Below is our compiled writing from the fest, courtesy of Associate Editor Robert Daniels and contributors Cortlyn Kelly and Tomris Laffly. Keep checking this space as our coverage continues.

Reviews

You Can See Everything (Tomris Laffly)

Gentle Monster (Cortlyn Kelly)

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (Robert Daniels)

Tenzing (CK)

Fatherland (RD)

Dispatches

Telluride 2026: Illusion of an Everlasting Summer, Burgundy, Rehearsals for a Revolution (CK)

Telluride 2026: Alpha Gang, The Liberation, The Idiots (RD)

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A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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So seeing a 6-part series that zips by like a 90-minute action movie feels almost invigorating. There’s no 6-episode anything on television this year that hums like the sixth season of “Slow Horses,” an outing that’s entertaining, suspenseful, and honestly moving. After season five, I was a little concerned “Horses” was losing its cadence; now, I’m ready to watch it for another decade.

Of course, as is often the case with a season of “Slow Horses,” much of the joy is in how the complex plotting unfolds, so this review will be vague. It’s one of those shows in which it feels like the writers are always just a step ahead of the viewer, but it makes you sit forward to catch up instead of the common reaction to streaming originals of scrolling on your phone until something happens.

Since it’s really the inciting incident, it’s not a spoiler to say that the sixth season opens just after the death of David Cartwright, River’s (Jack Lowden) grandfather. As River deals with his grief, two potentially intertwined events upset the day he has to bury David. First, a pair of Russian assassins seem to be eliminating members of Slough House, and the fact that they’ve also been removed from the MI5 payroll speaks to a potentially high-ranking reason to do so. Second, the vicious Frank Harkness (Hugo Weaving) pops up, leading to a confrontation between him and River that also pushes through a season that wonderfully contains itself over a limited amount of time. In almost every episode, River has to explain he’s in a suit because he was at a funeral that day.

The previews have spoiled it, but the return of a thought-deceased former member of Slough House also defines the sixth season. Since it’s such a shock to the characters within the show, we’ll keep it secret, but suffice it to say that the subplot really gives the year emotional depth, not just in how it brings out a different side of Lowden but in its themes. The agents of Slough House were sent there because the powers that be saw them as disposable, but what happens when people who were kicked out of the house break back in? So much of “Slow Horses” has been about that idea: That sometimes all it takes to make a great spy is to evict them from the system that holds them back.

Much of this is reflected in Lowden’s work this year, the best of his career. While the show understandably has been pitched as a “Gary Oldman Vehicle,” and while the annual Emmy nominee is truly excellent, this season reminds viewers that it’s at least equally Lowden’s show. The potential next James Bond is put through the wringer physically and emotionally this year, almost to such a degree that one starts to consider if the entire arc of “Slow Horses” won’t be how a River Cartwright becomes a Jackson Lamb through constant betrayals, slain compatriots, and bad diets.

The writing on “Slow Horses” remains some of the strongest on TV, and it’s not just because of the thrilling plotting. As well as any spy fiction of this era can, the writers embed character in plot, using the former to drive the latter instead of pausing for awkwardly inserted backstory. One can feel history and a mix of both regret and pride in these people. There’s a scene between Weaving and Oldman at a Shake Shack, of all places, that’s a mini-masterpiece, one of the best of this year on any series. And kudos to Kristin Scott Thomas for once again taking a complex role and making it real. She has fully closed the deal on the idea that her Diana Taverner is the smartest person in most rooms, but maybe not always the most ethical.

As September and October turn up the dial on streaming originals with shows like “Crystal Lake” and “American Hostage” that are so anticipated that people are paying film festival prices to see them at TIFF (where “Slow Horses” is also dropping its first two episodes, for the record), “Slow Horses” stands out as the likely best of the crowded bunch.

Whole season screened for review. Premieres on Apple TV on September 16, 2026.

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A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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This struck me as bullshit (I was always a very opinionated kid). I immediately started writing my name out as Ms. Marya E. Gates on all my school assignments, and have used that as my professional name ever since. That same year, I participated in the very first national celebration of Take Our Daughters to Work Day, which was the brainchild of Ms. Foundation for Women, going out into the forest on an archaeological survey with my mom. 

This was my first brush with the legacy of Gloria Steinem, who co-founded Ms. magazine and the Ms. Foundation for Women. A paragon, for better or for worse, of second-wave feminism and the nascent women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Steinem passed away yesterday at the age of 92. 

Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1934, Steinem was seemingly preordained for her role in the women’s movement. Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, her paternal grandmother, was a member of the National Woman Suffrage Association and chaired its educational committee. She served as a delegate at the 1908 International Council of Women and was the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education.

Last year on the Substack for Gloria’s Foundation, Steinem wrote that her grandmother died when she was just five years old. She didn’t know much about her feminist history until later in life when someone wrote a monograph about Pauline’s life. In the newsletter, Steinem shares, “I remember my grandmother for her own courage, but also as an example of the ways women’s history can be lost, even in our own families.”

Steinem’s parents divorced when she was just ten years old, after her mother had a nervous breakdown. She remained in Ohio with her mother, while her father moved to California. Steinem later recalled that observing how doctors treated her mother, as well as her mother’s inability to hold down a job, helped her realize early on just how hostile the world can be towards women, especially in terms of their health and their ability to support themselves in the workplace.

Stein attended Waite High School in Toledo before moving in with her older sister Susanne Steinem in Washington, D.C., where she graduated from Western High School. Steinem graduated from Smith College in 1956. A year later, she had an abortion in England while she was on her way to India. She dedicated her 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road” to the man who performed the abortion, Dr. John Sharpe, writing that he said to her, “You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life.” She added, “I’ve done the best I could with my life. This book is for you.”

After spending two years in India studying as a Chester Bowles Asian Fellow, she returned to the United States where she was the director of the Independent Research Service. In her four years working for the foundation, she told The New York Times in 1967 that she had “come home in 1958 full of idealism and activism, to discover that very little was being done.” Unable to find funds from private donors like the Ford Foundation, Steinem, as director, took CIA funding to send American students to the World Youth Festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki, Finland, in 1962. Although she claims the Agency at the time was “enlightened, liberal, nonpartisan, activist of the sort that characterized the Kennedy Administration,” her time working with the CIA remains one of the most controversial parts of her legacy. 

Pivoting to journalism, she became the first employee of Help! magazine in 1960 and, as a freelancer, wrote the 1962 Esquire article “The Moral Disarmament of Betty Coed,” which took on the then-controversial subject of contraception. She also wrote trailblazing articles about the sexual harassment of Playboy Bunnies for Show magazine and abortion and civil rights for New York magazine, before co-founding Ms. magazine in 1971 alongside founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Mary Peacock. 

That same year, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Action Alliance. In 2005, along with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan, Steinem co-founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that “works to make women visible and powerful in the media.” Along with her work in journalism, Steinem was an activist, taking on issues like the Vietnam War, advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment, the end of South African apartheid, and greater access to abortions for women across the globe. 

Through her journalism and activism, Steinem became a celebrity in her own right. A 1971 photograph of Steinem and Ms. magazine co-founder Dorothy Pitman Hughes immediately became an iconic image of the women’s movement. Steinem traveled the United States and the globe as an activist and speaker. She appeared as a talking head on countless television programs like “The Mike Douglas Show,” “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” “The Dick Cavett Show,” and others. 

She also appeared as herself in documentaries about other trailblazing women in politics and pop culture, such as Marilyn Monroe, Victoria Woodhull, Viola Liuzzo, Billie Jean King, Annie Leibovitz, Dolores Huerta, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mary Tyler Moore, Cyndi Lauper, Bella Abzug, Diane von Furstenberg, Martha Stewart, and Katharine Graham. Steinem even had cameos on “The L Word” and in the cult classic comedy “The First Wives Club” (1996).

Her 2015 memoir “My Life on the Road” was adapted by Julie Taymor into a feature film called “The Glorias,” in which Steinem is played at different ages by four different actresses: Julianne Moore as older Gloria Steinem, Alicia Vikander as young Gloria, Lulu Wilson as teen Gloria, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong as child Gloria. In her three-star review of the film, Christy Lemire wrote, “What’s elegant and efficient in the storytelling of “The Glorias” is the way it reveals how each person and experience throughout her life shaped her ideology and sense of purpose. 

The Glorias’ conversations on a bus ride that serves as the film’s through-line further illuminate this arc. Sitting side by side, the wind in their center-parted hair, Vikander-as-Steinem laments to Moore-as-Steinem that she wishes she’d spoken up and fought back more when male colleagues and editors discouraged, objectified, and harassed her. The elder Steinem reassures her that she will eventually: “Plenty of times, lots of times, speaking your mind will get you into trouble,” she tells her younger self with an amused smile at the memory of her own feistiness. 

That same year, Rose Byrne also portrayed Steinem in the miniseries “Mrs. America,” which, as Allison Shoemaker wrote in her review, is “the story of the fight to pass (or, depending on your perspective, stop) the passing of the Equal Rights Amendment.” Shoemaker also noted that “though Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne, expertly cast—honestly, they’re all terrific) is one of Chisholm’s staunchest supporters, her own blind spots rise up with great frequency, often to the detriment of the brilliant women of color in her orbit.” According to IMDb, Steinem was listed as an executive producer on Lateef Calloway’s upcoming project about abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth, which will include interviews with 10 of her bloodline descendants. Calloway shared a peek into the project’s production during Black Writers Week a few years ago. 

Steinem also inspired leaders of third-wave feminism, like feminist punk riot grrrl movement pioneer and Bikini Kill musician Kathleen Hanna, whose first introduction to feminism was when her mother took her to a rally in Washington, D.C., where Gloria Steinem was a speaker when she was nine years old. In a 2000 interview between Steinem and Hanna with BUST magazine, Hanna recalled: 

“My mom was a housewife and wasn’t somebody that people would think of as a feminist, and when Ms. magazine came out we were incredibly inspired by it. I used to cut pictures out of it and make posters that said ‘Girls can do anything’, and stuff like that, and my mom was inspired to work in the basement of a church doing anti-domestic violence work. Then she took me to the Solidarity Day thing, and it was the first time I had ever been in a big crowd of women yelling, and it really made me want to do it forever.” 

Last year, the complex legacy of Ms. magazine was examined in the multi-part HBO series “Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print” In her review, Cortlyn Kelly wrote, “To hear interviews of Steinem in the ’70s and ’80s sharing the same sentiments on women’s rights as she does today is reassuring of hers and the publication’s values, but concerning regarding our lack of social progress.” 

To this point, I was struck by a moment in one of Steinem’s final major interviews, for the BBC’s 100 Women series in 2023. Even at 89, Steinem still used her airtime to advocate for bodily autonomy. When asked by host Faranak Amidi what she has to say about the impact of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 court ruling that made access to abortion legal in the United States, Steinem replied, “it’s not for me to say, except to continue to support reproductive freedom, the ability of each individual woman to have the right to children or not to have children, and do my best connect with and communicate with and support women who are supporting this around the world. Reproductive freedom is as basic, maybe more basic, than freedom of speech.” On the issue of bodily autonomy, in the last few years, Steinem also put her whole weight behind supporting trans rights.

Twenty years after I was first inspired by Ms. magazine, when I was just shy of thirty, I saw Steinem in conversation with Melissa McCarthy in Los Angeles. It was a stop on her book tour for her memoir “My Life on the Road.” It was an enlightening conversation, not just for what Steinem had to say, but for the way McCarthy pushed back on some of Steinem’s outdated terminology and ideology, even as the two women agreed on their shared vision for a more equitable world for all. 

With a legacy as complex as Steinem’s, it’s important to remember that even though she was a pioneer and a tireless advocate for women’s rights, she was not perfect. She was not the end of the road for modern feminism, even if she helped pave it. The important lesson from Steinem’s life and legacy is that the rocky road toward liberation and freedom for all takes endless work. There is no rest for anyone as long as inequality for some remains the status quo.

