Users

I was at a loss even as the credits ended. Users was a movie so beautiful and sad; its parts so basic but its whole so unique. Only some time later did I realize: This movie made me grateful that movies exist. It was a learning experience unlike any I have had.

Looking at the story one way, it’s nothing special. Not a story at all, in fact. Just a narrator thinking out loud about the world technology is creating for her child. Thoughts we’ve all had before.

But Momma’s musings—her questions and concerns—are not about what the next generation of cell phone might look like. She is thinking about the very core of human interaction with this container we call Earth. And she is speaking to us.

See these cold, uninviting spaces? This is life now. These iced shoeboxes are the new womb. In this factory we grow plants without soil or sunlight. All our memories and communications? Instantly accessible, everywhere, but kept on quarter-inch-thick cable surrounded by millions of gallons of murky green water at the bottom of the ocean. Good luck restarting.

In pondering what life might look like, our narrator (the director) takes the time to show us what life does look like. And in doing so she spotlights how technology has already changed the course of humanity. For example, thinking about a baby being raised by a computer without its mother’s touch is scary, but so too is a scene where hundreds of TV screens glow in the faces of airline passengers. The perspective out the window—the perspective from the miracle of flight—has become so commonplace that we ignore it. Comparisons like these are powerful and plenty.

The scenes are simple, usually static, rarely showing more than one thing to focus on at a time, and yet the movie is an overwhelming sensory experience. A masterclass in direction, editing, camera- and sound-work, music.

Sure, a minutes-long rainstorm of recycled motherboard chips will have you feeling bad about the excess of our world. But the moviemakers pass no judgement here; rather than illustrating our “forgotten” connection with nature, they remind us that it is multi-faceted and ever-changing. We pass from the warm electricity of a baby at its mother’s teat to a computer assuring its child at play in the forest that it is safe. (Computers do not forget.) Each scene is beautiful; each ultimately reminding us that we are just animals trying our best in the universe.

From beginning to end, the imagery is crisp, incisive, and breathtakingly gorgeous. Tides of life and breath, water and memory, geometry and physics take turns washing over us.

I won’t tell you to watch this before you die. If there’s anything to take away from it, it’s that watching the world around you is what’s important. But if you’d like to do that from a new perspective—or if you need a reminder of how to do so, or whether it’s even worth it—then you’ll want to add this experience to your bucket list.

Paper & Glue

Art is a racket. Unnecessary and ostentatious. When’s the last time it fed the hungry, housed the unhoused—heck, even changed a mind?

It’s easy to think this way with the world burning. Maybe even intuitive. But Paper & Glue will make you think twice about that.

A young JR sure wouldn’t have guessed it, though. Growing up in a French ghetto, he found that art did nothing for anyone. Even after taking things into his own hands—tagging his name around Paris to tell the world that yes, he had a place in it—nothing.

And yet years later, we meet JR as a world-famous artist—one who has directed a movie that spotlights the practical, positive impact which art can have. And the story is simply incredible.

JR walks up to dangerous, forgotten areas (a favela in Rio or a maximum-security prison in the United States, for example), asks the social outcasts who live there if he can photograph them, and then pastes giant posters of their black-and-white photos all over the area. These are massive exhibitions, using whole or even multiple buildings. And seeing their effect can bring you to tears.

When a widow sings; when a Swastika-faced inmate reaches across racial gang lines; when a child who walks through machine gun violence every day says that a picture makes him happy, it’s hard to deny that art changes lives. And because JR documents his projects along the way, we watch realtime photo and video reactions to it all. Normal people who usually deal with more pressing concerns now look at their lives in a different way. They are changed profoundly by these experiences.

This, together with smart storytelling and JR’s charmingly unassuming demeanor, make for an entertaining and reassuring watch. Before you say art can do no good, come take a look at this. It just might be art in its highest form.

Fear Street: Part Two - 1978

Do you study the roller coaster first, or just go for it? Isn’t the fun part getting thrown around in unexpected ways?

I think the same is true for movies. The less you know, the better. But Fear Street: Part Two - 1978 breaks that maxim; you’ll get a whole lot more out of this movie if you watch its prequel (Fear Street: Part One - 1999) first.

