Free Republic

A year after he helmed "The Haunting of Sharon Tate," in which Hilary Duff played the doomed starlet plagued by visions of her death, the director is carving out his own unsavory subgenre of exploitation, stripped entirely of Tarantino-esque artistic notions. Try as actor Mena Suvari might to imbue Brown Simpson with some sense of wistful, melancholic tragedy, Michael Arter's script offers both women little in the way of poetry or empathy. Try she does, though: 20 years on from the teenage promise of "American Beauty," Suvari's sincere attempt to make something hurt and human of a character largely scripted...

Disparaging comments. Demeaning jokes. As the mogul reportedly considers a 2020 presidential run, it remains an open question whether his long-alleged history of undermining women will affect his chances. If you find yourself seeking, in these turbulent times, evidence of steadiness among the chaos—proof that even as the seas rise and the winds whip and the world that was gives way to the world that will be, some things will remain the same—here is a fact that seems always to be true: Mike Bloomberg is considering a run for president. The newest version of the old truth comes from an...