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The Addams Family musical toys with 'real' Americans

Liberal elites
Contained in their haunted-house black humor, Charles Addams's original Addams Family cartoons seemed intended as a sly critique of boring suburbia and an affirmation of quirky, alternative lifestyles.
By MADDY MYERS | February 14, 2012

The Overdub Tampering Committee

How a group of Boston musicians exacted their weird price from the world of online music sharing — without actually doing a thing
Armed with an idea, a hastily written manifesto, a press release, and some software to disguise my computer's IP address, I was able to raise the question, "How do you know that what you're illegally downloading is the actual music it claims to be?" This is a story about how my pop-music infatuation led me to fabricating a web of lies I called the Overdub Tampering Committee.
By RYAN WALSH | February 15, 2012

Activists rail at the T

Bumpy Ride Dept.
The latest theater in the war against MBTA fare hikes and service cuts opened with a bang this week, as activists stormed every corner of the subway map.
By CHRIS FARAONE | February 15, 2012

A store with character

Is our children reading?
Curious George shall rise again. As Publishers Weekly reported, the Harvard Square monkey-merchandise-cum-children's-bookstore, shuttered last summer, will return in late April under new ownership.
By EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | February 15, 2012

Moving on with Stephie Coplan & the Pedestrians

Turning the page
When Stephie Coplan was 14 years old, the empty pages in her first songwriting book were as much an escape as they were a creative outlet.
By MICHAEL MAROTTA | February 15, 2012

Letters to the Boston editors, February 17, 2012

Burning down the house
Regarding your recent "House of Incorrections" story (Talking Politics, February 3), I think it would be more believable if some criminal-justice experts were quoted.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | February 15, 2012

Review: The Innkeepers

Ti West's spook show
Ti West's spook show is atmospheric (thanks to the terrific hotel setting) and frequently funny; but the plot line is choppy, the dialogue often unnecessary, and the scares too sparse.
By PEG ALOI | January 31, 2012

Review: One for the Money

Julie Anne Robinson's insipid adaptation
TV director Julie Anne Robinson's insipid adaptation of this first volume in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series has more in common with Young Adult than with the average gumshoe yarn.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 31, 2012

Review: Charlotte Rampling: The Look

Angelina Maccarone's portrait of the actress
Rampling's physical gifts, unimpeded by plastic surgery in their march through time, are matched by a keen mind and an unapologetic approach to life and work.
By BETSY SHERMAN | January 31, 2012

Review: Big Miracle

Ken Kwapis's take on a true story from 1988
Taking a tip from the oil industry, Hollywood has started exploiting Alaska. Following in the tracks of The Grey is Ken Kwapis's take on a true story from 1988 about an effort to save gray whales trapped in the Arctic ice. Surprisingly, the film offers genuine complexity.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 31, 2012

Helios Early Opera's Charpentier; plus, the BSO's Mendelssohn Lobgesang

Hello, Helios!
There's a new group in town doing Baroque opera — not an easy ambition.
By LLOYD SCHWARTZ | February 01, 2012

Brite Futures | Dark Past

Turnout (2011)
A few years ago, the cutesy teens in Natalie Portman's Shaved Head slid out of Seattle on the hot pink shoulders of robo-bounce kinda-hit "Me + Ur Daughter" and the cheap intrigue of a ridiculous moniker.
By MICHAEL MAROTTA | January 24, 2012

Review: Crazy Horse

Wiseman behind the scenes at a revered dance institution
In La Danse — The Paris Opera Ballet , Frederick Wiseman looked behind the scenes at a revered dance institution. In his new documentary he examines a dance institution of a different sort, the cabaret bar of the title, a Parisian pop-cultural icon and tourist mecca dedicated to artistically ambitious "nude chic" dancing.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 24, 2012

Review: Red Tails

The struggles and triumphs of the Tuskegee Airmen
With a title that refers not to squirrels but to plane markings, Red Tails dramatizes the struggles and triumphs of African-American pioneers, the Tuskegee Airmen.
By BETSY SHERMAN | January 24, 2012

