Feb 26th, 2010 · In A Prophet, a young Corsican Arab must earn his place in the hierarchy of a French prison by murdering a fellow inmate. Director Jacques Audiard neither victimizes nor glorifies his protagonist, says critic David Edelstein. The result is a gripping, realistic prison drama. (Recommended)
Feb 4th, 2010 · Tim Farnsworth, a partner at a Manhattan law firm, has been beset by a mysterious condition — a compulsion to walk until he collapses from exhaustion. Like its protagonist, Joshua Ferris' new novel moves resolutely forward with a fixed, trancelike purposelessness.
Jan 13th, 2010 · At 61 years old, the protagonist of Noah's Compass has lost his teaching job and is settling into a new, smaller apartment, when an act of violence changes his life. Noah's Compass is Tyler's 18th novel.
Dec 23rd, 2009 · Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes update, starring Robert Downey Jr. as the iconic sleuth, looks to put a bullet in the popular conception of the deerstalker-wearing detective — though exactly what drives the protagonist in Ritchie's indecipherable adventure remains something of a mystery.
Nov 19th, 2009 · "A man without a gun, that's not a man," says the pain-wracked, drug-addled anti-hero cop at the center of Port of Call: New Orleans. You get the feeling that director Werner Herzog, that dedicated chronicler of alpha-male lunacy, agrees — and you can't help but notice that his crime drama is every bit as over-the-top eccentric as its protagonist.
Oct 10th, 2009 · The protagonist of After, Amy Efaw's new novel for young adults, is a 15-year-old straight-A student and Olympic hopeful who winds up in jail, charged with trying to murder her newborn baby.
Oct 3rd, 2009 · These are the opening elements of Victor Lavalle's new novel, Big Machine. The protagonist has a problem, but what's a man got to worry about if he's mopping floors for Trailways in Utica, New York? Guest host Jacki Lyden talks to LaValle, who some writes like Thomas Pynchon, others like Ralph Ellison.
Sep 11th, 2009 · Colin Beavan, the protagonist of the documentary No Impact Man, spends a year living "eco-effectively" — eating only locally grown foods and, eventually, forgoing electricity and toilet paper. Critic David Edelstein calls the film a "21st-century climate-change comedy of manners."