Savage aliens make the mistake of invading a London council block (low-income neighborhood), the turf of a group of street youths. Outer space meets inner city. A thinking man's action film, bursting with humor and satire. And aliens.

Demonstrating a praiseworthy diversity of styles from this fabulous album.

Mr. Neutron is Ron Averill of Everett Public Library (WA).

The Lone Reader follows food guru Michael Pollan's foray into feeding not your body but your head: Reviewing studies in which carefully controlled doses of psychedelics like LSD and Psilocybin are shown effective in treating certain types of mental illness.

Music: Beats, by Crooked Vision

Two films, 87 years apart, put the flutter in our ribcages.

The Lone Reader seeks relief for his tech-driven nightmares through reading a radically different world view: Native American religion, as interpreted by Indian writer Vine Deloria, Jr. It doesn't help.

Alan illuminates some underappreciated noir classics.

Stuart Kaminsky's irascible Soviet detective Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov travels to Siberia to find a murderer in a village full of exiles and incompetents.

Music: String Quartet No. 1, Op 7, by Bela Bartok, performed by the Borromeo String Quartet.

Alan surveys that American celluloid genre called "film noir": sinister, evocative, and doom-laden, both in style and content.

Image: "The Photographer," by Joaquim Alves Gaspar

Mr. Neutron explores the dark underbelly of mainstream popular music in the form of Portland's three-sister-act, "Joseph"

The Lone Reader takes aim at Joshua Hunt's scalding critique of the massive influence that the sports apparel manufacturer Nike wields over the University of Oregon and its football program.