Duh, you’re thinking. And duh, I thought, while watching. How could I have expected more from this?

The story begins where the last one ended: Deena and her friends are plagued by an evil that they’re unsure how to defeat. So they go in search of their only hope, a woman who had encountered that same evil years ago and who seems to have survived unscathed. A good sign, right?

Not so fast, says the survivor. In a movie-long flashback, she recounts what happened to her sister and friends back at summer camp in 1978. Everything was normal until someone started acting funny. And then someone else . . .

What this movie series does right is to swell with angsty, frivolous teens. This gets us on edge—and distances us from the gravity of the situation when one of them is inevitably chopped to pieces. The story unfolds slowly but surely, and the production is of professional quality. But it’s all been done before.

The movie lives off of stale approaches: the summer camp horror, the catchy music played as ugly violence unfolds, the caricatures of people.

You’ll enjoy Fear Street: Part Two - 1978 if you’re looking for a movie solidly in your comfort zone. It has mystery, gore, and good versus evil. But because it offers nothing new, the ride has no thrills.

Fear Street: Part One - 1994

Shadyville offers no prospects . . . unless you count murder.

Deena—heck, everybody—knows this. Her small town has become a hopeless, confusing place where high schoolers make light of killers; notoriety is the closest thing to accomplishment that they can imagine. It’s almost like everyone knows, deep down, that this place has nothing for them but pain.

As Deena and her friends will soon find out, there’s a reason for that. And it’s more sinister than they ever could’ve imagined.

You’ll learn too . . . eventually. The first half of Fear Street: Part One - 1994 feels just as long as its title. While petty, unsympathetic teens vie for the most-unlikeable-human award, little else happens. That makes it hard to care about what’s going on.

But if you can sit through the nonsense, the second half will reward you with classically-inspired, professionally-produced slasher horror. Indeed, the story’s structure gets better with compounding interest: Each plot point ratchets up the entertainment value by several multiples—and as time passes, with increasing frequency.

It all begins with, well, I’ll let you take a guess. And this affects Deena especially hard now that her boo and confidant has moved to the idyllic, rival town of Sunnyvale. When teen angst puts Deena and her crew in a spooky situation, more than just human emotions are rattled. A mystery dating back years and fears is uncovered once again.

The movie is no masterpiece, but its blend of light and dark makes for a fun date night. Especially if you’re in the mood for a scare, you could do worse than to watch this flick.

Squid Game (오징어 게임)

How did you fare on the playground? Be honest with yourself.

OK, good. Now that you have an answer, it doesn’t matter. Squid Game will chew you up and spit you out regardless.

It’s a jarring, violent story—but one so inventive and compelling that you’ll see yourself in the characters even as you’re repulsed by them.

Gi-hun introduces us to it all ever so innocently. He appears to be a degenerate gambler like any other, stealing from his elderly mother here, letting down his daughter there. But then a strange thing happens.

The man is given an offer: play on a grand scale. Play a game that, with debts like yours, it would be foolish to turn down . . .

To those of us with impulse control, this would appear too good to be true. And it is.

After Gi-hun accepts, a complex mystery is presented. This game has severe rules, in a severe setting. And Gi-hun is not alone. Not at all alone.

Each episode illustrates a bit more about the game’s players and creators, but devilishly leaves us wanting more. And the game itself? Disturbingly compelling. Our playground pastimes, adultified. Nine episodes of binge-worthy, nail-biting entertainment await you.

The winner will take home a prize that does something to our animal brains. All of them. Even us viewers safely watching outside the screen know this is crazy; we know this is unfair and violent and impractical, and yet we ponder it anyway. Watch it anyway.

It’s the kind of show you desperately want to talk about with someone else. Not necessarily because it’s good, but because it taps into something universal, illustrating and examining our human strategies to this game of life.

I watched every episode of Squid Game like an addict: always high, never satisfied. Am I happy about it?

The Card Counter

That thing you don’t talk about. That thing that eats at you all the same; the one you won’t remember—but can’t forget. The worst thing that has ever happened to you.

Can you sit with it? Will you forgive?

