ve ever seen about corruption. That’s true despite the fact that Mungiu underplays the typical elements found in tales about this subject: You won’t find many fast-talking crooks, sinister cops or elaborate sting operations here. Or a looming sense…

Keep your eyes on the magician’s hands. She’ll attempt to distract you with compliments and silly quips, but her most effective feint will be the story she tells as she shuffles the cards. She might give quaint mention to a lover’s spat between the King of Hearts and the Queen…

In Eric D. Howell’s adaptation of Silvio Raffo’s ghostly 1996 novel, Voice From the Stone, a timid woman finds employment as a nanny with a rural family ravaged by grief. The longer she stays in their cavernous, stone-and-stucco villa, the more she comes to act, talk, and look like the…

The Handmaid’s Tale premieres April 26 on Hulu In the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood herself shows up to slap our heroine in the face. The grande dame of dystopian fiction plays an aunt, one of the abbesses in charge of a new order of so-called handmaids:…