Fans of the book by Alice Kellen probably already know–Netflix’s “The Map of Longing” is more “The Fault in Our Stars” than “Bridgerton.” Yes, the Spanish series is adapted from an adult romance, but it brings a certain teenage melancholy, even as its characters are ostensibly in their 20s. So expect more earnest coming of age (think the driver’s test) and less randy fun (the sex is pretty tame, even if we do see more flesh than U.S. audiences are accustomed to).

The premise goes something like this: Greta Álvarez (a charming Alícia Falcó) believes she was born with a purpose–to save her immunocompromised sister Lucy (Georgina Amorós). But it doesn’t work, and Lucy dies in her early twenties, leaving behind a grieving family who has to figure out what life is like when the departed sister’s illness is no longer organizing their days.

The show opens after all the business of dying is done, with Greta, her mother (Laia Marull), and her father (Mario de la Rosa) stuck in their grief as they’re supposed to be carrying on. Then a handsome stranger arrives–Will Tucker (a brooding Pablo Álvarez)–with a game from beyond the grave, containing a series of challenges that Lucy created to help her family process their loss, and hopefully, live loudly and bravely.

It is maudlin and overwrought. This is a series filled with golden light and twee settings from Will’s cozy trailer to the hip but quiet bar where he works. But it also has quite a lot to say about the contours of grief. It’s hard not to shed real tears as Greta processes hers–the finality of her loss and the way it ricochets out across her life feels both real and too much to bear. And the setting reflects this: her home is a mess, where unwashed dishes and discarded tissues rule. She has to leave to find some light, but she also has to return to address her sadness at its roots.

The series is smart in portraying the family’s different responses as all valid. Her mother watches TV all day in a trance, deep in depression. Her father goes to work and seems to be functioning, even as he’s clearly avoiding his family and emotions. Greta, meanwhile, sets out to process her loss through Lucy’s game. She’s initially reluctant to accept her sister’s help, talk with Will, or participate in therapy. But she trusts her sister and slowly progresses to a better emotional relationship with her loss, thanks to the strength of their bond.

Sadly, “The Map of Longing” has neither insight nor curiosity in the male condition. Will appears as a handsome, mysterious stranger, and that’s the character at its most dynamic. In the second act, he shares his mysterious past, but the reveal makes no sense, turning him from a private person to an impossible fantasy. The show argues that there are “two Wills” and a brush with tragedy changed him–but the transition is too severe to believe. And the six-part series only gives a passing phrase as a way of explanation for how Will, who seems so gentlemanly and sensitive, could ever have been so callous in his past. The audience is simply to believe the delusion that his interactions with the Álvarez sisters could change his very being–from the way he stands to what he values–with their love and acceptance.

It’s pure fantasy, and an immature one at that. The first episode leans into this adolescent approach, making Greta the plucky heroine of too many Disney films, the one who talks too much, doesn’t know her own limitations, but somehow solves her problems with doe-eyed resourcefulness. Thankfully, in the second hour, “The Map of Longing” already starts to move away from that characterization, letting Greta feel and question in ways that match her situation and not the dream of it.

Falcó does a strong job here, even as she’s stuck with a series of strange costume choices like bad bangs for both her past and her future self. She gamely takes on her character’s plucky disposition, finding depth as her writing gets better, and showing a slow transition in fits and starts as Greta heals. She also has excellent chemistry with Álvarez, who is more likely to overplay his hand and is unable to coalesce his fractured character into a recognizable human being.

Still, it’s hard not to root for this young woman to get everything she desires—including the handsome Will, who, within this universe, certainly won’t harm her. It’s party how Falcó lights up from within as she starts to make progress, finally allowing herself to make choices for herself after twenty-plus years of existing for her beloved sister. It’s also the relatability of grief, how terribly universal it is, even if we each respond differently. Greta’s mourning is not overly sentimental or trite. It is lived in.

And so while her journey may feel too pat at times, there’s real catharsis here in seeing her earn her happiness. May we all be so lucky.

Whole series screened for review. Now on Netflix.

There I was in the spotlight, alongside my daughter, Sonia, playing Blues harmonicas onstage in front of a lively crowd. Was this some sort of a surreal dream? It certainly felt like one in the moment. But this was, in fact, an actual event that occurred on a Friday morning earlier this month. 

It all began with a Chicago Sun-Times article by Neil Steinberg that I read about a Blues Camp for children at Columbia College. I thought surely that this was some sort of misprint. Why were children learning about the Blues, and why would the music be of interest to them? After reading the column, I contacted Neil, who assured me that what he wrote was indeed not a work of fiction. Fernando Jones, whom Sonia recently met by coincidence on her morning walks, had created the international music program, Blues Camp, in 1989, and it has since grown into a recognized nonprofit. 

This realization immediately brought me back to the days of my youth. My love for the Blues began in Grade School. None of my friends could understand why I would want to listen to people they had never heard of like Muddy Waters, Albert King and Howlin’ Wolf. My curiosity had now peaked regarding what sort of kids would attend a camp devoted to Blues music. Thankfully, Sonia is always up for an adventure like I am, so I asked her to join me for the Blues Kids Foundation’s camp recital at Columbia. What we found there entertained and delighted us. 

The stated mission of Fernando’s nonprofit is to preserve, perform and promote Blues among America’s youth, educators, parents and community members. The organization operated as a free Blues Camp for children around the world, focusing on providing cultural, social and emotional enrichment activities for its young participants. Though not all of the budding musicians we saw at Columbia are destined to be breakout performers, we enjoyed how their participation in an ensemble taught them to collaborate and cooperate with each other. It also helped them to be less self-conscious when performing in front of others. There were at least a couple standouts, particularly a ten-year-old bass guitar player named Ricky, whose mannerisms were that of an older Blues man. 

Watching remarkable kids like Ricky caused me to reflect on Chicago’s profoundly rich history of music. We are home to such greats as the Father of Gospel, Thomas Dorsey; the Queen of Gospel, Albertina Walker; Mother Willie Mae Ford; Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers; the Edwin Hawkin Singers; Tammy McCann; and the glorious Mahalia Jackson. We also have Blues greats and other musicians who either were from Chicago or became famous here, from Buddy Guy, Quincy Jones, Earth, Wind and Fire, the Chi-Lites, Herbie Hancock, Nat King Cole, Lou Rawls and Bo Diddley to Esther Phillips, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Jennifer Hudson, Etta James and Chaka Khan, to name a few.

House Music was invented here in Chicago by the late Frankie Knuckles, among others, and thousands flocked to Jackson Park on July 11th for the annual Chosen Few Picnic & Festival honoring him and the other visionaries behind that genre. More recently, Chicago was home to Rappers and Hip-Hop artists like Common, Chance the Rapper, Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Da Brat. What a rich tapestry.

Albertina Walker will be honored posthumously by Calvin Bridges next month on her birthday. Calvin was my classmate at John M. Smyth Elementary School, and recently performed at the inaugural FECK Awards in April. However, his fame extends internationally, where he has been all over the world spreading the Gospel message. He will be joined by singer Sasha Daltonn for Albertina’s birthday celebration. An even bigger event is being planned in Walker’s honor for next year. 

I also feel overcome with immense gratitude for the newspaper article in Roger’s beloved Chicago Sun-Times that had informed me about this amazing camp. Though today’s newspapers are not what they used to be, I do believe that they are still an important and necessary part of our lives, especially when they prioritize local reporting. The Chicago Tribune’s Robert “Colonel” McCormick and the Sun-Times’ Marshall Field III should be commended for establishing Chicago as a leading newspaper town. Though most print media has melted away in recent years, keeping up to date on the daily news cycle is more vital than ever. I doubt the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan would’ve had one of the most successful engagements in the history of Chicago’s Lyric Opera with his sold-out show, A Night of Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, had it not received ample coverage from the city’s papers. 

All of these thoughts were running through my mind as Sonia and I were invited to join a jovial 94-year-old woman from the audience onstage to be taught how to play the blues at the camp recital. It was as surreal a moment for me as any in recent memory, not to mention indicative of how you’re never too young or too old to learn a new skill. 

For more information on Fernando’s Blues camp, visit his organization’s official site.

In anticipation of the upcoming opening of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” let’s take a look back at my article about watching the director’s acclaimed 2010 film, “Inception,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, originally published on August 18, 2020…

NOTE: Elliot Page’s name has been updated to reflect his transition since this original posting.

