Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
Every part of Strung is right there in the title. Chloe Bailey plays Laila, a gifted violinist whose whole world is strings. She takes a live-in job tutoring a wealthy family’s young daughter, and she is slowly strung along by people who know exactly which of her wounds to pull on. When the movie … Read more
Reminders of Him spends most of its runtime on a locked door. Kenna Rowan gets out of prison and wants one thing: to meet the daughter she has never held, a five-year-old being raised by the grandparents who blame Kenna for their son’s death. The people keeping her out are not villains. They are … Read more
Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) plans the perfect Nantucket weekend to outrun her grief, and the weekend answers by handing her the one secret she was not braced for. The friend who arrived carrying the heaviest sorrow, Gigi (Gemma Chan), turns out to be the woman her late husband had been seeing. That is the … Read more
Black Phone 2 is now streaming, and it sends Finney and Gwen up against a Grabber who is no longer quite human. The sequel ends with a frozen lake, three vengeful ghosts, and a phone call that recasts the whole story. If you want the ending untangled, here is what actually happens, what the twist … Read more