You Can See Everything has become a certified phenomenon.

Packed theaters, an overwhelmingly positive collection of reviews, and word of mouth that most modern releases would kill for have all come together to contribute to more than 2000 sold out screenings opening weekend, despite being in only 855 theaters. Sitting at $64 million and a 96% from audiences and critics, it looks to continue its success long after its release date, and is poised to easily win the Academy Award for Best Documentary. When great art such as this comes along, it is important to understand where its inspirations may lie and explore the origins of greatness. There is a wide range of content that can give audiences insight into You Can See Everything that is all great (honorable mentions of Gates of Heaven, Nathan For You, The History of Concrete, Close Up), but I highly recommend starting somewhere with these five incredible pieces.

F For Fake (1973)

The oldest and perhaps most abstract installment on this list, F For Fake is perhaps the most concrete example of a meta-documentary. Orson Welles was truly a master of the craft and perhaps the most visionary of all filmmakers, who never failed to push the boundaries of cinema at least 30 years ahead of his time in every project of his. Welles delves into the world of art fraud and forgeries, and asks us a plethora of questions along the way. What makes art valuable? What is a film or documentary actually about? Can artists of any capacity be trusted? Is there such a thing as a reliable narrator, or are filmmakers inherently magicians? This small sampling of questions feels thematically symbiotic with You Can See Everything, and I can’t help but feel that F For Fake has perhaps the largest thematic influence on Fielder and Oppenheim’s smash hit.

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

Errol Morris revolutionized documentary filmmaking in 1988 with the wildly influential The Thin Blue Line. Telling the story of a man he (correctly) believed to be innocent of a murder, Morris made the decision to recreate scenes using actors to better demonstrate to audiences how events transpired. He shows alternate takes, engages with the original subjects, and can piece together such a compelling investigation that the original defendant was actually released from prison and the real murderer sentenced. Errol Morris’s reenactment style is prevalent through modern documentary making, and is exceptionally well integrated in You Can See Everything.

Available to stream on the Criterion Channel

The Act of Killing (2012)

Legendary documentary and narrative filmmaker Werner Herzog described the 2012 masterpiece The Act of Killing as “unprecedented in the history of cinema” and called it “the most powerful, surreal and frightening” film he had seen in decades. I fully agree with this sentiment. The Act of Killing is another fine example of a documentary that pushes the boundaries. It follows Joshua Oppenheimer as he interviews Indonesian death squad captains, who were in charge of a mass genocide of suspected communists from 1965 to 1966. He allows them to explain themselves and even make a film about their own actions. He does not interfere; he does not really interject; he merely allows them to tell their own story the way they see fit, hoping that he can spark some sort of remorse or human feeling out of these murderers. The Act of Killing is a more coherent and fleshed-out vision of what Shoah attempted decades before. It shows what is perhaps the ugliest side of humanity possible in such crisp detail and so closely that it’s easily the most haunting documentary experience of the 21st Century, making it a must-see of the art form. You Can See Everything’s conflict between the desire to give its subjects agency and the actual truth is much more up front than The Act of Killing’s, but it is unmistakably present in both.

Available to stream for free on Kanopy

Ren Faire (2024)

Ren Faire is an excellent starting point for the work of Lance Oppenheim. It chronicles the power struggle that is still somewhat ongoing at the Texas Renaissance Festival, the largest ren fair in the US. In a three-episode HBO miniseries, Oppenheim is able to create something that feels like a bizarre 3 way mixture of documentary, reality TV, and narrative film. The approach is to collect as much footage as possible from several crews who follow multiple subjects at the same time and, in what can only be described as editing magic, stitch it together into a cohesive narrative. These crews are able to frame and block events on the fly with a remarkable photogenic precision that most modern mainstream films could only dream of. Lance effectively uses his craft at a remarkably young age to submerge us in this peculiar world without exploiting his subjects, which is a challenging line to walk even for veterans. While some may argue his style is not “true documentary”, he is regardless able to convey just as much (if not more) information as about 90% of documentaries released today in a far more effective and introspective manner.

Available to stream on HBO Max

The Rehearsal (2022-2025)

While it is a show, The Rehearsal offers a brilliant insight into the playful, introspective, and clever tactics of Nathan Fielder. As a documentary series committed to helping normal people have difficult conversations, Fielder blurs the line between performance and genuine connection. His obsession with the study of people is on full display and appears to be a rabbit hole with no bottom in sight. Each episode has its own unique challenges and its own piece of the puzzle to contribute to the larger discussion of human nature at hand. Its comedy is about as dry as can be, which ultimately ends up working in its favor. As bizarre and off the wall as the premise may sound, what Fielder does and the philosophical points he explores are unlike any other creative visionary working in the industry today.

The Rehearsal is available to stream on HBO Max

You Can See Everything truly is a perfect combination of some of modern cinema’s most exciting talents. The mixture of classic documentary inspiration and contemporary/cutting edge artistic expression helped create the most intriguing and high-quality piece of cinema of the 2020s that will inspire many copycats, but will never be fully matched. 2026 is really shaping up to be quite the year for movies, and I cannot wait to see what the future holds.

Ah, Studio Ghibli.

A polarizing subject.1 Not because anyone could argue against its artistry, oh no. And not because anyone could deny the indelible effect this studio has had on animation, on music, and on oh, maybe everything. I’ve given my pitches here before on Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle, both movies I love dearly, but that’s because I didn’t yet feel ready to tackle what is the most well-known, the most influential, and frankly, objectively2, the best of them all.

Spirited Away is considered one of the greatest animated films ever made. In the bajillion (my conservative estimate) films made in the past century, this movie consistently floats to the top of “Best of” lists. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the film single-handedly raised the global standard of what animation was capable of. Bursting into the scene in 2001, the film found enormous success with Japanese audiences before Disney handled its North American distribution, where it exploded in popularity, snagging an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature along the way. Since then, echoes and encores on this film are everywhere. From Disney, to Pixar, to Marvel, and countless indie films in between, you’ll find Spirited Away cited as an influence. Artists of all kinds, from Steven Spielberg to Billie Eilish have praised Spirited Away as inspiration. It has remained firmly at the top, and its legacy is not budging anytime soon.

So what’s the deal?

Spirited Away starts with the simple setup of a family moving to a new place. Young girl Chihiro’s despondent attitude is clear from the beginning. As she clutches a bouquet of wilting flowers given as a parting gift, it is obvious that she is unhappy and angry with her parents, with her situation, and with herself.

One wrong turn later, the family finds themselves exploring a seemingly abandoned bunch of buildings, with an increasingly fretful Chihiro urging her parents to leave, a mysterious, freshly cooked feast entices her parents to stay.

Not to give too much away for those who haven’t had the pleasure, but suffice to say, Chihiro is going to find herself trapped in a dazzlingly colorful and busy Spirit World, where she must blend in, work hard, and try to save both herself and her hapless parents. In the course of the film, Chihiro, robbed of her name but now called Sen, is going to be the bravest she can be, all while her terror, loneliness, isolation, and growth are beautifully, delicately, and achingly portrayed.

Director Hayao Miyazaki is one of those people so inordinately skilled you can’t be quite sure they are real. His artistry is superhuman, and much as I want to go on, I need to leave it at that. One of his signature moves is his penchant for portraying the beauty of ordinary moments, such as tapping a shoe to get it to fit right, wringing a cloth, or folding blankets. The time and effort and love that he pours into hand-drawing these seemingly unnecessary actions humanizes the characters in a way that dialogue cannot. By including these ordinary moments in the extraordinary spirit world, he brings the two together in a way that grounds it. This is, first and foremost, a fairy tale. But he will dwell in these little moments, giving this fairy tale a depth, body, and substance that has always set his work apart and always will.

While she remains trapped in the Spirit World, Sen has to work in an enormous bath house. For a girl unused to such hard labor, she struggles mightily, falls frequently, and suffers the ridicule of the spirits who encounter her. But she perseveres. Miyazaki wanted to create a realistic heroine for young girls. She had to be scared, and then choose courage. Sen has to undergo a transformation from a slightly spoiled, self-centered, petulant child to a selfless, sacrificial hero. And she will work hard for that transformation. She will undergo many sufferings, she will be out of her mind with fear and fatigue, but you won’t catch her giving up. Of course, she won’t be alone. The Spirit World offers a plethora of side characters to delight, to scare, and to confuse. The creativity bursts from the seams of this film, and the fact that Miyazaki had to cut several scenes to keep the film to a reasonable length leaves me feeling cheated. What have we been deprived of?

The colors are rich, the visuals are outrageously gorgeous, and the warm color palette wraps around you like a hug. There is so much beauty to dwell on, but we must give laurels to what, to me, stands out the most in this film, and has stuck firmly in my mind since watching it for the first time at the tender age of 5, and that’s the music.

Spirited Away was the first film to teach me the power of a score. That music can swell the emotions of a scene to bursting, and remain with you long after the end credits are over. I will die on the hill that “One Summer Day” is the most emotionally cutting instrumental featured in a Ghibli film, and that the last minute of “Sixth Station” is unreasonably emotive and pianos shouldn’t be able to do that. There are no misses with this soundtrack. It dances between soothingly delicate and gloriously grand, with a cohesive intensity that connects the two in a way that shouldn’t make sense but it does.

Hyperbolic? Perhaps. But this film can’t be talked about in casual terms. I’ve never met a person who walked away from this film with a neutral opinion.

This is a movie that explores identity. Sen is robbed of hers in the spirit world, and must regain it. A secondary antagonist, fittingly named No-Face, is a spirit who has no identity, but subsists on absorbing the traits of those he consumes. He reflects Sen in that they are both blank slates

in the Spirit World, but while he is quickly corrupted by greed and selfishness, she is not, because she is sustained by love. Love for her parents, love for the friends who help her, and love even for her enemies. This love is going to help Sen remember that she is Chihiro, and Chihiro has grown into a far better version of herself, strengthened by the trials she has endured. Miyazaki is not Catholic, but he keeps accidentally making films with beautiful Catholic sensibilities. And we praise God for that.

