A Touch of Wish Fulfilment

An image from Wanuri Kahiu's Rafiki

CW: discussions of sexual harassment, groping ahead

Few things hurt as much as something you like getting warped into toxicity. A favorite song forever intertwined with a damaging relationship. A beloved restaurant, the site of learning about your parents' divorce. Then there's me and my enjoyment of feeling hugged and touched by other people. I'm an affectionate person who enjoys snuggling, heads resting on shoulders, and all sorts of other physical contact. Ever since I was young, holding hands with a romantic partner in public has seemed like the height of romantic connection. It's a way of binding two individuals together while the other person demonstrates they don't mind being seen clutching hands with Lisa Laman for the whole world to see.

Unfortunately, since I've started transitioning and publicly presenting as myself, I've often only experienced touching in a way I don't consent to. Several cis-het male strangers have randomly groped my body or followed me on sidewalks, imploring me to let them touch my chest. Heck, there have even been gay guys who, for some reason, think being queer gives them permission to caress my knee or touch my shoulders. Spoiler alert: being gay does NOT do that, get away from me.

Creepy doesn't even begin to describe these encounters. These guys are the absolute worst and have often left me devastated. Since I haven't been in a romantic relationship or a series of dates since I came out, I also haven't had positive, consensual experiences with women/enby's to counteract these traumatic memories. My only experience with being perceived or touched as "attractive" or "sexual" is through the gaze of men I don't want to perceive me on any level. I just want to yell "GET OUT OF HERE, YOU CREEP!" to these bozos.

Now let's move on to something lighter...a fleeting moment this past Thursday where I got to feel the sensation of touch in a positive, soul-enriching fashion.

My romantic life isn't rife with successes (it's more often involved encounters with TERFs or ghosting), but I can't give up hope! Never give up hope! So this past Thursday, I returned to my local lesbian bar for a Sapphic Dating event hosted by a local queer community group. Located on the bar's first-level dance floor, this event was like a large-scale speed dating event. Attendees would, every few minutes, switch up and talk to somebody they don't know. Everyone was adorned with nametags that featured stickers indicating what kind of dynamic they were looking for. Yellow meant "friendship," while pink meant "flirting, date stuff."

As we all started moving around the dance floor, I immediately noticed her, a woman that we'll call Tonya here. She was tall, exuding tremendous confidence, wearing a dress shirt with the top buttons unfastened, and decked out in red hair. My heart did some pitter-pattering once I saw her, and I was determined to chat with her. For the first few rounds of this event, though, she was always on the other side of the dance floor. In the brief time when we all switched conversation companions, it was always impossible to make my way towards here. For a while there, I was certain I'd never get to talk to her.

Then! A miracle struck! The announcer of this event eventually declared that, for this next round, we had to sit down and chat with someone who had the same color hair (we also had those pink stickers on our nametags indicating we were looking to folks to date). Given that there were only three of us that fateful night (including me) with Ariel from The Little Mermaid hues atop our heads, Tonya and I finally had a chance to talk. Huzzah! We sat down at a small table and marveled at how few other people here had red hair. After asking me about my name, she playfully commended me for putting my nametag on my chest in between my breasts. That was unintentional, but that maneuver opened the door for her to make a potentially flirty comment about my tiddies. Good start.

It's been a while now since the sapphic dating event ended. Now, karaoke had descended on this lesbian bar's first floor. Tonya and I began chatting about whether or not she would be signing up to do some singing. We began exploring potential harmonizing choices for Tonya by looking at her Spotify favorites, an endeavor revealing we shared a passion for Megan Thee Stallion, among other artists. At the end of this task, Tonya and another woman near us complimented me on my outfit and makeup. "Oh you two," I remarked, "Y'all are gonna give me a big head!"

Instantaneously, Tonya wrapped her right arm around my head and grabbed a tuft of my hair. Then, she stared right into my eyes and declared, "you deserve to have the biggest head there is." She let go after that and returned to figuring out a tune, but honestly, I wouldn't have minded if she kept clutching my hair for the entire evening. I was momentarily standing there agog, almost refusing to believe I'd just experienced that. A hot queer she/they individual had voluntarily reached out and touched me. Not only thatm but they'd done it in an explicitly flirty fashion.

When those creepy men had extended their palms to grope or harass my body, it left me feeling so small. Afterwards, I was always reeling over being perceived as an object by these harassing wretches. Here, though, the spontaneous act of touching was one shared between queer gals looking for some kind of romantic connection. There was an equal playing field, rather than some cis-male stranger grasping me as just a means to his vomit-inducing sexual pleasure ends. Plus, Tonya's incredibly kind comments pre-touch about my appearance and her rhetoric while she had me in her grasp (literally) were all about reinforcing my humanity, not draining it. 

As a cherry on top, hey, I'll admit, I was in Heaven being controlled and grabbed by a taller lady. Trying to stop on top of rent, job opportunities, and all sorts of capitalist demands have often pushed my own physical, romantic, and sexual interests to the margins. It was enthralling to have such a visceral reminder here of "oh hey, I like this, this is what gets my heart pitter-pattering and makes me feel alive." And it all happened so spontaneously! I never could've predicted that would've happened even five minutes before my hair was clutched, let alone at the start of the evening. My wishes for some event like this to occur had come true! Wow!

In hindsight, I wish I'd immediately remarked something flirty to Tonya about how much I liked her clutching my hair, but hey, I was living in the moment. If a lady ever does something akin to that again, I'll know to keep the interaction and flirty vibes going. Plus, what's the good in going "ah, I could've done X or Y" on something so wonderful? After so often having my self-critical mind and anxiety tell me, "nobody would ever find you attractive," I got a brief moment of someone touching me that suggested otherwise. Here was the polar opposite of when those men contorted my love for physical affection into trauma.

Ironically, the whole day before this dating event, I was super cynical about attending, especially given the problems I've encountered at this lesbian bar before (like my dysphoric experience with a cis-lady on New Year's Eve). I was convinced all I would get out of this evening was just more feelings of isolation and feeling like a trans anomaly in a land of cis-queer/sapphic ladies. Instead, I not only made several new pals and experienced multiple positive social experiences...a lady grabbed me by the hair and said I was pretty. Finally, those creepy men were not the only people in my memories who'd touched me or said I was "attractive" after I'd transitioned.

Maybe that's the thing that makes life bearable. When I wake up in the morning, I'm entering a day that could contain unspeakable trauma or unexpected financial hardship. I could also be entering a day where I encounter cool new gay people, uncover an obscure cinema gem, or get my hair grabbed by a hot, tall she/they dyke. Life is chaos. To quote a wise Remy the Rat, "the only thing predictable about life is its unpredictability." Furthermore, to quote a Taylor Swift lyric, "it's miserable and magical." Even the sliver of a chance of experiencing the "magical" parts of life (not to mention basking in the presence of the tremendous friends I'm privileged to know) propels me out of bed each day. The chance to carve out new memores combatting and overwhelming recollections of cis-men who groped me...that'll also force a person to abandon a cozy blanket and pillow. 

Life's "magical" moments can materialize in so many ways. As this past Thursday solidified, I sure do like it when it manifests as gay women grabbing my hair and complimenting my appearance.

We Need Those Muppets And Their Love For Jaggedly Imperfect Art

Any advertisement for generative A.I. products makes my skin crawl. How can you not feel that way about technology damaging the environment, low-income neighborhoods, and stealing from artists? However, there's also something so dystopian and empty about these ads. These commercials focus on people needing help figuring out the most mundane things ("how do you talk to your date's father?") or feature celebrities like Lil Wayne and Pete Davidson alone in their expansive homes just talking to their Alexa. 

This isn't an exciting glimpse of technology. These commercials just feel like sad visions of how money and influence can't buy you happiness or reliable companionship. One day, you too can have oodles of cash and end up talking to your appliances like your Moe Syzlack trading barbs with The Love-Matic Grandpa.

Way smarter people than me have already pointed this out ad nauseum, but these commercials also feature endless, eerie undercurrents that demonize vulnerability or imperfections. Do NOT show up to a social gathering without knowing everything about soccer. Do NOT examine books or the larger world around you. Just ask your Amazon-approved appliance. A.I. slop imagery, meanwhile, is all about coating everything in an eerie, sterile sheen placing everything these machines create in the Uncanny Valley. They're disgusting simulations of creativity, not actual artistic endeavors reflecting blood, sweat, tears, and a human being laying bare some innermost part of themselves.

As we navigate a Silicon Valley Hellscape where the rich run rampant without consequence and generative A.I. nightmares are abundant, we could use quality homegrown art now more than ever. What better time, then, for The Muppets to return to pop culture. The stars of this past week's new Muppet Show TV special have always epitomized the joys of handmade artistry and making art with other people.

From the very beginning, the Muppet characters, pioneered and created by Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Richard Hunt, and so many others, exuded delightful, rickety attributes. I'm personally fond of those 1950s Wilkin's Coffee Commercials, starring proto-Kermit character Wilkin's perpetually torturing Wontkins for not enjoying Wilkin's Coffee. You can practically see the paintbrush strokes populating the thrown-together backgrounds, while the Wilkin and Wontkins puppets are sparsely designed. However, those qualities are immensely charming, not a drawback. To boot, they allow more room for imaginative demises for Wontkins and deeply detailed (and hysterical) performances from Wilkins. 