So let’s keep fighting.

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A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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The film benefits, as most of Swanberg’s films do, from its truly collaborative nature: the core actors receive producer credits and improvise during takes based on an outline he writes. The result is filled with characters who are earnest in their imperfections, people who mean well but are still very much figuring life out, even as they feel the tension of time and the need to settle down. 

At its core is Wendy (Dakota Fanning), a construction manager who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, whose relationship with her partner, Jack (Jake Johnson), is upended when he tells her that they should go on a break so she can go on other dates to explore if being with him is what she really wants.

Jack’s big-brained plan didn’t factor in the potential re-entry of Wendy’s ex-boyfriend, Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), a suave pilot with questionable credit, who scratches Wendy’s itch for adventure and spontaneity. Caught between the orbit of these two strong personalities, Wendy wrestles with whether it’s possible to live a life in relationship with both of them, if she has to choose, or if she needs to expand her horizons beyond this binary. 

Although “The Sun Never Sets” marks six years since Swanberg’s last feature, the intervening years haven’t been idle, from acting in projects like “Invention,” “Invader,” and “Loafers” to his extensive producer work. This project is a delightful reminder of what makes his mumblecore work so beloved, and feels as though it’s the most robust version of films of this ilk, whether it’s the Alaska setting that’s beautifully captured by cinematographer Eon Mora’s 35mm filming, or Swanberg’s own willingness to not settle for easy resolutions when dealing with such sensitive matters of the heart. 

Contrary to most limited releases, “The Sun Never Sets” opened first in Chicago before expanding to other territories this weekend. While in Chicago last week for a pair of in-person Q&As at the Music Box Theatre, RogerEbert.com sat with Swanberg and Smith to talk about the role of silence in understanding a character like Chuck, how Swanberg’s improvisational approach to scriptwriting has changed, and how spending time in Alaska has reframed their relationship to darkness and light. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Most movies usually open in LA/NY first, but it was heartening to see “Exclusively in Chicago” pop up on the poster and trailer screen. Can you speak to the importance of starting this film’s theatrical run in Chicago? 

JS: That was an IFC choice, but I totally agree with you, and I love that it’s met with some confusion and possibly some jealousy from the New Yorkers. 

Cory, as our resident East Coaster here, can you confirm if this is the case? 

Cory Michael Smith: (Laughs) Yeah … why the hell is Chicago getting it first?

JS: The Music Box Theatre, to me, was a holy place since I was 16 years old, and as early as I could take the train from the suburbs into the city to start watching movies, I was having important experiences there. I saw many of my favorite films there for the first time. I saw millions of films I had never heard of, and they completely expanded my idea of what movies could be. When I went to film school, I dreamed of making movies that would play there. That, combined with IFC looking at the calendar, felt like the right factors for that release. 

What’s also significant is that this is the biggest release any of my films has had by a wide margin. I think “Drinking Buddies” at its widest was in twenty-seven screens one weekend. We’re going over five hundred screens next weekend. So I got to say, I’m middle-aged, and careers don’t go in straight lines, but there were still points in my life where I thought, “I wonder if I kind of already saw the best of my career ten years ago.” It’s so nice to feel like, “I’m getting better at my job.” 

I also enjoyed seeing Chicago directors like Brandon Daley, who directed “$Positions,” and Katelyn Douglass in small roles here. Can you talk a bit about bringing Chicago with you to these productions? 

JS: I really wanted Dakota and Debby Ryan to feel like part of a real friend group, and Brandon, Katelyn, and Drew Angle are all actual real-life, longtime friends. Dakota and Debby don’t know each other, and I was nervous to cast some Alaska locals to play this friend group and throw them into a world that needed to feel unified. I knew that if I could get that trio out there, from a vibes perspective, Dakota and Debby could plug right in.

I’m also a huge fan of all of their filmmaking. I love casting directors in my movies in particular. Timing-wise, Brandon was having a nice moment with “$Positions,” and Katelyn with “Spanked by a Ghost.” I thought it would be great to capture these two during a year when their movies are really blowing up, and it’ll be a neat feather in the movie’s cap. They’re both going to go on and have big directing careers, and it’ll be cool in ten years to be like, “Oh my God, look, they’re both in this movie.”

The other thing we laugh about is that Brandon isn’t in that many scenes in the movie, but his character, Brad, casts a long shadow. There’s a team Brad situation, not team Chuck or Jack, that’s brewing and is going to blow back on all of us. I see it on Letterboxd where all the comments are saying “Pour one out for him; he didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Joe, I heard you talk about something Cory does in the film that you love: the beat of silence he takes between scenes. I’d love to hear you expand on that, and also, Cory, how you were thinking through the role of silence in someone like Chuck.

JS: Chuck’s silence in the film is very powerful; it gives him a unique vibe. It’s funny and intimidating. It functions in all these different ways and is perpetually watchable. It’s the opposite of dead time; it’s extremely active time. There’s that scene in the movie where Wendy asks him, “Can I call you?” and the pause that Chuck takes before answering … you see him work through five years of their relationship history in real time. These brief moments become so magnetic through that silence. It’s going to affect my direction going forward a lot. It’s a tool that I know I’m going to use in future movies. Maybe the right way to play a moment is for the actor to say nothing. 

CMS: As an actor, I’m not afraid of using silence. I think it’s an incredible storytelling tool. With this project specifically, I had the benefit of being cast last and understanding Jake’s assets. Jake is an unbelievably hilarious, witty, fast-talking man. Chuck needs to offer something else, and I think Dakota and I had agreed that there’s a different kind of sexual tension in this relationship, and often sexual tension can be born out of relationships where physical communication outweighs verbal communication. So it felt important to build a relationship with Dakota where the connection felt inexplicable and nonverbal. 

Then there also needed to be some understanding of what the problems were in the past. If your strength is a sexual connection, the weakness might be talking through things. “Why would Wendy be drawn to someone who can’t communicate their feelings?” was a question running through my mind. You can really be drawn to somebody just because you can’t understand them, and that made leaning into the silence the more natural reaction. 

JS: It does make Chuck thoughtful in his own way. He’s not a knee-jerk guy who is going to just say something to get himself out of a situation. Those moments of silence let you see Chuck as a compelling, mature character in his own way. He has his flaws and shit he’s dealing with, but there are a lot of moments where you just feel him thinking and being considerate. He doesn’t want to answer a question just because it was asked, or say the easy thing that’s going to solve the problem right then. 

He’s weighing his response, and in those moments you’re like, “I do see why she likes him.” He’s not just a blabbermouth; he’s more like, “Let me make sure what I’m about to say is how I feel so that whatever the outcome of that is, I’m not losing sleep about it later.” As an audience member, I love the ability to sit in that tension and think, “I’m leaning in right now. What’s about to happen?” He doesn’t even know what’s coming next in his life, but it also creates an excitement and charismatic energy that Jake, who is loaded with charisma, doesn’t bring to that character.

I think about the sequence where Wendy and Chuck are looking at properties, and once Chuck looks at the housing application and realizes it’s going to be an issue, he immediately closes off and resorts to a type of formality that’s disarming. 

JS: Chuck’s ability to close off like that leaves other people flabbergasted. You also realize in that scene, “This guy has a sense of humor. It’s dry as hell, and it makes Wendy laugh.” He’s fun, and he’s funny, but he chooses his moments to let it out. 

CMS: It’s a humor made for one other person. You can see why Wendy would love someone like him.

Did these conversations around personality differences manifest in any tangible way in the direction of the kissing scenes? I feel like the way the characters express their passion to each other is often another way to see how each man offers something different to Wendy. 

JS: It was a huge part of the conversation around what this movie was. To put it in its most basic terms, I think I probably said something like, “We need to feel like Wendy and Chuck, fuck.” Whereas Wendy and Jack have sex, we see them; they’re intimate too. That relationship is not devoid of a sex life. I’m not sure they “fuck.” So that, to me, was maybe from a directing standpoint where I was trying to send that thing. To me, it’s a huge distinction. It’s a big part of why, after two years with Jack, when Wendy runs into Chuck at the pool table, she realizes he’s going to bring something to the table that is missing. 

CMS: I think that we had a collective understanding that that was what we needed to do, but in terms of actual execution, I don’t think we really had conversations over specific choreography or movement. Dakota is an excellent storyteller, and it was easy to capture these physical differences because we all started on the same page. 

Dakota also shared that Wendy would carry characteristics similar to her because when you’re trying to come up with things on the spot, you naturally dig into the reservoir of your own life. I’m wondering if that was a familiar experience for you, and whether you resisted or embraced it? 

I think there are experiences I’ve had or behaviors I’ve exhibited in the past that I find familiar in this, but ultimately, I was still trying to make a character. I haven’t said anything to my parents, but I would be interested to hear what they think of this performance. I think there’s a lot of my brother, Chad, in here. I found that,  inherently, communicating more freely without a script just feels more personal, despite it being a character. This has been an enjoyable but challenging film to watch, I think, because you’re watching the manifestation of instincts beyond what I’m used to seeing in a normal film.

When I see the film, or even past takes, what I’m seeing on-screen are the specific choices with those words and those ideas from, say, take three. What I’m saying at any given moment is in reaction to Dakota, how she’s looking at me–which can shift from scene to scene. Some scenes were truly a real swerve from what we intended initially, simply by existing in space with her and being comfortable enough to freestyle with her in real time.

It was not terrifying, but I was nervous about how it would really go early on. Maybe what I’m about to say is terrible for art, but I don’t like wasting time. I like having intention and purpose when working, and so I didn’t want to waste time with instincts. With an actor like Dakota, though, it’s difficult to do that. I learned that nothing is wasted; everything is worthwhile. 

Joe, you talked about the role of improv in your script writing as being “in the service of naturalism.” How did that manifest tangibly in your work? 

JS: I know, improv is a tough word because I do feel like a lot of people have a lot of associations with it. I love improvisation and the shows associated with that word, but when I say, “My movie is improvised,” I know I’m invoking a very cringe idea of a type of performance. 

I also think there’s no other way to say what it is. It is an improvised movie, but it’s a very drama-based, character-based, storytelling-based improv. Especially being an improv filmmaker in Chicago, I know I’m drawing connotations to beautiful institutions like Second City. I’m in no way trying to throw people or that work under the bus. I’m referencing it to get people into the flow and rhythm of naturalism found through living life, as opposed to saying memorized words.

One thing that has changed, though, is that my approach was born out of working with non-actors in my early films, and there was a real hard line between an inability to speak dialogue and a real ability to be themselves a thousand times more compelling. Now that I’m working with actors this good, I am often sitting there going like, “I could write dialogue. These are good actors who can handle this dialogue. So I’m getting over my fear and I’m writing more and more each time I work on a project because I’m less like, “I’m going to give this person this script and it’s just going to sound bad when they try and do it,” and more”I could give this person the script and it’s going to be great.” 

Across your filmography, you play characters with rich inner lives who have to suppress them. Whether it’s Edward Nygma from “Gotham,” the insecurity of Chevy Chase in “Saturday Night,” or Adrian Lester in “1985.” I think there’s something similar here with Chuck, so I’m wondering if you can speak to this throughline. 

CMS: Yeah, I tend to like characters that struggle to communicate or that have a big secret and that don’t feel comfortable speaking. Adrian in “1985,” he’s just holding a secret the whole time. He’s with his family, whom he loves dearly, and he can’t live or speak freely or talk about the biggest thing in his life. That was a truly profound experience for me to play a heartbreaking character. I had to make that movie because when I read it, I was like, “This is a particular kind of pain that I actually want to exercise.” 

Chevy was interesting and a completely different experience, and I was petrified in pre-production that I wouldn’t be able to live up to his speed, wit, and dynamism. I was just watching him exclusively for two months out of paranoia that I would show up and not be able to embody that prowess and cockiness. The crazy thing that happened during that experience was that I started writing jokes in the voice of Chevy Chase. Because he was all I was listening to, it was exciting to channel him, to know one man’s voice so specifically that it could infiltrate my writing process. 

