The Spool

One of the most exciting aspects of an artist’s career is how past works inform present efforts and vice versa. Case in point, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s newest, , brings aspects of 2014’s (perhaps better known as on the streets) into sharp relief. Even as someone largely positive on the Best Picture winner, the “confrontation” between the playwright/actor Riggan (Michael Keaton) and critic Tabitha (Lindsay Duncan) struck a sour note.

When you’re a struggling writer, you’ll take any employment opportunities. So it is with protagonist, Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a novelist whose works languish in obscurity. That’s why, when she’s offered the chance to ghostwrite a new book for famous, newly incapacitated author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), she reluctantly accepts.

When you’re a struggling writer, you’ll take any employment opportunities. So it is with protagonist, Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a novelist whose works languish in obscurity. When she’s offered the chance to ghostwrite a new book for famous and newly incapacitated author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway), she reluctantly accepts the offer.

If you are Gen X or a Millennial, chances are good you’ve encountered some piece of “Kill Barney” “humor” over the years. Perhaps a quick-and-dirty reworking of “I Love You” or something even more obvious. Regardless of the version, they were part of life in the late 90s/early naughty aughties. Haters, drawn in from the moment he first proclaimed himself a dinosaur “from our imagination,” seemingly couldn’t help themselves. It’s no wonder such fascinating revulsion caught filmmakers’ imaginations.

In perfect fashion for its collection of castoffs, Season 6 begins with a payroll error. For some reason, no one at Slough House got a paycheck. By the end of the season, bodies, tragedies, and property damage have stacked up like cordwood. Which, if one thinks about it, is also pretty perfect for Jackson Lamb’s (Gary Oldman) Joes. While all of that is bad news for Slough—again, fittingly—it is great news for viewers.

Army Special Forces veteran and protagonist James Belmont (Brad Pitt) isn’t much of a people person. Hence his love for taking himself and his three-legged doggo Odin (who’s also an Army veteran) into a biplane and exploring isolated parts of Alaska. They’ve each seen enough turmoil and bloodshed to fill multiple lifetimes. Submerging themselves in nature is just what the doctor ordered.

is in the upper echelon of movies that sometimes made me wish the filmmakers and characters popped some Vyvanse. In a post- world, super hyperactive CG animated comedies (mimicking the rapid-fire sensibilities of younger audiences raised on internet scrolling) have long become the norm. Typically, that aesthetic is exhilarating rather than exhausting. Titles like the masterpieces, , and The Mitchells vs.

director Lance Oppenheim was born in 1996. He’s grown up in a world of artificial YouTubers pretending to be “normal”. He was just a few years old when and A defined what 21st-century television looked like. He’s witnessed firsthand social media algorithms contorting everyone’s definition of reality. No wonder stories about reality and fiction messily intersecting fascinate him. His 2020 documentary saw gritty human foibles intruding on an “idyllic” Florida retirement community.

If you’ve never played a horror video game, you probably haven’t really considered just how much scarier they can be than a horror movie. The difference is in the control. In a game, you’re not someone open the creaking door to the pitch-black basement. have to open it and tiptoe down the steps yourself. That amplification is part of games’ rush. For the first time, we have a big-screen video game adaptation that not only wants to, but has the skill, to give the audience that experience.

Whether fairly or not, the ending of a work can determine one’s impression of it. A film or TV show that ends badly can leave even everything that preceded it looking worse. That’s not quite the problem with , though the ending similarly handicaps it. Its final moments are, in fact, the most interesting choice the series makes. While I strive to avoid spoilers, I do need to dig into this show’s conclusion a bit to do it.