Burning for You

Film: Is God Is
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’ve got a lot of feelings about Is God Is, and I’m not sure exactly where I should start with them. So let’s start with the fact that this is director Aleshea Harris’s debut film as a director. Harris is a playwright and this movie started as a stage drama, but that’s not at all obvious from the way this is filmed. Discovering that this is her first movie is not unlike learning that Get Out was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut. Is God Is is a mature effort that feels like Harris has been sitting in the directors’ chair for a decade.

This is a revenge movie through and through, but this is not like an ‘80s revenge movie where Arnold Schwarzeneggar tracks down the guys who left him for dead and kills them one by one with a quip for each death. This is an old school revenge movie, one that feels like the natural child of every Western in history where a man hunted down the gunslinger who murdered his family.

A Normal Day in Indianapolis

Film: Dead Man’s Wire
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

The old saying is that truth is stranger than fiction. There are variants of this: “You couldn’t write this” or “If I wrote this, no one would believe it.” Movies like Dead Man’s Wire show the reality of the saying. This seems like a story that comes out of a weird fever dream, something just barely on the edge of possible. And then, you have to wonder why it took 50 years to make this story into a movie.

This genuinely feels like the sort of story that belongs on a television show, either as a wacky plot for some weird sitcom or as some insane plot-of-the-week for a crime of the week show. Honestly, it would have worked really well as an episode of Burn Notice or Person of Interest. I still struggle to realize that this is something that actually happened.

Troy Story

Film: The Odyssey
Format: Market Square Theater #3.

It seems like every now and then, a movie shows up that really pisses off a lot of people for no reason more than the fact that it exists. The backlash against Barbie happened before it released, and the same thing happened to The Odyssey. Over and over again, the movies that draw this kind of negative attention prove to be wildly successful, just as The Odyssey has done. It’s gone from having the most-disliked movie trailer in YouTube history to a movie in the high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes and clearly on its way to more than $1 billion, and it still hasn’t opened in China.

So, while I am going to talk about the movie, I think the controversy is worth a paragraph here. The backlash against The Odyssey was framed as being “historically inaccurate” because of the casting. Were people upset that we didn’t have an actual cyclops? Or that Odysseus was being played by a guy from Boston? No, of course not. The problem was that Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, was being played by Lupita Nyong’o, a woman who is objectively gorgeous, but happens to be Black. Oh, and Elliot Page plays Sinon, who actually isn’t in Homer’s epic poem and that freaked a lot of people out. In fact it freaked people out so much that the rumor was that Page was actually playing Achilles. And in the movie? If you aren’t waiting to be outraged, you wouldn’t even notice.

Shearers Out

Film: The Sheep Detectives
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

When I first saw the poster for The Sheep Detectives, I figured it was an obvious miss. I liked Babe well enough, but talking animal movies aren’t really something I seek out, and there’s always a sense of CGI talking animals hitting that uncanny valley area that I find disturbing. And then the reviews started coming in and they were almost entirely positive. So when it showed up on streaming, I figured it was time to take a more serious look at it.

There are certainly some initial similarities to Babe, of course. It takes place on a farm, there are plenty of sheep, and all of the animals talk. But, The Sheep Detectives is a murder mystery, and it’s the sheep who need to try to figure out who killed their shepherd, because the local police are not specifically inept, but completely inexperienced in dealing with any serious crime like murder.

No One Hurts You Like Family

Film: Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

As I slowly make my way through the latest crop of Oscar movies, I’ve found myself struggling at times to want to pull the trigger on them. All of the ones I haven’t seen are currently streaming at this point; I could finish this in less than a week if I had a mind to, but right now, what I want to watch is going in different directions. So, while Sentimental Value (or Affeksjonsverdi in the Norwegian) has gotten mountains of acclaim, I’ve found it difficult to want to watch it. But sometimes you just have to force yourself into doing those things that you know you need to do. I’d like to knock out one of the remaining Oscar films ever week—I’d be done late June/early July, and that would absolutely be a record for me.

Anyway, Sentimental Value on its surface is one of those movies that is about making a movie, but it’s really about the relationships of the people involved. Hollywood always likes movies about movies, but this is not a movie that at all feels like it’s glamorizing the business. In fact, it does the opposite, and it takes some very obvious digs at NetFlix to the point where it will clearly never be shown on that streaming platform.