The Card Counter recalls these painful themes. It’s a super-antihero movie that takes guts to watch. And it’s a masterpiece, one that you should watch as soon as you can.

But let’s keep it simple, silly. Like Bill. Even though he’s exceptionally good at cards, he makes sure not to win too much. The object of his game is maintaining a routine; traveling from city to city and casino to casino, counting cards each hand, each hour, each day, to pass the time. It keeps his mind off that thing . . .

As they say, though, game recognizes game. Bill is just too special to fly under the radar. When two very different people approach him for very different reasons, lives are changed forevermore.

That’s it. That’s all we need for a work that’ll go down in movie history as both brutally visceral and deeply tender.

As Bill’s routine continues with new shape, we learn more about his backstory: why he’s willing to spend his life as a gambling algorithm. The emotional masterpiece is revealed as the new acquaintances connect.

The care that was taken to create this movie is moving. Both the whole and its parts are exceptional, such that if I called any of them out, my list would probably just look like the movie’s end credits.

I am no expert. But I implore you: Please, go sit with The Card Counter, and learn.

The Father Who Moves Mountains (Tata mută munții)

What is it about those movies which we know are good—but that we still don’t like?

Take The Father Who Moves Mountains. It’s a stirring character study with an inescapable draw: Once his son goes missing on a mountain, Mircea does all he can to find him. We can’t help but root for a win here, and the suggestive title keeps our interest piqued.

This setup, though disconcerting, moves us. Mircea’s ex-wife; his current, pregnant wife; his son’s (also missing) girlfriend and her family; the rescue team—every one of these characters is in a limbo, and we feel for them.

Indeed, smart writing has given us a metaphor of what we all know and fear: parents can’t protect their children forever; people cannot protect themselves foralways; humans are smart and resourceful, but even their most capable cannot defeat nature’s long arc.

It sounds a downer, but our natural optimism keeps the story compelling. What might the latest search uncover? What sorts of tricks does Mircea have up his sleeve this time? And about that, who the heck is this guy anyway? What does he do when he’s not on a manhunt . . . or cheating on his wives?

This one-two punch of mortality and unsavory protagonist is actually refreshing. This is thoughtful construction which makes you think, and it’s what makes the movie good.

But it does not save the day. The movie remains a downer, and some of its other aspects frustrate in a far less constructive way. If you’re a woman in this story, you are mentioned only in relation to motherly duties; rarely discussed, rarely viewed, you’re just a pawn in a man’s storyline. Mircea’s power to move mountains (so to speak) is not explained or justified. And the ending, though successful in proving a point, feels more like a nail in a coffin than a satisfying resolution.

Vivo

Has your life gone the way you thought it would?

Or does it sometimes feel like you’re just a monkey, flailing around in a complicated world? Well, Vivo can relate with the latter.

OK, he’s a kinkajou, not a monkey. Irrelevant! What matters is that he can sing and dance! Along with friend Andres, he busks at the local plaza. Connection and fulfillment in sunny Havana, Cuba; what’s not to love?!

A letter. A letter written by someone from Andres’s past, asking him to travel all the way to the United States. The old man is ready for this, probably his last big adventure. But Vivo is not. His world was once big and scary, before he found meaning in Andres and his music, and he’s not ready to lose either.

But life happens, doesn’t it? Vivo finds himself journeying alone to Miami, and in doing so, re-learning what it means to engage with his surroundings.

It’s a sweet story, and very often funny. This world is colorful; its animation, in that sweet spot between campy and hyperrealistic. And though a cute, singing animal can do no wrong, Vivo’s friend-along-the-way Gabi, played by Ynairaly Simo, steals the show. Not only is her character (arc) adorable and instructive, Ynairaly’s performance hits high notes across the emotional spectrum.

Music, of course, rounds out the movie. The songwriting is recognizably modern (and recognizably Lin-Manuel Miranda), though rooted firmly in its Afro-Cuban inspiration.

Vivo’s earliest scenes may be on the nose, but that doesn’t bog it down. It’s an energetic, fun family movie—and one whose best parts, funnily enough, are its heavier scenes. When the music stops and the hard work of feeling begins, characters and audience alike have a chance to reflect.