These ads also established the violent chaos that the Muppets would be known for. These aren't just characters meant to sell Pizza Hut products in the 2000s. They're known for blowing up places with dynamite, kidnapping Jack Black, and accidentally setting rats instead of lamps on fire. You never know what bizarre mayhem will unfold with these beings. Wilkins and Wontkins perfectly established that with their dark comedy shenanigans (like placing a bomb in a house, kicking Wontkins out of a tree, or wiping blood off a sword) that I can't believe they got away with on 1950s television. 

Generative A.I. is all about regurgitating pre-existing art and giving people sickening, warped visions of what they've seen before. Right from the start in those Wilkin's Coffee ads and various Sam & Friends skits (the latter of which is where Kermit first properly premiered), though, The Muppets embraced enthralling unpredictability. Oh, and the innate humorousness of random explosions.

With The Muppet Show in the 70s, Kermit and his troupe of wackadoodle friends (Fozzie, Gonzo, Scooter, Miss Piggy, etc.) established another pivotal motif of Muppet media that spits right in the face of generative A.I.: artistic collaboration. The Wilkin's Coffee commercials were about two characters quarreling over a coffee brand. Budgetary constraints limited how many characters could be on-screen at once in Sam & Friends. The Muppet Show and feature films like The Muppet Movie, meanwhile, saw Kermit leading an ensemble of characters who were all working together (or, more often than not, crashing into one another) to make a show possible.

That creative crusade is built on a desire to create art with their own two hands (or flippers). Art that often doesn't go right. Fozzie's jokes rarely land like they're supposed to. Gonzo's stunts or trumpet playing never follow expectations. Poor Kermit never sees any of his best-laid plans come to fruition. Amazon, Meta, and other Silicon Valley companies would likely see these outcomes as impetuses to shill for generative A.I. products that could "solve" their struggles. 

The Muppets, meanwhile, see their jagged imperfections as delightful. Gonzo, Fozzie, The Electric Mayhem, Rowlf, they're always out there the next week or movie, ready to pursue their artistic passions once more. As Sunny Moraine put it on Blue Sky: "A small but very deep thing that bothers me about generative AI as a shortcut to practice and work and skill is the basic assumption that it’s impossible to take pleasure in a creative pursuit that you aren’t very good at and I assure you that is not the case." The Muppets thrive on that pleasure and create special art in the process.

When it's not about stealing art, generative A.I. ads and technology emphasize a lonely status quo where people only need to talk to Alexa and ChatGPT tools for "information" and companionship. Meanwhile, throughout the most memorable Muppet productions, the very act of singing and dancing brings people together and uncovers unseen depths in one's soul. With each Muppet Christmas Carol musical number ("When Love is Gone", "It Feels Like Christmas", etc.), fresh layers of Michael Caine's Ebenezer Scrooge are unearthed. How does Scrooge eventually signify that he's bonded with the larger world? Why by singing "Thankful Heart" with everyone, of course. 19 years later, The Muppets featured a bevy of delightful Bret McKeznie-penned ditties that helped newcomer Muppet Walter (a lifelong outcast) discover just where he belonged. To boot, tunes like "Life's a Happy Song" get so much of their euphoric and toe-tapping spirit from being crooned by large groups of people. 

You could spend your days alone talking to an Alexa or wasting entire lakes to create the ugliest A.I. generated art known to man. Or you could take a cue from those lovable Muppets and embrace the wider, tangible world around. There's so much vibrant humanity to bear witness to. Who needs a hideous digital, Elon Musk-endorsed simulacrum of art and human interactions?

This all feeds into a profoundly important core of the Muppets: they need each other and their idiosyncratic personalities. Week in, week out, no matter how crazy they drive each other, they'll always reunite to put on a new show. Animal and his loudness needs the sage, ivory-tickling chops of Rowlf the Dog. Ladies man prawn Pepe needs the stiff and uptight Sam the Eagle. Pragmatic Rizzo needs devil-may-care stuntman Gonzo. What makes these characters and their passions different is also what binds them together.

Kermit himself emphasized this in The Muppet Movie's deeply moving finale, where he told the villainous Doc Hooper... 

"Well, I have a dream too, but it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. It’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And I found a whole group of friends who have the same dream, and that makes us sort of like a family."

A life talking only to appliances and spewing out images plagiarizing pre-existing works sounds like an empty and hollow life. The Muppets, meanwhile, epitomize the joys of discovering people who aren't exactly like you, who look different from you, who have different dreams and ambitions, and creating art with them. Not the "best" art or art that Silicon Valley moguls deem "proper." Jagged, imperfect art that comes from your soul, that only a frog from a swamp, a whatever with a chicken, or someone like you, dear reader, could create. 

Those qualities were on full display in February 2026's incredibly endearing Muppet Show special. In the universe of this fictional program, these Muppets are once more bursting with enthusiasm for performing and each other. Doors falling down? An overcrowded schedule? Chickens unexpectedly losing feathers? No matter! The show goes on! Externally, though, it was also great to see little details like a discernible puppet rod on Kermit's arm when he's plucking away on a banjo. These elements subtly harken back to the days of Sam & Friends and those Wilkin's Commercials in reinforcing the homemade charm of the Muppets. 

Kermit and pals aren't CG beings striving to simulate reality. Their strings and reminders of their human performers are sometimes visible. Isn't it wonderful? While digital de-aging in The Flash or generative A.I. art makes me want to throw up, the techniques used to make Kermit play a banjo on a log in The Muppet Movie still captivate me. Human ingenuity always reigns supreme. Especially when it's servicing characters as hystericalas Rowlf the Dog and Uncle Deadly.

We need each other and our distinctive artistic perspectives, not generative A.I. monstrosities. Meanwhile, as video essayist Dan Olson pointed out, the modern surge of right-wing fascist politicians thrives on nihilism and contempt for other people. The Muppet's undaunted enthusiasm and embrace of communal joys are the perfect respite for those toxic norms. Let's keep making art and working together for a better tomorrow, no matter how many things go haywire in the process. "Keep believing, keep pretending," The Muppet Movie's character harmonizes in that feature's final scene. Cling to that mantra in these challenging times. And maybe also cling to a cup of Wilkin's Coffee. You never know when that psychoapth Wilkin's will show up to ask about your feelings vis-a-vis this brand...

20 Years Ago, Animated Family Movies Dominated Theaters. They Left Behind...A Complicated Legacy

Hollywood is a response industry. When one movie hits it big, every other studio wants to create its own equivalent to it. If Pretty Woman is massive, then a deluge of Pretty Woman clones litter theaters a few years later. Ditto The Avengers or Paranormal Activity. Animated family movies also inspire duplicates and clones, but because these films take so long to make (usually four or five years), it takes a while to see what ideas or themes are gripping this cinematic domain.

Five years after Shrek proved Disney didn't have a monopoly on lucrative animated movies, nearly every other major American movie studio* dropped their own CG-animated films. It took that long to get both these titles made and production pipelines established to create labels like Sony Pictures Animation. The result was 2006, a year in which a staggering number of CG animated family movies dominated theaters. Cars, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Happy Feet, Open Season, Barnyard, they all debuted here. 

To say it was a weird year is like saying Japan Air Lines Flight 123 experienced mild turbulence. Every movie theater across the globe was suddenly full of talking animals dropping pop culture references and lessons about families. God help us all.

Before Shrek, it really did look like Disney had a monopoly on profitable family-oriented American animation (save for the occasional box office smash based on a pre-existing TV Show like The Rugrats Movie or The Care Bears Movie). Part of this was due to Disney's suspicious counterprogramming manuevers (like scheduling Lion King and Little Mermaid re-releases against The Swan Princess and Anastasia's opening weekends, respectively), which drew attention away from competing animated films. Other times, titles like The Iron Giant didn't get the theatrical rollout they deserved, thus ensuring their box office failure. No wonder Disney seemed ot have an iron grip on this domain for so long.

Once DreamWorks SKG launched Shrek to a $267 million domestic cume (at the time, the second-biggest animated movie haul ever, only behind The Lion King), though, all bets were off. If a newbie studio like DreamWorks (albeit one led by former Disney Animation head honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg) could break through in this realm, surely more experienced studios like Sony/Columbia Pictures and Warner Bros. could produce some moneymakers. Further CG-animated hits like 2003's Finding Nemo only further inspired confidence that audiences had an unstoppable appetite for family-friendly comedies realized through computers.

Thus, 2006 was the year the CG-animated family movie floodgates were opened. For context, here's what the year's release schedule looked like:

January 16: Hoodwinked!
February 24: Doogal
March 31: Ice Age: The Meltdown
April 14: The Wild
May 19: Over the Hedge
June 9: Cars
July 21: Monster House
July 28: The Ant Bully
August 4: Barnyard
September 12: Everyone's Hero
September 26: Open Season
November 3: Flushed Away
November 17: Happy Feet

That's a lot of fart jokes and closing dance parties set to a classic pop tune.

2005 already demonstrated some clear holes in this strategy of "CG family movies = hit" with Robots and Chicken Little. Both titles did fine domestically, but they each grossed under $140 million domestically, making them among the lowest-grossing CG family titles up to that point. In other words, it was already clear that these titles didn't automatically become Shrek or Ice Age-sized smashes just by existing.

More pressingly, though, were the technological limitations of CG animation at the time. Though Hollywood was going all in on this technology, CG still had so many restrictions that prevented what or how many stories could be told in the medium. Humans, for example, were considered so tricky to get right that only The Incredibles had (successfully) navigated this realm. Antz director Tim Johnson explained on The Look Back Machine podcast that these limitations in what characters could be effectively realized in CG animation are what inspired initial CG films to focus on plastic toys and bugs. 2006's line-up of animal-centric films showed that CG animation hadn't evaded these growing pains.

