Sean Baker has never had problems finding cinematic drama — and a deep well of empathy — in the lives of people on the brink. To large degrees, all of his films have revolved around well intentioned folks doing the best they can in the face of debilitating financial situations. Be it Sin-Dee (Kitana Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor) working the streets of LA or Halley (Bria Vinaite) doing sex work on the side to keep a roof over her daughter Moonee’s (Brooklynn Prince) head, Baker’s characters clearly hold his respect. Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), the central figure of Red Rocket, is a new type of lead for the director.

Expectations are always high for a well regarded auteur, but they were especially lofty for Celine Sciamma following her revelatory 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire. From Water Lillies to Girlhood, the French director has always had a piercing vision, but Portrait brought her the largest audience and most fervent acclaim of her illustrious career. So how did she choose to follow it up? With Petite Maman, a 72 minute fable about a young girl meeting her mother as a child, of course.

For decades film has told the stories of young people finding their way in the world to dazzling effect. There is something so universally relatable about those late teenage years where you feel like you’ve figured it all out and seeing it with the gift hindsight you realize that those answers wouldn’t come until much later. The hard truth is that coming of age doesn’t happen all at once and that next phase of life brings with it doubts, big decisions and so much more uncertainty. This is the phase of life examined in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World.

A tale as old as time, how much can true love transcend? Is it simply an intertwining of attractions or is love something more, something so inherent to our very being that we’ll find our way back to it under even the most dire of circumstances? These are questions Georgian filmmaker Alexandre Koberidze poses, if never really answering, in What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

If there has been one silver lining of a massive, life altering pandemic forcing us all to stay home, it may be the other pandemic that it placed on hold. Simply by virtue of schools being closed, the coronavirus pandemic has ushered in the longest period without school shootings in the United States in decades. Although our current torment consumes much of our thought, it’s worthwhile to remember the trauma it temporarily alleviated.

They say write what you know, and the only thing any of us have known for the last year plus is a coronavirus lockdown. The next pandemic is on its way: a plague of COVID inspired films. And we wont have to wait long either. Michael Bay was first out of the gate with his critically maligned pandemic thriller Songbird. Doug Liman’s very COVID specific heist film Locked Down is already earning wide pans on HBO Max. Documentaries of the early days of lockdown have been informative and more are sure to come. Like the pandemic itself, this scourge of on the nose movies will be with us for a while.

**A Quick review of Homeroom from the Sundance Film Festival. More thoughts to come when the film gets an official release**

​Senior year is always a tumultuous time for students. Young people across the country faced with an uncertain world ahead. Not yet old enough to buy a beer or rent a car, they’re forced to make decisions that will profoundly affect the rest of their lives. Certainly this anxiety, mixed with the uniquely youthful optimism and energy must have been on Peter Nicks’ mind as he set out to document Oakland’s graduating class of 2020. What he never could have predicted is what unfolded over the year.

**A Quick review of CODA from the Sundance Film Festival. More thoughts to come when the film gets an official release**

​My family just can’t understand. It’s a bit of shared experience that has been fertile ground for coming of age films as far back as Rebel Without a Cause. Where, in Rebel, James Dean’s Jim was the one who didn’t understand his parents, CODA presents a case where a teen really is misunderstood.
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