Review: Haywire

Soderbergh phones it in
Despite some thrilling combat choreography executed with flair by MMA champ Gina Carano, Steven Soderbergh clearly phoned it in here. The barely-there plot involves Mallory (Carano), a double-crossed Black Ops agent who goes rogue in an uninteresting search for revenge.
By THOMAS PAGE MCBEE | January 24, 2012

Review: Miss Bala

Gerardo Naranjo's superb new feature
Gerardo Naranjo's superb new feature, Miss Bala , brilliantly draws on the conflicted personality of a young beauty pageant contestant as a tragically stark emblem of Mexico's all-enveloping drug wars.
By PATRICK Z. MCGAVIN | January 24, 2012

Review: Underworld: Awakening

Brief but bloody
The Underworld series got long in the tooth early, but here, in the fourth installment (directed by Swede Måns Mårlind), it grows new fangs.
By TOM MEEK | January 24, 2012

For Coyote Kolb, the roots come together

State of mind
Johnny Cash's baleful self-portrait "Ain't No Grave" oozes into my skull through a Sailor Jerry haze.
By BARRY THOMPSON | January 24, 2012

A Place to Bury Strangers | Onwards to the Wall

Dead Oceans (2012)
Onwards to the Wall clocks in at 16 minutes and 35 seconds, and it could shatter into smithereens at any moment.
By REYAN ALI | January 24, 2012

Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory

Carpark (2012)
With Attack on Memory , the third full-length from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings, 20-year-old frontman Dylan Baldi approaches new, drastically darker material with the same empty-bottle angst that made his previous releases so appealing.
By PATRICK MCDERMOTT | January 24, 2012

You Me at Six | Sinners Never Sleep

Virgin Records (2011)
Sinners Never Sleep is a transitional album, though such efforts rarely bode as well for the future as this does.
By MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER | January 24, 2012

Imperial Teen | Feel the Sound

Merge (2012)
Like its title, fifth album Feel the Sound is as generic as doubters have probably always assumed — they sound both relaxed and exhausted.
By DAN WEISS | January 24, 2012

Hospitality | Hospitality

Merge (2012)
On their homonymous debut, Hospitality sound like 800 different trendy bands at once (from Twin Sister to Tennis to TV on the Radio), so if it's pure originality you're after, you've come to the wrong department.
By RYAN REED | January 24, 2012

Review: Albert Nobbs

Gender identity crisis
Lesbianism doesn't exist as a cogent category in 19th century Ireland, which could explain why Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), a woman disguised for years as a man and employed as a Dublin waiter, has no personal understanding of who she is, her identity, or what she feels.
By GERALD PEARY | January 26, 2012

Review: A Separation

Family drama
Somehow, despite an increasingly repressive regime that has jailed many prominent filmmakers, including the world renowned auteur Jafar Panahi, Iranian cinema continues to produce some of the world's subtlest and most illuminating films about the relationships between men and women, and the conflicts inherent in all social units, starting with the family.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 26, 2012

Review: The Grey

Man vs. wolves
At the center of this superior stranded-men-picked-off-by-external-threat thriller is Ottway, an anguished loner powerfully played by Liam Neeson.
By BETSY SHERMAN | January 26, 2012

Review: Man on a Ledge

Clever if absurd heist film
Pablo F. Fenjves might not be Sidney Lumet, but his clever if absurd heist film does acknowledge its debt to the late, politically inclined director's Dog Day Afternoon .
By PETER KEOUGH | January 26, 2012

Review: The Flowers of War

Unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou
In 1937 the invading Imperial Japanese Army killed and raped thousands of people in the Chinese city of Nanjing. The atrocity has recently inspired two Chinese films, including Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death and this unimpressive outing from Zhang Yimou.
By PETER KEOUGH | January 17, 2012

Review: The Viral Factor

Run and gun
Made for a modest budget of $17 million — and feeling like it (who needs convincing explosions in an action movie?), Dante Lam's latest still gets the job done from a run-and-gun standpoint.
By BRETT MICHEL | January 17, 2012

Review: Silent Souls

Magic realism and Chekhovian melancholy
This is probably the only film we'll encounter about the Merja culture of West Central Russia, a Finno-Ugric tribe in which even the most modernized people pay allegiance to ancient customs.
By GERALD PEARY | January 17, 2012