Leslie Bridgers

Columnist

Leslie Bridgers is a columnist for the Portland Press Herald, writing about Maine culture, customs and the things we notice and wonder about in our everyday lives. Originally from Connecticut, Leslie came to Maine by way of Bowdoin College and never left. She joined the Portland Press Herald in 2011 as a reporter and spent seven years as the paper’s features editor, overseeing coverage of arts, entertainment and food.

Arts & Entertainment, Books

Read an excerpt from Morgan Talty’s ‘Night of the Living Rez’

June 26, 2022June 25, 2022

The Levant author’s first book, a collection of short stories, comes out July 8.

Arts & Entertainment, Review

Watching ‘Elvis’ feels like being in a washing machine for 2 ½ hours

by Ann Hornaday The Washington Post June 26, 2022June 22, 2022

The best way to appreciate “Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann’s audacious, frenetic, occasionally astonishing and ultimately confounding movie about Elvis Presley, is simply to surrender to it. Luhrmann, best known for such kaleidoscopic fantasias as “Romeo and Juliet” and “Moulin Rouge!,” possesses just enough hubris to believe himself capable of re-creating the lightning that Elvis Presley embodied, […]

Arts & Entertainment, Review

‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’: Finding sex and self-acceptance at 55

by Ann Hornaday The Washington Post June 20, 2022

In “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” Emma Thompson plays Nancy Stokes, a widow and retired religion education teacher who has endured a lifetime of erotic unfulfillment. Until today. As the movie opens, Nancy is arriving at a featureless hotel room to meet the sex worker she has procured for the evening – a last-ditch […]