Perhaps Richard Roeper planted an inception (the idea that movie theaters are still the best way to see a film even during the pandemic) in my head a few weeks ago when he wrote about going to see a film at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. I was agog when I read it. He actually went to the theater even though there are no proven vaccines or readily available treatments for the coronavirus! At that point, I was still too traumatized by the thought of catching COVID-19 and ending up on a ventilator to even think of stepping outside of my bubble to attend a public movie with other audience members. What kind of hygienic steps were they taking? Did they disinfect the seats and restrooms? Were they testing their employees or at least taking their temperatures and making them wear gloves? Were they using sanitizers? Would everyone, including me, have to wear masks the whole time? And more importantly, what kind of steps were they taking to make sure there was no recirculated “CORONA” air wafting throughout the theater?

I could see my way clear to attending one of the drive-in theaters newly mushrooming across the country after reading Matt Fagerholm’s article. At least you stay in your own car and breathe free-flowing outside air and can even take your own goodies if you are too timid to approach the concession stand. But something was compelling about Richard’s article. He had a good time at the movies, watching it with others, and said he would go back as long as they continued to limit the number of attendees. Yet, at that time, I concluded that it would probably be months or even next year before I set foot in a theater again. So it was with utter amazement that I found myself last Friday afternoon in mid-August, sitting in the Music Box Theatre watching Christopher Nolan’s film “Inception.” And I have to admit it was a pretty awesome experience, and I had definitely found my happy place for the day.

From the time I devoured Richard’s article, the small idea he planted in my brain grew. Much like the idea Leonardo DiCaprio had to plant in the brain of the scion of an industrialist in “Inception,” which was celebrating its tenth anniversary with a live 70mm showing. The idea of going to a movie theater was buffeted by our site’s managing editor, Brian Tallerico, even though Brian concluded he would watch it at home rather than take a chance on becoming anxious with every sniffle and sneeze if he went to the theater. Brian exclaimed, “The reason it’s easy to get carried away by ‘Inception’ is simple: it’s one of the most propulsive major blockbusters in history.” (emphasis mine).

I laced up my sneakers and headed out! That is, after going online to purchase a ticket for the 1 pm showing. I didn’t want to take a chance on going later when the theater was sure to be more crowded. Although Brian’s description of Nolan’s ten-year-old film made me want to see it again, it was his statement about the theater reconfiguring their ventilation system so it doesn’t recycle air and only pushes in fresh air from outside that convinced me it was safe enough to venture out. I took a deep breath for courage and set out on my first movie outing since March.

There is something special about watching a Christopher Nolan film. From “Memento” to “Interstellar“, or the ‘Dark Knight” Batman movies and even “The Prestige”, Nolan’s movies draw me in. Whether or not you think his films are ultimately great or merely good, I appreciate the fact that they make me think and give me a worthwhile cinematic experience. Their complexity lets you know that the filmmaker is thinking about the storyline; sometimes it seems as if he is overthinking it, but I’d rather have that than one haphazardly thrown together.

And this time, another payoff for going to the theater was the treat of seeing footage from the making of “Tenet.” If the film is even half as exciting as the footage shot in several countries around the world, it will be a blockbuster. I don’t like making predictions like that based on what is essentially a trailer, but maybe I fell under the spell of being back in an actual movie theater. Or maybe it was listening to John David Washington, sounding like his father, Denzel. Or hearing Nolan talking about why he takes time to so meticulously set up the scenes so he can use as little CGI as possible since certain computer-generated special effects don’t age well. Whatever the reason, I felt as if it was setting me up for another inception idea: returning to the theater when “Tenet” opens. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

My first viewing of “Inception” ten years ago was not wholly satisfactory, even though Roger awarded it four stars. I wanted to love it as much as he did, but I could not. “Inception” is about a corporate raider (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) who uses a combination of architecture and psychology to extract secrets hidden deep inside the recesses of one’s brain. Hold on a minute, you may say. Yes, I know, not your ordinary plot. But Nolan is no ordinary director. In the film, this method, known as extraction, is apparently used more often than we think in both political and industrial espionage because none of the other characters seemed too surprised to be invited to participate in an extraction, which takes place during someone’s dream. Oh, and you can take five or six other people with you into the dream to perform it.

But that’s not all. The other thing a skilled psychological architect can do is plant, rather than extract, the idea or meme in one’s head in the first place. And this is where Nolan is a master. An inception isn’t supposed to be easy, and for that reason, almost no one attempts it according to the plot line. In fact, the film espouses rules of engagement that sound as if they are from a manual for a hypnotist or a psychiatrist. For instance, the idea has to be one that the subject thinks is his from the beginning, not one that was forced on him by another. Also, once you’re in the dream state, you can’t encounter anything so out of the ordinary that it takes you out of the logical or even illogical construct of that particular dreamworld, or it could defeat the extraction or the inception. That makes sense to me. We all have had dreams where, at some point, we realized we were dreaming, and so we began to perceive the world in that dream differently. Your mind either wakes up a bit or you can force it to a deeper level.

Ten years ago, I expressed impatience about why the corporate raider needed an architectural student to help with the inception. Roger’s explanation did assuage my impatience. He asked, “Is it a coincidence that Ariadne (Elliot Page) is named for the woman in Greek mythology who helped Theseus escape from the Minotaur’s labyrinth?” And I was willing to accept Roger’s assertion that  “…the movies often seem to come from the recycling bin…Sequels, remakes, franchises. ‘Inception’ does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics so it feels like it makes more sense than (quite possibly) it does.”

So I just watched and accepted it on the cerebral level of the dreams and dismissed the action parts of it. Back then, I wasn’t aware of the plot of going into dreams presented in “Paprika,” the anime by Satoshi Kon based on the novel by Yasutake Tsutsui. Roger concluded that when Nolan left the labyrinth, he threw away the map. And back then, that was enough for me.

A quick review of some of my growing-up experiences may help you understand why I focused on the film’s dreamy aspects the first time around. I grew up in a house with a mother who was a Minister in the Spiritualist Church. Mother was called a prophet, a seer, a psychic, and more. She never used her “gifts” in a commercial manner, but we, all of her children, knew there was something different about our Mom. She was highly intuitive and perceptive. But she was also the most loving, nurturing creature we knew. We said that when she walked into a room, she brought the sunshine with her. So all the woo-woo stuff was just part of the whole package that we loved and accepted.

When my sister Adele and I played school, we held one class where you had to go to different rooms. One person was tasked with drawing shapes or objects, and the person in the other room had to receive the impressions telepathically or by remote viewing and reproduce them on a piece of paper. Back then, we thought that was normal; didn’t every school child do this? Of course, we found out the answer was no. The other thing we were encouraged to do was talk about our dreams so that we could learn how to distinguish the prophetic ones that would come true from the ordinary dreams that were just images from our subconscious rearranging themselves in our brain.

We were taught about lucid dreaming, where you could go in and tell yourself you were dreaming, then reconstruct events or change the dream to achieve the outcome you desired. If you were plagued by a recurring nightmare where a lion was chasing you, for example, you could give yourself a signal to stop and face the lion and tell it you are not afraid, and it is only a dream, and that you want it to stop chasing you forever. That lion may even become an ally in future dreams. But that particular nightmare will stop. Or if you have human adversaries with whom you cannot find an accommodation, you can face them and order a truce. They too may become an ally, right then and there.

On rare occasions, once you realize you are in a dream, you can surrender and coax yourself deeper into the dream. From that point, however, you must trust whatever may come afterward. One doesn’t always have full control during lucid dreaming. But you learn to give yourself a clue to help you. You can tell yourself to look at your arm. Is it solid? Can you pinch it? Or you can look for a mirror to see if you can see your own reflection or another’s. Or you can put your arms up in the air and just take off flying. Lucid dreaming can get really wild!

You learn that time is so fluid in a dream that five or ten minutes can seem like a whole day of activities. So watching some of the characters age in “Inception” felt so real. In fact, I had a dream where I lived for years with children who lived on another planet and thought they were bred in test tubes. I think I  was some sort of scientist who watched them grow up. Although I didn’t initiate the experiment with these children, I sat in classrooms watching them being taught by others. They were very bright. I observed them on playgrounds, smiling as they developed first crushes or learned how to negotiate behavior with others. 