Words fail, really. This is a movie to be experienced. Is it strange? Yep! All Ghibli movies are. Is it beautiful? Is it worth it? Is it thought-provoking? Is it exciting? Is it contemplative and complex, whilst also being simple enough to be understood by a child?

Yes. In a word, this film has gravitas.

There’s a Ghibli movie for every vibe, but if you want the quintessential one, the one that most completely represents the Platonic form of Ghibli movie, it’s this one. 25 years later, it’s still calling the shots.

It’s worth anyone’s time.

Spirited Away is available on HBO Max

The world of Mad Max is notorious for its brutal and bizarre nature. It has become almost an adjective used to describe something’s style. Whether it be cars, fashion, or the setting, Mad Max has become synonymous with post-apocalyptic media. What started as a niche and low-budget Australian New Wave film became a cultural touchstone, and thanks in part to The Road Warrior, it was able to define the post-apocalyptic genre.

The Road Warrior has a straightforward premise: a group of people surrounded by bad guys and needing a way out, with the only help available coming from our lone protagonist and his odd companion. While the premise may seem simple, George Miller expands it into something far grander. He manages to sow the seeds for a theme that audiences have become all too familiar with in the hero action genre: one needs to overcome selfishness and desolation for the betterment of others. It’s a sort of “coming of age” story for a stoic hero that truly elevates them to the level of hero. Despite being submerged in this bleak world, it still has a clear sense of right and wrong that many modern films shy away from. Duty and honor permeate the vast majority of character motives, and decisions are made in a logical manner.

The Road Warrior very clearly had an impact on the action genre. Its ruthless and clean pacing has been the blueprint for many, including the exceptional Mad Max: Fury Road, which feels like the natural and modern successor to The Road Warrior. There is not a single moment wasted in the whole film, and Miller was able to balance depth with function without sacrificing momentum for even a moment. Another strong impact is the effective characterization that seems to happen flawlessly throughout. The introduction and world-building of side characters in modern cinema seems like a tired and exhausting trope to endure, since now “everyone needs their time to be represented”. George Miller is more concerned with the side characters in their impact on the story and gives us just enough to feel something for a vast majority of them.

The eccentric nature of this world is pretty hard to understate. The villains are about as comical and over the top as can be done within the world of filmmaking. The “madness,” so to speak, is palpable in almost every frame and costume, really selling the rugged Australian Outback setting in a rather unpolished but effective manner. You won’t necessarily find an “all-time great” performance within Mad Max 2; however, everyone understands how to effectively ham it up when it’s needed. Mel Gibson would continue to validate himself as an action star as the typical stoic, but adds a little more nuance than what was in the previous installment.

Mel Gibson’s development as a filmmaker is evident from his early work with George Miller. Gibson has always been a filmmaker for me who “understands the basics”. He has always had a strong grasp of the fundamentals of filmmaking in a way that very much mirrors Miller’s early work, which is perhaps at its best in The Road Warrior. Gibson’s clear sense of focus, pacing, tension, and violence can be seen on full display, despite him only being involved as an actor. Clearly, Mel was absorbing all he could during this period to hone his skills for the future, and it made him all the better.

Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior is a solid, well-made action film that continues to impact modern filmmaking to this day. A clear sense of right and wrong, excellent execution, and creative experimentation all come together to help build a full-throttle, non-stop, post-apocalyptic joy ride that sets up Mel Gibson for long-term success both in front and behind the camera.

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In 2022, Warner Bros. DC Studios announced it would be hiring James Gunn (Director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1-3, The Suicide Squad) and Peter Safran as the co-CEOs of DC Studios. This move excited a lot of fans of the superhero or comic book movie genre, because Gunn had risen to prominence after his first foray into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Guardians of the Galaxy in 2014. It wasn’t until 2025 with Superman that the newly formed DCU finally launched into the theaters. Superman was a critical success, a phenomenal film, and didn’t do terribly at the box office for an IP that had seen diminishing returns in recent decades.

Unfortunately for DC Studios, their next foray into the superhero genre, Supergirl (2026) turned out to be a colossal box office bomb and lost the studio over a hundred million dollars. The DCU followed up Supergirl this summer with a resounding success in HBO Max’s Lanterns series, which was one of the top 5 most streamed TV shows in the platform’s long history.

It is against this backdrop that Clayface (2026) hit theaters this past weekend. When James Gunn infamously made his “phase 1 slate” announcement for DC Studios in 2023, he specifically stated what DC Studios wanted to do was unique and distinct from other comic book movie studios (Marvel). They wanted to create an inter-connected universe with a variety of genres and themes. Hence, you would have more traditional superhero flicks like Superman (2025) alongside a True Detective style TV show like Lanterns (2026). The biggest selling point Gunn had at the time for this distinctive element of the DCU was the announcement of a “Clayface” movie—bringing the Batman villain’s origin story to the silver screen for the first time in a body horror, rated-R feature length film.

Gunn was ambitious when he decided to make his new universe’s third feature film centered around a B-list villain from Batman’s Rogues Gallery. However, the promise was there. If they could pull it off, this would be a definitive win for DC Studios and potentially be an in-road to draw more accomplished, creative directors to the studio knowing they would have the ability to tell their stories, and not have creative restraints on their projects.

If you looked online at the early reactions, Clayface is receiving positive reactions. It is currently at 76% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 7.6/10 on IMDb, and has a 94% audience score with an A- cinema score. Unfortunately, when I went and saw the film last night, I quickly realized I must have seen a different movie.

I am actually quite shocked at how well Clayface is doing. It has a string-cheese plot, an identity crisis, abysmal CGI, and as Chris Ryan on the “Big Pic Pod” said in his assessment of the film “feels like the showrunners of (Amazon’s) Reacher series tried to direct The Fly”. There is little to recommend about this project. It refused to choose a theme, a key idea, or serve as a meditation on anything. Was it a commentary on the folly of looksmaxxing culture? Not really. Was it a meditation on the vanity of celebrity and influencer culture? No. Did it have anything profound to say about how trauma can turn us into either a hero or a monster? No. Did it have anything to say about the cosmetic industry and the folly of science as religion? No. Even though it added AI as a fundamental part of its plot, did it attempt to tackle that subject with any nuance? No.

As straight up entertainment, it fails as well. I am not a “horror” guy, but I know the best “horror” movies make your skin crawl and give you heart-attack inducing jump scares. This did neither.

In sincerity, if you are a “body-horror” fanatic, then maybe you should go see this in theaters. If you are a superhero completionist, maybe you should go see this in theaters. If neither applies to you, there are so many other options for you to spend your money on: Wildwood, You Can See Everything, and more. I’d skip out on this one.

The mark of a movie being labeled “poor” for me is: How often do I cringe or verbally say, “are we really doing this?” at the decisions a movie makes? This movie had (at a minimum) ten of those moments, and since it is a movie with AI driving a central plot point, I am giving “ChatGPT-face” a 4/10.

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(Spoilers for both the movie and the novel. TL;DR: stay home and read the book)

Klara and the Sun is a futuristic (dystopian?) film based on the 2021 novel of the same name by Kazuo Ishiguro and directed by Taika Waititi. It follows Klara, an Artificial Friend, as she accompanies her teenage owner, Josie, and navigates relationships with those around her. It’s a topic which is extremely relevant to a new generation growing up with AI, and Ishiguro was ahead of his time in thinking about the subject back in 2021 - ChatGPT would not launch until the following year. Ishiguro is one of the few truly great novelists still working today, perhaps most recognizable for works such as The Remains of the Day (1989) and Never Let Me Go (2005), both of which have received their own film adaptations, and consequently I was both excited and apprehensive about yet another of his novels receiving a movie treatment. To cut to the chase, I need not have been either. The film is neither great nor terrible, managing to ‘play it safe’ while also missing the most prescient elements of Ishiguro’s truly insightful observations.

To start out with the positive elements, this film is visually pleasant, even beautiful at times. The novel, told as a first-person narration by Klara herself, is at times extremely sparse in its physical descriptions – including of the AIs themselves – and thus the filmmakers have to create the visual world of the film almost from scratch. Despite, or perhaps because of, this blank canvas, the visuals are pleasing or even compelling -- with a couple exceptions -- and the occasional first person shots from Klara’s perspective manage to capture the very odd way in which Klara reports seeing things in “boxes” or “shapes” in the novel. If I had to list other positive aspects of the film, I would say that Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams were each compelling in their respective roles as innocent android and prickly Karen, and Michael Giacchino delivered as usual with a score that was both pleasant and even memorable.

On the other hand, the movie has definite flaws, even from a cinematic perspective. The dialogue is uneven and at times stilted, and worst of all, the film suffers from an effort to make itself interesting. The novel is not the most exciting or action-packed story, and the movie, being a visual medium, has an obligation to its audience to show rather than tell. Unfortunately, the director decided to solve this problem by making things “happen” at regular intervals in an entertaining or exciting manner.. Thus, predictably every fifteen or twenty minutes the story would be interrupted by some loud incident or jump-scare – Klara would knock something over, or a machine would make a sudden, loud appearance, or a car would crash. These things fit into the story, but once one realizes the pattern, they become distracting and annoying. To be sure, it can be difficult to adapt any novel comprised mainly of talking, let alone inner dialogue, without boring the audience, and yet the novel has plenty of visually striking images and set pieces which could have satisfied an audience without needing to wake them up every quarter of an hour – and based on the completely empty showing I attended, the filmmakers needn’t have worried about keeping a more general audience entertained and should have focused instead on creating a more insightful film, regardless of how slow-moving the results might have been.