So what if life doesn’t always go the way you thought it would? If it did, how could it ever be better than you had imagined?

Max Richter's Sleep

Please take a moment. Try and remember how it was to be rocked to sleep. How it felt when your parent sang you a lullaby, or read you a story as you dozed off.

Did you feel safe? Comfortable? Or were you not really there, moving between worlds? Max Richter’s Sleep explores all of this and more.

And that’s impressive considering Sleep is just a song. Well, a song eight hours long, whose overnight performances transform event spaces into giant public bedrooms . . . But perhaps even more affecting is that the thinkers behind this experience—and the many attendees—were willing to do this kind of thing. A stubbornly long lullaby shared with strangers while you are at your most vulnerable? It flies in the face of an always-on, self-protective culture.

And yet it’s not a new idea, Max explains. Long songs and performances have been found throughout cultures and history. The difference here, though, is the focus: This meticulously planned event means to speak to your mind precisely as it moves in and out of consciousness. It sounds trippy, but it’s a largely comforting experience, and one that calls back to the simple (and powerful) act of letting go which humankind seems to forget as it ages.

Watching the performance and hearing the music is therefore refreshingly calming. So too is its origin story beautiful.

Interviews tell us that Max and his wife Yulia often went to bed with empty stomachs; the starving artists always fed their children first. But their desire to create and connect with a broad audience kept them firmly at the low-paying fringes of society. Even if Max performed somewhere afar, Yulia would tune in at the end of a long day—and inevitably fall asleep. A thoughtful and perceptive person herself, she found that listening while dozing was an experience unlike any other. And when Max responded to this observation with a secret composition years in the making, their lightbulbs burned in unison. We need to do something with this.

The two make an adorable couple, and their dedication and creativity are on full display in this movie. So, too, are the stories of certain spectators and performance planners. We learn a bit about what drew people to this unintuitive experience. It all makes for an interesting watch, and thanks to remarkably consistent camerawork and lighting, an experience you can safely doze off to.

This is typically not the highest praise for a movie. But here, it is. It’s a testament to the respect and understanding the moviemakers have for these creators, their hard work and goals.

So take a moment. Get comfy, turn those lights down and that volume up. You’ll be glad you did.

The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story

The thrill of this movie may be lost on Generation Z; its members can access endless, personalized entertainment at any time. But Millennial viewers who had even sporadic access to the Nickelodeon channel growing up will know: It is special to experience something just-for-kids in an overwhelmingly adult world.

This nostalgia is made for the in-crowd, but even so, The Orange Years: The Nickelodeon Story is an uplifting watch.

One reason is its people. So many of them, it seems, were genuinely passionate about creating entertainment that nodded to the inherent unfairness, loneliness, and helplessness of being a kid. Executives, creators, and performers alike sit down with us to describe just how moving that was—and still is—to them. Nobody around was doing what they tried to do.

And not only does it uplift, it excites. We hear tales of underdogs from different fields banding together to fight for yet other underdogs—and in short order, hear snippets of success.

The movie unleashes all this goodness in order. First comes the small-time, Ohio public access inspiration. Then, the slow, deliberate focus on figuring out what it really means to be a kid. Then, the journey; its twists, turns, and hit shows.

Even if you don’t care how Nickelodeon got its name, or why it picked an orange logo, or why so many of its early shows were successful, you’ll likely enjoy the positivity and resilience on display in this documentary.

Free Guy

Do we need another movie about the rat race? Well, why not? Creatives gonna create, and we can always take it or leave it.

As for Free Guy, you might just leave it.

In this one, we follow handsome but plain Guy. Good morning!, he says to his goldfish each day. What an exceptional experience!, he croons, sipping the same coffee he always orders. Ryan Reynolds’s performance here is typical: Quip after quip gives the feeling of a lively character, but a restrained delivery has us questioning if the character—or the actor—has anything else to offer. The answer is yes and no.

You see, this is no repetitive time-loop movie. Though Guy (and everyone else in his world) sticks firmly to the comfort zone, Guy chases his (apparently unique) intuition that there must be more to life. Mundane but honest banter with his security-guard office-pal (played sweetly by Lil Rel Howery) brings a certain charm to the movie.