Somehow, I heard or read their thoughts and knew their belief systems. And so one day, when a quantum flying structure was built that could safely take them to an older planet, they were surprised to learn that they were actually from Earth and that they had parents and relatives down there. I went to Earth with these children and watched them, as teenagers, discover their natural families and learn for the first time that there were other people who looked and laughed and thought like them. On the outer-galactic planet, they were taught to value those most opposite to themselves.

I can still recall the welcome one of the male students received after going to an African country and being overwhelmed by the number of Africans he saw, and the female student who went to China and was similarly overwhelmed when her mother hugged her for the first time. Turns out these students had all been sacrificed by their parents for this experiment, for what they thought would be the good of mankind. At one point, we had a reunion of the students and the people on Earth, and they were asked to sit with social scientists to teach Earthlings how to develop this unconditional compassion and acceptance of others. This was a superpower they developed while living on the other planet.

We traveled all over the globe for these debriefing sessions in the dream. How did I get to each continent with these students? I don’t remember. How did I even get into this dream? I don’t remember. How long was I asleep to be able to observe these children growing from infants to teens? Perhaps a half hour total.  I just remember letting myself go and trusting that the dream would take me somewhere safe. Somehow, I knew part of what was happening to me was a dream, but other parts were so real that I felt like I had lived for years. I was experiencing a dream within a dream. So lucid dreaming is something I was interested in, and seeing it play out in Nolan’s movie ten years ago excited me then and still excites me.

Nevertheless, ten years ago, I didn’t know why Nolan had to take the characters into three deep stages of dreams and even hook up so many other dreamers to invade the dream. That made it too confusing about whose dream we were watching and why odd elements kept turning up. I also didn’t like it when he turned away from the dreamy aspects and had the characters break out fighting, or skiing down mountains in Switzerland like 007 characters on a busman’s holiday. Last Friday, however, after not having been to a movie theater for almost five months, I sat and watched the film with infinite patience. And lo and behold, I understood why Nolan did what he did, and I loved it. It made sense. And whether it did or not, it was damned enjoyable.

This time I didn’t question whether the totem, the object DiCaprio and his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) twirled to let them know they were dreaming, or in whose dream they were visiting, would keep twirling at the end or wobble and fall. It didn’t make a difference to me. I was just appreciating the layers of Nolan’s film, even the fight scenes, the guns, the snow, and the matching white snowsuits. As Jodorowsky would say, it was a feast for the eyes. I was fully immersed in the world of “Inception” while I was in the theater. Even the preparatory experience of walking into the theater and seeing the ticket takers wearing gloves and having an usher help me find a seat by checking the carefully laid out spaces on her clipboard was comforting. It assured that I would be far enough away from other patrons so that if they took off their masks to eat popcorn, I wouldn’t be affected. It helped put me in a dream state where I can’t recall each specific element of that process, but I can recall the feeling of safety.

There are times today in 2020 when we may question whether this pandemic world is a dream from which we will awaken. Or whether we are caught in the loop of some giant’s dream from another planet, until we go to level two or even level three and find some totem to help us escape. All I know is that it has been a few days since I was at the movies, and so far I have not had a sniffle or a sneeze or a sore throat or any symptoms that made me regret my foray to the Music Box. And as much as I loved the preview of “Tenet,” I can’t promise that I will be back at the Music Box to watch it. Not unless my dream world, where we are inoculated against COVID-19 with much stronger antibodies, comes true. Now that is a dream I want to wake up to.

In the 2020s, horror television has become a genre led and shaped by Black men. While the genre was overwhelmingly white in the 2000s and 2010s, with shows like “Supernatural” and “The Walking Dead” dominating the cultural sphere, the 2020s have given Black actors the space to lead this ever-expanding genre into a new era. Modern horror television is finally allowing its Black male leads to explore the harsh realities of being Black in these respective universes, while allowing the actors who inhabit them to command the screen as inherently flawed heroes, vigilantes, and villains. 

AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” debuted in 2022, introducing viewers to a new take on Anne Rice’s bloodsucker: Louis De Pointe Du Lac (Jacob Anderson) was transformed from a white slave owner into a multifaceted Black brothel owner. Creator Rolin Jones transformed the character into a richer version of the stagnant protagonist, with Louis now commanding the screen and forcing the reformation of this new narrative, rather than having it simply move around him. Tethered to humanity not simply because of his aversion to consuming human blood, Louis’ position as a Black man in 1910s New Orleans conflicts with his newfound life as a powerful creature of the night. 

Recently revamped as “The Vampire Lestat,” now taking place in the present day, the series continues to force Louis to confront the realities of his existence, and Anderson delivers a career-defining performance as a broken man haunted by his past, present, and future. Since the show’s inception, Louis’ race has forged an intrinsic bond between him and his Black pseudo-daughter, Claudia (Bailey Bass, Delainey Hayles), whose murder in season two propels him on a journey of reconciliation and revenge in the present day. Like all vampires in the series, Louis’ monstrosity is never shied away from; instead, it flourishes beneath his veins as an inherent aspect of who he is. The adaptation continues to make Louis’ Blackness an integral part of not only who he was as a human but as a vampire unable to escape his past and the shackles the world still desires to entrap him in decades after his turning. 

Like “The Vampire Lestat,” instead of trivializing the racism rooted in the foundations of its source material, HBO’s “It: Welcome to Derry” is the first adaptation of Stephen King’s famed novel to directly explore how the Black characters in Derry, Maine, would survive its supernatural and historical horrors. The racism that the Black characters face may be a lot to stomach, but with this brashness, creators Andy and Barbara Muschietti force their viewers to confront the realities of living in a town haunted by a creature who uses the fear and hatred of its inhabitants to wreak havoc. This doesn’t mean the show’s Black characters are perfect; instead, they are flawed products of their circumstances. 

Both Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) and Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk) are imperfect men, and the writing never shies away from their imperfections. As a father and husband, Leroy neglects his family’s concerns for his military job. When he finally abandons his post, it’s not for the greater good, but because the people he loves have been directly impacted by Pennywise’s (Bill Skarsgård) reign of terror. Also a military man, Halloran uses the gift of the Shining to torture Derry’s civilians for information. Like Leroy, he becomes involved in destroying Pennywise only after the entity’s presence threatens to destroy everything around him. The series never absolves either man of their sins, allowing both of them to become multifaceted portrayals of Blackness whose position during the civil rights movement is ever-changing.

“Interview with the Vampire” and “It: Welcome to Derry” boldly heighten their horror by acknowledging that racial tension was a constant, unavoidable aspect of American life in the time periods in which they’re set. While both shows are fantastic vehicles for exploring Blackness in America through genre storytelling, there are other offerings that prove that horror television is as multifaceted as the Black characters who now reign supreme in the genre. Sometimes, it is enough to simply have Black characters exist in horror media without their race shaping their presence, and that’s what FX’s “Alien: Earth” and MGM’s “From” have been doing since their respective debuts. 

While the former is chock-full of scene-stealing characters, there is nobody like Kumi Morrow (Babu Ceesay). Originally the security officer on the USCSS Maginot, Morrow is tasked with recovering the Xenomorph cargo that escaped from the ship when it crashed into New Siam, and spends the rest of the series proving himself to be one of the most fascinating anti-villains put to television. As he lurks through dimly lit hallways and manipulates childlike hybrids, Ceesay’s prowess chips away at Morrow’s seemingly impenetrable edges, slowly unearthing a fragile and complicated man whose best interests are always his own. 

Instead of his self-interest being degraded by the show’s narrative, creator Noah Hawley allows Morrow to bask in his selfishness, often admitted in the middle of interrogations, where it becomes clear that he’s one step ahead of his opponents and the audience. As one of the few Black characters in the series, Morrow’s Blackness is neither addressed nor relevant to his position in this world. Yet, his Blackness is inherently important to the television landscape he and the series exist in, where Black characters are seldom given the space to be as captivating and as complicated as he is. 

Unlike Morrow, Boyd (Harold Perrineau), the protagonist of MGM+’s “From,” is initially positioned as the series’ heroic figure. The de facto mayor of a mysterious town that traps everyone who enters, Boyd was also a military man. The series uses his previous occupation to show how Boyd’s time in the military influences his choices, which, as the series unfolds, quickly spiral from being seen as morally correct to being questioned by everyone around him. As the series has become more complex, so has its protagonist.

As tragedies mount in his life, Boyd’s motivations begin to sway from being about the greater good. The narrative never seeks to absolve him of his fallibility, forcing him to sit with the consequences of his own actions and become a shattered version of the man he once was. Boyd’s decisions, no matter how ludicrous they are, shape the series’ narrative rather than simply having the plot take place around him. 