The biggest problem by far with the film, however, concerns the way in which the central message of the novel is turned on its head. (Here, by the way, come the real spoilers, so if you plan on reading or watching, be warned.) To be sure, there were numerous changes which I thought impoverished the story, and occasionally didn’t even make sense. For example, the relationship between Josie and her mother is so fractious in the movie that the mother is outright opposed to getting an AF, which makes little sense, since it turns out that she had been planning for some time to replace Josie with a droid. A broader complaint I have is that the movie makes blindingly explicit themes and assumptions that are implicit in the novel. For example, the novel tells us that some children are genetically “lifted,” but never explains what this means or what difference it makes for these children - indeed as far as the events of the story are concerned there seems to be no difference; even Josie’s sickness is not explicitly linked to her genetic alteration. The film however, chooses to turn this plot element into a matter of wealth inequality, a theme implicitly present in the novel, but not developed, leading to a truly ridiculous scene, a marxist cartoon almost, involving a bunch of grotesquely hapsburgian horrors dressed like they were attending the met gala – the one true visual failure of the film. Again, these changes may simply boil down to the difference between the two mediums, but even so it was frustrating to watch the delicately woven suggestions of the novel bludgeoned to death by heavy-handed story-telling.

The most problematic change, however, lies in the character of Klara herself.

One of the central questions of the book is, what is a person? Does it rely on consciousness? Could AI be conscious? While the novel challenges the reader on these points, one also learns as the novel goes on that Klara herself, while very intelligent and far more understanding than most other AFs, nonetheless looks at the world differently than a human. The movie Klara, on the other hand, is far more like a newborn, innocent child who understands little of the world, but is essentially human in her emotions and reactions. This difference between human and AF nature becomes most apparent when Klara discovers that Josie’s mother is planning on replacing her, and that Klara herself will provide the brains and consciousness of the new Josie. Klara will essentially be used as an AI therapy tool, or even as a part of an extended roleplay -- the parallel to contemporary AI uses need not be stated.. Book Klara accepts this task with frighteningly little compunction, seeing it as her duty to perpetuate Josie after her death, where movie Klara more understandably (from a human perspective) refuses.

To take another example, Klara, who has implicit faith that the sun will heal Josie, believes that she must destroy a smog-producing machine in order to please the sun. Book Klara, while refusing to divulge her reasoning, manages to convince Josie’s estranged father (a character missing in the film) to help her in her vandalism on the grounds that it will help Josie, despite providing no evidence for this wild claim. Movie Klara, on the other hand, has no human help, and is repeatedly told that she is wrong in her fantasies about the sun. In the first of these examples, we see that Ishiguro is aware, in a way his character Klara is not, of the dangers of an AI system which lacks a moral compass and exists merely to please its human companion. In the second, we see the opposing danger: that AI could, because of its supposed advanced understanding, convince its human companion to do something completely irrational. It’s a stark warning from a book which is largely sympathetic to its AI protagonist, and five years later, we can see all too clearly both dangers being realized in some form or other in our own world. The film, however, misses these opportunities to present both the light and dark sides of AI, and chooses instead to tell a bland story focused on the (platonic) love story of a droid and her human. It’s a missed opportunity to say something really relevant about the new technological environment in which we live and in which our children will grow up.

As I said at the beginning, my advice to you is to stay home and read the book.

2026 has been a year of era-defining cinema between The Odyssey, Backrooms, You Can See Everything, and now Wildwood.

All films are a product of their respective cultures and, in that, say something about what produced it. Yet, it is a certain type of film that feels like a significant inflection point. Whether intentional or (likely) not, these films have captured a moral and spiritual transformation at the heart of society. Just as The Odyssey identified the moral failure of Western civilization post-World War II especially as it related to hospitality and masculinity, Wildwood is an allegory about the dissolution and distortion of the family as the crux of American decline. Admittedly, I am not sure this was the intention, but it is in the text nonetheless. Laika’s sixth feature film, an adaptation of The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy and illustrator Carson Ellis’ book series of the same name, may be the finest technical achievement, too, in animation history.

Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) is tasked with watching her brother Mac (Arthur Knight) while her parents (Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine) are out and about in Portland, Oregon. While at a playground, a murder of crows snatch Mac and take him to the fantastical land of the Impassable Wilderness just outside the city. This world is divided into various warring factions: the grieving mother Alexandra (Cary Mulligan) who controls a coyote army and wields the dark powers of the technology, Alexandra’s buffoonish bureaucrat cousin Lars (Marc Evan Jackson) who controls the urban part of the wilderness and wars with the coyotes, and the rebel bandit army who seek to reclaim their ancestral land from the machinations of both Alexandra and Lars are just a few at play here. There are a lot of moving parts that are generally well-handled considering the constraints of a feature-length runtime. I do wish we could have learned more about some characters, like the Avian Principality leader Owl Rex (Richard E. Grant). The closest analogue in terms of how the film feels both narratively and pacing-wise is the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

This is an epic.

An important disclaimer is that Wildwood is absolutely not for children. In addition to the setting’s immersion in Pacific Northwest progressivism, the film is unsparingly violent with cursing and other adult themes as well. One has to have a solid moral and theological grounding in their own right to appreciate this narrative. The story critiques at least some of what it seemed to initially present uncritically. Show the kids The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe instead.

Wildwood, in particular, tracks the bifurcation of modernity into nihilistic, posthuman technoapocalypticism and literally nature worshipping paganism. The 2010s American culture that fostered the New Atheism, Hank Green-esque scientistic superiority, and initial adulation of the Silicon Valley technological revolution has given way to a new paradigm. The romanticization of tech has been hurt by doomerism, mass layoffs, and the impact of AI expansion on consumer prices, and, if they are not religious or spiritual, being unaffiliated seems to be the more dominant position for youth than professed atheism (fedoras are at least partly to blame). “Facts and logic” seems to hold less cache now. Hank Green himself was involved in a scandal this year after being caught using an AI script for a video. Put briefly, the veneer of rationalism has been chipped away at and replaced by an experiential emotionalism.

In my own field of psychology, the two leading trends exactly encapsulate this moment. On the one hand, AI companies have infiltrated the highest levels of the field’s institutions. OpenAI was a top-tier sponsor for the American Psychological Association’s convention and the APA opened the completely unfrighteningly named Center for Behavioral Science and AI this year as two major examples. On the other side, the other recent trend is “indigenous psychology”, or “the psychology from within the matrix of the native culture, based on their history, language, arts and common Experience.” This subfield calls for cultural humility and the integration of traditional medicines and worldviews. Nature-based therapies especially have attracted a new wave of interest.

The core conflict culturally and in the film is between nature and technology. As Catholics, we know that neither is the complete solution. Without getting into exact spoilers, the genius of Wildwood is how the film reveals the folly and some merits of those who worship both.

What motivates and is caught in the midst of the conflict is the family. The characters sell out control of their reproductivity and family to dark technological and magical (perhaps even “satanic” as one character says) powers. This perversion of the family is the instigation for the destruction of natural order. All of the themes, including a commentary on colonialism, are still wrapped up in this primary disruption.

In addition to the narrative and thematic side of the film, the stop-motion animation is easily the best ever done. A climactic battle sequence, in particular, is a breathtaking achievement. Director Travis Knight has said this film took sixteen years to make and it shows. The voice cast is also solid. Awkwafina makes an obligatory appearance here, but Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Cary Mulligan, and Jake Johnson are particularly good.

Laika continues their streak of animation mastery and complex, emotional stories in Wildwood. Unfortunately, it seems doomed to be underappreciated yet again, too. I do recommend it to adults interested in a fantasy epic that is smarter and more nuanced than its initial appearance.

Wildwood is now playing in theaters.

If you like stop-motion animation, maybe check out this movie as well from our List!

Braveheart is a film full of contradictions. It’s a medieval historical epic that famously ignores historical accuracy in favor of telling a better story. Its protagonist is driven by marital romantic love to take action to free his country, yet commits adultery in the third act. It celebrates loyalty and integrity over all else, but changes history to make the very king it celebrates at the end into a traitor at Falkirk. It is brutal, messy, often meandering, and somewhat morally perplexing.

It’s also the best film of the 1990s, and arguably the best cinematic epic ever made.1

Braveheart loosely adapts the story of William Wallace, the legendary Scottish hero who fought the English conquerors invading his homeland. Wallace rose from being a minor Scottish landowner to leading an army of freedom fighters, gaining a knighthood along the way before being captured and executed by the English. The man he fought to put on the throne, Robert the Bruce, finished the fight Wallace had started, defeating the English at Bannockburn and cementing Wallace’s legend as the spark that started the flame of Scottish independence.

Braveheart follows all these major beats and doesn’t much care about getting all the details right in between. Though history nerds have been bellyaching about this for 30 years,2 director Mel Gibson’s decision to let storytelling take priority over historical accuracy makes for an epic film of mythical proportions. Gibson takes the messy strands of history and reforges them into a gripping story with one strong, overarching theme: how to be a leader of men without losing your soul.

You thought I was going to say the theme was “freedom”, didn’t you?

Freedom definitely underlies the main theme, but what the film really meditates on is not how to live freely but how to lead free men. Gibson contrasts three different kind of leaders: the Tyrant, King Edward Longshanks; the Politician, Robert the Bruce’s father credited only as “the Leper”; and the Leader, William Wallace. One is evil, another ignoble, but the third! The third has the potential not only to win great victories and inspire his men to feats of courage and nobility previously unthinkable, but to become a legendary hero inspiring generations to come.

Our two bad leaders both embody perspectives that, at first blush, seem to have some merit to them. King Edward believes that power must be grasped firmly, by force, and rights forcefully asserted. Any means necessary to expand his borders and enforce his reign are on the table, from bribery to outright barbaric violence. We see his works before we even see the man: a barn of hanging Scots, murdered under the flag of truce; a new bride raped by an English Lord exercising the “right” given to him by Longshanks; a village burned for retaliating against the rapine and murder. He is calculating, cruel, and ruthless to a fault, but because of this he has no one close to him and no one to carry on his legacy. His son is a sodomite and a weakling, approximating his father in cruelty but not in competence. His courtiers are sycophantic, and his French daughter-in-law openly despises him. He rules through fear and a near-inevitable sense of power, but does not command loyalty or respect, and his empire will die with him.

