Traindreams (2025): A Journey Through Memory, Loss, and the American Soul There are films that tell stories, and then there are films that drift like recollections—fragmented, luminous, half-remembered. Traindreams, adapted from Denis Johnson’s spare and haunting novella, belongs to the latter kind. Directed by Chloé Zhao, whose meditative gaze captures both the beauty and loneliness of…
Tag: netflix
A Real Pain: Healing, Heritage and the Stories We Carry
By Peter de Kuster Introduction: When the Past Calls, What Story Will You Tell? A Real Pain (2024) is a deeply moving dramedy about two cousins—one neurotic and responsible, the other free-spirited and troubled—who travel together through Poland to honor their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. What begins as a heritage tour quickly becomes a journey…
Reclaiming Your Narrative in the Face of Darkness
Introduction: When the Spotlight Isn’t Safe Woman of the Hour is a riveting, unsettling journey into the heart of 1970s America—a time when sexism, celebrity, and violence collided on live television. Anna Kendrick’s film tells the true story of Sheryl Bradshaw, a struggling actress who, in her search for a break, finds herself face-to-face with a…
The Power of Your Story in ‘Carry On’
“Carry-On” stars an effective Taron Egerton as a TSA Agent named Ethan Kopek, who becomes a key player in a terrorist plot. After a too-long bit in which we meet Ethan’s girlfriend Nora (Sofie Carson), who also works at the airport (of course), and discover that they’re about to have a child, we join Ethan on one…
The Power of Your Story in ‘Black Doves’
Happy holidays, you get a spy show! Only one show at Netflix now meets all the genre requirements and also throws in a few delightful extras: spirited characters and lively world-building, frenetic action and fizzy conversation, Ben Whishaw’s luscious hair, Keira Knightley smiling like she wants to rip you apart with her teeth. Black Doves is the…
The Power of Your Story in ‘Our Little Secret’
After taking nearly a decade off, Lindsay Lohan made her return to the movies in 2022 with a starring role in the Netflix Christmas romantic comedy “Falling for Christmas.” Since then, she has made two more rom-coms with the streamer: “Irish Wish” and this week’s “Our Little Secret.” What this pivot has proven is that Lohan is…
The Power of Your Story 