Every summer, I climb into the back seat of my dad’s Traverse, dogs in tow, to head to Carolina Beach for a week of family time. It’s a laid-back vacation during which nothing much happens, nor is it supposed to. We simply relax and enjoy each other’s company. My mother and I pay ...
In 2015, Pixar, the studio that makes us feel all of our feelings, made a movie about feelings that made us think about our emotions in a new way, “Inside Out.” Now, almost 20 years later, we are invited back inside Riley’s mind to take a peek as she grows into a teenager in Kelsey Mann’s “Inside Out 2.” Riley (Kensington Tallman) has turned 13. She is a good kid who loves playing hockey and hanging out with her friends Grace (Grace Lu) and Bree (Sumayyah Muriddin-Green). But when they go to hockey camp with the ultra-cool Valentina (Lilimar), new ...
The Tribeca Film Festival was founded in 2002 to celebrate cinema following the attacks on the World Trade Center. This year, 103 feature-length films and numerous short films were shown at Tribeca. Thanks to a virtual option, I was able to cover the festival remotely. Here are a few of my favorite watches from the festival. Documentary features “Hacking Hate,” by filmmaker Simon Klose, follows Swedish journalist My Vingren as she goes undercover to research far-right extremism online. Her work leads her to Anika Collier Navaroli, the former Twitter employee who ...
Growing up, my parents were strict about what movies my sisters and I were allowed to watch, so the only John Hughes film I had seen for a long time was a television edit of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I wasn’t familiar with the Brat Pack until later when I was able to watch films like “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “The Breakfast Club,” and “Sixteen Candles.” While these weren’t formative films during my youth, I do have an affinity for these actors of my generation who were part of a movement toward making and marketing films for a young audience. So one of my most ...
M. Night Shyamalan came onto the film scene like a hurricane with his debut film, “The Sixth Sense.” The ending absolutely shocked audiences and remains one of the best movie twists to this day. Since then, his films have had mixed receptions from critics and audiences alike, but they still manage to get people to the theater — even if it’s just to see if this is the one that turns it around. It is the same curiosity that sent me to see his daughter Ishana Shyamalan’s first film, “The Watchers.” On the 15th anniversary of her mother’s death, ...
Theater kids are often some of the most maligned kids in high schools. A little odd, a little dramatic, a little over-the-top. So when we watch movies with suave, gorgeous stars in them, we can forget that a lot of them are former theater kids. But every once in a while, we get the hint that these stunning people might have been perceived as something else not that long ago. This is heavily on display with Glen Powell’s character in Richard Linklater’s newest film, “Hit Man,” now streaming on Netflix. Gary (Powell) is a college philosophy professor. He is divorced and ...