Thus, from the get-go, there was already a samey quality to what kind of protaganists 2006's animated films would focus on. There was also the weird problem of costumes. Intricate outfits were a bear for CG animation to realize**, hence why so many early CG movies focused on fish and bugs that didn't need coats or shirts. Don't forget, Rick Mitchell from 2021's The Mitchells vs. the Machines was the most expensive and complicated character Sony Pictures Animation had ever procured up to that point, largely because of his ornately detailed wardrobe. 

This might sound like a weird tangent, but it spoke to another way the individual 2006 animated films couldn't exude personality. The ants in Ant Bully couldn't wear distinctive costumes. Barnyard and The Wild's critters eschewed outfits. This meant the chatterbox critters between these films blur redtogether. Because there were still limitations on what kind of costumes and characters could be realized in this medium, there were only so many plotlines these 2006 animated family movies could explore. Thus, most were buddy comedies involving mismatched characters going on a life-changing journey (like Toy Story and Shrek). Open Season, Flushed Away, The Wild, and Barnyard also all concerned sheltered animals thrown into the deep end of what the "real world" is like.

Worst of all, Shrek hadn't opened up the doors for a wide array of new visual styles. When Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse redefined the limits of CG animation, titles like The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem excitedly took kooky, 2D-informed aesthetics into their own territories. Similar distinctiveness didn't permeate Barnyard or Open Season, which opted for traditional character designs and backgrounds. Only Flushed Away (which emulated Aardman's stop-motion animation look in CG confines) offered something new visually. A "new" era of animated cinema was already inspiring imagery-based monotony.

Thus, 2006's year of animation went...well, it was messy. Cars, Ice Age: The Meltdown, and Happy Feet were massive box office winners, while Over the Hedge was a respectable performer. Nearly everyone else, though, failed to leave a mark financially. Some, like Doogal, The Wild, and Flushed Away, were embarrassing flops that suddenly made it clear CG animation was not a bulletproof way to avoid Titan A.E.-level calamities. 

Worse yet, the cynical impulses dripping behind these projects is more apparent than ever. Doogal, an Americanized dub of the British film The Magic Roundabout, stuffed as many celebrity voices into its plot as it could, including a moose that didn't originally talk (but now had Kevin Smith's voice). Open Season was so sweaty and desperate in its attempt to make the Shrek/Ice Age magic work again (at least its soundtrack produced some Paul Westerberg bangers like "Love You in the Fall"). Even Happy Feet and its slavish devotion to "realism" now feels eyeroll-worthy and a precursor to boondoggles like 2019's The Lion King (all due respect to the legend George Miller).

Early 2000s projects like Treasure Planet excitedly signified how 2D and CG animation could co-exist in harmony to realize previously impossible images and stories. 2002's Lilo & Stitch and its watercolor backgrounds, meanwhile, reinforced the enduring beauty of classical art techniques. 2006's CG animated family movie line-up, though, suggested individual personality was for chumps. Bold visual aesthetics? Why waste time on that when you can hire Jimmy Fallon as a voice-over actor. Potential for something new was snuffed out in favor of countless Shrek/Ice Age clones.

Ironically, despite all the new competition, Disney remained on top of the box office in 2006. Cars was the biggest animated movie of the year in North America, though Ice Age: The Meltdown handily took that crowd at the worldwide box office. Meanwhile, just one year later, in 2007, the animated family movies began drastically dwindling in numbers. They still existed, but they weren't arriving on a monthly basis anymore. 

Truthfully, there's never been a year like 2006 again in American cinema. As late as 2019, one could go two whole months in a calendar year without seeing a new animated family movie hit theaters. The idea of getting, say, three consecutive weeks of new PG animated titles would be unthinkable today. Unfortunately, having so many animated family features in one year didn't usher in a golden age for American animation nor allow a variety of unique creative visions to hit the big screen. Instead, corporate cynicism and the technological limitations of CG were the stars of the show. The year that Shrek wrought is interesting from a historical perspective, but save for giving the world Hoodwinked!'s goat song or Flushed Away's best gags, it's not really memorable artistically.

* = Universal Pictures was the one exception here, save for their 2D animated Curious George film. This label would stay out of the CG cinema wars until 2010, when it debuted Illumination's Despicable Me.

** = If you want to see how far CG animation came in realizing costumes in just 12 years, look at Monsters Inc. and Monsters University. In the former film, a handful of major characters (Mr. Waternoose, Ceilia) wore outfits, while Randall, Sully, Mike, George, and most other monsters walked around nude. In the latter feature, nearly all the new characters had complex outfits covering their bodies.

A Great Modern Film Score Is Hard To Find...But Not Impossible

Alfre Woodard from Clemency (2019)

I'm always singing something. Trapped in the house for a few days thanks to icy Texas weather, I've been reminded of all my little idiosyncrasies, including how often I'm humming or outright crooning melodies.  Whether it's "Love the One You're With" or "Come On Up to the House", I'm constantly engaging with my musical side. It's a testament to how much I love music (despite the fact that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, to quote Tracy Byrd) that my mind is fixated on harmonies. Unsurprisingly, this means I'm also passionate about an area where cinema and music merge: film scores.

When I was a kid, the John Williams DreamWorks SKG logo theme music always transported me away to a world of cinematic wonders. I also endlessly rewatched Fantasia 2000 as a youngster, which further solidified my adoration for fusing orchestral compositions and vibrant cinematic imagery. Since then, I've constantly been enamored with scores, even as this realm frustrates me so much today. Modern American film scores are often frustratingly middling...but all hope is not lost. There are plenty of great scores out there, reaffirming that this creative domain is not a lost cause. Many high-profile examples of film scores are just a bit pitchy (as Randy Jackson would say).

Way way way smarter people than me have broken down the specifics of why post-2010 film scores have struggled to stand out. Every Frame a Painting did a 2016 video related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's scores that delved into larger issues plaguing the modern score industry. Specifically, there's a heavy adherence to pre-existing "temp music" during editing that directors get too attached to. Composers then find themselves emulating those tracks rather than crafting something exciting and idiosyncratic for a film.

Meanwhile, there's the plague of Remote Control Productions composers dominating the industry. Remote Control is a film score company founded by Hans Zimmer in 1989. Artists connected to this location (many of them having worked under Zimmer) as well as the resources provided by Remote Control provide an enticing opportunity for studios. Zimmer can't be everywhere. However, if you want your big-budget film to sound like The Dark Knight, Dune, The Lion King, or any other blockbuster he composed, here you go. One of Zimmer's tightest comrades (Lorne Balfe, Benjamin Wallfisch, Tom Holkenborg, etc.) can conjure up a score for you here.

Just as Zimmer has made great film scores (his Dune tracks are outstanding), so too have both Remote Control Productions and his proteges created great film scores. Tom Holkenborg's name makes me groan whenever I see it in the opening credits of a film, but his Mad Max: Fury Road score remains masterful. However, the ubiquity of Temu Hans Zimmer composers has been a massive negative for the movie industry for decades now. Outlets like FilmTracks were complaining about the ubiquity of artists like Ramin Djawadi back in 2008. Today, someone like Balfe (one of the most egregious examples of this phenomenon) does a whopping seven films annually in years like 2024.  

No wonder American/British film scores today sound disappointingly samey. Problems like Remote Control Productions veterans and Zimmer's omnipresent influence have festered for so long and instilled an unexciting one-size-fits-all musical approach.

Ah, but let's get to the upbeat part of this musical landscape: the great modern film scores. The best thing you can do for orchestral cinema music is hire composers who aren't exclusively film veterans. The likes of Balfe, Djawadi, Tom Holkenborg, and Wallfisch are trained to emulate Zimmer. Meanwhile, Tamar-kali (whose provided such excellent scores for Dee Rees' various movies and Josephine Decker's Shirley, among others) is a veteran of the punk music world. She could bring a unique perspective to what film music "should" sound like that wasn't just centered on mimicking the Inception and Dark Knight Rises leitmotifs.

Daniel Pemberton, meanwhile, cut his teeth on homemade albums, commercials, video games, and various other low-budget media. Through these experiences (particularly the ramshackle tools used to assemble his first album, Bedroom), Pemberton mastered new levels of creativity, not to mention tremendous artistic versatility. Now, his works like the Spider-Verse compositions or Man from U.N.C.L.E. score sound like they're from wildly different worlds while deploying such creative instrumentation choices. Even after a 10+ years of doing film scores, Pemberton's default influences aren't just repeating what "normal" film scores sound like.

On and on the positive examples go. Past Lives, for example, had a tremendously moving and wistful score courtesy of Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen, a pair of musicians from the rock band Grizzly Bear. Irish DJ David Holmes, meanwhile, is Steven Soderbergh's go-to composer. That means he's responsible for Black Bag's score, one of 2025's greatest musical creations. I could listen to that jazz-inspired score all day, what a tremendously creative reinterpretation of spy movie music. And, of course, we have to recognize Jonny Greenwood and Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross when talking about stupendous film composers who don't exclusively work in this domain.

These 90s rock legends just keep crafting scores that zag whenever you expect them to zig. Greenwood's Spencer score, for example, realized the hallowed halls of Royal Family palaces with ominous jazz-influenced tracks. Reznor & Ross, meanwhile, embraced pulse-pounding trap music for Challengers. Those transportive tracks perfectly sonically reflected the propulsive romantic attraction between that film's three leads. Who can forget their electronic and aching Social Network tracks, which deftly encapsulated the mindset of these tech-driven tormented men who stumbled into changing the world.

