I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

It's hard for comic actors used to pulling faces just to be on screen, but Tina Fey does a good job. I liked watching her. The part, though, isn't filled in. When Baker announces that she's gotten too used to the madness of Afghanistan, that she's worried she's thinking of it as normal, the sentiment comes out of nowhere. The dramatic arc in "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" is nonexistent. The movie evaporates in the mind like water in the Afghan desert.

Let me tell you, if your marriage is in trouble, skip the therapist and find a psycho. Nothing brings people together faster.

Every year, I'm depressed that so few of the documentaries I've loved break through.

A critic often has to play the role of coroner, dissecting a work to find out why it died (or never lived).

I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

The economic and technological changes are real, but I just can't bring myself to wax apocalyptic about the future of books.