Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
Yes, Stolen Girl is based on a true story, though you would never guess the real one from the trailer. The film hands Kate Beckinsale a gun, a stack of wigs, and a way into a CIA espionage web to pull her abducted daughter out of Beirut. The woman it is actually based on, … Read more
Facing El Chapo opens with a title that promises a cartel legend, then spends most of its ninety-one minutes somewhere much smaller: a roadside motel, two tired federal cops, and the most wanted man in the hemisphere sitting on a bed, waiting for backup that might not come. So the question most viewers bring … Read more
Somewhere on day four of a 435-mile race through the jungle, an exhausted adventure racer tossed a meatball to a stray dog. That dog then followed his team for the rest of the course and eventually flew home with him to Sweden. So yes, Arthur the King is based on a true story, and … Read more
Ordinary Angels opened quietly in early 2024, to modest business and politely mixed reviews, and then slipped off to streaming the way small faith-based dramas usually do. Two years later it sits in the Netflix top three, and plenty of people are meeting it for the first time. The strange part is that the … Read more
On the night of January 13, 2012, a cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 people steered toward a small Tuscan island so the village on shore could watch it glide past, lit up like a floating city. Sailors call the maneuver an inchino, a bow. Minutes later the Costa Concordia struck a cluster of … Read more
On paper, Song Sung Blue sounds like a punchline. Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, two of the most charismatic movie stars alive, playing a married couple who spent their lives in a Neil Diamond tribute band in Milwaukee. You can already hear the sequins rustling. But the film, which landed on Netflix on June 13 … Read more