That second scene where we see him doing standup was initially just two jokes on a page that Jason wrote. I told Jason, though, “I just don’t see how this man could get up in a room filled with a bunch of men from around the country who are drunk and smoking, and leave the stage unless he gets some laughs from these guys.” I know the movie has to have momentum, but I showed up that day with all these jokes I had written, and to Jason’s credit, he let me perform them. He said, “Start the scene with what’s written, then do whatever the fuck you  want.” It felt nice to have this instinct I had about him get validated.

I’ve heard Jake talk about how the pervasive light in Alaska–from which the film gets its title–was one of the hardest things to get used to, because it would be 10 PM, you’d see kids playing at the playground still, and then you’d see other people doing drugs in a gas station. We associate so many activities with light or darkness, and I’m wondering how filming in Alaska, during a season of such full light, reshaped your relationship to darkness? 

JS: (Laughs) Jake was most certainly the most tripped out of all of us with the pervasive light. I don’t know what world he’s living in, but it seems to me that there are things he doesn’t want to see, and that Alaska forced him to look at. We shot the whole movie without the title, and the only thing in my head was “If the title does not remind the audience and address this daylight situation, we’re cooked.” 

I didn’t know what that title was, but I just thought some scenes looked like continuity errors. You just have an interior bar scene at night and then characters exit, and you’re like, “Oh, they ran out of time, and they had to shoot the nighttime scene at 5:00 PM the next day. Something’s wrong. That is just our instinctual movie-watching habit. I was thinking, “If the title of this movie does not remind you that you’re in Alaska, then you may be thrown off. But the title acts as a way to keep them invested.” 

From a filming standpoint, in many ways, it’s the greatest gift you could receive, especially shooting on 35 millimeter where you need light. We don’t have to chase short days the way some movies do. In Chicago, sometimes you run out of time. We were sort of gifted this nebulous perpetual day to play with and work with. So it ended up granting us freedom instead of being a problem. Eon and I had a lot of conversations heading into the shoot about utilizing the weird bit of Twilight nighttime. I was thinking a lot about whether I wanted to normalize Anchorage or make it feel like an American city. 

CMS: The thing that felt important to me is understanding that it’s bright all day in the summer, but these people also live through complete darkness during the winter. I was fascinated by the kind of person exposed to that experience. How does that person live? How do they feel? What are they willing to suffer through? The people there have more weight to them than people in other places. 

I read a novel called The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah before being invited onto the film. It talks very much about how late summer is about preparing for winter, literally, physically with supplies, and also mentally preparing for it. I do think that there is a toughness to Alaskans, and I felt like that was an important thing to be able to understand as a character. 

JS: As a filmmaker, I would be interested in going back to Alaska and doing a movie during the dark part of the year, where it’s reversed and instead of pervasive light, it’s pervasive night. 

I don’t know that I’ve ever worked in a place that can be so psychologically and physically different in the same locations, environments, and with the same people. 

Digging deeper into Karley Sciortino’s written work–whether it’s “I Want Your Sex” or her column at Vogue–much of her public-facing work explores women’s health and sexual life. How did she join the project, and did any conversations with her—whether about her work directly or just about her philosophies, experiences, and writings—impact your approach when exploring sex and relationships in the film? 

I was a fan of Karley’s writing and video work, and we became friends almost 15 years ago.  I wrote an episode of my Netflix series “Easy” (the season 2 episode “Side Hustle”) for Karley to star in, and while she’s known for her writing, I always thought she was a really talented and natural performer and had a great time working with her in front of the camera.  

I thought she would be a perfect match with Jake and that they would be funny together, and she would seem like a real threat to Dakota’s character. Karley is probably one of the people I talk to most about life, sex, and relationships in general, and as a friend she also knew all of the ins and outs of my real relationship and breakup that inspired the film, so it was a natural fit and her influence is definitely there.  She also has a great role in my next film and proves even further what a good actor she is!

Sara says, “I feel like we’re sort of too old for this.” Has working on the film made you reflect on what it means to “age well” in relationships? At what point do certain foibles become unacceptable, or when does “still trying to figure yourself out” no longer garner sympathy?

I hope that Sara’s conversation with Jake is refreshing for audience members who are already wondering why a mid-40s guy is being so messy and dramatic. The whole film inspires a lot of reflection for me, and I think “figuring yourself out” is a lifelong process, but I do think there are certain markers that most people hit at certain ages, and Jake’s character is interesting because in some aspects of his life he is very settled and mature, and in others he’s a total mess. 

For me, that’s the reality of life. We all advance, grow, and mature at different rates, in different contexts, and sometimes people are successful in one area of their life and can’t figure out another. I try to sympathize with all my characters, and Jake is such a fun, winning performer that it’s hard not to love him. But by that point I hope he’s maxed out everyone’s patience, and both Sara and Wendy tell him it’s time to grow up.

“The Sun Never Sets” is in theaters via IFC. 

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In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

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During this time, the physicians volunteer their skills in Gaza at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, with Teng’s film following them on the ground during visits before and after the alleged 2025 ceasefire. The film also follows them back in the United States as they educate and advocate for a true end to horrors they have witnessed. 

Although this is Teng’s directorial debut, she is no stranger to world documentary filmmaking. She produced the Oscar-nominated  documentary short “St. Louis Superman” and was the executive producer of the Emmy-winning feature “Patrice: The Movie.” Born and raised in Malaysia, she attended Taylor’s College in Kuala Lumpur and studied journalism at San Francisco State University, where she wrote for the student paper the Golden Gate Xpress.

After spending some time working as a journalist in India, she worked at The New York Times as a video journalist before joining Al Jazeera English, where she oversaw their documentary series “Witness.” 

As Director of Funds and the Enterprise Program at the International Documentary Association (IDA), she spearheaded a grant program for filmmakers with disabilities, supported by the Ford Foundation. She then worked as an Executive Editorial Producer for ABC News Studios under Disney. At the CPH:DOX festival this past March, she shared that, “A year into the genocide, I didn’t have any more words.” She subsequently quit her job and spent approximately $150,000 of her only money to kickstart the budget to begin production on “American Doctor.” 

In her director’s statement, Teng shares sentiments that I deeply agree with. She writes, “As an American, I needed to speak out. We are deeply complicit in this war. This is not just Israel’s war on Gaza. It is America’s war, with billions of dollars of American weapons being used to kill children and the innocent…This film is our way of honoring those we have lost—and fighting for the living. It is about bearing witness, speaking truth to power, and refusing to look away.”

For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke with Teng over Zoom the night after the film screened to a sold-out audience at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago (where Teng spoke with documentary participant Dr. Thaer Ahmad). We talk about why she left her career to tell this story, how she turned despair and rage into something positive, and why she still thinks documentaries can help change the world. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Towards the end of the film, Dr. Ahmad is trying to get into Palestine, but he can’t. He says he hopes his children won’t fail the way his generation has. You said in one of your Q&As that the seed money you put into the film was money you’d saved for your child, and you hope they’d understand someday. That feels like an interesting connection of sacrifice from one generation to the next. Had you thought of that connection when you were editing the film?

I don’t think so much of my own sacrifice because I don’t look at material things as something that I’m gonna covet because of my own upbringing. My mother is a staunch Buddhist. She always taught us children, all us kids growing up, that greed is the cause of all suffering; if you have something, you should be ready to let it go because nothing is permanent anyway. So when it comes to material things, I think it’s not that hard. Money comes, money can go, money can come back again. So that’s how I look at it. 

My daughter and Dr. Ahmad’s eldest daughter are the same age. So, throughout the entire genocide as it was unfolding, and working on the material and seeing the affected children, it’s been hard. It hits hard. Every night, I definitely held my daughter a little closer. To the point that she would ask me, “Why are you hugging me so tightly?” and I’d say, “It’s because I love you.” I think it was my way of coping. As for our generation, I don’t know. I don’t know whether what we are doing is enough, but we just try.

You left your position working as a creative executive at ABC News to focus on making this film. I wondered if there was a moment when you realized you could spend your energy doing something you truly believed in, or if you had a revelation like that?

I think for me, I was just sad all the time immediately after the beginning of the genocide. Then watching these videos, especially of journalists being killed, that hit home. Especially one particular journalist who I’ve spoken about before: Samer Abu Daqqa. He was a cameraperson. My first job out of college, after the internships, was as a cameraperson. His death really hit hard. Then the silence among peers cut deep. So I thought to myself, I can’t continue. I really cannot. I didn’t want to be in such deep despair all the time. So I ended up watching stream after stream of videos and feeling helpless. I didn’t want to feel helpless. 

That’s when I thought maybe I could use my work experience and contacts from the past 20-plus years, and maybe it could come in handy. It was all just trial and error. I wasn’t really sure. I was sure I was going to try, but I wasn’t sure what the final outcome would be. I knew I wanted to make a film. 

It’s funny. Earlier, I was reading this text that my friend sent. She took a screenshot, and she sent it to me a few days ago. This exchange happened on September 16th of last year. I’ll read it to you. This was nine plus months into making the film. I said to them, “It’s been such a lonely journey when it comes to funding, only heartache, but things are changing.” They said, “Sometimes it just takes one domino.” I said, “Everything I hoped for when we began: that by the time the film is ready in a year, funders, programmers, hopefully the audience, everyone will be ready. Hopefully, we shall see.” Then my friend messaged, “I’m so proud of you, dude. You were meant for this.” And I said, “Let’s see how far we go.” That was almost a year ago. And so last night, Chicago gave everything that I dreamt of and more.

How did you first come across these three doctors, and at what point did you realize that their advocacy, their friendship, and their shared journey to Nasser Hospital in Gaza was going to be the core story you wanted to tell?

I think once I found Dr. Mark Perlmutter, it was very clear. He introduced me to Dr. Thaer Ahmad and Dr. Feroze Sidhwa. First, the film’s journey started when I quit my job. I took my money out because nobody was dying to fund a film about Palestine. I knew I had to put my money in first. I mean, I had skin in the game. I was determined to make this film no matter what. So it was good motivation, but I didn’t know what film to make.

Then I saw Mark in a news clip. A reporter asked him, “Why do you think there’s no ceasefire?”—this was in 2024—and he said, “There’s no ceasefire because politicians are *expletive* to lobby groups.” It was a breath of fresh air, and then Mark very soon introduced me to Thaer and Feroze. That’s when I thought, three doctors go into a bar, one is Palestinian, one is Jewish, one is Zoroastrian, and that bar is Gaza. It’s Nasser Medical Complex. Then I wanted to see how they were dealing and what would unfold in the coming months. 

Thaer was the person that I filmed. It was Christmas 2024, and it was a lonely, lonely time. The first time I met Thaer in person, we were at a clinic filming the little boy [in the film]. This child who had come to the United States to get medical care. I saw Dr. Thaer be so comforting and gentle in how he approached the child and reassured his guardians as well, and I could see what a good person he was.

A few days later was the Muslim American Society convention in Chicago. I already knew from research that there are about 16,000 Palestinians in the Chicagoland area. So I knew right away I was going to open the film with the MAS convention. I wanted the American public, the general broad public, non-Muslims, non-Arabs, non-Palestinians, to see that this is America. So, we went into the convention center and boom. This is America. This is Chicago. And we invited the audience into the Palestinian American community. 

Dr. Thaer’s story is so interesting. He is American, just like these other two guys, and yet he is denied entry into Gaza as a doctor. The way you weave him into the film is really impactful. I think people usually think if you have an American passport, you can do anything. But it’s not true. His Palestinian heritage means he can’t go to Palestine. That’s wild. Thaer’s story is a great way of showing the layers of this institutional discrimination around Palestine.