The Leper, on the other hand, must grasp at power from a position of weakness. He is a master manipulator, a spider pulling on threads in his web, a consummate politician. He is always adaptable, always looking out for his own gain at the expense of everyone else. He counsels betrayal to gain more land and title, patience when action is needed, and cowardice instead of courage. His son, Robert the Bruce, shows deference to him as his father for far too long, carrying out his father’s schemes even when his heart aches to fight with Wallace. Ultimately, however, his rotten character is mirrored by his rotting flesh, and his son will seize the inheritance the Leper so desperately tried to accumulate for him only by completely rejecting his tactics and leaving him to die alone.

Wallace, by contrast, rejects both the tyrannical and political approaches to leadership in favor of boldness, loyalty, and integrity. He begins his story as a man of peace, hoping to establish a homestead with the woman he loves. Instead she is nearly raped, and when he rescues her she is recaptured and killed in retaliation. This spurs Wallace into action, and though there is an element of revenge in his motivation, as the film unfolds his driving force is seen more as a burning desire to see that this never happens in Scotland again. His passion for freedom and for justice drives him, his cunning and military prowess bring him victory, and his courage and virtue draw men to his banner. Wallace leads by example, marching and camping and fighting and bleeding with his men and showing them how much he is willing to sacrifice for them and their cause. His passion brings him the admiration of his men and the skepticism of the nobility, who are nonplussed by a man whom they cannot bribe or control. He leads from the front with an integrity and fierce passion that inspires his men to follow him into battle even against what would seem to be overwhelming English forces—and win. He cares not for the grasping of power but for accomplishing his cause: a free Scotland. Free not to conquer and scheme and join the political machinations of Europe, but free for Scots to live well, love greatly, raise families, and be untouched by tyranny. Wallace’s passion, nobility, and integrity is what causes him to become a great leader of men, accomplishing his goal and creating a legend which echoes still long after his death.

We, then, are placed into the story through the character of Robert the Bruce, the man who historically was called “Braveheart”. He must choose which of these three archetypes he will embody as King of Scotland. It is through his eyes that we see these clashing visions of leadership. At first he is vacillating, easily swayed by his leper father’s counsel and playing the ignoble game of politics his nobles prefer to manly battle. However, by encountering Wallace he is emboldened and ennobled, vowing after Falkirk never to be on the wrong side again. Historical accuracy aside, Bruce needed to betray Wallace at this battle for this story to be told. It is in the moment that his heart is broken, seeing Wallace’s despair at his treachery, that he could be reforged into the King a free people needed. In the coda of the film he fully embodies the spirit of Wallace, challenging his men: “you bled with Wallace. Now bleed with me!” Wallace’s example, not Longshanks or the Leper, is the one which will win the day and echo throughout history.

Braveheart is a film which almost defies discussion, it is such a monumental piece of cinema. I haven’t even touched on the filmmaking prowess on display, which comes closer to the epic scale of The Lord of the Rings trilogy than any other film of this era. It portrays the Middle Ages as a time of brutality, yes, but also life, color, and faith, something modern Hollywood has drowned in oceans of mud in every medieval set film. There are moments which evoke Gibson’s later The Passion of the Christ (#53), especially during Wallace’s execution. I have done my best here to tease out some of the themes which strike me each time I rewatch it, but more than anything it is just a grand story which must be experienced to be believed. Give Braveheart a watch or a rewatch this week. It’s a monumental experience that will continue to delight and inspire long into the future.

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The “video game movie curse” has rung especially true when adapting fighting games.

While their striking visuals might be tailor-made for a big screen, they often lack story and become difficult to adapt as a result. Case in point: the 1994 Street Fighter movie, a very loose adaptation of Capcom’s game that was really made just to show off how cool Jean-Claude van Damme is.

Since fighting games usually revolve around tournaments or story-less multiplayer, they are often left very open to screenwriters, especially those who aren’t gamers. But as soon as I heard Kitao Sakurai (The Eric André Show) was working on a new adaptation of Street Fighter, I was excited. Being a fan of the games, I knew he could craft a fun take on the universe. The result was a film that’s very aware of its zaniness, and uses it to give space for some genuine character growth that may be setting up a solid film series.

Street Fighter opens with a beautiful animated sequence from Titmouse (The Venture Bros, Critical Role). We are immediately introduced to Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken (Noah Centineo), lifelong friends competing in fighting tournaments under the mentorship of Sensei Gouken (Don Lee). After Ryu wins the 1986 World Warrior Championship, a clever nod to the game’s original Japanese title and release date, he goes into hiding after threats from the demon Akuma (Roman Reigns). Ken chooses to stay in Japan and becomes a washed-up celebrity managed by his lecherous buddy Dan (Andrew Schulz). In a flash-forward to 1993, M. Bison (David Dastmalchian), the psychic dictator of the faraway land of Metrolao, announces a new World Warrior tournament. After an invite from Interpol agent Chun Li (Callina Liang), neither Ryu nor Ken can resist an opportunity to compete. But what they don’t know is that it’s all a trap for Bison to absorb all the fighters’ power and become more powerful himself, in a close adaptation of the little story in Street Fighter II.

A major high point of the film is that the cast is terrific. Koji and Centineo sell the main characters’ brotherhood incredibly well, and Liang’s Chun Li makes for a perfect voice of reason to round out the overly serious Ryu and goofier Ken. Cody Rhodes’ performance as veteran fighter Guile is miles better than van Damme’s flat performance in the 1994 adaptation. David Dastmalchian is the only one who had big shoes to fill, as Raúl Julia’s intense, downright creepy take on Bison is the best part of the older film, but Dastmalchian’s interpretation feels more like a cartoony video game final boss, complete with mid-battle banter. It’s exactly how fans would expect Bison: a loud, campy, power-hungry dictator. I was genuinely surprised by Bison’s masked assistant Vega, played by country musician Orville Peck. In a cinematic landscape where most henchmen are brutes or idiots, Peck’s menacing take on Vega helped make Metrolao more of a genuine threat, and proved my point that we need more convincing villains in video game movies. He often reminded me of Brad Dourif’s Wormtongue in the Lord of the Rings movies, yet it worked perfectly for the nature of Street Fighter’s villains.

There’s not many fight scenes, but they are, expectedly, the best part. What really stands out beyond their breathtaking choreography is how natural the characters’ signature moves are. We see several attacks from the games come to life, often supplemented with their classic music and sound effects, and none of them feel out of place in the reality Sakurai is selling. Fans will be expecting a Hadouken or Shoryuken, the classic “Shoto” moves of Ryu and Ken, and the way they’re integrated as a narrative device is interesting. The Hadou, these moves’ power source, is earned after facing adversity in a fight, and leads to some very satisfying moments when the heroes are under pressure. It was rewarding to see Ryu’s perfectly timed Hadouken when taking down “beast-man” Blanka (Jason Momoa, in a cameo that was way too short), after 15 minutes or so of him just doing standard karate moves.

What makes this film stand out from other video game adaptations is the strong focus on brotherhood and healthy male friendship, which is very rare in contemporary cinema. Ryu’s secretiveness and Ken’s rashness are viewed as obvious flaws in their character, but reconnecting after some time apart helps them become more self-actualized, taking on a common enemy and looking uber-cool while doing so. It’s like Lethal Weapon but with karate and fireballs. Ken’s journey stands out because he rarely gets any spotlight in Street Fighter media – he’s just the “Player 2” character, the Luigi to Ryu’s Mario. Exploring his deep-seated insecurities and desire for personal excellence was a clever storytelling choice, and the stakes of the tournament and his friendships help sell it. Noah Centineo really nails the necessary vulnerability and creates a very positive male role model with his believable growth not unlike John McClane or Martin Riggs. Hopefully this leads to more action movies following suit and returning to the tradition of a more virtuous male lead.

Sakurai’s Street Fighter is exactly as loud and silly as you’d expect a Street Fighter movie to be. Sakurai’s deep understanding of the classic fighting game and the camp medium help him create an imaginative adaptation far from a direct 1-to-1 match to the games. Complete with a neon-retro aesthetic and sincere emotional weight, the film delivers more than what it would seem and is an entertaining yet genuine watch. If there’s a second round, I’ll definitely be seated for it again.

At the request of the filmmakers, I will try to make the spoiler section as roped off as possible. I highly recommend you go into this without reading too much about it, as the filmmakers very clearly stated they wish for the audience to partake in the same journey they did. I wholeheartedly recommend you see this film in a theater.

What truly goes on in a sociopath’s mind?

True crime documentaries have become a pop culture staple. Every streaming service in existence has its own true crime documentaries/ docuseries that all seem to follow the same formulaic genre. Hardly ever do they break the mold like the fantastic Morris documentary The Thin Blue Line, or redefine the medium like Joseph Oppenheimer’s haunting, magnificent The Act of Killing. In 2026, however, in a perfect storm of misfortune, circumstance, and intuitive filmmaking, Lance Oppenheim and the fantastic Nathan Fielder created You Can See Everything, the greatest film of the 2020s, and it will change the world of cinema forever.

You Can See Everything follows the infamous fraudster and felon, Elizabeth Holmes, through the 34 days before her 12-year incarceration. Nathan Fielder was granted unprecedented access into her personal life (at her request to A24), and what transpires is a surreal, complex, and haunting story that I have thought of nonstop in the 3 days following my initial viewing.

Begin Spoilers

You Can See Everything truly adheres to its title and then some. It is fundamentally a meta-documentary that not only analyzes the craft of understanding a project for a documentary, but forces us to analyze ourselves. Oppenheim and Fielder expertly crafted a cinematic Rorschach test that blurs the line between reality and truth without being subversive to it. Following a similar vein to Orson Welles’ F For Fake, the final product begs for truth and authenticity. It wants nothing more than to tell the total, unbiased truth. This is all it wants at its core, and what Nathan and Lance try their absolute hardest to find, even partially switching formats to find it. The central conflict and resistance is supplied by none other than the film’s subject matter: The Holmes family. In an excellent interview given by the New York Film Festival, Lance Oppenheim stated, “It felt like we were in the Zone from Stalker, every day… no one could agree on what was real. Every day everyone would debate what happened or what they thought, and no one could ever agree.” Their goal was to capture this feeling and deliver it to audiences, and they more than achieved.

