Catching up with old friends

Despite the weather, hopefully your Fourth was a good time to spend with friends and family. Possibly you got to see some all year round. Or maybe you get only fleeting moments with them. Recently, a close confidant from the city moved a suburb over. With the summer in full swing, your small group can go on a trip. Netflix’s The Four Seasons could give you some inspiration.

Proud to be an American

What’s sad about this year is that, in the 250th year of this great nation, there isn’t a plethora of films or television specials dedicated to its memory. True, there is a lot of coverage planned for by news outlets on July Fourth. However, very little has been present in the lead up. Larry David and co will have a program on just after the deadline of this article entitled HBO Max’s Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness on June 26. He and many others like Jerry Seinfeld and John Hamm created sketches lampooning various points in our history. As fitting as that is given the current state we are in now, I can’t help but feel like some mode of reverence in the Founding Fathers is deserved.

Horrors of modern life

As we are about to head into some oppressive summer weather, some levity is in order. My wish was that I wanted to review Scary Movie 6 and another film. However, with scheduling, this isn’t going to come to pass here. Maybe next time. Columnists have been editorializing on the bummer summer we are getting. All the songs are about heartbreak and wistful longing. Beloved shows are making their exit. A farewell in late night has rocked the public. And in that view, one really big film event needed to be addressed.

This is the way

The Star Wars Universe under Disney has taken quite a beating over the last few years for its lack of interesting storylines and uninspired character choices. Largely, the property has lived on in the era of streaming. Shows like Andor and The Clone Wars were there to feed long-term fans with content from a galaxy far far away. However, the loss of a big screen feature not since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker is telling.

Whether you take stock in that or not, winter is here to stay for a while. But no matter, celebrations still abound. Valentine’s Day is coming up; Wuthering Heights anyone? And in one resort town in Utah, a little film fest just wrapped up its latest iteration there. You might have heard of it. The Sundance Institute, founded by the late Robert Redford, has been the place to see emerging talents and independent artists. The last few weeks of January into February have been carved out to showcase and laud few films, as well as shop them to distributors. This marks the final year the fest will be in Park City, transferring to Boulder in 2027. While most of this year’s selections aren’t available yet, some of last year’s are now on streaming.

Americans vs. Canadians

Quick PSA: I am not claiming that one country is better or more worthy than another is terms of creative output. We Americans have been putting together fine work for even the last few decades. “Mad Men,” “Six Feet Under,” “American Horror Story” (at least the first few seasons. These are just a smattering of some that I have witnessed. Surely there are angry readers yelling “Breaking Bad” into their newspapers now. But sometimes we get it wrong. A show isn’t given enough time or axed due to some outside pressure. And now it is time to jump on Netflix with their cancellation of “Boots.”

Dead men do tell tales

New Year, New You. At least that is the slogan every person who greets the incoming year says, a hope for some prosperous future we can all attain. Hello all, hope your winter break was good, that the holidays were a moment of stress-free reprieve. I, for one, feel that now is the real escape. My day job being in retail, the month of December contains a different power over me than it once was. Although I don’t prescribe to the notion that Christmas/Holiday music is annoying. Unless it is “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”

But enough about that, here we are in the beginning of January. Possibly you are reflecting on what you didn’t do in 2025. Maybe a crisis came up that made you reevaluate your priorities, bring more focus to what is lacking. A crisis of faith, one might say. However, maybe it wasn’t that dramatic. That is just the dilemma at the emotional core of Rian Johnson’s latest in his Knives Out series.

Putting the finishing touches

With another festive season upon us, that brings family drama and rambunctious youngsters. Maybe you need an escape, for you and your clan to just kick back and enjoy. You could check out that new Taylor Swift docuseries and concert on Disney Plus. Or you could also catch up with this year’s best. Sinners over on HBO Max, Frankenstein on Netflix. Hedda on Prime Video, just to name a few. And it’s always a great time introduce the grandkids to charming melancholy of A Charlie Brown Christmas. I will never get the sound of light piano underscored by Snoopy skating around the ice.

Dark academia and case studies

A tinge of nostalgia always passes through my mind now when I watch films taking place in institutions of higher learning. The chill in the air as I sip a coffee on the Quad and read Proust or Dostoevsky, people watching fellow students making their way toward class. What I never saw was a philosophy professor chewing out their honors student for all to see. However, that is the centerpiece of Luca Guadagnino’s latest. And this was in the trailer and is not really a spoiler. After The Hunt is the type of film that reeks of smug self-congratulatory curtain bows; the look at me, I know how to be topical. Only problem is the analysis is surface deep at best. This is not the fault of the filmmaker or his game cast.

Wild interpretations

What makes for a good adaptation from the written word to a visual medium? This is a question that has launched many a film review in the past. Also, it has plagued filmmakers for over a century now. Most fall into two camps. Either you stay so completely faithful as to be a direct copy, think No Country for Old Men. Or you take the Baz Luhrmann approach, tossing every strange anachronism at the screen a la his Romeo + Juliet. Recent internet discourse has surrounded next year’s reinvention of Wuthering Heights. Although after watching the music video featuring Charli XCX with The Velvet Underground’s John Cale titled house, the Goth rock aesthetic has me intrigued in the soundtrack at least. As one commenter put it, Count Brat-cula indeed.

Lovable losers

A good film doesn’t require a good protagonist. There is no obligation to the audience from any screenwriter that the character we follow throughout the feature be as flawless as Teflon, no moral ambiguity whatsoever. The Hays Code has been long gone now and we are adults that can discern right from wrong. The only sin of the filmmaker is to make characters that are boring.

Filmmaker Kelly Reichardt would never be described as maximalist. Her dramas are quiet fly-on-the-wall observations of very grounded human beings. This is why the idea of creating a heist film felt so strange a genre for her to tackle. The Mastermind plays like a lost heir apparent to the works of Hal Ashby and Monte Hellman, a film that not only takes place in the 70s but beamed to us from that decade. Here we meet James Blaine Mooney (Josh O’Connor), a failure in the truest sense of the word. He is the son of a judge and comes from wealth; went to school for architecture and can build furniture. However, he is jobless not because of outside forces but his lack of ambition.