That was at the center of my motivation for making this film. As a woman of color, as somebody who grew up in a minority religious community where I’m from before I came to the United States, and as somebody from a very working-class background,  I’m very perceptive to who gets to say what, who gets to do what, and who gets to go where. So when I met the three of them, that was always front and center for me. And of the three doctors, if I can be honest with you, I was rooting for Thaer to get in. I knew the chances of them getting rejected going to Gaza in March 2025 were very high, but I was rooting for Thaer to get in. So when Feroze and Mark got in, and Thaer got rejected, I was crushed for him. I didn’t even have the words to console him. 

He actually spoke about this last night. He disappeared. He totally ghosted me. I freaked out because Thaer, in many ways, is the north star of this film, the heart of this film. When he disappeared, I called him, I texted him, I sent him flowers. I remember calling our director of photography, Chris Renteria, who’s based in Chicago, and saying I thought Thaer was mad at me. Chris said, “No, he’s not mad at you. Give him some time.” But I also realized how important it was to capture this moment. I knew from having spent time with him and the community that Palestinians are very polite, so I flew from New York City, where I live, to Chicago. I told him, “Hi. I’m in Chicago,” and he said, “Okay, come and see me.” That was when we shot the scene of him on the couch.

I think it was about a week and a half or two weeks after his rejection. I remember the conversations that we had leading up to that scene, because he was so in so much despair and anger. He wanted to go to Gaza to help his people, to be with his people. He said that he was embarrassed that he couldn’t help his people. I said to him, “Maybe there’s another role for you. Maybe you are not meant to be there. Maybe you are meant to be outside, to speak for your people. You are your people. You are the continuation of your people on the outside. So speak for them.” That was the lead-up to the scene on the couch where he was very honest with his anger and frustration.

I feel like even though this film is very educational, it is also a very angry film, filled with righteous fury. Like when Dr. Feroze talks about how our tax dollars are paying for this genocide. Our government has broken the social contract with the people who allegedly employ them, and this film states those facts very clearly. You have a scene towards the end where you have a news broadcast soundbite from Trump, basically saying that the IDF has used the weapons we gave them well. Then you show what weapons were used – destroying another hospital. It’s a really great piece of editing. It really drives home that the people in charge don’t care. 

The film was born out of deep despair and rage. But I also realized if I didn’t convert that into something for myself—and I’m only speaking for myself—it would consume me. Hence the movie “American Doctor.” I’m still thinking about the screening last night. After the film ended, everybody was like, “God bless you, thank you.” It’s impactful when it comes from the community, or even people outside the community. I think to myself that I am so thankful and so grateful to be in Thaer’s world and Feroze and Mark’s world, because they’ve saved me. 

Whatever your skill is, putting that energy towards something creative and hopeful is good because, as you said, despair can overwhelm you.

If you linger there for too long, it’ll consume you. I think acknowledging it is important. Acknowledging raw emotions is very important. I think it is important to acknowledge despair, acknowledge rage, and sit with it, but also to know that it will pass. This has been the biggest lesson in my faith. In Buddhism, we are not supposed to hold on to things, even emotions, even feelings. We’re not supposed to hold on tightly. We’re supposed to acknowledge the good and the bad, and that it will pass. That you cannot hold on to it, and so have faith that it will be better. So actually, making this film has been very experiential when it comes to the faith. 

A scene that really stuck with me since Sundance is that opening sequence where Mark is saying you can’t blur out images of dead children; that it would be journalistic malpractice. Then the camera holds on those horrible images for quite a while. The film, for me, feels like it’s a film trying to convince people who keep looking away to stop looking away. Why do you think people can still keep looking away so many years into this?

I don’t want to judge other people. I look at the people around me, right? My own friends, and when I was making the film, I was so upset at the people around me because my mind couldn’t understand. It couldn’t process what I was seeing, and just the people around me and how they were. But of course, when I took a step back, I realized that there are a lot of things that occupy one’s mind, especially in the United States. Life isn’t easy here. We have ICE crackdowns. The unemployment situation. So many things right on top of each other. When you look at the situation domestically, so many terrible things are happening on a consistent daily basis. So when something is happening so far away, in Gaza and the West Bank, or in different parts of that region, how are people going to actually compute? These days, when I have more patience and I take a step back, I can see that. 

During that first scene, I was frustrated. I wanted it in the film because I wanted to shake my friends and my family. I couldn’t understand, and yet I also understood. So, that’s why that scene is at the top, and why the film is the way it is. I wanted to speak to them, and I didn’t have the language anymore. Then Mark, Thaer, and Feroze gave me the language. 

You produced “Patrice: The Movie,” which is so joyous, but it’s also a social change film. It’s really about discrimination at its heart, even though it’s a rom-com-style documentary. With these two films, both social-change documentaries, do you feel that in this era, where so many documentaries are being made, this medium can still help facilitate change?

Absolutely. The power of story can always facilitate change. It’s just how you do it. As a former studio executive, I watch how people watch things. We see what draws them in. With “Patrice: The Movie,” it was clear to me that people like romantic comedies. Seeing director Ted Passon’s vision, I thought, “This is the way we can highlight the inequality when it comes to the disabled community, to put it front and center to a broad audience.” 

With “American Doctor,” I knew that Americans love medical dramas. They love “The Pitt.” I love “The Pitt.” So I thought, let’s give them “The Pitt,” but the difference is it’s real, and it’s set in Gaza. Audiences like to see interactions between doctors, healthcare workers, nurses, and patients. Let’s do the same thing in our film. Let’s show Dr. Abed and Dr. Ahem with Dr. Mark. Let’s show Dr. Feroze with Dr. Khaled. Let’s show doctors’ banter. Let’s show camaraderie, let’s show the love for life, let’s show the despair, let’s show friendship, using the elements of another genre, in this case scripted medical dramas, learning those storytelling techniques, and applying them to documentary. The difference is, in documentary, it’s real. 

In this day and age, when so much is curated and fake with AI, people want what’s real. And last night at the Music Box Theatre, I saw that. I felt the yearning for reality.

Even if it’s hard. 

Yes, even when it’s hard. Because what’s going to happen? It’s still in your mind, right? If you’re following it, if you’re reading news, it’s still playing in your mind. So what better way than to be part of the story by watching it, and then being in the community? That’s how one can process the moment. That’s how I’ve processed it. We’ve had the film playing at festivals for eight months now, and it’s out in the world. I feel so much more confident than I’ve ever been that, one, this was absolutely the right decision, and two, we are heading in the right direction.

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In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

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Season two begins with the family living an idyllic life, waking up bathed in sunlight and bickering over fixing their leaky roof. But the safety they’ve found all comes crumbling down seven months after their arrival, when another Jason breaks into the house and attempts to seduce Daniella, just like the first season. But this time, instead of falling for his charm, she shoots and kills him. When a cop shows up and spots the dead body, the Dessens are forced to go on the run again, desperately searching for a world where versions of themselves exist far away.

In its second season, the series takes a step back, and what was once a mind-numbing, reality-hopping sci-fi becomes a thrilling examination of humanity and belonging. Finally, the multiverse isn’t the focus of the story; instead, the characters within these realities are. While season one focused almost entirely on how the Box—the invention that enables travel between dimensions—affected Jason and his family, season two explores how the Box has affected the other people in his life and the world at large. By shedding CGI-laden landscapes and bloated physics jargon, the series has tethered itself back to earth, and therefore, humanity. 

By grounding the series, Crouch (who serves as the series’ showrunner and primary writer for season two) forces Jason to take a back seat as Daniela, Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), and Amanda (Alice Braga) get more deserved screen time. Haunted by their old lives, the three are no longer on a mission to return home, but to make sense of their place within the Box’s different dimensions. Any semblance of life as they knew it has crumbled, and with this transformation comes their own unraveling. As the toll of fleeing their old lives begins to fracture each of their resolves, all three actors harness their respective arcs with a magnitude that ripples through the series. 

As good as Edgerton is in this series, it’s refreshing that Jason is no longer the sole connector bringing these characters together. By focusing less on him, characters like Blair Caplan (Amanda Brugel) and Leighton Vance (Dayo Okeniyi), who spent season one on the sidelines, are given some of the show’s best material. With Jason now a side character, his peers begin to orbit each other in unexpected ways, and watching different versions of them no longer feels confusing; it’s simply fascinating. As the series leans more into an espionage flair, it becomes the best version of itself, as the multiverse gives way to thrilling car chases, tense moments of file searching, and emotional character arcs. 

This isn’t to say the show sheds its sci-fi shell completely; rather, its mystical aspects are woven into the story’s human foundation instead of overtaking it entirely. From the first episode, this season feels less bloated than it did in 2024, putting the spotlight on its fascinating characters instead of the world they operate within. In doing so, the series has two standout episodes that shape up to be some of the year’s best, each focusing on a character (or version of a character) viewers have little to no prior knowledge of. With these episodes, Crouch allows the humanity of this story to not simply take root, but to grow into a foundational aspect of the series going forward.

Scaling back its most excessive parts has made “Dark Matter” one of the best science fiction series of the year. By allowing its characters to sit in their grief, the series makes it clear that the versions of them who existed in their original worlds are gone, and no matter how hard they try, they cannot get those lost pieces of themselves back. Though it often feels like a requiem, the series is ultimately concerned with how we can retain our humanity through the transformations science makes, and, if anything, proves that although the ego of man is unstoppable, so is the fundamental empathy and drive for community found in human nature.

All episodes were screened for review.

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In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

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Thankfully, in Spike Fearn and Angourie Rice, MacDonald and writer Rachel Hirons have found more-than-worthy travelers to root us in this voyage. Fearn plays Owen, a sound engineer who, after spending a magical night with Emily (Sadie Soverall), realizes that she has given him the wrong number through which to contact him. Distraught, he seeks help from another Emily (Rice) to find her. Rice’s Emily sees Owen as a prime candidate for her theory that love serves no purpose in the modern world, merely an evolutionary carryover from when people still needed companionship and community. 

One key theme that “Finding Emily” thoughtfully explores is the digital anxiety young people face when trying to pursue love. When awkward dates can go viral, texts can be screenshotted and shared out of context, and no one wants to be the cautionary tale, how does this impact the way people interact? Does it force people to be more genuine, or does it make them put up more boundaries? “I think romcoms, in many ways, can be seen as a genre that explores the ways technology impacts human connection,” Rice shared on the theme. 

“Finding Emily” was released in the UK in May and as the film gets ready to jump the pond to make its US bow, RogerEbert.com spoke with Rice and Fearn about how filming in Manchester was emblematic of MacDonald’s anachronistic take on the romcom, the joy of filming their key musical scenes, and the outtakes they filmed that ended up being critical to understanding their character’s journeys. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

It’s rare for Manchester to be the setting of a romcom. From the film, it feels like it’s a place that feels modern and ancient, particularly how it oscillates between classic locations like the Northern Quarter and the more contemporary Peak District. That interplay between ancient and modern connects with the ways Alicia has taken rom-com tropes and updated them with distinctly Gen Z angst. Tell me more about what being in that city, and being surrounded by that history, helped clarify what Alicia was trying to accomplish with “Finding Emily.” 

Spike Fearn: Manchester was always a place I wanted to film, and I’m happy I could live into that dream. I’m inspired by the purity of Manchester but also its sound. I think with filming for projects, you’re often not there long enough to really fall in love with it, but it was nice to film there, grow with it, and experience its seasons and changes. 

I’m just happy that Manchester is shown because a lot of the northern parts of the UK are shown as gray, and that’s not really what it is. How Manchester is shown, with its vibrancy and color, is exactly how it feels. That focus guided how we thought through what Alicia was trying to do with this romcom: expand people’s horizons on what the genre can be. 

Angourie Rice: Spike wrote me a poem at the end of filming that was about Manchester. It was specifically about what you’re referencing. It’s about all that is old and new within Manchester, how it holds these realities. You were also writing that poem from the vantage point of where you were filming in your apartment because you see the city, but how it’s surrounded by green. 

SF: Manchester feels like it’s a city, but if you’re high enough and you look around, you see mountains and forests all around you. It feels like nature stopped just for Manchester to be there, and then it continued to build around it. That felt weighty, as if Manchester was “chosen” to be there and was there for a reason. 