The Holmes family is one that seems too insane to be real, but too nuanced and detailed to be fake. They are, by every definition, an enigma. The only surefire conclusion that can be gathered with You Can See Everything is that they are without a doubt batshit crazy. So much so that this took much time to discern and figure out. Never has there been such a group of manipulative and compulsive liars ever captured on film, who go to such extents that I am not sure what is truth and what is fake, even now. Just when you think you have this group figured out, something else unexpected is discovered or occurs that throws off the scent from any real or logical conclusion. Who has true agency? Who is the manipulator? Who is using who? Is everything cryptic, or straightforward? Are they dumb, or do they refuse accountability? Are they genuine or insincere? Why did Holmes learn how to be a human from the same lizard people presentation that Zuckerberg used? All of these questions and more are asked constantly, and never quite answered. Chiefly, the question of “What is going on in this person’s head RIGHT NOW?” is the core and daunting question that can never truly be answered.

The human brain is equally fascinating and terrifying. We, the general 95% of the IQ bell curve, find it fascinating to examine the extremes of the bell curve, those with exceptionalities. In particular, we love the outliers and try to find something in them to learn about ourselves as a whole. This pursuit of the outliers applies not only to, say, raw intelligence, but to things such as morality and ethics. We venerate saints and honor them, while at the same time finding deep intrigue in individuals such as Ted Bundy or Adolf Hitler. There’s something about seeing the highest of the high and the lowest of the low that compels us to examine ourselves through them. While the Holmes family wouldn’t particularly place extremely high on a moral bell curve, so to speak, You Can See Everything clearly shows that ALL PEOPLE are deeply flawed. In reality, most people are complex enough that you could never truly understand them. The Holmeses may seem like an extreme caricature of dishonesty and manipulation, but we all can be susceptible to imperfections. Everyone has lied at some point in their life and will freely admit it. When Fielder asks this simple question to Elizabeth Holmes, however, she cannot even answer it in a straightforward manner.

The theological statement of “The only unforgivable sin is the one we don’t repent of” is so real in You Can See Everything that you can practically touch it. Never have I seen individuals refuse so earnestly and frequently that they have never done wrong when the contrary exists for the world to see. Elizabeth simply does not see any fault in what was done, and Billy Evans nurtures this in his own bizarre manner. Liz’s refusal to answer practically any question in a straightforward manner only continues to work against her in the eyes of the public, and her continued fixation on semantics is stereotypical behavior for pathological liars. Unsettling eye contact throughout the extensive interview session only adds to the feeling that “I am being lied to”.

Being submerged in this web of dishonesty was enough to have me questioning everything, and the film isn’t even 3 hours long. I’m honestly shocked Nathan Fielder was able to maintain any sort of sanity while the events depicted were transpiring. Due to the Holmes family continuously asking Nathan questions, the production team decided it would be easier to go against Fielder’s initial request to not be featured. This move to make him an actual character in the film adds so much, allowing him to be just as vulnerable as Liz or Billy. His honesty and ability to look into situations is the lifeblood of the film, and will most likely be replicated in the future. Bringing in Amanda Seyfried to reenact real exchanges (as was done originally in The Thin Blue Line) was a stroke of brilliance that brought a whole new aspect to the conversation: The role of entertainment in public events. Seyfried seems to mean well and less performative than you would expect bringing in an actress would seem, but she adds valuable insights to the situation. Even her deflection of responsibility for contributing to the vilifying of Holmes to the masses was fascinating. Never has the quote “It’s TV” sounded so complex.

This film is OUTSTANDING in its craftsmanship. I full heartedly expect You Can See Everything to win quite a few Academy Awards, primarily being in cinematography. The film quality shots that were gathered within an only slightly controlled setting are going to be studied in film school and are a breakthrough for the indie film industry. Continuous face shots draw undeniable parallels to Bergman films, but serve to truly capture raw reactions and moments that add to this complex puzzle. Single light sources were used for most of the shots, and natural lighting filled the rest. David Bolen already had a solid outing with Primetime, but this is nothing short of a technical marvel, with some shooting locations and equipment having to be transported and set up in under 30 seconds.

Fielder acts as a fantastic pointman and directs well, with Lance Oppenheim really bringing the whole twisted portrait together in a way that feels distinctly him. I pray that these two will collaborate on future projects in such a manner, because the end result this time around was flawless. It’s difficult to say if acting Oscars will be won, as most of the film is reality, but I could be proven wrong. Ari Balouzian delivers a simple yet haunting score that complements the film, similar to how Philip Glass’s did for Koyaanisqatsi. Oppenheim and Fielder should absolutely win the Directing Oscar, as their creative chemistry is the best I’ve seen since the Coen Brothers.

Ultimately, if You Can See Everything becomes the first documentary in history to win Best Picture, it will be a well-deserved win. It is the best film of the 2020s (so far) that will change the art form for the better. Innovative and fresh storytelling combined with the surreal and dishonest world of the Holmeses creates a truly unique cinematic experience that needs to be seen by all in a packed theater. I am already planning my next viewing and plotting when I can get this total masterpiece on physical media.

I have been a huge fan of the films that 20th Century Studios has been putting out under president Steve Asbell since Disney’s acquisition of the studio: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was probably my favorite movie of 2024 and both Alien: Romulus and the Avatar sequels have been solid action blockbusters that deliver on their respective genres.

So I was pretty intrigued when CinemaCon rolled around this year and reports started coming in of a wild trailer for a movie called Whalefall, based on the 2023 book by Daniel Kraus (who has a screenplay credit on the film). Turns out Ron Howard’s production company (the guy really seems to like whales and diving) scooped up the rights and got the film made at Disney/20th Century.

The director of the film, Brian Duffield, had previously worked with the studio on a film for Hulu called No One Will Save You, a survival thriller following one character throughout an alien invasion (I am definitely going to be watching it ASAP after this movie), so it’s no surprise that he was Asbell’s top choice to direct a movie that’s mostly a dude trying to not get digested by a whale (Duffield has since been tapped to rewrite the Alien: Romulus sequel).

Starring in this film is none other than Austin Abrams, who recently did another very different survival movie with Resident Evil. Abrams does some impressive heavy lifting in both that movie and this one, and really sells you on both the reality of the respective fantastic situations and the wild mix of emotions of someone who thinks that they might meet their final end being digested by a whale.

Co-starring in the movie is Abrams’ Weapons co-star Josh Brolin, who once again is playing a tough dad who has trouble connecting with his son (mainly seen through flashbacks). Some of the elements surrounding how the memories of his dad interact with his son from inside the whale can be a bit corny but emotionally it worked for me.

The third star of this movie, however, is the team at Weta Workshop: since Avatar: The Way of Water, they are the go-to effects house for anything water related. I will be genuinely shocked if this does not get a Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination. One scene in particular where a pod of orcas attacks the whale that Abrams is inside is one of the coolest VFX scenes I’ve ever seen.

While the film is PG-13, it may still be a tough watch at some points as Abrams struggles to survive: you may not want to see the inner bowel movements of a whale even though a lot of it is obscured by the darkness. Unfortunately this may be part of the reason the film is struggling at the box office, although this probably also was the fault of the marketing deparment.

Ultimately, Whalefall worked for me: a high-concept survival thriller that’s ocean scenes are just as engaging as it’s scenes on land with Abrams and his father. I will say, I did shed a tear during a climactic scene involving a memory of father and son. I’ve seen videos of people watching this in 4DX which seems terrifying and yet also so much fun, but regardless see this one in a movie theater!

Unless you are afraid of whales. I don’t think this will do you any favors in that regard if that’s the case.

Book adaptations are having a bit of a moment in 2026. Starting with People We Meet on Vacation in early January, this year has quickly become the year of book adaptations in both film and television. There have been many fresh jumps from page-to-screen such as the aforementioned Netflix picture, Andy Weihr’s Project Hail Mary (likely to receive several Oscar nominations including Best Picture), and we will cap off the year in November and December with the first-ever adaptations of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping and Frank Herbert’s Dune: Messiah (under the title Dune: Part Three). Alongside these fresh adaptations, there have been many more readaptations or fresh-takes on previously adapted material.

Wuthering Heights began the year with what might be the worst page-to-screen adaptation in the history of film (hyperbolic, but it was definitively a low point for the industry). Following that, we had what is arguably the biggest book adaptation in a century with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (Gone with the Wind still holds the crown in adjusted-for-inflation box office revenue). The Odyssey will likely win the Oscar for Best Picture next Spring, and has catapulted itself to the 11th highest grossing film of all time with $1.7 billion at the global box office, smashing the previous record for an R-rated film (Deadpool & Wolverine at $1.3 Billion). Film is, however, not the only place we have received adaptations this year. A few weeks back, Netflix released a 7-episode miniseries of East of Eden (a faithful, but not family friendly adaptation of John Steinbeck’s iconic novel). In December, Netflix will release another Pride and Prejudice mini-series, adding to the long list of adaptations of Jane Austen’s most famous work.

With this surrounding context, it was with great surprise earlier this year when I saw a trailer for another film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Her first novel, “Sense and Sensibility”, explores the relationships and longings of two sisters with diametrically opposed temperaments, Elinor (the calm and composed elder sister, representing sensibility) and Marianne (the fiery, passionate and deeply affective younger sister, representing sense). Oft misinterpreted, Austen does not argue for one disposition as superior or less inclined to folly, but rather invites the reader into a deeply meditative exploration of the two sisters’ path to virtue within their respective personalities. What unfolds over the course of Austen’s premier novel is a beautiful story of sisterhood, desire, and the sufferings and rewards of profound integrity. This newest adaptation of the source material stands in a long line of attempts (many a success) to bring this story to life on the silver screen, including the universally loved and critically acclaimed 1995 adaptation starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, and Alan Rickman.