Kathryn Bostic's striking and haunting Clemency tracks, meanwhile, merge string-based traditional orchestral melodies with these ominous hums and rumbles. Tracks like "Nightmare 2" make your headphones quiver with their immense bass noises. They sound like visitors from a nightmare realm (fitting for tracks with names like "Nightmare 1"). This bold collision of opposing sounds is an ingenious distillation of a story concerning a human being (represented in the traditional orchestral harmonies) staring down the barrel of the inhumane process of a prison execution (represented in those hums and rumbles). Bostic is more than up for the task of delivering a score matching the tone and artistic mastery of writer/director Chinonye Chukwu's Clemency.

Let's also not forget Jerskin Fendrix, the go-to composer for Yorgos Lanthimos starting with his 2023 film Poor Things. This Greek musician was making incredibly unorthodox melodies for years before he and Lanthimos first hooked up. Once he started composing Emma Stone star vehicles, Fendrix, happily, didn't throw away his strangest tendencies. Instead, his Poor Things compositions are spectacular madness. The soundtrack's opening track "Bella," for instance, deploys the plucking of heavy harp strings that sound at once dreamlike and a little unsettling, a fitting encapsulation of the larger film. 

The sparseness of this track, meanwhile, fits how Bella Baxter's mind is so open and new once she's first resurrected. Subsequent compositions are heavy on screeching instrumentation and big, bold musical declarations. Emotions and visual impulses are mighty pronounced in Poor Things, and Fendrix's score is all too happy to match that maximalist atmosphere. Fendrix's go-for-broke singular musical vision for the Poor Things score is a triumph, not to mention full of noises and harmonies you won't find in any other movie.

We could be here all day talking about great modern film scores that I love (hi Ludwig Göransson and his deeply specific approaches to sonic landscapes). However, what's clear to me is that great modern film scores are risk-takers. They aren't beholden to temp music or repeating what sounded memorable in a movie from two years ago. Whether you're making orchestral compositions for Clemency or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, it's crucial to deliver scores that thrive on the unexpected. Give audiences sounds and harmonies they never thought they'd hear in a tennis movie or a film focused on 1930s Mississippi vampires.

That creativity can be especially potent when hailing from a composer who isn't exclusively experienced in film scores. I'm tired of seeing only Balfe, Holkenborg, Wallfisch, and Djawadi's names in the opening credits of movies. Reach out to unexpected and eclectic musicians (or criminally under-utilized composers like Tamar-kali and Bostic) from all walks of life. Give them the flexibility and room to deliver film scores that upend expectations. Cinema as a whole will prosper from not just seeing Zimmer and his proteges as the be-all end-all of film music. Plus, it'll give me some new melodies to hum while I'm walking around my apartment. Hurry up, though, I think everyone around me is getting sick of hearing me croon "Love The One You're With"!

The Past, The Uncertain Present, And Familiar Country Tunes: A Date Night Odyssey

A fusion of the past and present from Aftersun 

As usual, I was early. I'm always showing up to places before I'm supposed to. I always get so nervous about missing out on anything exciting that I want to make sure I'm early rather than late. In this case, I'd arrived at 6:54 PM at a Mexican restaurant, six minutes before my first date with a cool queer lady. It was time for some waiting, especially since my date was stuck in traffic. Some complimentary chips entered my mouth. I scrolled on my phone for a minute or two before whipping out a library book. Then, as I was absorbing literature, a familiar sound entered my ears. It was the song playing on the eatery's speaker system, a tune I remember from my earliest years.

"The South moves north, the North moves south
A star is born, a star burns out
The only thing that stays the same is
Everything changes, everything changes"

It's Tracy Lawrence's 1996 song "Time Marches On." This restaurant, which normally only played toe-tapping Spanish-language songs, was, for some reason, in a 90s/2000s country music mood tonight. That just happened to be the era of country music I listened to endlessly from 2004 to 2014. Brooks & Dunn, Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, Martina McBride, I knew all their works by heart. Back in middle school, I'd scramble to the library computers every Monday to check Wikipedia and see what country tunes had dominated that week's Hot Country Songs chart. These songs, though I hadn't listened to many of them in eons, were once crucial to my existence. 

How ironic. I was about to meet someone new. Carve out fresh memories. Yet before all that, I was taking an unexpected trip down memory lane. The past, present, and future had collided.

It would take my date until 7:30-ish to arrive, leaving me plenty of time to absorb the ghosts of Lisa's radio dial past. "She's Everything" by Brad Paisley quickly came on after "Time Marches On" and reminded me of how Paisley used to be my entire life. The first album I ever bought was his 2011 creation This Is Country Music, for goodness' sake. In that restaurant, I could practically feel the chipped, well-worn texture of the green iPod nano I used to listen to Paisley songs like "She's Everything" on. 

When uncertainty left me uncontrollably stressed at school (which was nearly every day), I could pop in these tracks and get cozy familiarity. For three minutes, someone like Brad Paisley practically saved my life, as ridiculous as that sentence sounds now. Who knows where that iPod nano is now, but its texture and the songs it contained stuck with me. After "She's Everything," sillier country tunes like "Bubba Shot The Jukebox" filled the restaurant, a reminder that not everything from your childhood is weighty. Nostalgia and personal significance cannot lend all artistic creations immense depth. Sometimes, songs you remember are just silly artistic creations that almost certainly solely existed because someone wanted to croon a tune with "Bubba" in the title.

Listening to these country songs that used to be daily staples of my existence, I was struck by the tremendous gulf between my past and present selves. Lisa Laman circa. 2009 hated her autism and would've given anything to not be disabled. She was so endlessly frustrated and didn't have terms like depression, ADHD, and transness to help her navigate the turmoil. All I could conceive of at the time was that I was constantly sad and lonely. Within the often aching vocals of country songs like "Alyssa Lies" and "When I Get Where I'm Going" were pieces of art that reflected that pain. Like Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comics, these country tunes made me feel like I wasn't alone in my anguish.

Among the tunes was Montgomery Gentry's "Something To Be Proud Of," a song that, in hindsight, introduced me to the idea that life could still be fulfilling if it didn't live up to either your dreams or other people's accomplishments. As toxic as 2000s country could be (oh hai Toby Keith song that endorsed lynchings, fuck off), I remain grateful for tunes like these that sparked weighty ideas in my head. 

I distinctly remember, at the age of 11, begging my parents to switch the car's radio dial if I heard the opening chords of songs like Brooks & Dunn's "Believe." These tunes about death or other grim matters were just too much to handle on an ordinary day, I didn't want to be put into a funk without any advanced warning. Those songs solidified to me that art could be imposing...and that's a good thing. Life is full of torment, especially when you're navigating the public education system. Even if tracks like "Believe" or "Live Like You Were Dying" scared me because they made me feel sad, they also solidified to me how art could tackle more than just upbeat happy endings or party vibes. 

Today, anxiety still grips me. Imposter syndrome is a daily friend. Just an hour ago, I had to wipe away tears over my insecurity regarding my romantic life, fears that I haven't accomplished enough in life, dysphoria over whether or not I can ever "belong" as a lesbian woman. Art remains a useful tool to navigate and translate that labyrinth of mental health issues. The difference now, though, is I don't just have to crouch in my room listening to the local country music stations to feel less alone. 

I now have glorious friends who remind me why life is worth living. All kinds of art (every strain of cinema imaginable, books, paintings, other genres of music) can now stir my soul. Best of all, I've actually accomplished and survived things (moving out, traveling on my own repeatedly, speaking publicly, etc.) that give me hope I can do the next big thing life throws at me. Heck, here I was, going on a first date on a Tuesday night. 13-year-old Lisa Laman, who could only find fleeting solace in Cross Canadian Ragweed's 2008 ditty "17," could never have imagined that.

I don't know how helpful it would be to tell my younger self all this. "In the future, you'll still be stressed and anxious, but you'll have more tools to navigate it" may not sound like a rallying pep talk on par with "today, we celebrate...OUR INDEPENDENCE DAY!" Then again, having more tools to lean on and knowing that some "impossible" things (like living on my own) were coming...maybe that'd be enough. Maybe that could bring comfort to the younger version of me who often felt like only Taylor Swift's "Tim McGraw" or "Fifteen" truly understood her.

Those were the thoughts swirling in my head as I sat in that restaurant. The past suddenly filled around me like a body of water I submerged in. All the while, I was wearing a pink dress, green eyeshadow, and fuzzy pink fingerless gloves that I could've never imagined wearing out in public even eight years ago, let alone in 2009. It was interesting to suddenly contend with yesteryear once more. But it also made me grateful to be here. To still be alive. To exist in the now.

A little after 7:30, she sat down across from. She was gorgeous, there was absolutely no other word for it. Radiant necklaces jangled on her neck and dots of glitter shimmered on her shoulders. We proceeded to spend the next 90 minutes chatting away, which included me asking her about her favorite kinds of music. She then responded that she liked all genres...except for country. I had to emit a cackle. Boy, had we come to the wrong restaurant, at least on this night! Hey, at least I know now...for the future.

The Irishman, No Other Choice, and masterful, quietly devastating endings

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR NO OTHER CHOICE AND THE IRISHMAN AHEAD

In No Other Choice's finale, protagonist Yoo Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) sits in the lavish front yard of Choi Seon-chul (Park Hee-soon), a top candidate for a paper company job that Man-su plans to kill. As they sit outside by a firepit, Seon-chul begins sobbing. "When I moved here," he recalls, "I thought I'd barbecue every night!" In reality, this unexpected rendezvous with Man-su is the first time he's utilized the firepit. "That's what happens when you finally get what you want," Man-su pontificates as he prepares for his latest act of violence. It's a very wise observation from this man slaughtering other working-class souls to secure financial stability for his family. 

