Fiction Reviews
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
April 26, 2025Novelist Lee Harwell is having breakfast at his favorite Chicago diner when a hostile homeless guy...
Movies
Julia’s Anti-Valentine’s Movies
April 26, 2025Ah, Valentine’s Day. In elementary school, we were forced to address valentines to everyone in class...
Movies
William Bibbiani’s Top Three Unconventional Romances for Valentine’s Day
April 26, 2025Or maybe you’re just like me, single on the most romantic night of the year, drowning...
Movies & TV
Many Criterion DVDs Going Out of Print: A Lamentation
April 25, 2025Criterion, you are the Pixar of DVD distributors. Every film you release is guaranteed to be...
Horror
William Bibbiani interviews writer/producer/director Mick Garris!
April 25, 2025Today, as you may have noticed, is a day of many, many interviews. In addition to...
Movies
A CLR EXCLUSIVE Interview… with CLR Film Critic Julia Rhodes!
April 25, 2025Hello everybody, and welcome to the Fourth Wall, in which we California Literary Review film critics...
Movies
Welcome to The Fourth Wall, a New CLR Movie Blog
April 25, 2025We're excited about our first blog, The Fourth Wall which will provide a less formal and...
Movies
How to fake your way out of seeing this year’s Oscar nominees!
April 24, 2025No, you don’t have to watch The Blind Side. I’ve got your back. This year, for...
Movies
Introducing…William Bibbiani!
April 24, 2025While Snowmageddon, Part One raged around us here on the east coast, the amazing and talented...
Video Games
Video Game Review: Dark Void
April 24, 2025The bad guys are alien robot Nazis (effectively combining every faceless antagonist in videogame history), Will...
Fiction Reviews
The Last Reader by David Toscana
April 24, 2025The stream-of-consciousness style and lack of quotation marks seen here is indicative of the entire novel....
Movies
Movie Review: From Paris With Love
April 23, 2025Structural difficulties, failed attempts at levity and below-par action sequences would be bad enough, but sadly...
Movies
Movie Review: Legion
April 23, 2025According to the script, God has lost faith in humanity, ostensibly because he grew “tired of...
Art
Michelangelo: A Tormented Life by Antonio Forcellino
April 23, 2025Before dawn on the morning of February 18 a group of Florentines entered the church stealthily...
Fiction Reviews
Fables: The Deluxe Edition Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham
April 23, 2025But without a doubt, it’s the series that he began seven years ago, Fables, that has...
Movies
Movie Review: The Lovely Bones
April 22, 2025The novel opens with a striking, abrupt proclamation: “My name is Salmon, like the fish; first...
Fiction Reviews
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova
April 22, 2025Oliver won’t socialize. He won’t even speak. He simply spends his days wrapped in his obsession,...
Fiction Reviews
Small Wars by Sadie Jones
April 22, 2025The conflict becomes a war in which, “…there was no truth. It was a nothing, laughable...
Video Games
Video Game Review: Bayonetta
April 22, 2025She also wears glasses, which may pass for originality these days but is thematically appropriate because...
Books
Some Like It Hot: The Official 50th Anniversary Companion by Laurence Maslon
April 21, 2025There’s plenty about Monroe, of course — her perpetual lateness to the set, her entourage (especially...
Fiction Reviews
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
June 11, 2026This book isn’t a book, it’s a jazz piece, a series of improvisations on Díaz’s country,...
History
Images from How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb
June 9, 2026Between 1945 and 1962, the United States conducted over 300 atmospheric nuclear tests above the ground,...
Fiction Reviews
William Gibson: The Father of Cyberpunk
June 7, 2026"The part of me that walks around and does interviews is incapable of doing very much...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Murdered by Mumia: A Conversation With Maureen Faulkner
June 16, 2026"The man lifted his arm and fired a single shot in Danny’s back. Danny was able...
Non-Fiction Reviews
What The Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula
May 22, 2026What The Buddha Taught accurately describes itself as a reliable introduction to Buddhism. As a religion...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Gen·e·sis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin by Robert M. Hazen
May 23, 2026In all the recent noise over the higher steps of evolution and the proper way to...
Fiction Reviews
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
May 26, 2026I read this book in one take late at night and immediately headed downstairs to kick...
Non-Fiction Reviews
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon
June 7, 2026I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is sort of an extended wake for its subject. There’s very...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Michael Behe on The Edge of Evolution
June 7, 2026"I conclude that Darwinian processes account for little of the machinery of life, and that most...
Non-Fiction Reviews
Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere by Peter Douglas Ward
June 3, 2026In an age when ad agencies regularly apply “revolutionary” to new car models and digital toys,...
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