Brie Larson's brown-eyed and appealing underplaying sells this material, which isn't the freshest. She is called "Vers," an amnesiac soldier of the outer space Kree empire, with the ability to blast photon rays from her fists. The power is a gift from the Empire's all-highest, an AI simulation that appears to her in the shape of Annette Benning. Vers has a rep for being too unfocused and emotional, as she's always reminded by her superior officer and sparring partner (Jude Law). After a skirmish, Vers is captured by the pointy-eared Skrulls. Her dormant memories are stirred up during an interrogation by their diabolical leader, the Cockney-accented Taros (an amusing Ben Mendelsohn). » Read More

Elle Fanning's debut wasn't auspicious; at age 3 she played the young version of Sean Penn's daughter in I Am Sam (2001) wherein Penn played a mentally challenged man trying to adopt a child. Penn got an Oscar nomination, but the film is destined to be remembered forever as the subject of a four-word rule, as stated by Robert Downey, Jr. in Tropic Thunder (2008). Just as one loves too wisely and not too well, one can act too dumb. But Fanning has been smart, and her poise has been remarkable for someone of her years. Consider the regret she brought to Super 8 (2011), where she played an Ohio steel-town girl pinched by sorrow, one of the better recreations of a '70s youth in a modern movie. » Read More

There is some excess, sure--interactions are melodramatic, the accents are ridiculous--but it's all part of the fun. As David, Adam Cotugno is hopeful and cherubic, serving as a straight man foil to the rest of the miscreant cast. Nick Mandracchia as Cheech is shrewd but comical, pouncing on David's innocence in a believable but entertaining duel of wits. Carla Befera as Helen Sinclair is perfectly boozy and fierce. However, the standout role is Olive, played by Jocelyn Pickett. She upstages almost everyone else by default. Through song and monologue, she is bombastic without being overbearing, raucous without being lewd, coalescing in a hilarious performance that carries the show in loud, parade-like package. » Read More

For those who grew up in a world where the police regularly chased skateboarders out of public squares, Cirque du Soleil's action sports-embracing Volta is a kind of bittersweet vindication. The mainstream acceptance of all forms of extreme athleticism is nothing new. Gleaming the Cube hit movie theaters in 1989. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater debuted on the Playstation in 1999. And in October, Apple released a commercial for its latest iPhone X model that featured a gaggle of free runners cartwheeling down flights of stairs and vaulting over cars. Next summer, skateboarding is set to drop into the 2020 Olympic Games. » Read More

You can hear the sculpture of a head rotating on its axis before you zero in on the location of the whirring sound. It's one of five heads, each one mounted on its own pedestal. From the entryway, the heads project an alabaster sheen that's smudged by black ink running across their faces. There are gold plaques underneath each one. Four of them read, "When I was young I wanted to be a policeman." Beneath the fifth and central figure the plaque reads, "A loss of faith brings vertigo," which doubles as the name of the work as a whole. That middle head is the whitest of the five except for a significant black oblong blotch marring the forehead. It's a bullseye that's lost its shape, melting, molten and dripping down toward the bridge of the » Read More

A gaggle of photographers stands in the courtyard of downtown San Jose's federal building on a cold January day. It's clearly a bigger deal than the hacker trials or corporate battles, such as Apple v. Samsung, that unfold there and sometimes attract media attention. "Which case?" I ask. "Theranos," a paparazzo replies. A reporter spots the 35-year-old founder and former CEO in a hallway, before she ducks into a room by the exit. "She's fixing her hair," the reporter speculates. A few minutes pass and Elizabeth Holmes emerges with her attorney. She's dressed in an all-black pants suit, with hair tied back. She looks straight ahead as she takes long, purposeful strides and the cameras follow her to the crosswalk by Original Joe's. » Read More

If the hideous beige buildings of downtown San Jose tend to bring you down, if the neighborhood's decades-old color palette of faded brown, off-white and jaundice yellow depresses you, then hire Patrick Hofmeister. Especially if you're trying to bootstrap an Indian fusion restaurant. Situated directly across from City Hall in a location formerly occupied by a seedy pho joint, Tandoori Fusion Grill opened a few years ago, but now finds itself with a brand-new matrix of resources. Hofmeister initially showed up as a customer, but soon realized he could provide additional skill sets and connections to accentuate the eatery's already intriguing culinary delights. As a result, he became business partners with owner Jagath Ranasinghe, who then » Read More

Still, it isn't a surprise that you'd go, "Wait...faithful to the first one, faithful to the next one; must've been why these relationships tanked!" This leap you're making probably comes out of how uncomfortable our minds are with uncertainty. According to research by cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga, a mechanism in our brain's left hemisphere that he calls "the interpreter" steps in to fill in the blanks, to save us from the cognitive chaos by coming up with an explanation. Unfortunately, it's like the world's sloppiest detective. It quickly scans for any patterns or vaguely plausible meanings and then just goes with them, creating a narrative that seems to make sense of our experience (and never mind the tedious snore of » Read More

The coming weeks might be a good time to acquire a flamethrower. It would come in handy if you felt the urge to go to a beach and incinerate mementos from an ex-ally. It would also be useful if you wanted to burn stuff that reminds you of who you used to be and don't want to be any more; or if you got in the mood to set ablaze symbols of questionable ideas you used to believe in but can't afford to believe in any more. If you don't want to spend $1,600-plus on a flamethrower, just close your eyes for 10 minutes and visualize yourself performing acts of creative destruction like those I mentioned. » Read More