I remember being inspired and reflecting about how nature stopped for this beautiful place that we’re now filming. That sense of time stopping and building around a particular emotion like love was also something I was thinking through.

Angourie, I heard you share that the team had about a week to film when school wasn’t in session, and that all of a sudden, these empty streets were flooded with people as production went on. I imagine that puts the idea of “doing things that are cringe with sincerity” to the test when you have all these watchful eyes. 

AG: When the students came back, it was as if the city came alive. It was fun because we filmed on Canal Street, and a couple of weeks earlier, Manchester Pride was on that street. It was so crowded, and coming back a couple of weeks later to film was special. 

SF: One guy with a camera kept following us around when we were filming. He must have been the only paparazzi guy in Manchester. He always knew where we were. 

AG: I didn’t feel embarrassed or cringe while performing. It was interesting, as you pointed out, to think about the fact that people were watching and to work not to let that factor into the performance. We added a shot of me running out of the library at the last minute. 

We finished filming early, which never happens, and as I’m running out the front of the library, there’s this crowd of people gathered to watch, evidently, me run–and they set up a barricade. It felt like all the people of Manchester gathered to watch me run from the tram stop in front of the library. They were cheering me on, not knowing what I was running to, from, or for, and I was like, “I’m just filming a movie!” It all felt so magical though; that’s what Manchester is like. 

People will see something, and then they’ll be like, “Wait, this is awesome. Let’s check it out.” 

Both of you have standout musical moments in this film: Spike, your scene with Jack Riddiford as you rap “Wordy Rappinghood”, and Angourie, your dancing scene with Cora Kirk. Tell me more about filming those scenes of catharsis, particularly how you communicated that sense of liberation in these very contained environments: the car for you, Spike, and the cramped living room for you, Angourie. 

SF: For the scene with Jack in the car and me, Alicia was like, “What should the song be?” My 

dad always showed me music growing up, and my mom showed me that song by Tom Tom Club. That’s always stuck in my head as the musical influence my mom has had on me, and I thought it would be fitting for these two brothers to listen to something that their mom showed them. 

I remember on the day we were doing it, Jack and I realized that we both don’t speak French and there’s obviously a key French part of the song. On the day, Jack said, “Instead of trying to do the French part, what if we just said ‘French French French French French French.’” It was just so enjoyable to film, and we couldn’t hear them say “cut” because we were having such a good time. 

The significance of that dance scene, Angourie, was that production played the song out loud while you dance “Off Wiv Ya Headz,” which often doesn’t happen for productions. 

AG: Yeah, we filmed that sequence several times. I felt like it was just as fun as the boy’s scene in the car. Alicia and our DP, Rachel Clark, wanted to film the scene as one shot. Obviously they cut into it, but those scenes were filmed through as one take. Alicia also wanted to do a 360-degree perspective of the room so everyone was out of the room–normally very rare on a film set–and it was just Cora, me, Rachel filming us with a handheld camera, and Alicia hiding under the kitchen bench. I love those moments where you get to dance with the camera operator as well. 

It felt exactly how it looked; we were coming to the end of filming, so it was emotional to be there, dancing, and letting all of these emotions out. We had an incredible movement coach called Polly Bennett, who gave both Spike and me a framework for how we’d move our bodies. It was less “do this” and more “Here’s roughly how I want you to move. Do something different during this beat; here’s the shape of how you’ll be moving in space.” She gave us guide rails to freestyle. She was also there when you were doing all of the music stuff on stage as well, Spike. 

SF: She worked so well with the background actors, which in my scene was important. She did warm-ups with them and helped me feel confident I wouldn’t be embarrassed and could lead that scene with all those people. 

Speaking of filming and endings, a scene that stood out to me was the moment of revelation between your characters, when Owen realizes Emily has been using him. That confession moment is a rom-com staple; these characters have to feel betrayed by each other before they can love each other. What’s interesting, though, is that we don’t hear their confrontation. James Blake’s “Atmosphere” is what the audience hears while the dialogue is inaudible. Talk to me about how that affects your line deliveries as actors, when you know that what you’re saying might not be heard by people, especially for a critical moment like that. 

AG: I didn’t know the song, but there was no dialogue scripted. So everything was figured out and improvised on the day. 

SF: There was a different song before the James Blake one. It might have been “Love Will Tell Us Apart.” It’s funny you mention that scene because my dad likes that moment too. Everybody picks up on it. It’s such a smart scene, because I remember when we were filming, I really wanted to talk. Thinking about this from Owne’s perspective, I want to say my piece right over what’s happened. We did do a take like that, but then Alicia was like, “That’s a different movie.” 

AG: I think it’s good though that we did that take because whether or not it ends up in the film, what we do informs, at least for me, the next take. I was thinking, “What is Emily afraid of? Is she afraid he’s going to yell?” So when you did yell for that take, it was scary because her fears were realized. But then when we did the silent, more muted version, that felt worse than the yelling. What happened is much worse than what she feared. She feels like she deserves to be yelled at, but he doesn’t, and that aches. 

SF: Speaking on things that were filmed but didn’t end up in the film yet still informed the character, the last thing we filmed is not actually in the movie. It’s Angourie and Cora walking home from a night out. I had wrapped filming earlier in the day and had gone out with some of the cast to the pub for celebration drinks. I decided to go down to where they were filming, and I had my hood on, and I wanted to get in the back of the shot in a shopping cart. 

Scenes like that, whether it makes it in the final film or not, are one of the many ways that sets “Finding Emily” apart from films of a similar ilk. It has such delightful quirks, like that scene where you, Angourie, and the character played by Emily Ash listen to Spike’s heartbeat. 

SF: I think that’s what’s so great about the film: there are these quirky small parts where others can shine apart from the main ensemble. It’s what drew me into the story, and because there are so many parts and each person has a funny bit to do, it keeps you engaged. I’m happy you mentioned that heartbeat scene because I love that so much. I couldn’t stop laughing during that moment. 

Angourie, I read that you read Essays in Love by Alain de Botton to prepare for the role, and even attended a Carl Jung lecture. Can you talk about building the philosophical spine for the character of Emily Rain, what stood out to you from these readings, and how you might have layered them into your performance? 

I think what I really took from that book is that, and I think Emily goes through this too, is that you can intellectualize love from every single side, and you can figure out how to talk about it and really break it down into its elemental building blocks. At the end of the day, when you’re standing in front of somebody who makes you feel like your heart is going to explode, none of that intellectualizing is going to help. You are still going to feel how you feel and express it in some way. That’s not to say don’t research. You can try to gamify all these things, but there’s something about meeting someone face-to-face and the embodied connection that stands out powerfully.

I’ve been thinking about the role of technology in this film, and how it’s changed what’s possible but made what’s permissible murkier. If “Finding Emily” took place in a different time, I feel like Owen would leave things be, but it’s because he exists in a world where it’s possible to send emails that almost enables his fantasy in a way. Tell me more about this undercurrent of digital anxiety and the ways it manifests in how young people navigate relationships. 

AG: I think romcoms, in many ways, can be seen as a genre that explores the ways technology impacts human connection. If you’ve seen “Sleepless in Seattle,” that’s a ‘90s romcom where the character falls in love with somebody over the radio and, using her journalism skills, finds him. So that idea of technology enabling your search manifested there, and I also think about the film “Dangerous Liaisons.” That’s a film based on a book from the 1700s that similarly has this plot of enticement and the use of letter writing to find and locate someone. 

I think it’s interesting to think about how, for broncos, the context and details change, but the feelings are the same. For these characters, the feeling of being embarrassed, even if it’s three hundred people who you’ve accidentally sent an email to, or if it’s just that you’ve accidentally said the wrong thing to one person, that feeling of embarrassment stays the same no matter where you are or what time period you’re in.

SF: I think we live in a time where people are scared to see phones in their movies, mainly because people might go to the cinema to get away from life where screens dominate. I empathize with that, but at the same time, this is the time we’re living in. In. I think Alicia, in pursuit of authenticity, cleverly incorporated technology without drawing too much attention to it, focusing on how it has infiltrated every part of our human experience, including love. Love and its pursuits change with the times, but you can still be smart about the way you change.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

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Jasa Backlink

Download Anime Batch

“The Big Lebowski“
“The Bling Ring“
“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo“
“The Green Knight“
“I Swear“
“Moneyball“
“The Outrun“
“Poor Things“
“The Shallows“
“Swiss Army Man“

15 NEW TO BLU-RAY/DVD

“American Dream” (Criterion)
“Harlan County, USA” (Criterion)

A new film by Barbara Kopple is an event for documentary lovers, and her “Union Town” premieres at TIFF next month. Kopple is quite simply one of the best non-fiction filmmakers of all time, and Criterion honored her this with month with the inclusion of two of her best films into the collection. Her masterpiece will probably always be “Harlan County, USA,” Kopple’s film about Appalachian miners fighting for their rights via the Brookside Mine strike in the ’70s. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary and really put Kopple on the map. The Criterion release includes not just a new 4K restoration but audio commentary, making-of documentary, and even an interview with John Sayles. Kopple’s follow-up, “American Dream” has also been given a Criterion 4K release with an interview and a conversation with Studs Terkel. These are great, essential releases.

Special Features:

• “American Dream”
• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Barbara Kopple, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Interview from 1992 with Kopple
• Audio conversation between Kopple and historian Studs Terkel from 1992
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• “Harlan County, USA”
• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Barbara Kopple, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary by Kopple and editor Nancy Baker
• Making-of documentary featuring interviews with Kopple, crew members, and strike participants featured in the film
• Outtakes from the film
• Interview with bluegrass singer-songwriter Hazel Dickens
• Interview with filmmaker John Sayles
• Panel discussion from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival featuring Kopple and critic Roger Ebert
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: Essays by film critic Michael Atkinson and musician and writer Jon Weisberger

“EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert“

When Baz Luhrmann was making “Elvis,” he came across hours of footage that had never been seen before, including an audio recording of Presley talking about his life and career. Much of the concert footage needed detailed audio recovery, which led the Oscar-nominated director to the production of this remarkable document, a movie that’s part bio-doc and part concert film. One of the most successful documentaries in years, this was a pretty sizable hit for Neon, who have now given it a stunning 4K home treatment. Of course, the most important thing: The audio mix here is incredible. I’m not sure why I put off seeing this for so long. I think I thought it was just another Elvis highlights reel. It’s not. There’s a passion to the assembly here by Luhrmann that illuminates his admiration and respect for the King in a manner that’s contagious. It’s fun, funny, and, of course, the music rocks.

Special Features:

• TV Spots
• Trailers

“Exit 8“

Kazunari Ninomiya stars in this adaptation of the 2023 video game of the same name, a movie that feels of a piece with the trend in horror this year of ordinary situations becoming surreal and terrifying in films like “Backrooms,” “It Ends,” and even “Obsession.” This one is the story of a man who essentially gets stuck in a neverending loop in an underground subway tunnel. As he tries to figure out how to escape, the anomalies speak to his real-world anxieties and fears. It’s a smart movie that deserves more attention on the VOD and Blu-ray market, although the Neon physical release is a little slight. (What’s up with no digital codes, Neon?)

Special Features:

• NEW! Behind the Scenes of Exit 8
• NEW! Cannes Film Festival Footage
• NEW! Busan Film Festival Footage
• Trailer

“Hokum“

The Neon party continues! This is actually one of their best films of 2026, a banger of a folk horror piece from the director of “Caveat” and “Oddity.” Adam Scott stars as an alcoholic asshole of a writer in this Stephen King-inspired piece about a man who goes to a very haunted hotel, searching for both secrets about his past and a way forward in his own existence. When a worker at the hotel goes missing, our protagonist gets sucked into the web of a witch who happens to live in the building. Director Damian McCarthy does wonders with forced POV and deep shadows. It’s a smart, riveting piece of genre filmmaking, one of the best horror films of 2026.