Each of these series has offered the actors who helm them their most versatile work to date, flourishing in a media landscape that often chews Black characters up before spitting them out. As these Black protagonists become more common within the genre, so does the longevity of their legacy, not only within the sphere of their respective shows, but off-screen as well. With the 2020s, television has become a medium where Black actors take center stage, transforming the foundations of a genre that, in the past, had seen them not only as disposable but nearly obsolete.

Some lives become so woven into the fabric of our culture that we experience their influence long before we ever learn their name. For generations of Black Americans, George E. Johnson, Sr., was one of those people. I am one of the privileged many to have called him a friend. Founder of the Johnson Products Company with his late wife Joan, and one of the great architects of Black enterprise in America, George passed away on July 6th at the age of 99. His passing marks the end of an extraordinary life, but his legacy reaches far beyond the shelves where Afro Sheen and Ultra Sheen once stood. It lives in the confidence of generations of Black entrepreneurs, in the celebration of Black beauty, and in the cultural institutions that flourished because he believed they deserved to exist.

I look forward to celebrating George’s legacy with his loved ones and friends this week. The visitation for him will be held from 4pm to 8pm on Thursday, July 16th, at Leak and Sons Funeral Home, 7838 S. Cottage Grove Ave., followed the next day by his funeral at 11am at Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th Street. The funeral service will be livestreamed at trinitychicago.org. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to Chicago State University (http://www.csu.edu/) and/or The HistoryMakers (http://www.historymakers.org).

Even though we will be attending a Memorial Service, my memories of Mr. Johnson through the years, are of how lively, gentlemanly and sharp he was about business, human relationships and life itself! That includes earlier this year where we hosted him and his wife Madeline at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Gala in California. He was so pleased that he had finally published his memoir a year earlier (at age 97!). He said that the Lord whispered to him that it was time to tell his story. He connected with the writer Hilary Beard and the result was the entertaining book: Afro Sheen: How I Revolutionized an Industry with the Golden Rule, from Soul Train to Wall Street.

His book is an inspiration and a blueprint for making your dreams come true by having faith in yourself, in Black entrepreneurship and he emphasizes, by following the Golden Rule. It was his firm belief that we should treat others as we want to be treated. I sensed that his pleasure in telling his story was not to bring glory or attention to himself, but to encourage others to follow their dreams. And indeed, at the stops along his book tour that I attended, I noted that among the attendees were a good many successful men and women who attributed their success to encouragement (and seed money) from him. 

It’s worth noting that several successful Black families in Chicago had the last name of Johnson, which at one time caused some confusion. There were the Ebony/Jet magazine publishers John and Eunice Johnson, and leading Cadillac dealer Al Johnson, among others. Yet George’s near-century of achievements will stand as a singular beacon of inspiration for generations to come.

Born on June 16th, 1927, in Richton, Mississippi, George entered a world where opportunity for Black Americans was deliberately limited. When he was just two years old, his family joined the Great Migration, settling in Chicago in search of the promise that so many Black families hoped the North might offer. George learned the value of work early. He shined shoes as a boy and held whatever jobs he could find to help support his family. Financial realities forced him to leave high school before graduating, but they never diminished his curiosity or his ambition. Instead, they sharpened his instincts. He learned to recognize problems, to listen carefully, and to see opportunities where others saw none. And at his death, he had been awarded almost 10 honorary doctorate degrees from various universities.

After gaining experience working for the legendary entrepreneur Samuel B. Fuller, George struck out on his own. In 1954, he and his wife, Joan Henderson—whom he had met in high school—founded Johnson Products Company with $500. Part of that amount was a $250 loan that a bank gave him to “take his wife on a vacation.” (He had been turned down for a loan in that amount to start a business.)

It has all the ingredients of a classic American success story, but what made George remarkable was not simply that he started with very little. It was that he recognized an entire community whose needs had been overlooked. For years, Black consumers had largely been ignored by major manufacturers. Products formulated specifically for Black hair were limited, and advertising rarely reflected Black beauty with dignity or pride. George understood that serving this market meant more than selling shampoo or hair relaxers. It meant telling millions of people that they mattered.

His products—including Ultra Wave, Ultra Sheen, Afro Sheen, and later Classy Curl—addressed practical needs, but they also arrived at a pivotal cultural moment. As the Black Is Beautiful movement encouraged African Americans to embrace their natural features and reject decades of imposed standards, Johnson Products became part of a larger affirmation of identity. His advertisements didn’t ask Black Americans to aspire to someone else’s definition of beauty. George’s business grew into one of the most successful Black-owned companies in America, eventually dominating the Black hair care market. In 1971, it became the first Black-owned company listed on the American Stock Exchange. This resonated as far more than a financial achievement. For many Black Americans, it was proof that Black ownership could thrive on a national stage, that excellence and ambition were not exceptions but expectations, and that businesses rooted in serving Black communities could become institutions.

George’s influence extended far beyond commerce long before corporate America recognized the value of investing in Black audiences. Johnson Products became the first national sponsor of “Soul Train,” helping transform what began as a local Chicago television program into one of the most influential cultural platforms in American history. Through music, dance, fashion, and joy, “Soul Train” introduced millions of viewers to Black artists and Black creativity on their own terms. He believed economic opportunity was inseparable from civil rights. While marches and legislation transformed America in visible ways, George understood that ownership, employment, access to capital, and economic independence were also instruments of freedom. Having experienced discrimination in securing financing himself, he later helped establish Independence Bank of Chicago, creating opportunities for Black families and entrepreneurs who had too often found traditional financial institutions unwilling to invest in their futures.

If there is a thread running through George’s remarkable life, it is that he consistently opened doors he had once been forced to knock on himself. He built products that affirmed identity. He created a company that created opportunity. He invested in culture before others recognized its value. And he built institutions that would continue serving communities long after he stepped away.

On a personal note, I had the great fortune of knowing not only George but all three of his wives (the middle of which has been left out of most tributes I’ve read). All three wives were smart, beautiful and accomplished. But it was Joan with whom George started their business and with whom he had four beautiful children: Eric, Joan, John and George E. Johnson, Jr. Joan was admired in the Black community. We shared confidences at the hair salon where we both were clients of the late Emory Jones.

Joan and George divorced after nearly four decades of marriage. But like a story from a fairytale, they later remarried in 1995, and remained so until her passing in 2019. Before they got back together, however, George was married briefly to Renée Derem, the founder of Chicago’s Sister-City relationship in Paris. I fondly recall spending time with the couple in both cities.

Then in 2022, George married his third wife, my longtime friend, the very accomplished Madeline Murphy Rabb. Madeline is an artist, designer, and veteran art advisor who once served as the Executive Director of the Chicago Office of Fine Arts. In addition to being an artist and curator, she is a Silver and Bronze Medalist in the National Senior Games. I remember George being greatly impressed by Madeline’s beauty and athleticism, which she demonstrated through her competitive swimming captured in Luchina Fisher’s acclaimed documentary short, “Team Dream.” The film won our Ebert Award at the 2023 edition of the Ebertfest Film Festival. Madeline is also one of the kindest women around. 

Together George and Madeline embraced a season of life that many people assume no longer exists in later years. They traveled, visited friends, and shared adventures. It is a beautiful reminder that life’s final chapters need not be defined by decline. They can also be marked by companionship, curiosity and gratitude. Just this past November, George was honored with the Edwin C. “Bill” Berry Civil Rights Award by the Chicago Urban League. And it was only weeks prior to his passing, according to his son Eric via AP News, that the Joan and George Johnson Program Room was dedicated to them at the recently opened Obama Presidential Center. President Barack Obama was in attendance for the dedication as was George, a crowning moment for a towering life. 

When George took his final breath at the age of ninety-nine, Madeline was beside him, holding his hand. There is something quietly fitting about that image. A man who spent nearly a century building, creating, and giving was surrounded, in the end, by love. History will remember George as a pioneering businessman, a visionary entrepreneur, and one of the most consequential figures in the history of Black enterprise. Those titles are well deserved. Long before “Black excellence” became part of our everyday vocabulary, George was quietly living its meaning. His products filled store shelves. His vision expanded horizons. And his legacy will continue to grow in every entrepreneur bold enough to imagine a future that others cannot yet see.

