Politics
AMERICA IS IN DECLINE: SIGNS, CAUSES, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL POLITICS
Movies
Movie Review: The Rite
July 12, 2025The Rite is remarkably dull where its most obvious predecessor, The Exorcist, was sharp as a...
Video Games
Video Game Review: Dead Space 2
July 12, 2025For many years, Electronic Arts was seen by most as the “evil empire” of the video...
Blog-Dance
And There’s Prize Money!
July 12, 2025News flash — Dance makers need money! Oh, the big companies are on all the corporate...
Movies
Movie Review: The Mechanic
July 11, 2025Jason Statham, the icy British actor famous for jacked-up action romps including The Transporter and Crank,...
History
The Civil War Begins: An Exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia
July 11, 2025These are not merely newspapers, letters, transcripts of speeches and official reports from the 1850's through...
Fiction Reviews
Book Review: Heartstone: A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery by C.J. Sansom
July 11, 2025Matthew Shardlake the lawyer and his friend Dr. Guy Malton represent the arrival of the professional...
Movies & TV
Movie Review: The Way Back
July 11, 2025The really good character work – and make no mistake, this is a good cast –...
After Image
Badlands and Lost Edens: The Photography of Robert Adams
July 10, 2025Adams recorded the ever-expanding suburban sprawl of the 1960s and 1970s, and his haunting, classically composed...
Sex
Movie Review: No Strings Attached
July 10, 2025Studios are beginning to cater to the “hookup culture” people are wringing their hands about. The...
Blog-Video Games
The Metro City Reform Committee: An Inaugural Address
July 10, 2025I’m setting up a little blog here at the California Literary Review. It’s going to ostensibly...
Theatre
Welcome to Alone Together, CLR’s New Theater Blog
July 10, 2025Alone Together will explore emerging trends in theater and what they tell us about who we...
Fiction Reviews
Book Review: Destiny and Desire by Carlos Fuentes
July 10, 2025A decapitated head washes ashore near the Mexican resort city of Acapulco. A young man, Josué,...
History
The Weekly Listicle: Ballad Of The Soldier
July 9, 2025This weekend, Peter Weir graces us with The Way Back, a tale of daring escape by...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Book Review: The Big Policeman by J. North Conway
July 9, 2025J. North Conway's new account of the law enforcement career of Thomas Byrnes, The Big Policeman,...
Dance
Introducing Dance Vine, A New CLR Blog
July 9, 2025We are pleased to announce our new blog, Dance Vine. CLR dance critics Hanna Oldsman and...
Movies
A Voice In The Night Tells Dan Fields To Shut Up (Although He Does Have A Point)
July 9, 2025You got me, Dan. I didn’t see Let Me In this year. But just for the...
The Fourth Wall
The Weekly Listicle: Not Your Average Romcoms!
July 8, 2025We like our romcoms quirky. None of this, please. Romantic comedy in the last few decades...
Movies
Movie Review: Season of the Witch
July 8, 2025There are many different ways to go when making a film about knights, witches, pestilence, the...
Best Movies
“Let Me In!” Cries A Voice In The Night
July 8, 2025A certain writer for the California Literary Review has thoughtfully distilled a whole year of reviews,...
Fiction Reviews
Book Review: The Sherlockian< by Graham Moore
July 8, 2025There is a telling scene in the novel, when Conan Doyle visits the theatre managed by...
Movies & TV
100 Greatest Gangster Films: The Godfather, #1
December 20, 2025The Godfather made careers, most notably those of Francis Ford Coppola and Al Pacino, despite the...
Television
In Defense of The Social Network: Movie demonizes sexism, doesn’t glamorize it.
October 16, 2026Fiction vs. reality: Eisenberg and Zuckerberg. First things first: I’m in the business of paying close...
Historical Fiction
Book Review: Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
October 18, 2026Pasternak ranges the individualism of Zhivago against the heartless society that is being erected by the...
The Fourth Wall
Catching Up With 2010: Marmaduke
October 9, 2026A scant few minutes into Marmaduke there’s a fart joke. Right after this fart joke Marmaduke...
Movies
All Of This Will Happen Again: Step Up 2 The Streets Revisited!
October 5, 2026Earlier this week we took a look at the first Step Up, the hit machine that...
After Image
Larry Rivers, NYU, and Child Pornography
September 27, 2026How should we respond, however, when sexual abuse is the subject of a piece and a...
Art
Art Review: Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy and Germany, 1918-1936
October 14, 2026Chaos and Classicism tells the story of good intentions that went terribly wrong. After the carnage...
Movies
Movie Review: Step Up 3D
October 3, 2026Step Up 3D is a good movie. Not an instant classic, but a genuine celebration of...
Video Games
Video Game Review: Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
October 22, 2026Oddly enough, it’s this great multiplayer mode that most throws the rest of the game into...
Literary Themes
The Weekly Listicle: Misleading Movie Titles
June 29, 2025Sometimes a movie's title appears to be a secret known only to the writer. Sometimes it...
The Fourth Wall
Mad (wo)Men: The Complexity of Womanhood in “Mad Men”
October 11, 2026The cast of AMC’s “Mad Men:” Vincent Kartheiser, Elisabeth Moss, John Slattery, Jon Hamm, January Jones,...
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