Special Features:

• Audio commentary with Damian McCarthy
• Behind-the-scenes making-of documentary
• Short film: Jack the Donkey, A Family Favorite
• Original teaser trailer
• Original theatrical trailer

“Identity“

Long before he was making Peak Dad Cinema like “Ford v Ferrari” and “A Complete Unknown,” James Mangold directed this mind-fuck of a horror film, a flick that rode a wave of “twist” movies in the wake of hits like “The Usual Suspects” and “The Sixth Sense,” and has earned quite a cult following over the years. The words “cult following” and “Arrow Home Video” go together like peanut butter and chocolate. So it makes sense that they would give this John Cusack flick about ten strangers stuck in an isolated motel with a serial killer the full Arrow treatment. The new release includes HDR versions of both the theatrical and extended cuts, along with new interviews with star Pruitt Taylor Vince and producter Cathy Konrad. It also includes previously available material like deleted scenes and a commentary with Mangold. For Arrow, it’s a little slight, but slight for Arrow is better-than-average for most companies.

Special Features:

• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATIONS OF THE THEATRICAL AND EXTENDED CUTS OF THE FILM
• Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Archival audio commentary by director James Mangold
• Archival audio commentary by screenwriter Michael Cooney
• I Met a Man That Wasn’t There, a brand new interview with actor Pruitt Taylor Vince
• Producing Identity, a brand new interview with producer Cathy Konrad
• On The Set, an archival behind the scenes featurette
• Deleted scenes
• Storyboard comparisons
• Theatrical trailer
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring two choices of original artwork
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andrew Cardno and original production notes

“Ju-On: The Grudge”

The influence of J- and K-Horror from the late ’90s and early ’00s still feels a tad underrated. Movies like “Ringu” and “The Eye” have a surreal visual language that clearly influenced the 2026 kings of horror like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, with their chilling visions of reality gone askew. One of the most important films of this era was Takashi Shimizu’s “Ju-On: The Grudge,” which was technically the third film in a franchise that continued for years beyond this release, including 2004 and 2019 American remakes. The imagery most associated with J-Horror can be traced back to “Ringu” and “The Grudge,” and Arrow has given it a fantastic physical release with tons of special features, including deleted scenes, interviews, featurettes, and even a commentary with Sam Raimi, who produced the first American remake, along with excellent new writing on the film by some horror experts.

Special Features:

• 4K RESTORATION FROM THE CAMERA NEGATIVE BY ARROW FILMS
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Original DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio plus stereo audio
• Optional English subtitles
• Introduction by writer-director Takashi Shimizu
• Audio commentary by film historian David Kalat
• Audio commentary by Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel
• Alternate English dub track in 5.1 surround
• Haunting in Monochrome, an interview with Takashi Shimizu on the Ju-On films
• Being Kayako, an interview with Takako Fujion her role as Kayako
• The Evolution of Ju-On, a featurette with authors and Japan specialists Tom Mes and Zack Davisson discussing the cultural forces that shaped the series
• Through a Glass Darkly, an archive interview with Takashi Shimizu
• Whispers in the Dark, an archive interview with actor Megumi Okina on her role as Rika
• Fade to Black, an archive interview with actor Kayoko Shibata, who plays Mariko
• On-set interviews with Takashi Shimizu, Megumi Okina, Misaki Ito, Misa Uehara and Yui Ichikawa
• Deleted scenes with commentary by Takashi Shimizu
• Almost an hour of behind-the-scenes footage
• Ju-On True Stories, two ghostly true-life tales that inspired the films, narrated by Hiroyoshi Kihara
• Original trailers
• Image gallery
• Collectors’ booklet featuring writing on the film by Grady Hendrix, Jason Morehead, William Carroll and Lindsay Nelson
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Dare Creative

“Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair“

In late 2025, the Movie Gods finally got around to gifting us with the long-awaited single film version of Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” originally released in two volumes in 2003 and 2004. Conceived as one cinematic experience, Tarantino had cut the films back together into one back in 2011, but it took almost another 15 years for it to get a digital and physical media release. The changes are most notable around the connection between the two volumes (the survival of B.B. isn’t revealed at the end of the first volume anymore), along with the “House of Blue Leaves” sequence now being in color and O-Ren Ishii’s anime sequence running longer. The physical release also includes “The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge,” a Fortnite-related animated short that played with “Whole Bloody Affair” in theaters.

Special Features:

• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• The Lost Chapter
• 40-page behind-the-scenes booklet, curated by Quentin Tarantino
• 70mm film still featuring artwork from the film
• Five double-sided collectible character cards
• Two posters from the theatrical screenings of Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair

“Little Odessa” (Criterion)

Let’s hope this is just the beginning of a long relationship between Criterion and one of the best American filmmakers working today, James Gray. The director of “The Immigrant,” “Ad Astra,” and the upcoming (and excellent) “Paper Tiger” made his directorial debut with this 1994 thriller starring Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, and Vanessa Redgrave. Criterion has commissioned a new 4K restoration of the film, overseen by Gray himself, along with a making-of documentary and a new conversation between the writer/director and journalist Sean Fennessey. If that’s not enough, the physical release includes an essay by our very own Glenn Kenny.

Special Features:

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director James Gray, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary from 2000 featuring Gray
• Once Upon a Time . . . “Little Odessa,” a making-of documentary by David Thompson produced for French television
• New conversation between Gray and critic and podcaster Sean Fennessey
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Glenn Kenny

“The People vs. Larry Flynt“

I always loved how much Roger loved Milos Forman’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” He wrote, “Milos Forman’s “The People vs. Larry Flynt” argues that the freedom of speech must apply to unpopular speech, or it is meaningless. Beginning with this belief, Forman constructs a fascinating biopic about a man who went from rags to riches by never overestimating the taste of his readers.” A story of fighting against the systems that are trying to destroy free speech in this country couldn’t be timelier in 2026, which makes the drop of this gorgeous Arrow Home Video release even more essential than Forman or Flynt could have imagined. Arrow has not only remastered the film in 4K but commissioned new interviews with the brilliant writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, star Woody Harrelson, and producer Janet Yang. They’ve also included a ton of great archival special features, including two commentaries, a 1997 interview with Forman, and a featurette about Flynt narrated by Dennis Hopper. This is one of the essential movies of the ’90s, given its best physical media treatment to date.

Special Features:

• DISC ONE – 4K BLU-RAY
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Original lossless stereo audio and DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio option
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Archival audio commentary with cast members Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, and Edward Norton
• Archival audio commentary with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski
• DISC TWO – BLU-RAY
• Hail Larry, a brand new interview with lead actor Woody Harrelson
• Satire in Satin, a brand new interview with Columbia Pictures’ ex-production president Lisa Henson and producer Janet Yang
• Only in America, a brand new interview with screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski
• À la lumière de l’évidence, an archival interview with cinematographer Philippe Rousselot
• Miloš Forman on The Charlie Rose Show, a 1997 interview with the director
• Free Speech or Porn?, an archival featurette about the making of the film
• Larry Flynt Exposed, an archival featurette narrated by Dennis Hopper
• Deleted Scenes with optional audio commentary by Woody Harrelson and Larry Karaszewski
• Theatrical trailer
• TV spots
• Image galleries, including the original script
• Reversible sleeve featuring original artwork
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Miloš Forman expert Andreas Halskov, an archival essay by screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and an archival Forman interview conducted by director Adam Davidson

“Power Ballad“

John Carney earnestly believes in the power of music to change your life. You can see that belief in every frame of “Once,” “Sing Street,” and even “Flora and Son.” His contagious love for creative expression infuses this fun comedy with a big heart. It’s the story of a wedding singer (Paul Rudd) who spends a drunken night with a pop star (Nick Jonas), only to discover that the heartthrob has taken his tune and turned it into a hit. Who owns creativity? And what does it mean to sing a song that you don’t feel in your heart? Rudd and Jonas are great in a movie that’s consistently engaging, and lands with one of 2026’s most satisfying twists.

Special Features:

• The Making of Power Ballad
• The Music of Power Ballad
• The Power of Paul Rudd
• Theatrical Trailers

“Project Hail Mary“

The 4K release of this gigantic box office hit looks and sounds spectacular, which is the most important thing about this release, but it does feel kind of slight in the bonus material department for one of 2026’s biggest films. People may have forgotten a bit about Rocky and the story of “Project Hail Mary” in the wake of the Summer 2026 blockbusters, but I still suspect this film will have a resurgence on home video, not just for fans who want to see it again, but as it becomes an awards season major player. (It’s getting into Best Picture and Actor, almost certainly.) “PHM” was a phenomenon because it crossed so many demographics, appealing to both young and old viewers, and because it presented a relatable story of a reluctant hero, someone forced to be a savior who never thought he could become one. It’s a truly well-made piece of popcorn entertainment that plays nearly as well at home as it did in theaters. (Note: This is another release in the column without a digital code. A disconcerting trend emerging.)

Special Features:

• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• DOLBY ATMOS /AUDIO TRACK
• Audio Commentary by Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
• “Earth’s Favorite Eridian” featurette
• Five Deleted Scenes

“The Sheep Detectives“

The best family film of the year has been given a lackluster physical media release, one with no special features at all, and not even a digital copy. Maybe Criterion or Arrow could one day save this one, but until then just enjoy the story of a group of mystery-loving sheep who get wrapped up in solving the murder of their shepherd. A sort of hybrid of Agatha Christie and “Babe,” this is a movie that works for all ages.

“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu“

Audiences couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being asked to pay theatrical prices for a mini-season of a Disney+ show, which led to Jon Favreau’s blockbuster becoming one of the few true bombs in the “Star Wars” universe. While $345 million worldwide sounds like a lot, it’s actually the lowest gross for a live-action “SW” film. The relatively awful previews that made Favreau’s flick look duller than it actually is didn’t help. I’ll admit to kind of dreading it, but actually found it goes down relatively smoothly at home, where the sense that you’re watching extended TV doesn’t hurt as much. It’s still a misfire (the Ratta CGI is criminal), but not the disaster you may have heard. And the physical release is pretty strong, including featurettes and a Favreau commentary.

Special Features:

• Audio commentary by Jon Favreau: Watch the film with audio commentary by director Jon Favreau.
• Featurettes:
• Crafting “The Mandalorian and Grogu”: Discover the craft behind an epic Star Wars adventure! Go behind the scenes with artists creating the stunning puppetry, miniatures, sound design, and visual effects that bring the worlds, characters, and creatures of “The Mandalorian and Grogu” to life.
• Biomes—From Snow to Swamp: Voyage with director Jon Favreau and his crew to a pair of brand-new worlds that may seem a touch familiar to fans of the original Star Wars trilogy. Discover how the ingenious filmmakers constructed snowy landscapes and a living swamp from the ground up!
• Welcome to Shakari: A bustling metropolis like Shakari cannot simply be found—it must be made. Join the film’s fabrication as they build an entire Star Wars city with a downtown warehouse, conjuring an epic playground for Mando and his young apprentice.
• Dejarik for Real: Sometimes it’s the little things! Who can forget the Millennium Falcon’s charming holochess game introduced in 1977? Witness how the tiny creatures featured in the game were lovingly brought to giant-sized life for the Mandalorian’s big-screen debut!

“Troy”

The folks over at Arrow Home Video are smart enough to time their 4K restoration of Wolfgang Petersen’s underrated “Troy” to ride the wave of the pop culture domination of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” Petersen’s film was dinged at the time for its lack of historical realism, but it would be absolutely destroyed in today’s social media outrage cycle. Yes, some of “Troy” is clunky, but it works as the old-fashioned swords-and-sandals that Petersen set out to make largely due to its strong technical elements and a truly great performance from Eric Bana. It has never looked or sounded this good, restored from an original camera negative in 4K for the first time. Bonus material is largely archival, but the release does include new writing on the film by the brilliant Priscilla Page.