And it’s funny, too, in large part because Guy is a stooge. Literally. He is a background character in a video game. As tanks rampage through his city and as his office is robbed he doesn’t blink an eye. This makes about two thirds of the movie a running joke—and one that often pleases. It’s a novel idea, seeing a game from the perspective of a clueless insider, and a good metaphor for our own lives sometimes.

When the jokes don’t cut it anymore, the movie tries to level up by introducing a couple of programmers involved with Guy’s universe. One works for the game’s host company; the other plays the game. Their three paths eventually cross in unexpected, cute, and dangerous ways. And this is where the movie lost me.

The programmers might have feelings for each other; the computer might be sentient; the head of the game company might be evil. Yadda yadda. Not only do parallel, drawn-out storylines fail to keep the movie fun, they refocus it away from truly interesting ideas: Guy, our thinking, feeling protagonist who dared for something greater in his life, was in true human fashion being used all along as a tool to tell a less interesting human story.

Watch Free Guy and you might find Easter eggs about intelligence, or love, or evolution. That can be nice. But those tidbits don’t make up for the logic errors in this movie’s programming.

The Green Knight

Oh, the silly games we play . . . the things we do for what we think we need . . .  

So, what do you play for? More stuff? More money? Or do you yearn for those intangibles like love, or recognition?

Young Gawain usually plays for pleasure. As King Arthur’s nephew, he’s able to take advantage of all the bounty that medieval times can possibly offer. Drink and women seem to be high on the list. 

But he wants more—honor, to be exact. Inadequacy gnaws at his brain as he sits among legends like the King and his knights. Connected he is, but proven he is not. As luck (or something else?) would have it, a special challenge might solve Gawain’s problem.

On Christmas, when gifts are exchanged, the Green Knight visits the King’s court. And our world is changed forevermore. 

This knight is something wild. Unnaturally natural. When he offers a test that not even Arthurian legends will take, Gawain licks his puppy lips and bites.

What follows is a dark, mystical, and fantastical journey. The moviemakers—and without a doubt, the writer and director David Lowery—have reveled in the fact that the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight is centuries old and has many different versions: They’ve taken a cue from this and flooded their own telling with symbolism, double entendres, camera tricks, actor re-use, stunning sound and visuals and other tools that, quite simply, confuse us to high heaven. This is not a bad thing.

Legends exist for a reason, regardless of whether we can decipher it. They make us feel a certain way about the nature of the world and how we make our place in it. The Green Knight’s moviemakers understand this, play with it, and bask in it. Give this movie a watch with that in mind, and you just might awe in the confusion, too.

Val

What to do, what to do?

How about pretend to be someone else? Get dressed up, be silly, and get paid for it?

Val Kilmer has had a rather successful career doing just that. But this Hollywood actor’s life hasn’t been about money, it’s been about the things he doesn’t have. So don’t let Hollywood fool you: This is a true story that’ll tug at your heartstrings again and again.

One of the first things we learn is that this guy has always enjoyed capturing video. Thanks to thousands of hours of his own archived footage, we can see how he has acted (on and off screen) throughout the years. This was excellent raw material for the editors Ting Poo, Leo Scott, and Tyler Pharo (the former two of which also directed), and they’ve used it well. The years changed, but the man didn’t: He appears sensitive, humorous, and misunderstood since the beginning.

You could argue that this story is a pretentious self-advertisement. But I think you’d be wrong. There are too many genuinely tender and vulnerable moments here to think that this is born of pure self-aggrandizement. The way the man looks adoringly at his two grown children; the way he jokes with people; the way he speaks about his mother is likely to start your waterworks more than once.

So what actually happens? Well, we watch home movies of kid Val and his brothers making movies themselves; of young-adult Val on stages and movie sets; of middle-aged Val at home with the kids; of current-day Val doing something creative, while voice-over Val explains what we’re witnessing. These stories are the building blocks, and can teach us the power of storytelling; of seizures; of cancer.

These blocks create what Val would call the big picture: an explanation for his desire to act, to find the truth behind illusion and the illusion within truth. Though it sounds fanciful, these concepts are brought down to earth—heck, they never even leave it—because of how genuine everything laid before us seems to be.