MUBI Fest returned to Chicago for the third time this year with its most varied and robust line-up yet, further cementing it as an art powerhouse that thieves in creating films in conversation with cinema canon. That Chicago remains the only place in the United States to host this event is a testament to the Windy City as a premier destination not just for cinema but for the arts at large.

Like past year’s MUBI Fests, this year’s iteration anchored its programming around a theme, and I couldn’t help but be moved by the choice: Better Together. A MUBI release was often paired with a non-MUBI film that acted as a cinematic sibling. Some pairings came from the filmmakers themselves, such as “My Father’s Shadow” being programmed alongside “Monster,” as director Akinola Davis Jr. has cited Hirokazu Kore-eda as his favorite director. Others were rooted in thematic questions; “Why do the people we love the most drive us insane?” reads the descriptor for the 25th anniversary screening of Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums,” which was linked with a sneak peek screening of Karim Aïnouz’s “Rosebush Pruning.”

Per the programmers’ intentions, the connected films could both “reflect and refract,” “echo or complicate” each other, but the belief was that, at the end of the day, the films were better when viewed together. I have no problem seeing films as being in dialogue, but to say that two films could be greater than the sum of their parts was a bold statement; I was excited to put that theory to the test.

One facet worth mentioning is that there was a longer build-up to this year’s film programming with several other activations and events happening throughout the week. My favorite was a “Happy Dipping Sauce Hour.” Hosted at The Brewed coffee shop, people could go for free finger foods, signature dipping sauces, and specially themed drinks that highlighted the weekend line-up. Food and movie collaborations can often feel tacky, but there was a deep synergy in the offerings here. On a scorching Chicago day, for example, it was refreshing to sip on a drink inspired by “The Substance,” which had matcha, lime, mint, and sparkling water; it looked very much like the sickly green activator in Coralie Fargeat’s body horror film of the same name.

The event was also a clever nod to one of the most anticipated film premieres of the festival: Jane Schoenbrun’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which might be the first film with the honor of using dipping sauces as an aphrodisiac (or at least, KFC’s honey mustard and buffalo). Music Box Theater audiences are always generous in their engagement, but there was something special about not being able to hear the present dialogue because people were laughing at a joke from three beats prior. If “I Saw the TV Glow” was about how queer people find solace, home, and safety in media, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is the next step in that idea, asking how to interrogate that media post-rebirth (or more personally in Schoenbrun’s case, post-transition). It’s a haunting, beautiful, and hilarious film that felt special to experience with a group of moviegoers who were on board with Schoenbrun’s spasmodic wavelength.

The night continued with “Sleepaway Camp,” which feels both too on the nose (in the best way) and makes perfect sense to pair with Schoenbrun’s film. MUBI Fest made a space for engaging with it in its own right, thanks to drag performer Peaches Christ, her co-host of the Midnight Mass podcast, Michael Varrati, and star of the film Felissa Rose, doing a Q&A before the film that explored the film in the context of the queer slasher canon. It’s one of the many examples of the festival not being afraid to program projects that might be challenging by providing a scaffolding with which to hold those conversations.

In addition to a live performance from the Current Joys and Delroy Edwards, day two of MUBI Fest featured two interactive experiences that elevated already stellar films. At the Salt Shed, attendees got to experience a scratch ‘n sniff edition of “The Substance,” accompanied by a punch card to scratch and smell when the corresponding number appeared on screen. The screening was a great way to keep audiences engaged, and only solidified how watching movies in a theater is a sacred act of community; I’ll never forget the moment we saw Dennis Quaid’s character chewing on shrimp up close, and I witnessed everyone methodically raise their cards to smell the scent.

I had somehow gone my whole life having never seen “Popstar: Never Stop Popping,” and I’ll forever cherish that my first experience of this masterpiece was in the context of a sing-along event. Attendees were gifted flags and light-up sticks and encouraged to sing all of Lonely Island’s outlandish lyrics with musical abandon. Witnessing the crowd, with their imperfect pitch and infectious enthusiasm ringing through the theater, I’m fully convinced I’ll never see a better concert.

I am grateful to MUBI Fest for giving me a new way to document time because I now will exclusively think about my life as “before I saw Rob Mazurek and The Mastermind quartet perform live” and “after I saw Rob Mazurek and The Mastermind quartet perform live” (should any reader come up with a snappier abbreviation, sound off below. I had seen and loved “The Mastermind” prior but seeing it with Mazurek and his coterie (Victoria Vieira-Branco on vibraphone, Joey Sullivan on drums, and John Moran on Bass and Mazurek on the trumpet) made it feel like I was almost watching a different movie.

Kelly Reichardt’s slow-burn heist film is already understated, with Mazurek’s score giving the film a jolt of energy just when you think the temperature has been turned too low, but hearing it live only made the silences deeper and the cacophony more vociferous. This was paired with a screening of Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven,” and if “The Mastermind” was ever going to feel like an “Oceans” film, it would be thanks to Mazurek and his team performing the score live. Truly, the glee I felt witnessing the score in the theater rivaled only that of when a heist gets successfully pulled off.

For Mazurek, playing in the Music Box Theater felt like his own homecoming. “I moved to Chicago in 1983, and, soon after, ‘84-85, found the Music Box,” he told RogerEbert.com, “The Music Box opened my world up to foreign film, the great American canon of film.” The sound was tightly integrated into the experience, and for Mazurek, performing meant there were opportunities for him to add flourishes in real time. “The overall shape and timings for the thing were spot on. We used a little more improvisation in this performance, but in subtle ways. For the second solo trumpet section, when Josh O’Connor’s Mooney gets on the bus, I had John hit a few tones on the bass just for a slight variation. And of course, for the end credits we hit it a little harder and floated a melody that was composed for the film but was not used.”

As energizing as Mazurek’s score is, per Reichardt’s films, there are long stretches where the film is also silent. For Mazurek and his team, not just watching the film but actively participating in it unlocked a new appreciation for a film he told me he’s seen “at least one hundred times.” “The silence in this film was as important and strong as the soundtrack itself. Nothing was trying to make you feel a certain way. It just was … the quartet and I were mesmerized by her painterly shots, sublime pacing, and ability to slow down and take in the beauty of Chris Blauvelt’s amazing cinematography. I can tell you one thing: we weren’t smoking between scenes!,” he shared.

I was already a fan of Alex Russell’s “Lurker” and crowned it the #1 film of the year on my personal top ten and was delighted to hear that a special 35mm screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center acted as the closing film for the festival. In the year since its release, its musings on the relationship between love and obsession, the ways people will hollow themselves out for a taste of the spotlight, and its interrogation of the toxic power dynamics within male friendship circles seem only more pertinent in our parasocial age.

Speaking with me before the film’s Q&A, Russell waxed poetic about “Popstar: Never Stop Popping,” which “Lurker” was paired with. There are some surface-level connections in that both films are about the entourages that surround pop stars, but Russell found a deeper, more tender thread of DNA. “A lot of Lonely Island comedy is about two deadpan guys singing to each other about these excuses they have to not hang out with each other. Their work revolves around guys who don’t know how to talk to each other; that very much speaks to ‘Lurker.’”

As much as “Lurker” may be a cautionary tale about fandom, in the year since its release, Russell touchingly reflects on the beauty of pursuing passion and being unapologetic about what you enjoy. “I think it actually is really cool to be a fan and to openly love things and express your appreciation for things because as much as it’s shown in movies that people don’t appreciate that, it is appreciated,” he shared. He also offers an interesting thought that as much as our parasocial age is primed to want to know the ins and outs of the people we’re obsessed with, there’s still beauty in mystique. “As you get older, you realize everyone is a person, and there’s something nice about the mystique that you can have between yourself and somebody you’re a fan of. Your view of them is not going to get better than it is as a teen with a poster on your wall. It’s kind of the same as having a crush. That in itself is something to cherish, and even sort of the yearning for familiarity with someone that you project so much can only ruin things.”

The Q&A post-screening was also among the best I’ve seen, thanks to Russell’s humor and willingness to be present with those who had come out for the screening. When given the cue to wrap, Russell advocated for more time, saying, “The film is streaming on two separate platforms. I feel like if you guys came out for this, then you want to talk, and I want to talk because I came to Chicago for this.” I’d like to think we all left the screening with a deeper awareness of how to be better fans of the people around us.