She's Got Those Baby Blues

Film: Die My Love
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

Remember a few years ago when Jennifer Lawrence was the flavor of the month? It was right around 2012 when she was in both The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, even though her real coming out party in Hollywood was her role in Winter’s Bone. She’s not that anymore, which is probably a good thing. In a sense, she has the ability to do what actors like Daniel Radcliffe and Kristen Stewart have—she can basically do what she wants and take whatever roles she feels like. That brings us to Die My Love, which is essentially a movie about post-partum depression.

Another person who has that same ability to pick projects that they want because they don’t really have to worry about their career is Lawrence’s co-star for this film, Robert Pattinson. Why am I talking about this? Because it’s important to have these people in the industry so that films like this get made. Die My Love was never going to be a box office smash. You need people who don’t care about how much money a film will make, who might even be willing to take scale for a film that has less big hit appeal but much more artistic credibility.

Koi Pond

Film: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes )
Format: Blu-Ray from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

Ray Bradbury said in interviews that he has distinct memories of being not merely an infant, but of being days old despite being told that this is essentially impossible. I say this because it’s going to be relevant to Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique detubes in the original French). This is a story a very young child, essentially in utero until 3, from that child’s perspective. Little kids have been in movies before, and have even been main characters in movies before, but this feels like the first time that a film has been narrated from this perspective.

What this means is that our title character, Amélie, is going to have an adult vocabulary, but a child’s version of the world around her. Specifically, this means that she is going to be a solipsist for the bulk of the film, which takes place between her second and third birthdays. Amélie is difficult to like initially because of this. It’s not inaccurate, but it is frustrating. Amélie is entirely self-absorbed, which makes her a difficult narrator.

Life Happens

Film: If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various players.

I’ve talked a little bit about what my life was like in 2025, but I haven’t really gone into a great deal of detail. It was the worst year of my life by a pretty good margin. When I had a conversation with my boss about what I had accomplished in 2025 with a look toward 2026, my answer was that my biggest accomplishment was that I hit all of my deadlines—all of my students’ papers and projects got back to them on time. There were a lot of times during the year where it felt like I was always on the edge of a complete breakdown—it was a combination of the events happening around me and the reactions of other people to those events in some cases. All of this brings me to If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, a movie I don’t think I could have made it through had I attempted to watch it last year.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (I’m going to shorten this to just the pre-comma part of the title for the rest of this) feels like a modern update of Diary of a Mad Housewife combined with the white anger film Falling Down. Linda (Rose Byrne, who was Oscar-nominated for this role and the reason I watched it) is a woman whose life is falling apart on every front. My situation last year was plenty bad, but I have nothing on Linda.

Appomattox

Film: Civil War
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

It was only a matter of time before someone decided to project a new civil war onto the United States. The level of division is maddening and disturbing—there are states I’d rather not drive through right now, and some that I have driven through recently where I wasn’t exactly worried, but where I definitely felt out of place. Alex Garland’s Civil War feels like a worst-case scenario, but also feels unfortunately real.

We don’t actually get a great deal of background on the war that is being fought. We see the unnamed president (Nick Offerman) practicing a speech that feels a bit overblown and hyperbolic, especially since we soon learn that there are multiple successionist movements of varying strength and success, and the group commonly referred to as the Western Forces are rapidly approaching Washington D.C.

Hombre Secreto

Film: The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

There were times when I was watching The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto in the original Portuguese) when I felt like I had seen this movie before. The reason is that it feels like it covers a lot of the same territory as I’m Still Here from the previous year. Both films deal with the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s and with the lives that were devastated or lost under that regime. I’m Still Here deals with a woman looking for what happened to her husband. The Secret Agent deals much more with the direct victim of the violence. The stories are different but similar, and feel united even though they take place years apart and concern different people.

Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) is a dissident in a Brazil that has been under military rule for more a decade. He travels to Recife where his in-laws are taking care of his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes) ever since Armando’s wife Fátima died. He finds his way to a sort of commune of dissidents and takes the name Marcelo as an alias. He is placed by the group in a job at the city office that creates identity cards. This allows him the opportunity to look for information on his mother, who he knows very little about.