Even the ways Val talks to us throughout the story—through past movies, in voice-over and addressing us in realtime—are poignant, and introduced in poignant ways. This movie is the work of many creative minds—and at the very least, one more than I had previously thought.

Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain is gone, and this documentary won’t bring him back.

You might say to yourself, fine, I just need a taste. Well, even the taste is sour. To watch this isn’t to indulge in never-before-seen footage or experience the refreshingly twisted, pessimistic optimism that made this public personality so popular. To watch this is to be more like Tony—to embrace the uncomfortable hoping to understand.

As we hear from Tony’s close friends and co-workers, we learn about his insatiable curiosity. The small-time chef was not just a chef, but an aspiring writer. The best-selling writer was not just a writer, but a magnetic journeyman. Descriptions like these were not his thing, though. People were. War-torn or five-star didn’t matter; the people there did. 

The first half of the movie almost assumes that we know all this. It starts off in a fit, just as Tony’s rags-to-riches story begins, but is otherwise slow and uneventful.

The second half, though, channels the openness of our star, and in doing so magnetizes us to the screen. Watching him describe and experience his wildest dreams (writer, father); watching him live the lows of uncertainty and desperation as his friends are helpless, are moving, if quite painful to watch. 

There’s not much to it aside from that, and that is more than enough. This work is a respectful study on a vibrant, if dark and puzzling man. It’ll remind you of the beauty that life offers if you seek it—and the pain of experiencing things that we cannot yet—and maybe never will—understand.

The Get Lost Losers

Your family is trash.

This is just one of many colorful songs written and performed by The Get Lost Losers. To name others would risk spoiling their bite; each—like the movie itself—is acerbic and hilarious, and must be experienced. What we have here is a pitch-perfect mockumentary. 

We begin by meeting the band several years into its rock and roll lifetime—at a time when most of the members are, quite frankly, tired of rock and roll. Our permanently-scowling bassist, Orly, can’t hide her disgust at how uneventful this has all been. She’s about ready to pounce on other work. And our drummer, Christophe, smartly written as the opposite of that wild, unintelligent-drummer stereotype, introduces himself by sharing his love for his 401k and catered office lunches.

This is funny stuff, and the moviemakers know it. From jokes and characters to the story arc itself, they use (and twist) band stereotypes to wonderful effect.

Art is precarious, but the tension here is next-level thanks to Sereno. He’s the arrogant, insufferable front man who seems to think that rock and roll requires it of him. That most everyone in the Los Angeles music scene hates him actually fuels his passion . . . until it drives his band members away.

Right before the band showcases its talent to industry executives, it falls apart. Even Anthony, the hilariously docile, verging on air-headed guitarist; even Anthony, the man who can attract girls with his sensitivity just as fast as he can . . . repel them with his sensitivity, has lost his patience for his friend Sereno.

Can Sereno form another band in time? Will any one of the rest succeed without the others?

Maybe you won’t care: This humor isn’t for everyone. It's quite dry, and lands better if you have preconceptions about rock and roll and band dynamics. But if you like it, you’ll really like it; it’s clever and hilarious, close to but never over the top. The band—or what’s left of it—has a new fan in me.

Reefa

Some movies, you remember for the twist. Reefa belongs on that list.

It follows Israel “Reefa” Hernandez in the days before he and his Colombian immigrant family receive their green cards. Though the parents are all nerves, Reefa stays calm. This teenage visionary—or this broke immigrant kid, as his father would describe him—is convinced that everything will work out, and that his art will change the world.

Seeing Reefa in his element, in the artsy underbelly of Miami and with other first-generation friends, is instructive. We don’t learn as much about his motivation as we watch how he spends his days, but we do learn plenty about the pressures his generation faces. Doing something wrong won’t get them grounded; it’ll get them and their families deported. They remain upbeat, skating and cracking jokes, kids after all. But it’s clear that they live concerned.

As we are. Especially so when we’re introduced to the third-generation, rough police who patrol the city; especially so when Reefa gets the itch to do something less than legal. He needs to go to New York like his art idols, but before he can do so, he has to create a masterpiece for his city. His friends say that it’s dangerous, but if he doesn’t tell his story, who will? 