Man-su is eventually reminded of this brutal reality in No Other's Choice's gut-punch of an ending, which reminded me of nothing so much as The Irishman's haunting finale. Both films keep their bloodthirsty leads alive and well for the closing shots, but also suggest they've become encased in their own personal Hells. A Faustian bargain has transpired. Blood has been shed for survival...and it's a nightmare.

Let's start with Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, a 2019 adaptation of Charles Brandt's 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses. This gangster feature follows Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) as he gradually becomes a more and more prolific figure in the Italian-American mafia. Throughout The Irishman, on-screen text illustrates to the viewer the grubby, unflattering endings these various opulent gangsters will eventually suffer. No amount of money or power can prevent them from experiencing death's cruel hand. Sheeran knows death's inevitability all too well, given the countless lives he's taken as a hitman. 

During his job, he develops a close friendship with union advocate Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). Their bond makes it overwhelming when Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) informs Sheeran that not only has a hit been put out on Hoffa, but Sheeran must pull the trigger. Upon hearing this news, Sheeran reacts with dismay and confusion over how this could even be possible. It's a tragic response illustrating his naivety about this world he's inhabiting. In a realm built on corpses, nobody's safe. Not even the people closest to you.

Sheeran does kill Hoffa and (thanks to unrelated transgressions) eventually goes to prison. Once released in his feeble old age, Sheeran finds a quiet nightmare waiting for him. He survived. He followed the orders of his bosses. He shed so much blood. Outliving so many of his superiors means Sheeran now gets to live a life of estrangement from his daughter. To boot, he can't sleep without keeping his door open a crack. That's a maneuver Hoffa used to employ in hotel rooms to make it easier to see any potential assassins. Now, in his final years, Sheeran still keeps that door slightly ajar once darkness falls. The fear of death persists, as does looking over his shoulder. This is the devastatingly silent Hell Frank Sheeran now inhabits. He has no company beyond the fear he will end up like Hoffa and the other souls he murdered.

The Irishman's final aching image devastatingly reflects this reality. That's the kind of haunting status quo No Other Choice's final season echoes. Long before that ending arrives, Yoo Man-su is reciting a speech he plans to give to his Solar Paper bosses about how he can't fire his cohorts at the company. Man-su darkly jokes to his co-workers (who are listening to him rehearsing this spiel) that he's only doing this because he doesn't want to toil away with unfamiliar co-workers. However, this and earlier glimpses of Man-su interacting with his coworkers illustrate how this job's human element is essential for this man.

Cut to No Other Choice's ending two hours later. The company Moon Paper opts to hire Man-su for a secure job. However, this gig solely entails overseeing a "lights off" factory where machines make the paper (the "lights off" term refers to how the robots inside don't need light to work). Man-su is now just some observer of cold, lifeless machines working on paper. This is his existence now. Nobody to talk to. No human beings to connect with. No lights to provide brightness. Just darkness and sterile mechanical creations. He killed so many to get here and secured monetary stability. All of the madness got Man-su what he wanted, and it's a lifeless nightmare. Like Sheeran peering at the slightly open door in that assisted living facility, Man-su is now destined to spend his days alone. 

Immense confidence just drips off these conclusions. That chutzpah doesn't just come from the lack of tidiness or "comeuppances" in these respective endings. It's also apparent through the heavy emphasis on dialogue-free imagery. No Other Choice especially leans into this approach while following Man-su navigate his new workplace. Relying exclusively on visual storytelling reinforces the sterile, quiet nightmare Man-su will now live day in and day out. After several previous hysterical sequences (like Man-su attempting to kill Goo Beom-mo) hinging on overlapping loud dialogue, No Other Choice concludes with a hauntingly sparse sequence other, less assured filmmakers would drown out in didactic dialogue.

The Irishman's ending shows similarly masterful gumption in its imagery-based choices. Framing a doctor tending to Sheeran from a low-angle shot, for instance, emphasizes how far this man has fallen in power. He slaughtered so many to maintain his societal stature. It's all led to him being so vulnerable and at the mercy of this stranger. Shortly after that, the final 30 seconds of The Irishman transpire as a dialogue-free, aching portrayal of pervasive loneliness. Only the hum of lights occupies the soundtrack while dark shadows fill the frame's corners. Save for one quick close-up shot, these final 30 seconds occur as a wide shot. Here, Sheeran is as distant from the camera as he is from everyone else in the world.

Painful loneliness is palpable in these exquisite endings. Such a powerful atmosphere derived from evocative sparseness could only be possible under top-caliber filmmakers like Park Chan-wook and Martin Scorsese. These artists have each created sublime endings that creatively and unforgettably depict the most hollow of victories. Man-su secured the job, his childhood home, and financial stability. Sheeran outlived everyone else in the gangster underworld. 

In the process, they've secured lives that aren't prosperous. Man-su's wife, Lee Mi-ri (Son Ye-jin), now (unbeknownst to him) knowledgeable about her husband's barbarism, will never look at him the same way. Corpses, meanwhile, litter Sheeran's mind, whether it's the people he killed in World War II, the hits he executed for the mob, or the friends he's lost (or slaughtered). These two fictional characters are technically existing in the aftermath of "victories," yet they've lost so much. To boot, neither man is about to die or change their status quo as their respective stories end. These tormented existences will go on and on long after the credits finish rolling.

Such endings fascinate me. They're extensions of conclusions in ancient yarns like Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, where ironically gut-wrenching endings await morally complicated protaganists. "Finally [getting] what you want," as Man-su knows too well, doesn't solve all your problems. At once so classical and contemporarily relevant (particularly Choice's searing look at the modern job market), more than just immense artistry binds No Other Choice and The Irishman's unforgettable endings. They also reflect the inevitable outcome of blood-soaked, morally-compromised existences. As Guillermo del Toro so poetically described The Irishman's ending for Variety: 

"Dead are his enemies, and the places in which they dwelled. Gone are the reasons for their demise and the laurels of his victory. There he stands in the lateness of the hour, with his ghosts, consumed by regret — lacking any comprehension or insight — overwhelmed by the final silence.  Bypassed by history, forgotten, abandoned by all."

No Other Choice and The Irishman are haunting ballads of men trapped in prisons they carved with betrayal and bloodshed. They toiled and killed to get to the top. All that awaited them was an army of mechanical co-workers and a slightly ajar door. 

Kangaroos, Robert Downey Jr., and deceptively chatty canines...MLK weekend family movies are a trip

January isn't quite the toxic cinematic wasteland it's cracked up to be. For sure, studios tend to drop weaker titles and schlockier features in this month that's in between big holidays. However, if you don't live in New York and Los Angeles, many of the biggest arthouse titles are just now coming to your local multiplex in January. Movies like Silence, Selma, and Inside Llewyn Davis (just to name a few contemporary titles) all went into 600+ theaters in a month more known for The Devil Inside and Uwe Boll directorial efforts.

Still, if there is one fixture of this month that's undeniably (largely) crummy, it's the family movies that tend to open on one specific January weekend. Over the three-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend frame, Hollywood typically unleashes dire family movies that wouldn't have a prayer of success anywhere else. As if America hasn't desecrated MLK's memory enough!

The domination of this type of movie over MLK weekend can be traced largely to one Disney movie: Snow Dogs. That infamous Cuba Gooding Jr. star vehicle featured the titular pooches talking up a storm in its ad campaign...only for the dogs to remain voiceless in the final film. Deceptive marketing didn't steer audiences away from the title, though. Given that December 2001 hadn't produced a massive $100+ million family movie domestic grosser, family audiences were hankering for something to get them out of the house. Thus, Snow Dogs became the de facto motion picture of choice for a key, lucrative market. 

Suddenly, a new window for family movies opened up. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer especially took notice of Snow Dogs as a model for a troubled R-rated Australian comedy that was trapped in post-production. After Dogs, Bruckheimer and the feature's team overhauled this property into the PG-rated Kangaroo Jack, complete with making sure the kangaroo briefly became a chatty CG character. The result was January 2003's biggest movie by a considerable margin with a $66.93 million domestic cume. A new strategy was born. Subpar family movies that couldn't make it anywhere else on the calendar could open over MLK weekend and (thanks to a dearth of competition) make a pretty penny. 

By January 2005, two major family movies, Racing Stripes and Are We There Yet?, were launched in January (only the former opened over MLK weekend). A month once devoid of family features was now housing multiple motion pictures targeting this demographic. 2006's Hoodwinked! chalked up another $50+ million domestic performer for January family films, though it would take another three years for the holiday weekend's biggest kid-friendly success story. As the end of the 2000s approached, Paul Blart: Mall Cop became a box office phenomenon opening over 2009's MLK weekend.

Impressively, that same weekend housed another family movie hit, Hotel for Dogs (canine films do well in January, I guess). With $73 million domestically, Hotel for Dogs outgrossed Kangaroo Jack despite direct Paul Blart competition. Tooth Fairy was 2010's foray into January family films (though it didn't open over MLK weekend), while Beauty and the Beast 3D dropped over MLK weekend 2012. Save for The Nut Job's terrific $19 million debut over MLK weekend 2014, though, Hollywood began abandoning this January frame as a family movie launchpad after 2012. The only mid-to-late-2010s exceptions are the first two Paddington films. Otherwise, MLK 2019 and 2016 were devoid of major family movie newcomers.

