
Politics
AMERICA IS IN DECLINE: SIGNS, CAUSES, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL POLITICS
Dance
Dance Review: NYCB Offers Polyphonia, For the Love of Duke, and Concerto DSCH
November 5, 2026Yet while these dancers retain their individuality, Ratmansky manages to make their movements seem of a...
Dance
Dance Review: San Francisco Ballet’s Giselle
November 5, 2026The cast for the opening night (Saturday, January 29) featured the deservedly popular Yuan Yuan Tan...
Movies
The Weekly Listicle is Seeing Double!
November 5, 2026The Roommate‘s Minka Kelly and Leighton Meester. Fiction is perpetually preoccupied with doppelgangers–doubles or evil twins....
Fiction Reviews
Book Review: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
November 5, 2026The passing of Swamplandia!, a crass, hokey "hicksville" where live chickens are suspended from wires to...
Dance
A Gala Celebration with San Francisco Ballet
November 4, 2026As usual for these events, Wednesday night’s audience came in their finest duds — men in...
Dance
And There’s Prize Money!
November 4, 2026News flash — Dance makers need money! Oh, the big companies are on all the corporate...
Movies
Movie Review: The Rite
November 4, 2026The Rite is remarkably dull where its most obvious predecessor, The Exorcist, was sharp as a...
Video Games
Video Game Review: Dead Space 2
November 4, 2026For many years, Electronic Arts was seen by most as the “evil empire” of the video...
Art & Design
The Civil War Begins: An Exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia
November 4, 2026These are not merely newspapers, letters, transcripts of speeches and official reports from the 1850's through...
Movies
Movie Review: The Mechanic
November 3, 2026Jason Statham, the icy British actor famous for jacked-up action romps including The Transporter and Crank,...
Art
Badlands and Lost Edens: The Photography of Robert Adams
November 3, 2026Adams recorded the ever-expanding suburban sprawl of the 1960s and 1970s, and his haunting, classically composed...
Fiction Reviews
Book Review: Heartstone: A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery by C.J. Sansom
November 3, 2026Matthew Shardlake the lawyer and his friend Dr. Guy Malton represent the arrival of the professional...
Movies & TV
Movie Review: The Way Back
November 3, 2026The really good character work – and make no mistake, this is a good cast –...
Video Games
The Metro City Reform Committee: An Inaugural Address
November 3, 2026I’m setting up a little blog here at the California Literary Review. It’s going to ostensibly...
Movies
Movie Review: No Strings Attached
November 2, 2026Studios are beginning to cater to the “hookup culture” people are wringing their hands about. The...
Humor
The Weekly Listicle: Ballad Of The Soldier
November 2, 2026This weekend, Peter Weir graces us with The Way Back, a tale of daring escape by...
Theatre
Welcome to Alone Together, CLR’s New Theater Blog
November 2, 2026Alone 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
November 2, 2026A decapitated head washes ashore near the Mexican resort city of Acapulco. A young man, Josué,...
Dance
Introducing Dance Vine, A New CLR Blog
November 2, 2026We are pleased to announce our new blog, Dance Vine. CLR dance critics Hanna Oldsman and...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Book Review: The Big Policeman by J. North Conway
November 1, 2026J. North Conway's new account of the law enforcement career of Thomas Byrnes, The Big Policeman,...

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...
Movies
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...
Dance
Dance Review: New York City Ballet’s Swan Lake
November 8, 2026The dual-role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake is well-known -- probably more now than ever, thanks...
Architecture
Farewell to the Future: Iconic “Sleeper” House is Foreclosed On
October 27, 2026By 1973, the “technological faith, confidence, and competence” Hines sees embodied in the modernism of the...
Classics
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...
Art & Design
The Civil War Begins: An Exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia
November 4, 2026These are not merely newspapers, letters, transcripts of speeches and official reports from the 1850's through...
Theatre
Theatre Review: Frankenstein at the National Theatre, London
November 13, 2026There are some terrific “There’s something in the sack!” or “What’s that climbing down the wall?”...
Movies & TV
A Watchful Eye On… Winston Churchill
November 11, 2026Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, known best as the wartime Prime Minister, held in his distinguished...
Dance
Dance Review: San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker
October 28, 2026For sheer production values, though, the San Francisco Ballet Nutcracker remains at the top of the...
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...
Games
Video Game Review: Fight Night Champion
November 11, 2026At the end of the day Fight Night Champion, when it works, proves to be a...