Indeed. 

In this last portion of the movie, Reefa’s dreams come to a head. The tacky lines, extraneous interludes, and unnecessary romantic storyline dissolve from our memory as we focus on what is happening right now. The moviemakers move the lens from Reefa to his friends, and in doing so, wrap us in a straitjacket.

Reefa, played by Tyler Dean Flores, can be both charming and maddening. The same can be said for this movie. Though it’s well-intentioned, it’s a fair amount choppier and sappier than it needs to be.

Nevertheless, it reminds us that our world needs people like Reefa, with their head in the clouds. Unfortunately, it also reminds us that this alone won’t stop the rain.

Drunk Bus

How do you feel when things don’t go as planned? Do you get frustrated, or down? Do you giggle and shrug it off? 

Our reactions to life are important, and this is what Drunk Bus is all about. Take its open-air screening last night at the Montauk Film Festival, for example.

The showing started a tad late; we had to wait for the sun to set. Gorgeous, elemental, but slow! And when the sky eventually darkened enough to see the projection, the movie wouldn’t play. And when the movie played, no sound came out.

And then the heavens smiled on us and said let there be sound. I was ready to be hurt again! A darkly beautiful, music-driven opening scene drew me and the rest of the crowd in. It was at precisely this point that the director stood up and asked us to stop the movie. We should have been hearing dialogue, but weren't. Did I mention that it rained, too?

Michael, our lead, would’ve sat through all of this with a blank stare, his mind elsewhere. Actually—he wouldn’t have come at all. A late-shift campus shuttlebus driver, he’s stuck to the same routine for years. Since his girlfriend left for New York, he’s been both upset and incapable of changing anything about his life.

The college-coming-of-age tale has been written before, but that takes nothing away from this one. Michael is played convincingly by Charlie Tahan, a young and promising, depressed and muted individual all at once. And then there’s Pineapple.

This punk rock, Samoan Santa is hired as security after Michael loses his latest battle with belligerent passengers. Pineapple is not the answer to all (or really any) of Michael’s issues, but he is something different. Very different. Thanks to Pineapple Tangaroa (the real person), Pineapple (the character) is a confusingly soft and intense presence. His dark sense of humor and worldliness makes it easy to build a bond with Michael—and just about every passenger who jumps on that bus.

Their interactions move the movie, but even bit players like Fuck You Bob (a grumpy passenger) and Michael’s intercom-only boss add levity and depth to the story. The writing here—like the direction, art direction, camerawork, editing, and music—are thoughtful, well-balanced, and dark in the lightest way.  

As expected, Michael and Pineapple go through their ups and downs. Michael’s loop of indecision and unhappiness doesn’t change, but it hurts ever more. The impending return of his ex adds to the discomfort. We begin to wonder whether he will ever make it out of his self-imposed prison, just as we wonder where the heck Pineapple came from.

Before Drunk Bus, my perspective was lacking. After Drunk Bus, I was able to see how a speed bump-filled evening was indeed a fitting host for such a quirky, touching movie. 

The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52

There’s a whale out there who has swam alone all of its life, crying into the vast nothingness of the oceans and never hearing a reply.

What a sad story—and one that we are all too ready to believe is true. You see, we don’t actually know the details of 52’s life. The scant data we have simply tells us that it communicates at a frequency which we haven’t encountered before or since. 52 hertz, hence the name, 52.

The Loneliest Whale is the riveting story of the first ever search for 52 in the flesh—if it’s still out there. We learn about the military who first discovered this phenomenon, the civilian scientists who dedicated years to studying the unknown, and one moviemaker who, like so many others, had his life change after learning this story.

The movie condenses years of preparation—and shows mere days of electric, open-sea adventure—in a way that puts the videos you watched in science class to shame. It’s a modern-day treasure hunt which also explores why so many people identify with an animal yearning for connection.