This void isn't surprising, given the shifts happening in Hollywood at the time. Major American studios were shifting towards making fewer, but more expensive movies. With this strategy alteration, fewer (if any) mid-budget live-action family films were getting made. What family features were still produced were so costly that they couldn't rely on box office performances on par with Snow Dogs and Hotel for Dogs to get by. While the two Paddington films (particularly the first hit feature) did respectable numbers in this frame, Dolittle dropping over MLK weekend 2020 was like an admission of pre-release defeat rather than a sign that this Robert Downey Jr. star vehicle was the next Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Hastening the decline of the MLK weekend family movie was a little title by the name of The LEGO Movie. A month after the dismal Nut Job ransacked $50+ million from North American audiences, The LEGO Movie shattered expectations with a $257 million domestic cume. That comedy opened over February 2014's first weekend, or one week before the three-day President's Day weekend holiday. Suddenly, a new corridor for launching family features in the first two months of the year opened up. To boot, it could produce megahits right in line with Hollywood's "bigger=better" mantra.

For the major studios, it wasn't even a question of whether or not they wanted a Snow Dogs or LEGO Movie in terms of box office numbers. MLK weekend quickly became a ghost town in the late 2010s (save for Paddington 2) while the pre-President's Day weekend housed The LEGO Batman Movie and Peter Rabbit. In 2020, Sonic the Hedgehog (opening over the President's Day weekend frame) did circles around MLK weekend family movie Dolittle, a sign of how much baton had been passed when it came to family movie scheduling.

There's been no real attempt in the 2020s (thus far) to revive the MLK weekend family movie. Last year, Paddington in Peru even shifted its U.S. release date from January 17, 2025 to February 14, 2025. Even that marmalade enthusiast has abandoned the timeframe that he once dominated. For 2026, the only new MLK weekend family movie is Charlie the Wonderdog (somehow starring Owen Wilson). Given that Wonderdog's distributor has never released a movie that's grossed over $4.3 million domestically, I doubt it's going to leave much of a box office mark. Universal is also putting Madagascar back into a little over 1,000 theaters. Neither is exactly Kangaroo Jack 2.0 in terms of box office potential.

The kind of family films that once thrived theatrically over this holiday, like dog-centric movies or Kevin James star vehicles, are now (if they even get made at all) dropping on Netflix and Prime Video. Major Hollywood studios won't make them period and the ones that do get created head to the small screen. No wonder this weekend's now such a non-starter for family movies at the box office. But hey, at least this holiday weekend's cinematic offerings did give the world Monster Trucks. Yes, Creech's cinematic debut hit theaters on January 13, 2017 after countless delays, and Paramount Pictures wrote down the film as a massive box office bomb (how rude to do that before its debut). Go away, Kangaroo Jack. Sayanora, deceptive Snow Dogs canine. Sorry, snarky houseflies from Racing Stripes. Creech is the champion of January family movie cinema. She may not have done much at the box office, but her artistry stands heads and shoulders above The Nut Job and its ilk. Once more, into the Creech, as they say.

Why Has The Academy Awards Struggled Recognizing International Performances From Non-White Actors?

The answer to the above question should be obvious. After all #OscarsSoWhite. There has only ever been one Black Best Actress Oscar winner in the 97-year history of the Academy Awards (Halle Berry in Monster's Ball is the lone victor). There are immense struggles to get English-language performances from actors of color on the radars of Academy voters. It's unsurprising that international performances from actors of color also struggle to get Best Actor, Best Actress, etc. Oscar nominations.

Still, this erasure of international non-white performances at the Oscars fascinates me, especially as the Oscars have begun annually nominating multiple foreign language titles for Best Picture. Thanks to external factors like the increasingly globalized Oscars voting base and the decline of the mid-budget American movie, international cinema has begun excitingly and regularly winning categories like Best Original Song, Best Sound, and Best Animated Feature. However, Oscar nominated non-white international performances are still a rarity at this ceremony. 

What's going on here? And more importantly, what great performances has the Academy snubbed through this practice?

At the 34th Academy Awards, Sophia Loren's Two Women performance became the first foreign language turn not hailing from either an American film or feature primarily in English to get an acting Oscar nomination. To boot, it won the Best Actress trophy that year. From there, a smattering of French, Italian, Swedish, and Slovakian performances garnered acting Oscar nominations in the 60s and 70s. A common overlapping element, though, was that these performances all originated from European countries. Hiroshi Teshigahara's The Woman in the Dunes (which hailed from Japan) could score a Best Director nod, but its integral performances were MIA in the Oscar acting categories.

When non-white actors delivering non-English performances do win Oscars, it's for films that are produced in America. Benicio del Toro's turn in Traffic as Javier Rodriguez, largely done in Spanish, inhabited an American feature from director Steven Soderbergh. Steven Yeun and Youn Yuh-jung's unforgettable Minari turns (largely realized in Korean) existed in an A24 film shot in America. The rare, welcome exceptions in this department are Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira's Roma performances. Otherwise, international cinema acting nominations are exclusively the domain of white European performers like Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Roberto Benigni, and Isabelle Huppert.

Even Parasite, a film that the Academy heaped endless Oscars onto, didn't escape this trajectory. Song Kang-ho and Cho Yeo-jeong's performances (among many other excellent turns) were snubbed that year in a crop of acting Oscar nominations that were almost exclusively white (Cynthia Erivo in Harriet was the lone exception), Parasite remains one of only three 21st-century Best Picture Oscar winners to score no acting Oscar nominations. One of those other three is the English-language feature Slumdog Millionaire which, like Parasite, entirely utilized actors of Asian descent.*

So what's going on here? Why didn't Takashi Shimura score heaps of Oscar nominations on his lifetime? How did the two iconic central Drive My Car performances not get any Oscar love? Why is Wagner Moura (a white guy, as his movie, The Secret Agent, itself notes) the only foreign language performer getting any Oscar buzz this year?

Part of this stems from a general hostility to international cinema from American audiences. While Life is Beautiful and Pelle the Conqueror got into the Oscars acting categories, titles with subtitles have often been as "boring" or "extra challenging" to watch by American voters. Given how the Oscars voting base largely focused exclusively on a small class of American figures for so long, it's not surprising Kareena Kapoor as "Poo" in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was ignored while Eddie Redmayne and Jared Leto have Oscar nods (Redmayne has TWO!).

Plus, the Oscars have historically had a dismal track record of representing non-white faces at this ceremony. Don't forget, Michelle Yeoh's Everything Everywhere All At Once Best Actress Oscar nomination made her only the second Asian performer (following Merle Oberon in The Dark Angel) to be recognized in that category. The same erasure that kept Nickel Boys out of the acting categories last year (how did Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor not get a Best Supporting Actress nod there?!?) also ensures international actors of color are unspeakably scarce at the Oscars. This horrific history means the Oscars have missed out on acknowledging truly incredible turns like Leila Hatami in A Separation or Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love.

I also have a totally speculative reason why these performances don't gain more Oscar traction: unfamiliarity with the actors. So much Oscar momentum is based not necessarily on artistry, but on stories. "Leonardo DiCaprio is overdue for an Oscar!" "This is the movie we need right now!" "Finally, you're getting your time to shine!" These are the phrases peppering major entertainment publications as Oscar season gets into full swing. Such sagas that'll resonate with Oscar voters are easier to concoct when they involve performers whom voters are familiar with. 

Character actor J.K. Simmons, for instance, has been in the industry for ages. That omnipresence gave Sony Pictures Classics an edge when crafting his Best Supporting Actor campaign for Whiplash. They could promote this performance as not just sublime, but a way to give an industry veteran his flowers. That's not to detract from the outstandingly tense and bravura work Simmons delivered in that 2014 masterpiece. Rather, it's a sign of how even great performances can get an extra Oscar boost from Western voters being familiar with their work.

In contrast, many turns from international actors of color are from performers Western Academy members may be unfamiliar with. A typical Oscar voter is going to know the entire career of Leonardo DiCaprio. They may be less familiar with Lee Byung-hun or Shu Qi and how their 2025 performances reflect or fascinatingly respond to their earlier work. To boot, international titles of all stripes are typically handled by tinier or even entirely homegrown outfits in America. Without Netflix, Comcast, Disney, or even A24 money at their side, these distributors don't have the resources to get international performances on the radar of Oscar voters. 

All of these reasons shouldn't be seen as excuses or rationalizations of this long-standing Oscar erasure. Rather, they reflect the frustrating problems plaguing this awards show that still has so much sway over the larger culture and a film's theatrical run.

However, let's end this piece on a more upbeat note and give roses to the various international performances that the Oscars won't (barring a miracle) be recognizing at the 98th Academy Awards. For starters, Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice is crammed full of outstanding turns. Leading man Lee Byung-hun is a master of physical, ineptitude-driven comedy in his absorbing performance. Son Ye-jin as his character's wife is also a riveting treat. The Voice of Hind Rajab similarly has an excellent cast, with the standout here being Saja Kilani as Rana. She's confined to a chair and being framed only from the waist-up for much of Hind Rajab, yet Kilani still delivers a soul-shattering turn. Her raw portrayal of feeling devastated at the world's injustices will leave any viewer distraught.

Jackson Yee inhabits so many different characters and archetypes of cinema's history throughout the absorbing Resurrection. It's a towering work embodying versatility. Ma Shih-Yuan in Left-Handed Girl is remarkable, while Alice Carvalho absolutely owns the screen with her one big scene as Fátima in The Secret Agent. Then there's the entire cast of It Was Just An Accident, which features nary a dud performance. The film's MVP, though, is Mariam Afshari as Shiva. Her climactic monologue when she finally unleashes all the torment she's been forced to bottle up will haunt my dreams forever and ever. She's delivering the kind of mesmerizing work that should automatically inhabit any discussions of 2025's best performances. However, Mariam Afshari's artistry doesn't need award nominations to justify its greatness. This kind of exquisite work will live on and on, even after the Oscars inevitably snub it and any other 2025 international performances from non-white actors for a nomination.

