Woman Power Serves a Boy in Mike Mills’ Late-’70s Remembrance

One of the quasi-bohemians in Mike Mills’ gauzy 20th Century Women loves to document ephemera, taking photos of everything she owns. A similar instinct — archiving as art — guides Mills’ movie itself, a trip back in time in which era-specific talismans substitute for genuine thought. Though big feels glut…

Patriots Day Finds Mark Wahlberg Caught Between Fiction and Real Disaster

For better and for worse, Peter Berg has found his genre. After oscillating between sports (Friday Night Lights), superheroes (Hancock) and even board games (Battleship) without much distinction, the writer, director, producer and actor has made a loose trilogy in which Mark Wahlberg reenacts recent tales of American heroism. Lone…

Ben Affleck’s Crime Epic Live by Night Is a Pile of Parts

Somewhere inside the 128-minute Live by Night is a reasonably solid 168-minute movie struggling to get out. No, that’s not a typo: You can sense the contours of an absorbing story as writer/director/star Ben Affleck’s slapdash and fragmented assemblage limps along. Most of the pieces are there, but they remain…

5 Essential Art Events: January 13-15

Rachel Livedalen – To Lisa With LoveOpens Saturday 500X Gallery 500 Exposition Ave. Rachel Livedalen’s interdisciplinary works explore contemporary femininity viewed through the lens of generations past. Growing up, she loved Lisa Frank so much she’s about to unveil an entire solo exhibit dedicated to the sticker maven. It’s a…

21 Best Things to Do in Dallas This Week, January 10-16

Tue 1/10Church isn’t somewhere we often think to go when we want to broaden our horizons. It’s a place to discipline your mind, sure, but expand it? Highland Park Methodist Church (3300 Mockingbird Lane) is challenging our preconceived notions with their Authors Live series, which invites acclaimed authors of both…

The State of Action Filmmaking, 2017

In the ’80s and ’90s, there were action movies. They starred muscly guys like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, or martial artists from Jean-Claude Van Damme to Cynthia Rothrock, or actors who were dedicated to the physical demands of the genre, like Bruce Willis or Wesley Snipes. They mostly told…

Molly Haskell Follows Spielberg From Boyhood to Responsibility

Almost all of the history of American movies flows into Steven Spielberg, and the movies that have come since can’t help but be in response. As a storyteller and as a cultural figure, his closest precedent isn’t John Ford or David Lean, but Dickens, another age’s popular titan, beloved more…

Your January TV Watch List: The Six Shows We’re Counting On

New year, new us! JK, new year, same ol’ us: watching TV and hiding in a hole from the bitter January cold and impending doom. The only solution? Watching all the television! You can take the day of the inauguration off to protest, but I expect you back under the…

Ask a Stoner: Can Marijuana Help With Arthritis?

Dear Stoner: I think pot will help my grandfather’s arthritis. Is there a kind of pot product — flower, edible, whatever — you’d recommend? Scott Dear Scott: According to science, you’re probably right. A study by the University of Oxford showed that cannabis-based medicine administered orally helped reduce rheumatoid arthritis…

5 Art Events for Your Weekend: January 6-8

Greg Piazza — Painted Lens Wall Gallery 1529 Dragon St. Opening reception 5 p.m. Saturday Greg Piazza is a minimalist among minimalists. It’s simple and pure geometry, the raw, sharp-jawed photographs he captures via his own style of streamlined gusto. Now he’s translated his inspired snaps into canvas paintings that…