Special Features:

• DISC ONE – 4K BLU RAY: THEATRICAL CUT
• NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE CAMERA NEGATIVE
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio plus stereo audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• DISC TWO – 4K BLU-RAY: DIRECTOR’S CUT
• NEW 4K RESTORATION FROM THE CAMERA NEGATIVE
• DOLBY VISION/HDR PRESENTATION OF THE FILM
• Original lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround audio plus stereo audio
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Troy Revisited, an archival introduction by director Wolfgang Petersen
• DISC THREE – BLU-RAY: EXTRAS
• In Movie Experience, an archive picture-in-picture commentary of the film
• Troy in Focus, a series of archival behind-the scenes featurettes
• In the Thick of Battle, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
• From Ruins to Reality, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
• Troy: An Effects Odyssey, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
• Attacking Troy, an archival behind-the-scenes featurette
• Gallery of the Gods, an archival introduction to the Greek Gods
• Easter egg
• Trailer
• Image galleries
• Collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by Priscilla Page and Laurie Maguire and an excerpt from the original production notes
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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His first task begins innocently enough: “Stand on one foot,” the boy says. The machine obeys.

His second task reveals a sinister edge: to target nearby onlookers. The boy orders his machine to grab one of them by the head, pulling him into the air while he screams. His friend tries to intervene, and the machine, leather-clad and 6 feet tall, draws a handgun, and just as it’s about to blast a hole in the man’s head, the boy screams “NO! Put the gun down now!” and stops him just in the nick of time.

This short scene from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” captures in elegant shorthand the possibility and danger of using thinking machines. Released in the final months of the Cold War and nuclear annihilation remained a terrifying possibility, “Terminator 2” harnessed those fears and redirected them towards something more intimate: the rise of the computer, and unlike the atom bomb—which could only be misused by Governments—these machines would soon be in millions of homes around the world. The terrifying result? Using them would turn each person into a makeshift cyborg, with silicon computing becoming an amazing, but frightening, transhuman extension of how we think and behave.

At release, “Terminator 2” was a tech-noir cautionary tale on the rise of computers (in military application and at home). 35 years later, it plays as a cyberpunk mirror of how far we’ve already let technology disrupt and dominate our lives. From the devices we hold in our hands to “smart” algorithms and predictive language models, we don’t have to carry laser rifles or battle armies of skeletal machines to feel as though we’re in a cyber-dystopia. Machines replace us in the workforce, our dopamine is dependent on the addictive scrolling of our devices, and it’s never been easier to blur ethical lines in how you behave online. Whether through the moral prompts of how to use the T-800 or the propulsive set-pieces, “Terminator 2” demonstrates the more we use machines, the more we risk becoming like them. The danger from A.I. isn’t necessarily a singularity superbeing starting World War III, but the way we let technology change who we are in the first place.

So when that boy, John Connor (Edward Furlong), escalates a physical gag into physical violence, he’s proven just how quickly machines blindside us into morally pernicious choices we may never have otherwise. Vigilance is required. It’s that key scene that sets John on the path to become the future leader of the human resistance, where, in the far future (in the film, 2029), he fights against Skynet, a synthetic super-intelligence that enslaved humanity. To save his younger self, he sends a reformatted version of the villain in “The Terminator,” the T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), which obeys any and all commands John Connor (of any age) gives. It’s for good reason: Skynet has sent the T-1000 (Robert Patrick) after John, a nexus point to save this once and future leader. The young John may have been told how this android operates—it will follow precise instructions without question—and yet his careless teenage words still nearly get a man killed. 

Sometimes seen as a softer, less hardcore sequel to the straight-horror original, “Terminator 2” is still plenty horrifying; beyond the tests of will that Cameron imposes on the human characters, the film’s scares reveal the ways a digital intelligence can penetrate, and then distort, what we know reality to be. In what was a landmark leap in CGI technology, the T-1000’s body is a kind of shape-shifting, liquid metal, and thus can take on any physical form, have any voice, or become any non-complex object: deepfakes that can kill you. It can trick a husband that his wife—already deceased off-screen—is still in the room. It can take on the blue dress of law enforcement, a not-so-subtle hint at Cameron’s dismal view of authority.

In one of the film’s most uncanny moments, the T-1000 breaks into a mental health facility by taking on the appearance of a security guard and terrifies the guard with, well, himself. Gazing at this digital homunculus leaves him terrified, only for the villain to morph his hand into a shimmering metal spike and kill him. It’s a warning by Cameron that soon, computer technology will be able to inhabit, if not also replace, human beings. Thus, the T-1000 is, itself, a meta-cinematic device. On its most basic level, the plot follows a killer computer repeatedly trying to kill a teenager, but on another, the clearly digital liquid-metal visual effects add an uncanny wrongness to the film’s moments, where something clearly synthetic, diegetically and to the movie audience, is attempting to replicate being human.

Part of Cameron’s genius with spectacle comes from his magician’s way to blend multiple techniques across micro-seconds of footage, like stop motion, reverse photography, CGI, practical explosions, and miniatures, to create a convincing tableau for his impossibly epic images. It’s just the same in “Terminator 2” and the T-1000, a mix of Robert Patrick’s lithe stunt work, makeup and prosthetics in the form of metallic geometry attached to Patrick’s body, and computer-generated imagery. Together, they make him a frightening, wholly credible foe. It also, however, shows possibilities of the limits of machines: when the T-1000 liquifies and moves through a gate in the hospital, he forgets he’s carrying a gun and is snagged on the bars. The weapon can’t move through as he can, and the T-1000 didn’t realize it. 

On one level, this is Cameron’s way of selling a cool visual effect. But on another, it reveals that something so seemingly advanced can still have blind spots. Even the way the T-1000 always re-absorbs its liquid metal is a disarming reminder that machines are closed systems; they cannot iterate on themselves, and if they can adapt, they’re still slow learners. Each masterful set-piece becomes a chess match where the underdog heroes try to exploit a machine’s weaknesses (something that, if anything, is more cathartic today than at release). Sometimes that’s brute force—pumping round after round into its fluid metallic body—and, in others, it’s by forcing it into the extreme elements of ice and fire.

In fact, in some ways Cameron’s obsessive desire for photorealistic visual effects has led us to where we are today. From the enchanted tentacle of animated sea water in “The Abyss” to the effervescent beauty of the Na’vi in “Avatar,” the creation of a digital character as perceptually real as any human has been his life’s pursuit. Pause any close-up from “The Way of Water” and marvel at its artistry: the cracks of Ikran-feet around the hero’s aging eyes, the perfect pores that dot Neytiri’s face, the fidelity of skin as it wrinkles from an outburst of a teenager’s volatile emotion. The greatest triumph of his “Avatar” Trilogy is how, while watching, you are seduced by its mimetic spectacle; you soon forget that none of it is really happening.

“Avatar” is the crowning achievement of how persuasively computers could create a fully believable, lush, dynamic and hyper-immersive digital world. Or, at least it was, until that same push for verisimilitude has (in a sense) encouraged A.I. programs like Grok, Sora and Midjourney to achieve the same, but with more unsettling results. Just as the T-1000 was a shape-shifting metaphor for digital tech in the ’90s since we can perceive a certain offness as it tries to inhabit different shapes and people, these programs have largely produced images that are lifelike but with details that betray their veneer of fidelity. For a long time, the most upsetting part was studying the hands: while the location, props, and even faces might look alright (if somehow, undefinably weird), images made by these applications might have too many fingers or too few. In some cases, the hands would appear as if they melted together under intense heat (ironically, one of the weaknesses of the T-1000). Today, A.I. images come eerily close to replicating whatever they want, and just as John initially used his terminator as a bad actor to razz some nearby onlookers, the potential consequences for easy, thoughtless misuse are massive. 

Far more insidious than any Terminator attacker is how machines create gateways for our behavior to change for the worse, and how easy it becomes to embrace the digital devils of our worst selves. It’s why John’s interactions with the T-800 are so revealingly dangerous. It exposes the (now cliché) difficulty of choosing our words carefully when communicating with literal-minded machines; a technical design comes with technically specific instructions. A.I. can only know what we program it to know, and even the most advanced language models in the world expose huge gaps in problem-solving. This dilemma has given rise to a whole subset of sci-fi storytelling—from “I, Robot” (2004) and beyond—where the infamous scenario involves telling an A.I. super-intelligence to “protect humans,” only for it to enslave the human race because we are the greatest threat to ourselves. This is at the heart of landmark sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov’s law of robotics, where the first states “a robot may not harm a human, or through inaction allow a human to come to harm.” His stories would create complicated scenarios where artificial intelligence could do just that.

Likewise, John quickly realizes he still hasn’t solved the dilemma of how to work with the T-800. In one of Cameron’s most intense sequences, designed with low-angled shots that make the characters look a thousand feet tall, they have to spring his mom, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), the main character of “The Terminator,” out of a mental institution. Though John has already given the command never to kill, the T-800 pulls his handgun and casually double-taps a security guard in both of his legs; John screams “what are you doing,” and the T-800 replies with Schwarzenegger’s effortless comic timing: “he’ll live.” John’s input removed one sort of action from the table, without accounting for others. The rest of the movie shows the T-800 balancing his non-kill rule with Cameronian blockbuster badassery, none more so than pumping rounds of gas into an army of police who have the building surrounding. They’ll live, but only just. 

Worse, it reveals the critical issue isn’t whether John can control the T-800, but whether John can control himself. When John had the T-800 razz the two men nearby, they only approached after “his” android seized John, and the boy screamed for help; they weren’t just random bystanders, they were good samaritans. Drunk off the power fantasy that this all-powerful action figure clad in biker leather will do whatever he wants, his line of empathy temporarily clicks off, and he abuses these men for no reason other than a cruel pleasure.

No one reveals that entangled psychology more than Sarah, who begins the film with enough hatred towards robotics that she gets thrown in a mental ward for trying to blow up machine factories. She gave up her motherhood for the cause. By the time the reprogrammed T-800 shows up to liberate her, she still holds a repulsive, virulent anger towards all machines. Expectedly, she panics when it first appears. But after they’ve escaped and she has time to stage her next steps, Sarah makes the decision, in Cameron’s words, to become a terminator herself and assassinate the man about to create the chip that will eventually launch Skynet, Mike Dyson. 

What gets overlooked isn’t the ethics of her is-it-ethical-to-kill-baby-hitler sniper mission, but what comes immediately before it: in narration, she gives an uncharacteristically sentimental speech on why the T-800 is an ideal father for John. This machine isn’t only a valid or valuable ally, but a fit father figure, one that’s better than her past boyfriends and better, she imagines, than most fathers period. What she says is simultaneously true and untrue: a harsh, if fair, judgment of humanity. By this point, the T-800 hasn’t just learned to crack jokes or evolve with his “thinking chip” (in the “Special Edition,” they remove a chip Skynet built to inhibit learning as a way to explain his personality shift); he’s protected John better than Sarah ever has. 

But Cameron, typically sharper a writer than he’s given credit for, has a dual meaning beneath what could sound like a mom’s cornball parental philosophizing: this speech is Sarah’s rationalization that the murder she’s about to commit is okay, that John will have someone to take care of him, that this new robotic dad, this machine, this computer moments ago she thought she could never bring herself to stop hating, will take care of him.

In other words, Sarah has made herself into a terminator by projecting shades of humanity onto a terminator, a more psychological version of the dilemma of John back in that parking lot. It’s not the orders she’s giving the machine that matters; it’s that the machine has allowed her to change, that it has allowed her to act on her worst impulses. In those moments, neither she nor John understands how the very existence of these super-machines can reprogram their behavior in ways beyond their self-conscious understanding. Once these machines exist, we need to police what they let us convince ourselves to do, rather than policing the machines.