Let's Make a Baby

Film: The Assessment
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

I’ve said before that horror movies are going to be more and more about environmental issues. The same is true of science fiction. Some science fiction will be specifically about environmental issues, and then there will be films like The Assessment, where the environmental problems are tangential.

We’re looking at a world in this case where some environmental disaster has happened. The environment has collapsed and resources have become rare, which means that the powers that be have put huge restrictions on parenthood. This is not just because of the scarcity of resources but also because human life expectancy has been dramatically increased through a variety of pharmaceuticals, drugs that also prevent fertility. In this world, people who want to be parents must be assessed for fitness.

Good Times Never Seemed so Good

Film: Song Sung Blue
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

I’m extremely white. A few years ago, when it was the thing to do, I had my DNA run on 23 and Me and the results were than 99.9% of my DNA is from the British Isles, northern Europe, and Scandanavia. A substantial amount of my ancestry could chuck a rock into the Arctic Circle. What this means is that there are a few things I can count myself an expert in. One of those is white people music. The whitest music ever made isn’t country or bluegrass or polka. It’s Neil Diamond. That being the case, it was only a matter of time before we got a movie that featured Diamond’s music, and thus we have Song Sung Blue.

Song Sung Blue is a biopic, but it’s not a biopic of Neil Diamond himself. Instead, it’s about Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) and his wife Claire (Kate Hudson, who was Oscar-nominated for this role). The two made a living in part as tribute musicians, with Claire specializing as Patsy Cline. They realize that Mike, who calls himself “Lightning,” could probably pull off a Neil Diamond tribute band (what he styles instead as a Neil Diamond experience).

I'm a Snake When We Disagree

Film: Zootopia 2
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on Fire!

I had issues with Zootopia when it was released. It’s a movie whose heart is in the right place when it comes to things like racism, but it gets so much wrong that it’s hard to connect it to the way that racism actually works in the real world. Essentially, the ultimate message of Zootopia is that the way to defeat racism is to just stop being racist. That being the case, I didn’t have a lot of hope for an improvement in this when it comes to Zootopia 2, which gives us a much more obvious racism plot.

The reason it’s more obvious in this case is that we’re bringing in an entire class or two of animals into the story. The original Zootopia concerned itself entirely with mammals. For the sequel, we’re bringing in reptiles. I looked for amphibians—I didn’t see any, so they may be reserving them for a future sequel (but you can expect based on the short scene in the credits that if there is a Zootopia 3, it will center on birds).

Germany's Most Wanted

Film: Nuremberg
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Every year, there’s an Oscar bait movie or two that fails to secure a single nomination. Sometimes, it’s a good to great film that is simply overlooked, like The Woman King from 2022 or The Iron Claw from the subsequent year. Sometimes, it’s a movie that has gone hilariously bad, like Cats from 2019. And then there are the movies that have big ambitions, but fail to gain any traction. By all rights, Nuremberg was created for a run at the Oscars, and it goose egged.

It had to have had a shot, though. It’s a movie that is clearly relevant, discussing the Nuremberg trials at the end of WWII, making clear comparisons to the rise of fascism in the U.S. today. It’s headlined by two Oscar winners (Russell Crowe and Rami Malek) and a two-time nominee (Michael Shannon) and a one-time nominee (Richard E. Grant). This was clearly a film that wanted to take a swing for the top prize, and probably a few others (Best Actor, Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay for a start).

Vroooooooooooom!

Film: F1 (F1: The Movie)
Format: Streaming video from Apple TV on rockin’ flatscreen.

There is a huge problem at the heart of F1 (sometimes called F1: The Movie). The problem is that because we know we are watching a movie, the endgame is played out for us once we know the premise of the film. Once you know what the plot is, the ending, while not guaranteed, is shuttled into a couple of possibilities with slight variation. It makes about 90 minutes or so of the film not meaningless, but having nothing really at stake. We know where we have to get.

We’re going to start not with F1 cars but racing at Daytona in the 24 hours at Daytona event. The person we are focusing on is Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a one-time F1 prodigy gone from that world for 30 years. Hayes now lives in his van, moving from driving gig to driving gig, essentially working for hire. His team wins the race, but he refuses to touch the trophy, or even really to celebrate. He collects his bonus check and drives off.