This duality is what makes the movie. It’s curious and playful even as it helps us contemplate serious (and sometimes uncomfortable) questions about connection and meaning in our world. The pace is smooth and engaging, and yet in only one hour and thirty-six minutes is still reminiscent of the highs and lows of life: Brief moments of ecstasy as we approach majestic creatures are balanced out by the more typical—and many—mundane moments. 

Having hooked us with all that, the movie draws us in with booming, plaintive whale songs. I could listen to these endlessly. It’s a language like ours, from a creature who thinks and feels and has families. Hearing it, knowing this, will have the sound resonate through every fiber of your being. This is just one example of how the movie will affect you.

The needle in the haystack may never have been so thoughtfully used to weave a story.

A Most Beautiful Thing

When every day is a struggle, there’s no time for games.

Think about it. If you go to sleep not knowing whether your drug addict mother will come home; if you walk to school through multiple gang territories, your mind might be on other things. 

A Most Beautiful Thing opens our eyes a bit wider to living like this. Through interviews, montages, and discussions, we hear about growing up in the dangerous west side of Chicago. Our stars are now a group of middle-aged friends, but their story starts years ago, when they were teenagers at odds and on high alert. Yes, they made a movie about it, but no, you can’t make this stuff up. 

The sport which eventually brought them together, crew, drew their attention simply because of the free pizza at the high school info session. Hearing tidbits like this one will bring a smile to your face, and our stars speak often speak with one, reminiscing sometimes and actively thinking others.

But light this movie is not. Not only do the stars speak about crime and fear and violence, subject matter experts provide statistics to contextualize their lived experience.

Indeed, the movie walks a balance beam between poverty porn and fairy tale. In a positive but realistic manner, it shows how a group of people (who could be any of us) gained perspective and built healthy habits and relationships. It is sobering and uplifting at the same time.

Parts of the movie can feel like filler. Listening to stories, we see montages of “the streets” instead of looking into the eyes of our stars. But the emotional connection—and the statistics of pain—draw us back in every time.

So who need sports? Well, what if in blissful silence you found yourself gliding over water? What if after hearing sirens all your life, you now hear calm as YOUR tools slide into a cool blue mirror; now silence as you listen to YOUR heart still beating, still alive, still capable, now powerful, with your thoughts and with your family?

Naomi Osaka

You’ve just achieved your lifelong dream. Now what?

This is Naomi Osaka’s dilemma, and she’s only 23. Though she has broken professional tennis records and started important conversations about identity, it is difficult to say she’s content.

This eponymous three-part series dives into this discomfort, and is equal parts talent show and coming-of-age tale. Or put another way, bingeworthy.

Part 1, “Rise”, introduces our soft-spoken, dutiful superstar. We learn about her childhood apart; her desire to win for family and home-country of Japan; her extraordinary prowess on the court—and her inability to deal with fame. Home movies, grainy and muted, set the tone from the start. This life is crisp, but soft; this life is not automatic movement, but focused motion.

Part 1 has us feeling sympathy for our young champion. Surprisingly vulnerable narration shares the pressure she feels to do right by just about everyone. And lucky for everyone, Part 2, “ Championship Mentality”, provides breathing room. Naomi talks about her talents beyond tennis. Fashion? Well, she has sketched clothing for years, dreaming about wearing something other than sports clothing all the time . . . In this part, we see Naomi step off the court to reconnect with her curiosity and her family—and in her doing so, we see radiating positivity. 

This of course thickens the plot. Watching Naomi realize that fulfillment may exist outside of tennis is as haunting and exciting to us as it is to her. And not only does this make it easier to root for her, it makes it painful to watch how others glom onto her fame at the cost of her discomfort. The series does not hide these moments.

As you’d guess, Part 3, the “New Blueprint”, shows Naomi exploring this tension and following her inclinations. We learn about her Haitian father and Japanese mother; about her upbringing; about her desire to create conversations about identity, race, nationality, and more in a world that continues to navigate its own type of conversations.

Watching Naomi crush (or fail) at tennis is enveloping enough, but this series shines at stepping on and off the court at just the right times. In contextualizing the success of a young, still-active, still-maturing superstar, it is a special story. If this series has shown us anything, it has shown us how there are molds yet to be broken, and difficulties to be surmounted, if only one considers the possibility of doing it.