As I anticipate what a future version of MUBI Fest could be, I’m grateful for another lesson the festival imparted: that viewings don’t exist in a vacuum, and that writing about them should acknowledge, in some form, the context with which you watched it. So often when reviewing, I strive for objectivity but attending MUBI Fest made me consider that maybe there’s space in criticism to acknowledge the many factors that go into viewing and watching a film. What makes each viewing of a film so special is that it is either implicitly or explicitly engaging with not just what’s going on in my own life, but the things I may have seen before. There’s a power in acknowledging that, and now I attend each viewing with a certain excited curiosity: how might what I see not just be evaluated on its own merits, but be speaking to what I saw the night before? I leave MUBI Fest not just more cultured but also more attuned to the wondrous commonalities that may exist across cinema as a whole.

My final dispatch of KVIFF features some heavy hitters. There’s the Crystal Globe winner, the festival’s top prize. There’s also two coming-of-age stories about how kind the world can be and how unflinchingly harsh it actually is. Each work is led by a lonely, misunderstood protagonist whose mental health is at stake. They’re all deeply beautiful films to look at too, featuring some of the best photography and sense of place and mood of the festival.    

There’s a foreboding dreamlike quality to “Fruit Gathering,” writer/director Aung Phyoe’s directorial feature debut, which won the Crystal Globe. The queer film’s imaginative feeling doesn’t offer unwavering bliss, but a stoppage in time, in life, and in romance. 

Set in Yangon, Myanmar, the film concerns San Kyi (a spontaneous Nandar Myat Aung), a seamstress at an overcrowded garment factory who becomes emotionally entangled with a new hire: Theint (an observant Nandar Myint Lwin). The pair form a fast bond that borders on parasitic. San Kyi envisions Theint as her ticket toward independence, away from her domineering mother and her ill grandmother. Conversely, to Theint, San Kyi’s steady presence suggests a financial lifeline and a kind ear to be used when necessary and discarded when convenient. 

Phyoe harvests great rewards from this dynamic when he narrows his focus on San Kyi and Thient’s turbulent relationship. Eloquently composed shots of a sensorial Yangon that stretch on for an eternity are juxtaposed with San Kyi’s stolen glances of Theint; patient pans across intimately small rooms and sensual tilts down lithe bodies run counter to the cavernous sterile confines of factory life. Cinematographer Thaid Dhi’s visual acumen uplifts the tension felt between San Kyi’s desires and Thient’s limits into Sirkian realms, allowing the film to stretch beyond this romance into further themes. 

Unfortunately, “Fruit Gathering” moves with less assuredness outside of its central relationship. Phyoe gestures toward the necessity for worker solidarity in exploitative working conditions, showing how San Kyi’s reticence to agree to sign a petition is emblematic of why unionization efforts struggle to gain steam. But he can’t do more than finger wag. Similarly, Phyoe attempts to contrast the urban from the rural with dream sequences that at once elucidates San Kyi’s painful past along with her ideal future of picking mangos with Thient. By never fully embracing a Thoreauvian fantasy, Phyoe wrestles through several complexities about where and how queerness can thrive. 

Consequently, when “Fruit Gathering” aims for the intimate, Phyoe’s vision finds clarity in the collision of obsession and care. And while he does waver in translating the broader themes that interest him, he remains committed enough to this beautifully shot, longingly acted queer romance to plant its seeds deep within one’s memory.

Told with a similarly deliberate pacing, Shuntaro Uchida’s visually evocation coming-of-age film “Incinerator,” an adaptation of Kaori Ekuni’s same-titled short story, takes place over an endless summer lived by a reserved nine-year-old Kozue (Karin). The young girl has a shaky family life: her father Kenji (Takuma Nagao) is a ne’er-do-well musician bordering on an alcoholic; her mother Yoko (Akiko Kikuchi) works heavy hours in a bookstore to support the family; her grandmother is ill in the hospital. Kozue’s only place to let off steam is the incinerator located at the back of her school. While the crucible was installed to burn disused papers, Kozue places objects in it she connects with bad memories. 

Her world is brightened, however, when Jinta (Taikia Shinozuka), an equally reserved university student, visits her school to perform a shadowplay. While the vibrant mix of lush colored backgrounds and black silhouettes excites Kozue, she’s equally enthralled by an attentive Jinta. She develops a crush on him. Their unrequited friendship—Jinta, of course, treats her as a little sister—gives Kozue greater confidence to express herself. 

Though “Incinerator” runs at 97 minutes, it’s certainly not a brisk watch. That’s intentional. Uchida and his editor Takaki Yokohama rely on long takes whose meditative expressions recall how children experience the world, not in a blinding rush but as a seemingly never-ending desire to finally grow up. Uchida, nevertheless, never speeds up Kozue’s clock, so to speak. In fact, as the film continues, he and Yokohama almost appear to elongate their takes, as though to visually tell Kozue to literally slow down. In that way, “Incinerator” often recalls Chie Hayakawa’s “Renoir,” a film similarly concerned with giving a young girl cinematic space to live, grieve, and grow.

Uchida and his cinematographer Shin Yonekura also craft immersive pastoral scenes, like a motorbike ride between Jinta and Kozue out to nowhere, with the intent of intimating the slower pace necessary for Kozue’s survival into adulthood. Karin shoulders this distant character with a similar assuredness for process, suggesting Kozue’s myriad disappointments without relying on loud dialogue. Instead, every emotion—from petulance to sadness—arises from Karin’s slightly bent posture and her dynamic face: giving a performance, ironically, that feels far beyond her years.  

Miroslav Terzić’s brutal and unsettling psychological drama “3 Weeks After,” has one of the strongest openings to a movie this year. It begins on a static frame showing an apartment complex where one flat is engulfed in flames. The sound of the raging fire fills the frame with equal intensity. A downtrodden teenager, Tzotza (Jovan Ginić), enters the shot to observe the blaze before walking away, followed on a track, through his tranquil neighborhood that is no longer filled with crackling sounds but the natural ambience of birds tweeting. He meets up with his friend Darija (Andjela Alavirević), who is surprised but happy that he’s taking this school trip. 

See, something happened three weeks prior that’s rendered Tzotza a social outcast. The two incompetent teachers—Milica (Tihana Lazović) and Markuš (Branislav Trifunović)—whisper about its consequences: new articles and cold calls from reporters dominate their phones. His classmates, united in their vitriol, mercilessly tease him. The situation becomes more unstable when Milica (Klara Karaulić), a vapid popular girl with a clearly rich father, sneaks her sadistic boyfriend Miloš (Andrija Marković) onto the Serbian class’ Bulgaria-bound bus. During the short sojourn we will discover the truth: Tzotza’s best friend Andrija died by suicide three weeks ago. The question that looms over the trip is who’s to blame. 

For a time, Terzić’s film is acutely controlled. The aforementioned sound evocatively flips between the character’s interior perception of the world and the exterior reality, while cinematographer Damjan Radovanović’s evocative compositions, which often utilizes negative space on barren fields and in mammoth caves to visualize Tzotza’s aloneness, provides a visual counterbalance. He juxtaposes those wide spaces with cramped hallways whose perspective can often feel ghostly. LP Duo’s thrumming score modulates between brooding shaking and overwhelming ecstasy, particularly during an animalistic red-drenched party scene that recalls Gaspar Noé’s “Climax.” But mostly, it’s Ginić’s close-to-the-vest performance—which sees his swollen face drained of all life—that keeps this work grounded as Tzotza endures near-homocidal abuse from Miloš and his gang that only intensifies once the class’ bus breaks down, stranding them in an empty hotel. 

It’s a shame then that Terzić dispenses with that hard-fought control in the film’s final minutes. It’s as though the director and his fellow screenwriters: Vladimir Arsenijević and Bojan Vuletić—thought they needed to end on a bang to make the moody trip worth it. Terzić and his DP therefore reach for visual profundity to balance out the film’s hellish turn, composing shots filled with sleeping teenage bodies as a decadent, painterly scene. And while the final push-in toward Ginić’s certainly holds a haunting quality, an edge has been lost in the film’s bluntness, making “3 Weeks After” a terrifying, albeit flawed, commentary on bullying and violence.  

It felt good to be back. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve attended the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (after going three straight times, last year, I had to cancel at the last second due to a personal emergency). But walking through the Neo-Renaissance Mill Colonnade, being in the Viennese-Bohemian Municipal Theatre, wandering the cobblestone roads that lead one down toward candy-colored villas that delightfully match the lush mountainous forest and the the winding canals that hold the channels of the Teplá river—restored part of me. This year was the 60th anniversary of KVIFF, giving the always self-deprecating festival a celebratory mood. 