In one of Cameron’s greatest bars, the iconic “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves” speaks to today as much as it did when he wrote it. It’s a line that speaks against a predetermined universe, and that no amount of certainty about a worse tomorrow justifies inaction today. It’s a crucial bit of dialogue that recalls one of the ending lines from “Tenet”: “What’s happened happened. It’s an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world, but it’s not an excuse to do nothing.” The same is true in “Terminator 2,” where a time loop should make their situation fruitless. The chip Dyson is about to make is based on technology he only had access to because of the events of “The Terminator,” but that doesn’t mean we should not act to change it.

In 1991, computers were about to enter our homes before we realized all that meant. As if to complete the metaphor, Cameron set both “Terminator” climaxes in the iconic backdrops of an automated machine factory, making his breathless action a forewarning that if we aren’t careful, we’ll soon be just as mechanized ourselves. Today, Cameron warns the next cycle of escalation won’t be in stock loads of nuclear weapons, but artificial intelligence, where wars will be fought between data centers instead of battlefields. At home, jobs will be lost. The CEOs of companies building these products insist these changes are inevitable, that there’s no use fighting the tide. The most powerful legacy of “Terminator 2” is to fight the fatalism of tomorrow, and to remember its refrain, “no fate.” Our digital age may have dehumanized and changed us, but we are still in control—and the future is always in our hands. 

“Terminator 2: Judgment Day” will be re-released in a new 4K edition this Friday, August 28.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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Ullom’s film follows four recent college grads, James (Phinehas Yoon), Tyler (Mitchell Cole), Fisher (Noah Toth), and Day (Akira Jackson), who embark on a late-night drive before they go their separate ways. They realize that they’ve turned onto a never-ending road, and any time they try to pause to catch their breath, they have only ninety seconds of respite before hordes of screaming people swarm and attack them. As the odometer climbs and days begin to blend, each member of the crew has to wrestle with what this purgatory means for the futures they once thought they had.

Though the foursome are plagued by eternal monotony, the road to “It Ends” finding a movie home was far from straightforward. After a premiere at SXSW, a subsequent tour on the festival circuit that included the 2025 Chicago Critics Film Festival, a stint on the Letterboxd Video Store, and creative persistence from Ullom himself (“insanity,” he corrects me in our interview) involving influencers at a “Jurassic World: Rebirth” event, “It Ends” finally roars into theaters now. 

RogerEbert.com spoke with Ullom once in person during the film’s Chicago premiere and once over Zoom after Ullom wrapped principal photography on his follow-up, “4×4: The Event”; this piece combines those interviews into one fluid conversation. Ullom spoke about the importance of silly questions when navigating our present hellscape, humanity’s tendency to create liturgies to process suffering, and how his decisions to balance the film’s horror and hangout elements manifest in the characters’ arcs. 

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I found the sequence where James is pleading out to some unknown force for the car to start to be relatable for those who come from religious backgrounds, in particular, the ways people of faith or dechurched people can be so quick to revert to crying out to God in a moment of crisis. Did drawing from your own faith background prove prudent when articulating some of these characters’ spiritual angsts? 

Alexander Ullom: The film is definitely religious trauma coded, but I have nothing against religion. Anything that would give people a sense of comfort as they’re dying is probably a good thing, and we have an increasingly short supply of those balms. That scene where Fisher is lamenting that his mother might think he’s going to hell because he told her he was not religious has personal resonance. 

In the two-and-a-half-hour version of this movie, there was a whole swath of scenes where the group was trying to remember stories from the Bible. They were talking about Lot’s wife and how she turned to a pillar of salt because she turned around to look at the destruction of Sodom when God told her not to, and trying to understand why she’d do that. Like, dude, if God–like literally, God– fucking showed up and was like, “Do not turn around or else …” I would be like, “Yeah, absolutely. Assignment understood.” 

One thing that your film really dives into is the fear of eternity. I feel like as human beings we’re not built to fully reckon with the concept of “forever.” What’s your relationship to eternity? 

I think for people my age, our relationship with infiniteness and liminality–call it “Backrooms,” if you will–all stems less from a religious place and more from the fact that we don’t really have a destination to “arrive at” anymore. There’s a movement away from any sort of interconnected moral system in our generation that there might have been in the past. The tent poles of structure that used to hold up society, whether it was having a family or buying a house, or literally religion–which used to be one of the moral center points of what held all the kids together–all of those structures have kind of dissolved, and in their place is kind of nothing, like a transitional state. 

If liminal spaces are transitionary states, it just feels like we’re in a long one right now. Our relationship with nature is off right now, and because, in general, I think people are becoming less religious or spiritual, we’re losing a connection to something bigger than ourselves. 

I was struck by a relatable, futile tendency to graft ritual onto otherworldly situations to shrink them down to size and make them relatable. It’s why I resonated so much with the on-screen rituals we see the characters undergo once they accept their fate. What was the origin of coming up with these rituals? 

The guide rails were that each practice or “time” was crafted to process a specific emotion. The screaming is the physical sensation of getting the fear out; the memes are brain gooping, to give your mind space to unwind. I’m probably not smart enough to articulate this, but with the dancing, one of the things I was trying to communicate was how, within the confines of capitalism, every emotion and physical need is exploited, individual time that needs to exist inside of a larger structure. So dancing was a way to break free from some of that. 

Are there practices you find yourself implementing now that act as your form of release? What do you do with your anger, despondency, and despair? 

It has changed over time. When I was young, meditating was ridiculous to me, but now I figured out how to climb our fire escape to get to the roof of my apartment. So now I’ll go up there and just sit in the sun for a while. Reading has reentered my life, which is crazy. I’m trying to commit to doing things that actually are good for your well-being. Eating all the food groups …

Where do Clif Bars–which get a nice payoff at the end of the film–fall into that diet? 

I don’t think I can eat those anymore. I told Phineas I’d eat bar for bar what he ate during production, and I ended up eating a lot of them. This stuff to actually improve your life is just what everyone already knows; you just have to commit to doing it, which sucks. With meditation, my attitude was, “ I don’t want to waste 15 minutes sitting in silence when I could be, I don’t know, doing anything else.” But then after 15 minutes, I’m like, “All right, I feel a little better. I can enjoy TikTok a little better now.” (Laughs) 

How do you think growing up terminally online has shaped your (or Gen Z’s) approach to processing trauma? 

Personally, I was fifteen when I saw the Russian Brick Video. I saw a cartel execution online when I was twelve years old. Every single time you watch anything on a phone–even in movies– there’s a simulation of emotion, and so if I was going to feel the real thing, I had already been desensitized to the actual sensation of that feeling. I think we’re all walking around with a functioning numbness, spawned in part due to a collective dissociation. 

I’m curious if someone in medieval times who saw their family’s heads chopped off in real time would process it better than how we’re processing similar images now because their emotions are rooted in witnessing something real. Every time we see awful footage online and go on with our lives, we are–as Fisher says–experiencing weaker shades of emotions. 

I remember my first heartbreak, and it was world-ending, and then I got used to it. It feels like we only have a certain reservoir for a specific emotion, and over time, it gets ground down and down. You run out of it, and the more you’re online watching stuff, the more I think you use up that reservoir. 

Even with watching a horror movie, about an hour in, I just get desensitized to the actual sound of the theater. There’s only a certain number of times a speaker gets really loud before I’m completely used to it.

It’s terrifying how easily we get used to things. In addition to the aforementioned Russian Brick Video and Bible story retelling scene, I also know there were lots of conversations and scenes that you ultimately didn’t include in this edited cut, like another one including the song “Viva La Vida.” Tell me more about the process of choosing the cultural references in this film, knowing that by the time of release, the film may feel dated by what its characters talk about? 

I just wanted to root the dialogue in the stuff that’s stuck around with my actual friends in real life. It’s weird because by the time this movie comes out, people are going to think that we’re copying the “100 men versus gorillas” meme based on the question that the characters bicker about at the start of the film. This interview proves we are ahead of the game right now. I think what will keep it universal and fresh is that the references aren’t necessarily rooted in a specific trend. Like modern art, people use memes to process what they’re going through, and that’s what will be familiar, less so the content of the meme itself. 

You’ve shared before that when you were in a dark place, the silly debate you had with a friend about whether a gorilla or bear would win in a fight galvanized something in you that helped make life worth living. Tell me more about the role of silly questions in friendships. 

There’s no such thing as objective truth anymore. So now these questions are a truth in a way. The actual limit of the human experience is questions with no answers. The confines of existence are questions without an answer, but also know that since there’s no truth, everyone’s subjective opinion is the most important thing now. So the person arguing for the gorilla …. That debate is essentially a spiritual battle, because that’s all that’s left (Laughs). I feel like scholars and scientists have kind of already figured out everything there needs to be, and now it’s for us to debate the silly questions of life. Maybe that’s the unifying moral structure our generation can push together in the absence of religion. In many ways, arguing over a stupid hypothetical is actually the most important thing in the entire world. 

A lot of the characters’ grief stems from a legitimate nihilism that anyone would feel living in the world we’re in now. I found their grief to be an almost righteous form of discontent. 

If there’s all this horror, if all this shit is going on around us all the time, then the only real thing we can do to make our fellow conscious experience a little bit better is hang out and connect with someone through conversation. Talking with people, hearing different perspectives- to me, these feel like the ways to combat that desensitized meaninglessness. They don’t necessarily need to be these “bear versus gorilla” questions either. If everything’s horrifying, terrifying, and meaningless, then the only reaction is to hear everyone talking about it.

You talked about how one read of “It Ends” that you like is that there’s a war over the film’s tone with the characters themselves, right down to the changes in aspect ratio. The film widens during the hangout moments, whereas in its “horror” phase the frame is tighter. Talk to me a little bit about that wrestling you were undergoing as a director with this film, and then transplanting that struggle onto the characters? 

I think that if they didn’t make that turn, the group would have gone and had a “Dazed and Confused” kind of night. The film would have been a dope little hangout movie, and they probably would have kept butting heads because James is a bit of an asshole. But the film turns onto the road, and now it’s in horror movie mode. 

Horror and genre are built on overcoming conflict as quickly as possible. A belief runs through those projects, rooted in the hero’s journey: I’m going to conquer this object, this conflict, and then I will return having changed. That is not how adulthood works at all, or real life. There’s just this scrap in the mud where you pull meaning from wherever, and that’s the thing that James couldn’t fully understand.

So while James is on one end, bringing in that framework and horror, you have Fisher and Day on the other, who, after the time jump, are just trying to hang out. There’s a healing in vibing, and that helps save us from the period of transition we’re in. James is literally saying: “I want the new thing? What is the new thing?” That’s very typical of a genre audience member. For James, he can’t accept that relationships and the people you love are what give life meaning. He doesn’t want to hang out. That was me when I was younger; I couldn’t be present. I couldn’t live in a world where I couldn’t get an answer for that, partly because of my religious upbringing too. 

Fisher and Day have to literally turn off the story vehicle. James can’t accept that, so he takes the same vehicle, the one driving the plot, and takes off on his own. They’re battling, and the movie can’t conclude till the plot concludes and, by extension, he takes the movie from them. 

Going just off the logline of your next film, “4×4: The Event,” it feels like if “It Ends” is going to be about that transition to adulthood, your follow-up is about how to survive the reality of adulthood.

Yeah, if “It Ends is like “Hey, don’t kill yourself. Love the people around you,” “4×4: The Event” is very much “Okay, now that you didn’t kill yourself, we need to unite.” It’s an intense escalation. If “It Ends” was about the transition from 18 to the ages 23-25, then the next project is about me going from 25 to 30 and watching the people I love’s lives be deeply and negatively affected by the state of the world. 

Visually, the film was inspired by my time living in that windowless walk-in closet while I was making “It Ends.” You don’t get this from the logline, but yeah, all the contestants are living in small, dark, windowless concrete rooms with tunnels between them. There’s a drop chute where their orders come in. It’s a setup that truly inverts the natural world. There’s not a single thing in that room that’s organic. They’re pretty much told, “Hey, here’s your computer … here’s your tool to conquer the world. Good fucking luck.” That’s modern life in a nutshell.

“It Ends” is in select theaters via NEON.

PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

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