* = amusingly, the third film in this equation is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which has the whitest cast imaginable.

The 83rd Golden Globes let down talented nominated artists with paeans to toxicity

An It Was Just An Accident image demonstrating what everyone had to do after viewing the 83rd Golden Globes catastrophe

Well, at least Ricky Gervais didn't show up in-person.

Like a browbeaten  Franz Kafka protagonist returning to work at a dead-end job even after turning into a cockroach, I shuffled into my couch last night to once more watch the Golden Globes. Each year I swear I'm done. This will be the year I skip this award ceremony, I'm always complaining about. Yet, like terrible clockwork, my eyeballs remain glued to this glitzy debacle. I'm predictable. I'm resistant to change. As AJR once sang, "I'm weak." But hey, at least I wasn't the person in charge of the music at the 83rd Golden Globes.

If any element encapsulated what a boondoggle this enterprise was, it was the barrage of random modern pop tunes scattered throughout the ceremony. Only occasionally (like Timothee Chalamet's Marty Supreme win being accompanied by "Everybody Wants to Rule the World") did the tunes remotely make sense win for what was happening on-screen. Mostly, it was a grab-bag of familiar yet incongruous pop songs just blaring over people walking to the stage or presenters coming to the stage. Were the producers worried that viewers would stop paying attention if they didn't have "stimulation" every second of the ceremony?

That concern would certainly explain the presence of the two announcers that kept weighing down the 83rd Golden Globes. Kevin Frazier and Marc Malkin were tasked with doing the "coming up...Best Animated Feature" segways into commercial or dialogue while winners strolled up to the stage. Frazier and Malkin's approach to this task was to emulate a pair of boisterous radio DJs who compel you to switch to another station the moment they start talking. Their banter was cringe-inducing, while their delivery of lines like "will [Chalamet] thank Kylie Jenner again? We are about...to...find...out!" was way too hammy, even in award season, a realm that gave us Ariana DeBose's "Angela Bassett did the thing" line.

Irritating is the only word for Frazier and Malkin's antics. I instinctively began to groan the moment they started talking. Worse, combining them with the overt needle drops as folks like Stellan Skarsgard walked to the podium imbued the proceedings with the wrong kind of excess. The days of Donald Sutherland at the Oscars dropping a behind-the-scenes tidbit about Shrek (which just won Best Animated Feature) while soaring orchestral music plays are apparently gone. Now it's all about overstimulation that woefully distracts from the movies themselves.

The art that the Golden Globes are supposed to be highlighting kept getting lost in the shuffle during the 83rd Golden Globes. This included the weird choice to not show clips from the various movies/TV shows when the acting category nominees were announced. Who wants to see why Chase Infiniti and Lee Byung-hun are getting universal raves when you can just cut to a wide shot of the entire ballroom with as little yellow dot indicating where these people are sitting? Rather than letting viewers appreciate tremendous artistic accomplishments, these wide images just conveyed cold distance. 

Then there were the disgraceful elements of the ceremony that dramatically undercut the most moving moments from the various acceptance speeches. Teyana Taylor concluded her richly deserved Best Supporting Actress win (for One Battle After Another) by declaring:

"To my brown sisters and little brown girls watching tonight, our softness is not a liability. Our depth is not too much. Our light does not need permission to shine. We belong in every room we walk into. Our voices matter, and our dreams deserve space."

What a magnificent speech. Shortly afterward, Frazier and Malkin kicked off the first of many Polymarket plugs during the ceremony. These showed viewers which of the nominees were the favorites to win per this crypto-driven prediction market's users. First of all, keep some element of showmanship and surprise in an awards show. Don't just blare "this is whose the favorite to win!" More importantly, crypto services have been shown to heavily affect Black and Brown communities, including how data centers fueling crypto and AI are being built on "environmental racism" targeting those marginalized populations. Teyana Taylor made a righteous plea for a Black and Brown women to remember their humanity. The 83rd Golden Globes kept highlighting a service and practice running counter to that humanity.

Then there was the fucking UFC promo, oh God. One of those announcers made the declaration that "these next two presenters are so in demand we had to get muscle  from the UFC to protect them." A pair of UFC fighters then came out in a clumsily arranged shot before they immediately left the stage. Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club" then played as the Heated Rivalry duo came out. The joke was already a weird one predicated on "UFC machismo and then SURPRISE! Gay stuff!" It was also eyeroll-worthy corporate synergy, as the parent company of CBS (the new broadcast home of the Golden Globes), Paramount Skydance, just announced a long-term deal to air UFC fights.

What made this especially disgusting, though, was that it happened right after The Secret Agent won Best International Feature. This movie about working-class people banding together in the face of totalitarianism and the horrors of living under fascism is a masterpiece. Yet director Kleber Mendonça Filho's acceptance speech was shamefully cut short, while this UFC plug got to play without any trims. 

Even more egregiously, the UFC is an organization (like Paramount Skydance) in deep cahoots with fascism, including the "grand wizard" (as Bob Ferguson would say) in the Oval Office. How sickening to provide a pat on the head to a movie so masterfully exploring the horrors of existing under fascism only to then devote screentime to a fascism-endorsing sport. The marginalized and working-class voices that The Secret Agent elevates and underscores are the same ones UFC head Dana White and other leaders in this organization constantly dehumanize. The whiplash here was staggering. Like the Oscars giving No Other Land the Best Documentary Feature Oscar while refusing to support one of its directors when he was attacked by IDF soldiers, this Golden Globes ceremony couldn't follow even 10% of the moral convictions of its nominated artists.

These disgusting developments combined with other baffling moments, like Snoop Dogg's befuddling Best Podcast category presentation (if that sentence doesn't describe a layer of Hell, I'll eat my hat) or Panic! at the Disco's "High Hopes" playing when KPop Demon Hunters won Best Animated Feature (why not play "Soda Pop," "Takedown," or "What It Sounds Like" from the actual movie?!?) made for an entirely bizarre ceremony. The outside world is burning down. ICE agents are killing human beings like Renee Good. Nobody reasonable would expect the ceremony that nominated The Tourist for Best Picture to have the good sense to "lead the revolution." A little more tact to not shill for crypto and UFC, though, is not too much to ask.

What's sad is, whenever the everyday artists making great movies got up on stage, the ceremony finally had a warmth and humanity that was irresistible. The KPop Demon Hunters Best Original Song speech was such a lovely ode to the struggling dreams. "Rejection is just redirection" is a great mantra that I'll be adding to my everyday lexicon. Paul Thomas Anderson giving a special thank you to Regina Hall in his One Battle After Another speech was deeply moving, ditto his tribute to the late assistant director Adam Somner. Also loved that Chloé Zhao gave Ryan Coogler a shout-out from the stage about their time together in Sundance Labs. Man, those two being in the same room decades ago, what I wouldn't have given to be there.

The 83rd Golden Globes, unfortunately, needed more of that rich humanity or even just memorable spectacle (like the Best Original Song performances at the Oscars) to make the three hours function nicely as satisfying "bread and circuses." Instead, it was a clumsy experience marked by janky audio cuts (I lost count of how many times a presenter saying "the nominees are..." got drowned out by orchestral music that was cued up too soon) and limp writing for the presenters. The lack of footage showcasing the nominated movies/performances/TV shows just made the whole thing feel less like an ode to a year of artistry and more like a chance for Paramount Skydance/Silicon Valley synergy. Why did I see Polymarket bullshit more often than Sinners footage?

The distracting presence of toxicity was exemplified by Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos lurching over the table belonging to Warner Bros. title One Battle After Another. This man, whose dedicated years to slaughtering movie theaters, now lurched over a collection of talent behind a film exemplifying the joys and craftsmanship going into theatrical cinema. I know Sarandos and the other Netflix brass have purchased Warner Bros., but they don't own it yet. I also know Sarandos is always at major award shows, including the Golden Globes. However, why was he seated here or allowed to sit there? It was so gross to constantly see him and be reminded that Warner Bros. will soon get swallowed up by the folks endorsing Tony Hinchcliffe.

In presenting the night's penultimate awards, Julia Roberts said this was a night for "artists". She did not say it was an event for Silicon Valley Baron Harkonnen to remind everyone of his monopolistic cultural ambitions. Unfortunately, folks like Sarandos were at the forefront of the 83rd Golden Globes. Many of the films nominated at this show, like Sinners, The Secret Agent, One Battle After Another, It Was Just An Accident, and No Other Choice, implored audiences to look around and challenge the wider world. The 83rd Golden Globes, meanwhile, asked viewers to shut up and hug their new daddy, Polymarket. 

Sidenote: Hey, it looks like Scott Gairdner, the co-host of my favorite podcast (Podcast: the Ride), directed the AMC Theatres podcast segment! No wonder Griffin Newman made a voice-over cameo in this bit, I got so excited when I heard his voice, I was just listening to his PtR Timekeeper episode in the gym yesterday.

Let your guard down and embrace the unique craftsmanship of The Testament of Ann Lee

Musicals make people more uncomfortable than nearly any other genre. Countless stories exist of people groaning the moment they realize a motion picture involves people singing. Movie marketers are terrified of promoting that motion pictures, like Wonka, are actually musicals. This hostility has even infiltrated corners of the genre's modern form. Musical movies themselves now often feature characters making self-satirical "oh God, please, no singing!" jabs (see: Spirited).

