Nasty Women, Repped: Dry Land and What Every Girl Should Know, reviewed.

Yakima Rich and Emily Whitford in Ruby Rae Spiegel's play Dry Land. (Forum Theatre)

My review of Forum Theatre's "Nasty Women Rep," comprised of Ruby Ray Spiegel's Dry Land and Monica Byrne's What Every Girl Should Know, took longer to appear than it should have, but it's up now. These two shows sustain Forum's reputation for bold, timely work, and I recommend them—Dry Land, especially.

Imperfect Organism: Life, reviewed.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson are better than Life. (Sony)

Life, the new anti-space-exploration space movie from Swedish director Daniel Espinosa and starring my beloved Rebecca "Ilsa Faust" Ferguson plus some other famous people, is no Gravity. Or Interstellar. Or The Martian. But it's aight. I reviewed it for NPR, and then, having finished reviewing Life, I recalled The Onion's lovely backhanded obituary for Roger Ebert from 2013.

Sisters of No Mercy: Three Sisters and No Sisters, reviewed.

Kimberly Gilbert and Todd Scofield in No Sisters. (Studio Theatre)

Studio Theatre is putting on a ballsy experiment for the next month or so, running a new production of Three Sisters and No Sisters—Aaron Posner's companion play—not in rep but literally on top of one another. I review both in this week's Washington City Paper.

FURTHER READING: My April 2015 review of Round House's Uncle Vanya. My January 2015 review of Posner's Life Sucks, or the Present Ridiculous at Theatre J. My June 2013 review of Stupid Fucking Bird. And my August 2011 review of the Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya, starring Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving.

Ape-Pocalypse Now: Kong: Skull Island, reviewed.

This Bell UH-1 Huey is 'bout to get rung. (Warner Bros.)

Look, I'm no hero, but did you happen to notice that my NPR review of Kong: Skull Island contains not one occurrence of "titular" or "eponymous"? Please notice that.

Time for Carrousel: Logan, reviewed

The family that hides together, abides together. Dafne Keen, Patrick Stewart, and Hugh Jackman in Logan. (Fox)

I'm looking forward to the argument we're going to have over beers, you and I, about whether Logan is the best comic book movie since The Dark Knight or the best Western since No Country for Old Men. 

Here's my NPR review, where I ran out of space to cite all the things I loved about this movie (Eriq La Salle! Autotrucks!), or to warn you that if you know you will recoil from the sight of an 11-year-old girl defending her life with lethal force, you should skip it. And it would probably be more correct to call it the Rocky Balboa of Rocky movies than the Creed of Rocky movies, but sometimes clarity is more important than pinpoint accuracy.

Bring tissues.

The Game-Over Man: Remembering Bill Paxton, 1955-2017

Paxton helps Tom Cruise through a very bad day in 2014's Edge of Tomorrow. (Warner Bros.)

For NPR, I wrote this fond remembrance of the actor Bill Paxton, a man who lived but one colorful life but who died onscreen an absurd stupid lot of times, in some of my all-time favorite film. He was in great big movies like Aliens and Titanic, he was in not-great big movies like Twister, he was great in little movies like One False Move and Traveler and A Simple Plan. He was great, basically.

I strongly endorse the episode of WTF with Marc Maron on which Paxton appeared only three weeks ago. He spoke at least as much about his upbringing in Texas as about his 40-year career in movies, but it was a wonderful interview, warm and revealing. But please read my piece, too. I literally ripped a sleeve from emphatic typing while working on it.

Here's one of his monologues as PFC Hudson, deleted from ALIENS' 1986 theatrical release but restored in the home video "special edition" some years later. We'll miss you, Bill.

Get Up, Get into It, Get Involved: Get Out, reviewed.

Daniel Kaluuya stars in Jordan Peele's feature filmmaking debut. (Universal)

Jordan Peele's terrific new horror flick Get Out is many things, but it parody it is not. My NPR review is here.