The early glimpses we saw into this newest take on Sense and Sensibility promised a darker (lighting, not tonally), earthy take on the material with Daisy Edgar Jones (Normal People, Twisters) starring as Elinor Dashwood alongside Esme Creed-Miles as Marianne Dashwood, George MacKay as Edward Ferrars and Herbert Nordrum as Colonel Brandon. In the press runs leading up to the film and its social media footprint, it was clear the marketing strategy centered around making this film about a central concept in our cultural consciousness: the phenomenon of yearning. Every post, every interview, every advertisement pitches the film as a meditation on yearning. So, was this film successful at producing its intended result?

Yes, but only if you do not drum up the hyperbolic claims by some online outlets (some of which have said there are “biblical levels of yearning”... whatever that means). I found George Oakley’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility to deliver on this central premise. The movie does so through its earthy tone, lush score, and patient, if sometimes exceedingly awkward, dialogue. The latter of which I think carries the most weight in its attempts to convey the phenomenon of yearning. In particular, Oakley seems to contrast the morality of yearning with the immorality of grasping in the awkwardness, or unawkwardness, of the dialogue between characters.

Of the men in the film, Willoughby, who is infamously rash and a “love bomber”, has the least restraint in his words. He is remarkably charming, quick-witted and well-spoken. This makes him the subject of Marianne’s desire. He appears externally “passionate” and holds nothing back. Willoughby is able to be as smooth, charming and perfectly unawkward because he has chosen not to train his desire at all. This charm and winsome character is contrasted sharply with the awkwardness of dialogue from the two most virtuous men in the film, Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon. Their line delivery is remarkably restrained, particularly in their interactions with their respective love interests, Elinor and Marianne. In every scene centered around Edward and Elinor or Colonel Brandon and Marianne, the body language of the men portrays a deep sense of desire which their prudence is restraining their tongue from expressing because it is not yet the adequate time. Every close up of the two men feels like there is unrequited desire on the edge of their lips, but their desire is unrequited precisely because it is desire and not utility. Their hearts are spacious enough to desire Elinor and Marianne without turning them into an object for consumption or pleasant feelings (which is precisely what Willoughby does). The genius of the film is thus in presenting the audience with a case study for understanding the true nature of yearning: Edward and Colonel versus Willoughby. Inside of each of us, there is an Edward and a Willoughby; someone who has the capacity to behold and someone who seeks to consume. Only when we choose to train desire so it can properly find its resting place are we able to yearn. Yet yearning is a dreadful and awkward thing, because it necessitates the recognition of mystery, which is by definition uncertain and dramatic.

While there is much to admire about this new adaptation of Austen’s iconic novel, it is this deeply phenomenological exploration of yearning that justifies it as a worthy addition to the long line of dramatizations of Sense and Sensibility. It is refreshing to see a film tackle the subject of yearning in such a violently restrained manner because the agony of yearning has disappeared in Western culture due to the positivization of love. As the great contemporary Korean Catholic phenomenologist Byung Chul-Han puts it in his work, The Agony of Eros, yearning or desire (and therefore love) is being “positivized into a formula for enjoyment. Above all, love is supposed to generate pleasant feelings. It no longer represents plot, narration, or drama—only inconsequential emotion and arousal. It is free from the negativity of injury, assault, or crashing. To fall (in love) would already be too negative. Yet it is precisely such negativity that constitutes love: ‘Love is not a possibility, is not due to our initiative, is without reason; it invades and wounds us.’”

If you have an empty calendar this weekend, do yourself a favor and schedule a trip to your local theater to see this on the big screen, it is well worth it. Sense and Sensibility (2026) is a 9/10 and my second favorite movie of the year behind Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey.

The Social Reckoning is Aaron Sorkin’s newest dissection of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. While this film still follows Facebook and features Zuckerberg, it is not a true sequel to Sorkin’s 2010 film, The Social Network (dir. David Fincher). It doesn’t follow up on the events where The Social Network ends, or seemingly want to connect itself to The Social Network despite the two films having the same writer, topic, and character. Instead, Reckoning is concerned with telling an entirely different story by focusing on the Facebook Files - a series of articles published in The Wall Street Journal discussing Facebook’s internal documents which showcased the platform’s negative impacts on society. Thus, instead of building on The Social Network, Reckoning solely focuses on how the Facebook Files came to be.

As Reckoning progresses, it develops an overarching thesis: should free speech on social media be absolute, or, should posts be regulated and should platforms establish rules to regulate what individuals can and cannot post. The film follows these issues through two different groups: Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) who advocates for the absolutist position and Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) and Francis Haugan (Mikey Madison) who want to expose Facebook in order to have the company enforce greater relegation over its platform. Horwitz and Haugan argue that unchecked algorithms can film influence and “radicalize” individuals; hence, the need for regulation. In contrast, Zuckerberg argues that he is a free speech advocate and refuses to place any restrictions on what can be posted to Facebook. Reckoning is extremely thought-provoking as each side debates its case over the course of its runtime.

Unfortunately, this is the only good aspect of the film.

While I enjoy this movie debating its theme of regulation, I really dislike that the film triumphs one case over the other. Sadly, Reckoning is not open ended nor does it respect the audience to formulate their own conclusion. Without spoiling the film, it openly mocks the audience and forces its belief on the issue of regulation. It doubles down on its position to the point where it illogically arrives at a conclusion that is completely out of context, unnecessary, and utterly absurd. Instead of the ending being a battlefield where both sides, pro-absolutist vs. pro-regulation, meet in an exhilarating crescendo, the ending was merely an upset writer (Sorkin) screaming into the void while simultaneously patting himself on the back.

One question that I wish Reckoning focused on is should someone have complete control over who is able to post on social media platforms or should there be a governing body that promulgates what can be posted. The film focuses on algorithms and how algorithms can influence and “radicalize” individuals, but doesn’t focus on the absolute power that an individual like Mark Zuckerberg has. Should he be the person who regulates everything on his platform? Should world governments have the ability to deny or approve what can and cannot be posted on these sites? Should these decisions be left up to the corporations themselves? Unfortunately, the film completely removes this question, and, once again, tells the audience how it should think and provides the answer for it.

To pile on, the editing is absolutely abhorrent in Reckoning. Shots lingered too long and sequences didn’t line up as the plot transitioned from following Horwitz and Haugan to following Zuckerberg. There are shots within scenes that didn’t make sense. For instance, one scene where characters sat around a table opened with a shot of all of them, then transitioned to focus on a person talking which switched to someone who wasn’t talking and had no visible reaction to what was being discussed. Then, it cut back to a wide view of everyone in the meeting room and you couldn’t tell who was carrying the conversation. It was jarring and pointless. Needless to say, I have seen shorts that have better editing than this sequence.

I would have liked to see Jesse Eisenberg reprise his role as Mark Zuckerberg. He really carries The Social Network and I think he would have added to this film. Unfortunately, Jeremy Strong delivers the worst performance of his career and acts like a plank of wood for every appearance on-screen. Additionally, having continuity with The Social Network would have strengthened this film and Eisenberg would have had a stronger on-screen presence.

If you are someone who is interested in these types of social questions and debates, I believe you should go see this film. While I do not agree with Reckoning’s conclusion, I do not think that my opinion should dissuade one from seeing it.

We wouldn’t be a Catholic film blog if we didn’t have a deep love and appreciation for the madman known as Mel Gibson. He is a man of many contradictions: the popcorn-flick action star who made one of the most deeply meditative works of sacred art in film; the publicly devout traditional Catholic who is also a divorced womanizer and sedevacantist; the director of explicitly Christian films who received mainstream acclaim and Academy Award success. He has achieved incredible success as both an actor and director, runs his own movie production house, and is a philanthropist and regular patron of Catholic arts; he has also been in (and recently directed) some really bad films, been exiled from Hollywood, and floated some questionable ideas in both politics and theology. He’s a fascinating man and has acted in and directed some fascinating films, and his career is well-worth a look by any Catholic film-lover.

Mel Colmcille Gerard Gibson was born in New York in 1956. His family moved to Australia when he was 12 years old, and he got his start in acting on the Australian stage in productions of Shakespeare, including Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was more interested in the movies than the theater, however, and took various roles in low-budget Australian movies. One of these would launch him to stardom: 1979’s Mad Max, directed by George Miller. Gibson plays the protagonist Max Rockatansky, a police officer and family man turned vigilante killer by brutal events in an apocalyptic future. Mel would return to this role two more times, cementing his status as a cinematic icon very early in his career.

Max Rockatansky, however, would not lock Gibson into pulp action star typecasting. He would take several dramatic roles in the 1980s, including a couple for Australian director Peter Weir1 and an excellent turn as mutineer Fletcher Christian across from Anthony Hopkins in 1984’s The Bounty. Although our perception of him is as an action star, he would continue to take interesting and varied roles throughout his career, refusing to be typecast and bringing his strong dramatic and comedic skills even to his action roles. He would return to his Shakespearean roots with 1990’s messy but compelling Hamlet; he starred alongside a young Elijah Wood in the weird little sci-fi romance Forever Young; and he turned in a hilarious performance as the titular character in the underrated comedy-western Maverick. He even took voice acting roles in a couple of high-profile animated films, Pocohontas and Chicken Run. Mel’s career in the 1980s and 1990s was interesting and varied, demonstrating his versatility as an actor and eclectic taste in film.

Of course, in the late 80s and through the 90s Gibson would also become one of America’s biggest action stars and one of its most exciting new directors. In 1987 he took his second iconic action role, Martin Riggs in Richard Donner’s Lethal Weapon. The four Lethal Weapon movies comprise one of the best 90s action franchises, rivaled only by the first three Die Hard movies. They are fast-paced, incredibly well-directed, smart, funny, thrilling, and surprisingly wholesome. They also do not shy away from some of the darker corners of 80s and 90s America, examining high crime rates and political themes that some other films were too scared to touch. The central friendship between Riggs and Murtagh (Danny Glover) keeps the whole series grounded, however, and the light always triumphs over the darkness, making every return to Lethal Weapon seem like a breath of fresh air compared to today’s morally grey antiheroes and brutality for shock value rather than good storytelling. Gibson was firmly established as an action star after Lethal Weapon, taking many action and thriller roles in the 90s such as Air America, Ransom, Conspiracy Theory, and Payback. These films are of varying quality, but Gibson always gives it his all with his trademark mix of intensity and humor.