The opening night, in fact, saw a highly produced song and dance number that witnessed several Czech singers perform covers of film music in a medley that included a stream of images of the several figures, memories, guests, and movies that are intertwined with KVIFF’s long history.  That night, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jesse Eisenberg both received the President’s Award, while Dustin Hoffman was bestowed the Crystal Globe. The evening was heightened by the opening night film, Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco’s “The Match,” being a crowd-pleasing tip of the cap to the World Cup (many festival attendees tried to balance their movie watching with catching games at the local bars). 

In the days that followed, more honorees and a bevy of films took their bow. Three-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Robert Richardson, known for his work with Oliver Stone, Quentin Tarantino, and Martin Scorsese, not only took home a Crystal Globe. But he also witnessed the world premiere of Jana Hojdova’s raw documentary about him: “Robert Richardson: The White Devil.” During the festival, he sat down with RogerEbert.com to discuss the film and his career. 

Harvey Keitel also appeared for his third visit to a festival that’s become a second home to him. In his speech, he said, “I’m one of you,” to the KVIFF crowd. During that day, in fact, I saw Keitel wandering the streets with two very tall, very muscular bodyguards (you can’t take any chances, the KVIFF attendees are understandably obsessed with him). By closing night, Jeffrey Wright had arrived to accept his President’s Award, an honor that became a full circle moment when the festival announced they would screen “Basquiat,” the actor’s breakout role and the one that first brought him and Christopher Walken to Karlovy Vary with the film nearly three decades ago. Wright also spoke with RogerEbert.com about the importance of “Basquiat” to his career. “I still do feel the influence of that experience,” explained Wright.  

On the final night, Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, who arrived with their film “Family Movie,” were also acknowledged. Actress Magda Vášáryová received her Crystal Globe, as did Juliette Binoche. I’ve rarely been affected by seeing a star, but I admittedly melted when I saw Binoche arrive before the ceremony. I’m sometimes reminded that light bends differently around some people.

And while the stars certainly provided KVIFF with some added panache, the quality of the lineup pulled together by Executive Director Kryštof Mucha, Artistic Director Karel Och, and the programming team, is always surprising in its variety and scale. On top of seizing the biggest highlights of Sundance, Berlinale, and Cannes, the festival’s own premieres, drawn mostly from Central Europe, never fails to spotlight new voices and festival favorites. Many of the best works that played, in fact, balanced local filmmaking talent with creators from outside the continent. 

In the Promixa competition, whose jury consisted of Estrella Araiza, Devika Girish, Dirk Decker, ​Marija Kavtaradze, Jakub Felcman—Isabelle Tollenaere’s intimate immigrant drama “Paris Paris” and Giovanni C. Lorusso’s Cambodia-set environmentalist slow-burn thriller “Homo Sive Natura” were personal favorites of mine. The section’s top prize, nevertheless, was awarded to the youthful Czech screwball comedy “Lover, Not a Fighter.” The Jury Award went to Shuntaro Uchida’s rich coming-of-age drama “Incernator” and the Director prize was given to Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis for “A Whole Person Almost.” Anna Domček and Šimon Domček’s “33 Steps” took home a special mention. 

In the Crystal Globe competition, juried by Eskil Vogt, Pavel Rejholec, Amanda Nell Eu, Justin Chang, Nadia Turincev, my personal favorite was Petar Valchanov and Kristina Grozeva’s bleak tragicomedy “Black Money for White Nights.” And while that film was surprisingly shut out by the jury, that doesn’t mean any obviously puzzling decisions were made in what they did choose. They awarded Best Actor to Ghassan Saad for “Pipes” and Best Actress to Anna Schinz for the social issue drama “A Happy Family.” Mad Mengel’s tragicomedy “The Guest” felt like it could’ve easily swept the category, garnering a Best Director prize and the Special Jury prize. But the Crystal Globe ultimately went to Aung Phyoe’s intense queer romance “Fruit Gathering,” a film that hails from Myanmar (it’s the first picture from the country to appear in the main competition). 

Not to be forgotten, Helena Třeštíková’s documentary “Bára – Diary of a Rockstar” also took home the Pravo audience award. 

Because of the packed lineup, more than any other year at KVIFF, I felt time slipping away. I didn’t get around to many films in the Out of the Past section (though I did manage to catch Kaneto Shindō’s grim post-war melodrama “Children of Hiroshima”) and the Imagina section proved to be just out of my reach as well. I barely had enough time to do my yearly hike, this time it was to the Diana Observational Tower, which had to be saved for my last day. 

Hiking through the Slavkov forest is one of my favorite things to do at the festival, if only because the higher you go into the hills, the less you hear the partying and crowds that tend to fill the town. Amidst the towering trees is a humbling that occurs, one that always manages to re-energize me. And when I reached the summit, which allowed me to climb the steps of the Diana—there’s a gondola that’ll take you up the hill if you have limited mobility—I was once again amazed by how, from high, Karlovy Vary simply looks like a storybook: a picturesque small town with vivid architecture, nestled in a sea of verdant trees. It’s impossible not to be grateful that your human eyes can absorb a panoramic review that always manages to put things in perspective, a quality that the best of movies also possess.

As I climbed back down toward the rush of the festival, I hoped it wouldn’t be another two years before I knew this feeling again. 

“Ride or Die” arrives on Prime Video this week, and its title is accurate in multiple ways. Calling someone your “ride or die” means they’ve got your back no matter what: you need to bury a body, they’ve got the shovel; you need a getaway driver, they’ve already filled up the gas tank. Adding another layer to this story, Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham go on a comedic “Thelma & Louise” inspired adventure, where they either keep running or get permanently extinguished.

That 1991 classic isn’t the only foremother for “Ride or Die.” This eight-episode action-comedy caper proudly blooms from its family tree. A sort of Miss Marple meets “How Stella Got Her Groove Back” in Spencer’s Debbie, an antique-hunting woman-behind-the-man who’s been underestimated but turns out to be sharper than her doubters. She’s paired with the assassin chic of a “La Femme Nikita” with a “Black Widow”infusion in Waddingham’s Judith. A deceptively sensitive woman who isn’t just posing as a forensic accountant, she excels at finance too. Not only do we get the open-road, no-more-apologizing fury of “Thelma & Louise” (with lots of much-needed apologizing), but there are whispers of the “Killing Eve” brand of psychological gamesmanship, and a full-blown French detective version of Lupin. Oh, hello.

This show is the offspring of an entire fictional lineage of ungovernable women. That’s a lot for one series to hold. Mostly, it carries the weight. Created by Tessa Coates alongside showrunner Matt Miller and director Peyton Reed, of “Ant-Man” fame, the premise is primed for shenanigans: Debbie (Spencer) thinks she knows everything about her lifelong best friend Judith (Waddingham). She’s probably right except for one tiny detail: Judith is an international assassin. After Debbie’s husband crosses an unforgiving criminal organization, and one of Judith’s past hits goes sideways, the two get catapulted into a frantic chase across Europe, pursued by cops, killers, and lies.

But the heart of the matter is a test of what two besties will do to protect one another—no matter what. It’s also about the second life that begins around fifty, when women finally shed the things that have been holding them back, others’ expectations, unrewarded compromises, and what they thought they wanted but don’t. Debbie and Judith blow up each other’s lives. Their disasters are mutual; their resolutions might be the same.

Waddingham and Spencer live up to their lore. Beyond the action-hero swagger and big feminine energy, they convey depth, often with conflicting emotions, in single expressions. Waddingham holds guilt, hope, and tenderness with contrasting ruthlessness. Spencer shimmers with swallowed rage, devastation, and unearned confidence. More than anything, their chemistry is the catalyst for the show, which sparks like a Roman candle, but yes, possibly burns for too long. However, when they’re up against the villainous Ana (Sylvia Hoeks) or playing love games with Ed Skrein—a delight—and Jacky Ido—the Lupin analog I mentioned, you can’t help but smile.

Hoeks gives Waddingham a mirror with none of the warmth but clinging to the same desires in the most misguided ways. She’s a great foil for the leads. Bill Nighy does what needs to be done, giving them all fits as the source of Judith’s daddy issues (wait for it, that doesn’t mean what you think it means). And if I had my wish, the mother-daughter pairing of Cathy Tyson and Savannah Steyn would have their own spinoff. The quietly not-quite-confident Sam (Calam Lynch) rounds out a cast that makes this midlife catastrophe well worth the trip.

