Less a modern Western than an inside look at Hollywood’s fragile psychology, the film “The Magnificent Seven” is a lesson in the way that the movies think at the moment. It’s an encouraging thing, and a more honest historical assessment, to re-create an Old West posse with minorities in major roles. It’s another thing to be so perfectly, comically and distractingly fancied up with diversity that a focus group seems like

The Hunger Games will sap up comparisons to science fiction. That’s what happens with stories about futuristic dystopias and freaky hovercraft. The better comparison is to Roman or Biblical epics of the fifties. Its story, of the youth of twelve outlying provinces exploited for the bloodsport of a wealthy and perverse capital, is reminiscent of Ben Hur. It even has a grand chariot parade, with crowds adoring Katniss Everdeen, a coal-haired

As a reporter long ago, I worked a story involving [...]