As much success as he saw in front of the camera, Gibson was also becoming interested in doing more work behind it as well. His directorial debut, 1993’s The Man Without a Face, is a drama that sees him play Justin McLeod, a man disfigured in a car accident who befriends and educates young Chuck Norstadt — to the suspicion of the rest of town. It’s a compelling drama, definitely showing Gibson’s storytelling instincts and eye for direction. He would jump straight from this modest drama to a full-blown historical epic two years later with Braveheart, to great critical acclaim. Braveheart is an immense cinematic achievement, following William Wallace in his lifelong struggle to free Scotland from English tyranny. It deserves its own dedicated analysis, but one of the interesting facets of it for our readers is that Gibson seeded the film with several Catholic elements that leap off the screen in light of his later films. Though not explicitly Catholic, it is a shining example of Catholic filmmaking by weaving imagery, themes, and quality craftsmanship to make a film which teaches without preaching, and is an absolute joy to watch as well. Braveheart won 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Gibson, and put him on the map as an acclaimed filmmaker as well as a popular actor.

The early 2000s were good for Gibson as well, with classics such as The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, and Signs (#71) all being well-received. At this point, Gibson took his biggest creative swing of his career: 2004’s The Passion of the Christ (#53). As our writer Charles Scott said in his review for The List:

The Passion of the Christ serves as the truest form of an Icon within the 21st century, and while not the prettiest or easiest film to watch (arguably one of the most difficult films to watch), it stands as the most powerful, spiritual, and moving piece of religious cinema ever crafted.

The Passion is Mel’s masterpiece, the sort of film that only he could have the audacity, resources, and clout to make. It is arguably the best piece of Catholic cinema of all time; so of course it was not particularly well-received in mainstream Hollywood. Although considered a classic in most Christian circles, it is widely considered “controversial” among secular critics. From the moment he released The Passion of the Christ, it seemed like the Hollywood establishment, like the Pharisees in the Gospel, took counsel how to put his career to death.

They wouldn’t immediately succeed, as Gibson released Apocalypto in 2006, another historical epic set in Mesoamerica and (like The Passion) entirely in the languages of the historical peoples. Apocalypto is brutal, haunting, and ruthlessly compelling, tying together many of the themes of Mel’s body of work into one insanely ambitious package. Although generally well-regarded, it would be Mel’s last film for a decade as events from his personal life would give Hollywood its pretense to banish him from stardom.

On July 28, 2006, Mel Gibson was arrested for drunk driving and had an altercation with the police which would be recorded and leaked to the press in the coming weeks. He made some remarks about the Jewish race which served to confirm secular and Jewish suspicions about the portrayal of the Jews in The Passion of the Christ.2 Gibson took some time away to recover from alcoholism, went through a divorce, and faced domestic assault allegations from the woman he shacked up with, and throughout this time Hollywood seemed to be completely done with him for all intents and purposes. Documentaries were made to mock him, he was the butt of jokes on shows such as South Park, and it would take a miracle for him to resurrect his career.

However, Gibson was not totally friendless. It would be partially through the influence of his friend Robert Downey Jr., who had gone through his own redemption arc and was on top of the world as the star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that Gibson would be given another chance. He starred in a few low-profile films starting in 2012, before returning to blockbusters in Sylvester Stallone’s action franchise The Expendables 3 in 2014. He would complete his redemption arc with another directorial project, Hacksaw Ridge, in 2016. Hacksaw Ridge is another masterpiece about a Christian army medic who refuses to take up arms but would save dozens of fellow soldiers in the Battle of Okinawa. Mel remained unapologetically Christian through it all, not toning down his filmmaking but telling such a compelling story that it broke through his blacklist and earned him another two Oscars. Gibson seemed like he was fully back, and rumblings even started that he was working on a followup to The Passion of the Christ.

However, Gibson’s career since Hacksaw Ridge has been mostly marked by low-budget action schlock, fun pulpy adventures for those (like me) who enjoy them but nothing approaching the genius of Braveheart or Hacksaw Ridge. He’s also become something of a patron of Catholic cinema, acting in 2022’s Father Stu alongside Mark Wahlberg and in David Henrie’s 2024 directorial debut Monster Summer. He’s joined the John Wick franchise, rumored that he will be returning to Lethal Weapon (though with Danny Glover’s health in decline this seems unlikely), and yes, has finally made The Resurrection of the Christ. This long-awaited project wrapped production in June of 2026 and is set to be released in two parts next year. We Catholics await this project with bated breath, hoping for a masterpiece but knowing that (according to the rumors) this could be Gibson’s most ambitious, crazy, personal project yet.

Mel Gibson holds a special place in my heart, his films touching on my favorite genres while providing a Catholic perspective that stands out in amoral Hollywood. Though his sedevacantist perspective leaves me unable to fully hold him up as a Catholic example, his artistic instincts are unparalleled and have given us some of the best Catholic films of all time and his traditionalism ensures that the best of the past 2000 years of Catholic art, thought, and spirituality inform his work. I have great hope that his Resurrection project will at least approach the spiritual and artistic heights of The Passion and appreciate his support of Catholic filmmaking in the 2020s. Whatever else can be said about Mel Gibson, he’s certainly interesting and takes his faith incredibly seriously, and for this reason he deserves the crown of premier Catholic auteur of the past 30 years.

Mad Mel, I salute you.

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“Knowing when and where to use it, that’s the whole ball game” is a fitting thesis for the new DCU/HBO Lanterns show.

It is a refreshingly earnest, comic book western detective story with what cosmic elements of wider DC lore can fit into its hyperfocused narrative. While still essentially a “walk to new location and talk” show, Lanterns delivers a story that feels bigger than any spectacle that appears on screen. In an IP historically cursed with middling to offensive low budget TV series, Lanterns is a huge win for both HBO and their interest in James Gunn’s burgeoning DC cinematic universe.

Like most adaptations these days, the first few trailers for Lanterns were met with extreme pessimism. This pessimism colored the first viewing even for myself, who was not very familiar with the Green Lantern mythology prior to picking up the show. Whatever low expectations myself and the public had were quickly washed away by the end of the first episode. Lanterns is an engaging, well thought out narrative that focuses almost entirely on a theme of responsibility. Now, superhero media as a whole is very focused on responsibility and great power.

Lanterns differentiates itself by really meditating on the aspect of authority that comes with the power of a superhero. And to my delight, their criticism of authority is not at all cliche or derivative. The show presents several characters who are used to wielding power and through them shows the audience that true authority requires compassion, charity, and intimate knowledge of those in your charge. The modern tendency to conflate power with authority is precisely what makes the show’s treatment of the subject so interesting. Authority is not merely the ability to command; it requires knowing and loving the people entrusted to you. In a culture that increasingly refuses to recognize any authority higher than the individual, Lanterns‘ insistence that power must be ordered toward the good of others feels surprisingly countercultural. It would be easy to hand-wave some of the show’s critiques of authority as generic anti-authoritarian slop, but I found the criticisms in Lanterns to be remarkably specific without becoming preachy or sanctimonious.

I did not know much about Green Lantern comic mythology prior to watching this show, and went into it as an outsider fully prepared to point and laugh. There are some contrivances and plot conveniences that keep Lanterns from reaching over the 8/10 mark, but the end product is coherent enough that they rarely become distracting. What few holes I could poke are more than made up for in the character writing and main cast of actors. This show will disappoint many by essentially being a ‘walk to new location and talk’ show, and it would not work as well as it does without all star performances from Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre. Kelly Macdonald is extremely well suited here as well, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by Jason Ritter. With one exception, the episodes are paced extremely well, and what little spectacle there is gets used effectively. Lanterns is clearly trying to establish a Green Lantern mythology for the DCU untainted by the Ryan Reynolds foray into the character. This is a bad thing insofar as it means the show is almost too afraid to embrace the wacky side of the mythology, but ultimately its restraint is justified by a very satisfying ending.

Lanterns succeeds in that it understands that great characters are at the heart of every comic book, and the mythology will flesh out around those characters. I do hope future Green Lantern shows will have more green and lanterns, but for a reintroduction, Lanterns makes a solid first impression.

Welcome back to “What’s Good on Streaming”; aiming to showcase what’s actually good from your streaming subscriptions! This is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to check out the rest of the list and see what’s good each week, consider joining our paid tier!

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In preparation for Brad Bird’s first original animated film since 2007’s Ratatouille dropping this winter, his long-gestating passion project Ray Gunn, we decided to take a look back at #33 on our List, The Iron Giant.

Kevin Chan takes us back in time to look at the state of animation around the time of its production and why this film was so revolutionary. Was it the last truly great American animated film?

Check out the video essay below!

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This film is extremely difficult to discuss without spoilers, and if I didn’t discuss them here, it would be a disservice. The spoiler talk is clearly marked and italicized if you want to see the film unspoiled (which is encouraged).

Satire is supposed to be funny.

Dr. Strangelove, Tropic Thunder, Network, and The Death of Stalin are all funny. It ironically takes a lot of skill to pull off a successful and hilarious satire that is able to convey an impactful message. Despite Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu undoubtedly being one of the higher-quality directors of his generation, he clearly demonstrates that he may not be cut out for the satire-comedy sphere.

Digger is primarily about an eccentric oil tycoon who, through negligence and greed, brings an impending disaster upon the world. Digger Rockwell (as depicted in every ad) attempts to right the ship with a delusional president (John Goodman) and a stereotypical inept team of about the most cliché individuals imaginable. That is as far as I can go without major spoilers for the plot.