I couldn't tell you why there's so much discomfort over this style of cinematic storytelling. Maybe it's because the very sight of human beings crooning about their feelings instantly jolts people away from reality. Perhaps general audiences are self-conscious about watching anything that's "silly". Whatever's behind it, I was reminded of people's chagrin with musicals at my Testament of Ann Lee screening. As the runtime wore on, attendees trickled out of the auditorium like water flowing from a barrel's fracture. There were also constant instances of people's phones/smart watches buzzing brightly or individuals scattering to the bathroom.

It was clear this crowd was uncomfortable with this period piece ballad littered with extravagant displays of singing and physicality. Me? I'm the weirdo who loves bravura musicals like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Better Man, and The Lure. Naturally, The Testament of Ann Lee was right up my alley. Better yet, the feature also channeled the bittersweet atmosphere of First Cow. It's like writer/director Mona Fastvold cooked this one up in a lab for me.

The Testament of Ann Lee's Story and Approach to Reality

Growing up in Manchester, Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried) was raised to believe that there's a certain order to things. Women do what men want. Religion is used to inspire fear and hostility between people. As she grows up, Lee and her brother William (Lewis Pullman) become enamored with a new approach to religion from a group that eventually becomes known as the Shakers. These are souls who express themselves through elaborate "dance" routines and chants. After ceaseless hardship (including the loss of four children during childbirth), Lee becomes deeply entrenched in this religion.

That's a bit of an understatement, actually. She eventually becomes the movement's figurehead. Letting a woman serve as the centerpiece of a Christ-driven religion makes her coalition (which emphasizes non-violence, celibacy, and harmony between all people) a target. There's only one place where she and her people can fulfill their fullest potential: America. Here, Ann Lee and her followers build up land where they can realize all their wildest dreams. Unfortunately, new forms of turmoil and aggressive oppression also await them.  

Fastvold and fellow screenwriter Brady Corbet keep viewers constantly on their toes throughout Ann Lee with compelling contradictions. For instance, though Ann Lee's high stature in her religious community is apparent, Fastvold's camera doesn't hold back in emphasizing this woman's vulnerability. Her most distraught moments in incarceration or during childbirth reinforce how we're watching an often endangered human being.

Simultaneously, this entire film is narrated by Lee's friend Mary Partington (Thomasin McKenzie), who emphasizes how certain aspects of Lee's life are now lost to legend. Did she speak in just 12 different languages in one confrontation with English authorities...or 72? Perhaps she just rambled in tongues on that fateful night? Partington's narration and the visuals leave this ambiguous. Equally uncertain are segments like John Hocknell (David Cale) pointing his finger outward and harmonizing as he pursues the ideal terrain for Lee's colony. Partington suggests this particular sequence is based on legend...could it have actually happened this way?

Whether or not Lee is actually imbued with the power of God is even left up to viewers. Throughout The Testament of Ann Lee, one can simultaneously perceive divine and practical explanations of various "holy visions" or psychological breakthroughs. The duality and quietly shifting definition of "reality" don't just provide an inspired bedrock for an unorthodox musical. It also makes for a sublime template for a religious-based movie. I remember as a child getting in trouble with church higher-ups for daring to ask if stories like Jonah and the Whale were allegories rather than straightforward facts. With The Testament of Ann Lee, Fastvold encourages the inquiries that I was encouraged to stifle as an adolescent.

Bouncing between reality and legend, not to mention blurring the line between the two, Ann Lee ingeniously taps into religious mythology's enigmatic qualities. Plus, it makes for a captivating feature. 

All Hail Amanda Seyfried

Impressively, even while oscillating between surrealism and reality, Fastvold unwaveringly makes Ann Lee consistently transfixing. Part of that comes from the inspired casting of Amanda Seyfried in the role. This performer's always carried such an immense soulfulness in her physicality and vocals. Even in a frothy good time like Mamma Mia!, her voice carried palpable humanity and yearning in songs like "Honey, Honey." She ropes you into her characters' interior worlds and makes their longing and ambitions so real they might as well be your own. Those gifts are why she's such a great anchor and audience point-of-view character for Jennifer's Body, for example.

Here, Seyfried's performance, like Fastvold's script, doesn't lose sight of Ann Lee as a human being. You can see rich, heartbreaking pain in her eyes (rooted in all the loss she's suffered) when she's cuddling with a friend against a snowy window, even as Lee's voice speaks of resilience and ambition. Seyfried's engrossing presence depicting Lee giving grandiose speeches or intimately talking to newcomers, meanwhile, makes it apparent why anyone would follow Lee as a religious leader. Whether it's shouting to the rafters about the world's injustices or making fresh faces feel like they're the only two people in a crowded room, Seyfried realizes each side of the character marvelously. The down-to-earth and mythological versions of Lee both come so naturally to her.

As for the sequences where Seyfried really leaves it all on the floor, there's really no other word for her work other than "jaw-dropping." A musical number entitled "Hunger and Thirst" especially excels in this department. Here, Seyfried (in a largely unbroken single-take) portrays a starved Lee writhing on a prison floor reaffirming her surrender to a higher spiritual power. With no props, a detailed background, or extravagant physicality to draw from, Seyfried still more than justifies the camera's unblinking nature. How could one look away from such a stripped-down depiction of a human being's enduring spirit? 

This whole sequence is a masterful showcase of acting-based conviction, yet while watching The Testament of Ann Lee, it didn't register as that. I just perceived this sequence as a raw look at Ann Lee's dedication to her deity. Seyfried's talents are so immense that they never distract or overwhelm the story and character she's servicing, the sign of a truly legendary actor. 

Luscious Visuals And Melancholy Themes Are a Holy Triumph In Ann Lee

Given that this feature hails from the same creative team behind The Brutalist, you know Testament of Ann Lee was going to deliver on the glorious imagery front. Brutalist cinematographer Lol Crawley and The World to Come (Fastvold's directorial debut) lenser André Chemetoff sat this one out, which means cinematographer William Rexer gets to tackle his biggest feature film to date. Shockingly, his grandiose Ann Lee visuals are an improvement on his camerawork from three of Movie 43's segments. There's so much painterly beauty scattered throughout this title, particularly in how Fastvold and Rexer lean into the distinctive moods evoked by natural weather. Elements like melancholy snowfall or blisteringly hopeful sunlight work wonders in informing some of the feature's most unforgettable tableaus. 

The theatricality in the cinematography echoes the grandiose sensibilities of The Testament of Ann Lee as a whole film. Several sequences, namely anytime hordes of people begin to fiercely dance and harmonize together, are absolutely stunning in their gusto. Everything is being left on the floor in these set pieces, and it's remarkable to witness. An inevitable, devastating climactic sequence where everything goes to Hell, and Ann Lee is attacked, is similarly transfixing (albeit for more heartbreaking reasons). 

This and other Ann Lee scenes practically grabbed my head and commanded my attention. It's always extraordinary to experience instances where a motion picture truly comes alive, and it feels like you're barely holding on. Fastvold's filmmaking impressively overwhelmed and captivated me, an experience only enhanced by watching these images on a grand big screen.

It is in that shattering finale that The Testament of Ann Lee's melancholy core is reinforced. Like First Cow, this is a story about what attributes can't survive in Europe or America. Subverting rigid gender norms? Emphasizing kindness instead of cyclical violence? Daring to suggest we're all equal and worthy of love? Those won't thrive in colonial spaces built on genocide and repressive religion. Fastvold's vision of Ann Lee depicts hostilities against her as a precursor to the motivations behind subsequent American horrors like the Tulsa Race Massacre, the murder of Wyatt Outlaw, the Lavender Scare, the murder of Renee Good by ICE agents, and so many other events. 

Anyone who dares to "challenge" white male power structures, whether by active protest or simply existing. will be brutalized. Like those two men at the heart of First Cow who just want to make biscuits and tend to a cow, Ann Lee's hopeful vision of religion is at odds with a crueler, larger world. Her dream cannot last. That adds an extra aching core to this beautifully-realized movie, not to mention a center that's tragically very relevant. A bunch of men getting fantatically violent over what kind of genitalia a woman (in this case Ann Lee) has...why does that sound familiar? 

Once more, The Testament of Ann Lee astonishes in how many seemingly paradoxical plates it juggles with such finesse. Resonating as so horrifically relevant to post-1700s American events doesn't deprive Ann Lee and these characters of their emotional immediacy. Their world still registers as so beautifully immersive and discernibly 18th century. Chalk part of that up to the terrific visuals. The way light seeps into interior domains in this pre-electricity world, for instance, really makes one feel like they've stepped into a time machine. Committed work from the stacked ensemble cast also goes a long way towards making Ann Lee's period piece backdrop work. Everyone speaks in jagged accents (combinations of Irish and British accents, specifically) and an old-timey vernacular that aren't polished up to make Ann Lee and company sound more "accessible" to modern audiences. 

Whether it's in its critical examination of America's history, its most bravura set pieces, or just the outstanding costume and production design (props to Malgorzata Karpiuk and Sam Bader, respectively, on those two departments), The Testament of Ann Lee astonished me. This movie's ambitions are so grand that it even pulls off some humorous moments (namely, some bits centered on John praying) without upsetting the delicate tone. Paradoxical creative impulses are executed with grace here from top to bottom. After her striking and unflinching directorial debut, Fastvold has returned with an even more ambitious yet similarly striking filmmaking accomplishment. If you're adverse to musical cinema in general, Ann Lee won't be your cup of tea. For the rest of us, who prefer "Naatu Naatu" and Phantom of the Paradise to "gritty reality," come bask in this sensational filmmaking.