Star power

As one great thespian once said, “Space, the final frontier…” So many great works of literature and film have tackled what lies outside of our own atmosphere. Whether it’s fantastic like Star Wars or the Dune series (more to come on that later in the year) or reality like Gravity, our collective amazement at the cosmos continues to fuel our imagination. Some of my personal favorites are 2001, Arrival, Interstellar, and The Martian, the latter of which has a connection to a feature in theaters now.

Warm climes and salacious times

So, we are in the midst of another wild bout of weather, as we glade through turbulence into April. As of writing this, we have been through summer, fall, winter…and hopefully spring. But as no doubt your grandkids are about to take a midseason break, maybe we should set aside some time for beach vacations and parties ourselves. I, on the other hand, am going to a lake house a couple days after this is turned in for much needed rest and relaxation. Just because we are all older, that doesn’t mean that Spring Break shenanigans are off the table. And that goes for the characters in these shows.

Grab a coffee and gab

Let me say this from the start, I have a love/hate relationship with director Jim Jarmusch. He has, simultaneously, had me enthralled and baffled. Sometimes this happens within the same film, for good or ill. He has a tendency for just barely tying his loose plot threads up. However, they keep fraying at times despite his best efforts well before the credits roll. Jarmusch’s typical hipper-than-thou attitude can make general audiences less inclined to venture through his filmography. Even after watching his latest, Father Mother Sister Brother, I am still not sure how this one ranks among his others.

Reheated Rivalry

There is no mistaking that I love music; all different kinds. When asked about whether I was watching the big game or not, I quipped “Oh, you mean the football match interrupting the Bad Bunny concert?” This art form has been a part of me since I was a little kid. However, it is time to talk about “stan” culture, the type of toxic fandom that exists within the sane worlds of these artists. These people turn loving a musician into bloodsport. Disproportionately, female pop stars make up their core. There are some men (looking at you, BTS and Justin Bieber). These aren’t the ones we are discussing today. We are here for Taylor Swift and Charli XCX.

Dancing out of Park City

A certain prognosticator of seasonal change got wrenched out of his hovel and whispered into a Punxsutawnian’s ear: six more weeks.

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.

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.