Digger was written by 4 people, and IT SHOWS. There are so many conflicting visions within this story that it gets muddled to its own hindrance. Digger sometimes throws shade at itself, but never enough to balance out its not-so-subtle, relevant social commentary. It falls in vain less with Doctor Strangelove, and more with Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 (a film I was also not fond of). For some strange reason, highly respectable international filmmakers seem to be hell-bent on getting their two bits into the American political system. Digger, however, isn’t quite a stereotypical “orange man bad” film but rather decides to pick its fight with two main culprits: Big Oil and American Evangelicalism.

Now, the former I am not surprised at and was more copy-paste of the same exact talking points that have been done since the 1970s. It maintains this moral righteousness that oil is bad, but gives absolutely no solutions. Iñárritu takes plenty of time to critique fossil fuels, but only grazes over any and all counterpoints with convenient swiftness. What was shocking was the latter. Digger does not target anyone who believes in a higher power, but rather the extreme patriotic American evangelicalism that is unfortunately present in some aspects of the government. Specifically, some of the hokey theology that comes from individuals such as Paula White-Cain or the Christian Zionist movement. While it most likely is an expansion of the “orange man bad” culture of Hollywood, it at least is a somewhat more specific criticism.

Digger is not funny. I probably laughed about 3 times total, and I believe 2 of those weren’t at things that were supposed to be funny. Yet despite its shortcomings in the comedy department, it takes the time to TELL and EXPLAIN to the audience why it’s so funny. This is perhaps the cardinal sin of comedy. It tries so hard to be funny, and keeps trying to explain to you how it’s funny, to the point that it reminded me of the unfunny DJ from Good Morning, Vietnam who takes over for Robin Williams. If you ever have to stop in the middle of trying to be funny to explain to someone how funny you are, you simply aren’t funny. Yes, Digger has exaggerated and flamboyant performances in it (with a couple of scenes that should absolutely become memes), but there are no good belly laughs or any clever comedy bits present in the film.

(Begin spoiler portion)

Digger has a rug pull 20 minutes in where it is revealed that we are watching a play being rehearsed. This revelation adds a bizarre plot/subplot that I still can’t decide if it saved the film or helped exacerbate the disjointedness. Later, it is revealed that the play is inspired by true events that occurred within the real world where this play is being performed, but as a satire to help everyone “cope” with what happened. While this helped add a fresh layer to the film that sets it ahead of Mickey 17, its conclusion is arguably more disturbing. Audiences are shown cheering as Digger Rockwell takes his own life at the end of this play, as if this will help heal anything.

The play is being funded and sponsored by Rockwell’s nephew (amazingly played by Jesse Plemons), which seems to insinuate that the rich need to publicly pay to humiliate their legacies and fortunes in order to atone for their sins to the public. Meanwhile, the world is still hell and ruined, with no real source of hope or redemption provided. Religion seems to be gone, and everyone is bleak, damaged, and embittered, with only uncomfortable, unfunny satire to provide them comfort. The political bias can even be seen in the background in details such as a not-so-subtly placed To Be or Not To Be poster, which clearly indicates this theater troupe’s self-righteous vision of themselves as “antifascists”. The side drama of Tom Cruise’s personal issues and critiques of the whole situation were probably the only truly emotionally engaging aspect of the film, and one of the core reasons this doesn’t fall to the same levels as Megalopolis in the flop category.

(End Spoilers)

Another massive hindrance to the film is that Iñárritu does not let scenes fully ferment to their full capacity. He was spectacular with this in films such as The Revenant and Birdman, but he seems to have lost his way in Digger. There is a scene where Digger Rockwell and Riz Ahmed’s character (who perhaps is the best character and performance in the whole movie) have a heart-to-heart that actually starts to go somewhere interesting before it’s abruptly cut off for what I assume was seen as “comedic purposes”. Another scene with Jesse Plemons’s character was being used to potentially say something actually interesting and unique, and then just stops. This was a frequent issue that permeated throughout, and I am not sure if it is to blame on the writers or the director.

Despite all these negatives, Digger does have the technical prowess that Iñárritu has become well known for. The acting is, to no one’s shock, quality. Tom Cruise has a fantastically layered performance that will most likely get him at least a nomination, and he is able to sell himself on all fronts. His character is fun to watch and engaging, alongside John Goodman, who is able to be entertaining. Michael Stuhlbarg and Jesse Plemons are underutilized and fantastic, as well as Ahmed. The cinematography was very engaging and creative, and the score was good as well.

While Digger certainly takes some ambitious swings, it ultimately falls flat at both having something interesting to say and being a funny satire (despite its own insistence). It stands as a reminder that even well-acted and technically capable films are not always the recipe for success that one may think. It makes me question as to how Warner thought this was going to make a profit, but something like Coyote v Acme wouldn’t. At the end of the day, Digger is another Oil Man bad film that offers no solutions to its perceived problems, serving as a pessimistic and well-crafted mess that fails at the most basic aspects of satire.

100 Movies Every Family Should See

‘Coyote vs. Acme’: Looney Tunes, Back in Action

Age Recommendation: Whatever age you would think it appropriate to show your child a Looney Tunes cartoon…

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2 months ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Charles Scott

What do you get when one of the greatest directors of all time works with some of the greatest screenwriters (and directors) of all time?

You get 2015’s Bridge of Spies, directed by Steven Spielberg, written by the Coen Brothers, and starring both Tom Hanks as the real life diplomatic negotiator James B. Donovan and Mark Rylance as the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

Spielberg loves a good rescue movie- Saving Private Ryan, Empire of the Sun, and even The Lost World: Jurassic Park all revolve around the eventual rescue of their protagonists from life-threatening circumstances. To quote New Yorker critic Richard Brody in his review of this film:

Spielberg has always been obsessed with the ideal of rescue, with the mobilization of a mighty system designed for other purposes, whether war or business, for a humanitarian mission in the interest of a single person in dire straits. That ironic shift, for Spielberg, is a matter of passionate empathetic devotion; it could as easily reveal the absurdities and paradoxes of the system, which is why the Coen brothers’ collaboration on the script makes surprising sense.

In Saving Private Ryan, a squad of soldiers (led by Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller) deployed for killing must brave everything for the saving of a life rather than destruction. Even in Jurassic Park, the heroes are rescued by the very thing that tried (succeeding at one point) to eat them, when the T-Rex chomps up the Velociraptors via dinosaur ex machina.

There’s a touch of the providential here, with the bravest and most heroic deeds stemming from the least ideal circumstances. As alluded to by Brody above, this is why the Coen Brothers were the perfect choice to write this story. Many of their films, from Fargo to The Big Lebowski, from No Country for Old Men to A Serious Man, have to do with fate and the inexplicable, often unseen hand that affects our daily lives, sometimes in major ways.

James B. Donovan- like most Spielbergian protagonists- is painted here as the quintessential American man: hence the casting of Hanks. This marked Spielberg’s fourth collaboration with his close friend, and right after this film they made The Post together. Hanks, for many Americans, embodied that same position that Jimmy Stewart did for a while as a trusted presence on the screen representing the common man.1 However, the introduction of Donovan shows that he is an insurance lawyer, hardly anyone’s idea of a “white knight”, and the film opens with him representing his company against five injured drivers.

Where Donovan’s moral center comes in- gradually- is when he is assigned to represent Rudolf Abel (Rylance), a quiet, unassuming old Russian who turns out to be a Soviet spy. Donovan spends a lot of time with Abel, who is remarkably calm and unbothered throughout the proceedings which may result in the death penalty: his response to Donovan over and over when the lawyer remarks that he should be more worried is “Would it help?”

As the situation evolves to the point where Donovan must travel into the Soviet Union to bring Abel for a prisoner swap, Hanks’ lawyer ends up becoming more and more impressed with Abel, who seems to be a good man who has been abandoned by his own government. An impassioned letter from Abel’s wife thanking Donovan for his work in keeping her husband safe only motivates him further in helping him to get home.

This does not sway Donovan from his homeland nor is this some secret anti-patriotic propaganda: much like The Hunt for Red October this film shows that there are heroes and villains on both sides. Both the US and USSR are so stifled with bureaucracy that any intent of good from anyone involved will get lost and pushed aside. It takes people like Donovan who go the extra mile, making the sacrifices necessary to do the right thing and preserve the virtue of their nation.

From a filmmaking perspective, let there be no one who says that all late Spielberg is trash and not worth watching: he’s still working at his best in this one. The tension throughout the film and the comedy provided by the Coens shines through Spielberg’s lens, and the scene where the U2 pilot is shot down and a perilous crossing of the Berlin Wall are both fantastic action sequences. Hanks and Rylance make a perfect odd couple, supported by reliable actors Scott Shepherd and Amy Ryan, to name a few. This also is the rare Spielberg film that is not scored by John Williams, with Thomas Newman providing an excellently subtle score (Williams at the time was caught up with Star Wars).

Overall, Bridge of Spies is a highly rewatchable film that is one of the best of the 2010s, and a hopeful note to round out this list of political thrillers.

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At the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Olympics in Paris, Christians worldwide were shocked by a blasphemous mockery of the Last Supper as portrayed by ugly transsexuals. This past Saturday night, in front of 80,000 cheering Frenchmen and the Vicar of Christ himself, Catholic France delivered its answer. During a prayer vigil celebrating the Pope’s visit to Paris, French Catholics put on a pageant celebrating France’s impressive lineup of saints. Starting with the tradition of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus coming to France to evangelize, the pageant moved through French martyrs under Roman persecution, the baptism of Clovis and evangelization of the Franks, monastic saints, the glory of the High Middle Ages under St. Louis IX, a triumphal entry by St. Joan of Arc riding her horse directly up to the Holy Father and doing him homage, various French Marian apparitions, and modern saints on bikes and automobiles (including the incredibly cute touch of having Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin on a tandem bike). All this was accompanied by a beautiful musical medley weaving together Gregorian Chant, traditional French hymns, and polyphony performed by a live choir and orchestra. The production level was incredibly impressive, with each saint decked out in era-appropriate costumes with the various symbols associated with them, several scenes on horseback, well-cued lighting and voiceover work, and a huge firework finale when all the saints together approached the papal throne.

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