What’s most refreshing is “Ride or Die” doesn’t ask these women to be precious or repeat the current psychological thrills. It lets them be ridiculous, needy, and dangerous on the way to realizing who they want to be. A Season 2 seems highly probable, given the ratio of assassins to loose ends, a surprising reveal, and the closing cliffhanger. Seems like Debbie and Judith are just getting started. I guess finding out your best friend is a killer for hire is the perfect excuse for an extended girl trip.

As I mentioned, “Ride or Die” is more like one long movie caper than a series. I probably could have done with fewer episodes. The pacing is good, but at times the plotting feels self-indulgent, especially with all eight episodes releasing on July 15. It might have worked better if they dropped two episodes a week—like a K-drama. I may not be texting “you must watch” alerts to my friends, but I enjoyed this. Of course, two besties versus an assassin guild with high-speed action and comedic twists is hard to resist, so don’t. Give in to “Ride or Die” and get your fake passport stamped with heists, second chances, and a friendship that never says die.

Entire series screened for review. Premieres on Prime Video on July 15.

The 30th edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival is upon us, perhaps the largest genre film festival in the world (and, for my money, my favorite), setting nearly three weeks aside at the tail end of July to descend upon Montreal with over 125 buzzy, strange, experimental, and just plain weird features (and more than 200 shorts) that should appeal to genre hounds of several stripes.

Playing July 16 through August 2nd, Fantasia celebrates its third decade with a host of works from around the world, including Chinese wuxia pictures, Canadian horror comedies, and documentaries about everything from VFX legend Steve Johnson to the history of the Ultraman franchise. We’ll also get restorations of films like the Chow Yun-Fat action classic “City War,” Takashi Miike’s bizarre “Gozu,” and Bruce McDonald’s 2008 classic “Pontypool.”

Among the luminaries announced to receive awards at Fantasia include “Drive” director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose latest film (and his first in a decade), “His Private Hell,” will open the fest; Japanese horror legend Takashi Shimizu (“Ju-On: The Grudge”) will receive the Cheval Noir Career Achievement Award, coinciding with the world premiere of “Village of Eight Gravestones” (more on that later) and the North American premiere of “The Mouths.” The fest will also host the Canadian premiere of Jane Schoenbrun’s hotly anticipated “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” as well as a two-hour “fragment” from Louise Weard’s groundbreaking (and lengthy) work of trans cinema, “castration movie chapter iii: a fragmentary passage.”

For more info on the fest and how to buy tickets, head here. In the meantime, if you need to plan your schedule, here’s a handy list of titles we’re particularly excited about.

Freaks Part II

While “Her Private Hell” is opening the fest, Fantasia will close with the latest from some local boys made good: Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s “Freaks Part II,” a sequel to the 2018 film about a hidden society of people with superpowers who are hunted by an unfriendly government. “Part II” follows the mother and daughter from the previous film, Mary (“Silicon Valley”‘s Amanda Crew) and Chloe (Lorelei Olivia Mote), as they continue their flight from the authorities, hiding their powers and identities to keep themselves safe. But Mary has revenge on her mind, with an eye to the officer (Lili Taylor) who killed her first child. The first “Freaks” overcame a modest budget with some really inventive special effects, and “Final Destination Bloodlines” proved that Lipovsky and Stein have a stellar command of horror thrills, so consider us sat.

The Glorious Dead

The Adams Family are Fantasia favorites, and for good reason; their prior films, “Hellbender,” “The Deeper You Dig,” and “Mother of Flies” (one of my favorites of last year) elevate themselves beyond the DIY auspices of the family filmmaking team into genuinely unsettling works of folk horror. Now, they’re back with “The Glorious Dead,” in which a small-town sheriff and her deputy wake up to find a world that is unrecognizable, spooky, and decidedly bloody, and a townspeople that are increasingly swallowed up by fear and anger. Expect plenty of inventive lo-fi gore, atmosphere shooting from the gills, and some shockingly timely gestures towards what it feels like to live in America today. Think “Evil Dead–dington.”

Hot Spot

“The Lure” director Agnieszka Smoczyńska returns with a sci-fi thriller that, naturally, touches on our growing anxieties about AI. In “Hot Spot,’ the world is ruled by sentient artificial intelligence, and a private detective (Noomi Rapace, seemingly born for these kinds of mid-level science fiction capers) sets about solving a murder, only to find herself in the company of a rebel group who might just be able to free humanity from their digital masters. Not much has been said about this, but the heady mix of director and material (which screams everything from Albert Pyun to “Blade Runner 2049“) makes this absolute catnip for a sci-fi hound like moi.

Our Effed Up World

While “Camp Miasma” is the clear marquee title for queer and trans cinema at this year’s Fantasia, it’s always nice to see prolific trans horror wunderkind (and Shoenbrun acolyte) Alice Maio Mackay up to her usual tricks as well. This year’s entry, “Our Effed Up World,” stars “Camp Miasma”‘s Jess McLeod, “Fucktoys”‘ Annapurna Sriram, and the “Hellraiser” remake’s Brandon Flynn as a group of slacker friends who are suddenly tasked with fighting off an alien invasion. Knowing Mackay’s penchant for using genre to probe the messy dynamics of queer friend groups (see last year’s “The Serpent’s Skin,” which charmed me), this ought to be fun.

Permanent Damage

Canadian filmmaker Seth A. Smith returns to Fantasia with a quirky crime caper about an escaped convict (“The Umbrella Academy”‘s Calem MacDonald) who finds himself in a battle of wills with a cruel landlord (Stephen Dorff) as he tries to steal his “golden goose.” Smith’s “Tin Can” from 2020 was a Fantasia highlight for me, a gloopy paranoid sci-fi thriller about the perils of isolation; I’ve long been curious what he’d do next.

The Samurai and the Prisoner

Plenty of previous festival favorites will be playing at Fantasia (another honorable mention I can’t wait to catch: Yuen Wo-ping’s “Blades of the Guardians“), but ever since its rapturous reception at Cannes (see our review), I have been champing at the bit to experience Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterful samurai film/murder mystery about a

Los Vampires

The Spanish-language version of 1931’s “Dracula” has long been a fascinating curiosity: a Spanish crew shot at night on the same set that Tod Browning’s classic vampire film used during the day. Craig Mitchell’s “Los Vampires” fictionalizes that account in much the same way as “Shadow of the Vampire” did “Nosferatu,” as a Spanish actor (“Lost”‘s Henry Ian Cusick) who shadows the English-speaking actor (Thomas Kretschmann) who’s playing the count by day. The premise and its promised tone feels like a beautifully deranged ode to the compromises and risks inherent in the creation of art, particularly in the messy days of Early Hollywood.

Village of Eight Gravestones

While his J-horror return “The Mouths” also looks intriguing, of the two Takashi Shimizu pictures announced this year, I can’t help but gravitate to the eerie folk horror of “Village of Eight Gravestones,” in which a young man named Tatsuya visits the rural village where his late mother grew up. Along the way, he’s assisted by the iconic Japanese pulp detective Kindaichi, who helps him solve the mystery of a killing spree that has beset the village shortly after Tatsuya’s arrival. Ghosts of the past and the splattered blood of the present are sure to meet, which is the wheelhouse Shimizu has spent a career mastering.

You Are the Film

Makoto Ueda loves his time-loop stories; after writing the scripts for the exceedingly clever “Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes” and “Rewrite,” Ueda steps behind the camera to film his latest, “You Are the Film.” This time, the twist revolves around two people, three kilometers apart, who must guide each other in real time through the actual cinema screen. That’s an inventive premise on its face, a lovely parallel to the innate interactivity between subject and object that occurs when we watch movies; I trust Ueda to explore it in some fun ways.

Zsazsa Zaturnnah

Based on the Filipino comic book of the same name, “Zsazsa Zaturnnah” (or its full title, “Zsazsa Zaturnnah vs. the Amazonistas of Planet X”) feels like it’ll be a candy-colored celebration of one of the Philippines’ foremost super-queeroes. Under the watchful eye of Filipino animator Avid Liongoren (“Hayop Ka!”, also restored and playing the fest this year) and Manila studio Rocketsheep. “Zsazsa” will tell the story of gay hairdresser Ada, who gets hit by a pink meteor and turns into the curvaceous superheroine of the title—who must, of course, protect her village from the aforementioned Amazonistas and all the terrifying creatures they can muster. It all looks riotous, uproarious, and hilariously flamboyant.