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction

Film: One Battle After Another
Format: Streaming video from HBOMax on Fire!

We need a regular reminder that the Oscars are political and rarely correct. I say this because Paul Thomas Anderson is almost certainly going to win Best Director on Sunday and One Battle After Another seems likely to take Best Picture. The reason this is upsetting is that this is clearly not the best movie of this year and not the best directorial performance. However, Paul Thomas Anderson is a top director and much like the year that Christopher Nolan won for Oppenheimer, people have decided that it’s Anderson’s year.

That’s frustrating. Paul Thomas Anderson, to be fair, does have 14 nominations and no wins, so I understand the sentiment that he is due for a win. The problem is that One Battle After Another, while a fine movie, is not anything close to Anderson’s best work. This feels like Pacino winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman or Paul Newman finally winning for The Color of Money. But, that’s where we are, and in a couple of days, it’s likely that that’s where we’ll remain.

Too Too Solid Flesh

Film: Hamnet
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

My undergrad degree is in English literature. What this means is that there are times when I know at least some of what is going to happen in a movie. You can’t be much of an English student without knowing something of the life of William Shakespeare. Because of this, while I didn’t know exactly where we were going with Hamnet, I at least knew one or two of the major plot points. In this case, that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the film, but it does mean that there will be people who are shocked at a particular moment that I spent a large part of the film expecting.

With Hamnet, named after Shakespeare’s son (both the movie and the play), we’re not getting a new filmed version of Hamlet, but sort of the story of its creation. This is much more the story of Shakespeare’s (Paul Mescal) tumultuous family life and his tormented relationship with his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley). This was something that surprised me—traditionally, Shakespeare’s wife is recorded as Anne, but no matter.

Take a Ride on the Reading

Film: Train Dreams
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on gigantic television.

At this point, I think the Best Picture race is pretty much limited to One Battle After Another and Sinners with an outside chance of Marty Supreme. Honestly, even Sinners feels like an outsider at this point, with oddsmakers giving OBAA a better-than 60% chance. Train Dreams has virtually no chance of winning, and that has essentially been the case from the moment the nominations dropped. It doesn’t have much of a chance, but I am pleased that it was nominated. Oscar should go out of its way to nominate films like Train Dreams more often, if only to call out more attention to them.

Train Dreams is not the kind of movie that is normally going to get a great deal of attention from the average movie watcher. It is slow to a fault. Not a great deal happens in it. Even the massive forest fire, something that could easily become something like an action sequence is slow. I don’t have a problem with this, but I imagine that some people will.

Love for Sale

Film: Rental Family
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Brendan Fraser seems like one of those people who is genuinely a nice person. He’s the kind of person who I want to see succeed; he seems like someone who would be fun to hang out with, or have dinner with. When I first saw the trailer for Rental Family, I was of two minds. First, I thought it looked like the sort of film that Fraser should be doing—a drama with a great deal of heart, but it also looked like a film designed to capitalize on Fraser’s recent resurgence and Oscar win. But I also knew that I would be unable to resist watching it.

This is important for Rental Family, because this is a film that only works if we like Brendan Fraser. Well, we need to like his character. This is very much a film about empathy, and getting to that is going to be hampered if we have none for the main character.

You Saw Me Standin' Alone

Film: Blue Moon
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

When people talk about very talented actors, people who are genuinely and consistently good at the craft, Ethan Hawke doesn’t get mentioned enough. Hawke feels (to me) like one of those actors who goes into every job like it’s the one that’s going to make his career. He commits, and he’s good to great in pretty much everything he’s been in, at least that I’ve seen (and I even forgive him for The Purge). I was happy to see that he was nominated for an Oscar, his third acting nomination and first for lead. Blue Moon hinges entirely on Ethan Hawke’s performance. This film is him, and he is the film, even with a good supporting cast.

Blue Moon is a memoir of sorts of Lorenz “Larry” Hart (Hawke), the lyricist half of Rodgers and Hart, who wrote a number of Broadway musicals over the course of a couple of decades. Hart’s decline came about not from rumors of his sexuality (he was what we would today probably call pansexual), but his copious drinking. Rodgers, needing a more consistent partner for his music, teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein to make the greatest musical composition team ever, starting with their first collaboration, Oklahoma!