Homebody weekend
Friday, May 8 — Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you’re gearing up for a relaxing weekend, and hopefully not planning to drive anywhere outside of a two-mile radius from your home. If you need some homebody plans this weekend, the Atlanta Film Festival is still going on virtually. If you’d rather brave those streets, I salute your courage.
Without further ado … Action!
📺 Atlanta media mogul Ted Turner passed away on Wednesday at 87. Check out Jane Fonda’s so very “Jane” tribute to her ex-husband.
🎧 Actor’s Express Theatre Company has started a new weekly podcast called “Theater People,” where the hosts sit down with Atlanta theater artists of all types. Learn how to listen here.
🏳️🌈 Out on Film is hosting a screening of the British film “Departures,” directed by Lloyd Eyre-Morgan and Neil Ely, on May 12 at the Tara Theatre.
🎭 The Atlanta Fringe Festival returns for its 14th year on May 27, with performances of dance, theater, comedy, and more set to run through June 7.
🦁 In huge, IMAX-sized news, for the first time in history Netflix is giving one of its original films a traditional theatrical release. Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ “The Magician’s Nephew” will hit theaters on Feb. 12 with a 49-day exclusive theatrical window before moving to Netflix on April 2.
⚖️ Indigenous actress Q’orianka Kilcher (“The New World”) is suing filmmaker James Cameron and the Walt Disney Company for the unauthorized use of her likeness without her knowledge or consent in Cameron’s “Avatar” franchise.
🤝 Both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA have now reached a tentative deal with studios for new four-year contracts.
This week’s newsletter includes an interview with Canadian filmmaker Aisha Evelyna, as well as the sound team for the television show “Beef.” We’ve got three movie reviews this week, and the long-awaited return of Spotlight. Plus, what’s playing at movie theaters this week and some reading and listening recommendations for your lunch break.
Thanks for reading!
Sammie
🎉 Win local experiences, goods, and treats. The Root Ball 2026 silent auction is open now, and bidding ends Thurs., May 14 at 9 p.m. Anyone can browse and bid. All proceeds support Trees Atlanta. SPONSOR MESSAGE
Making sense of the world through movies with Aisha Evelyna
🌊 Every time Canadian actor and filmmaker Aisha Evelyna sees an unhoused man of a certain age or build, she does a double take. The last time she saw her father, she said, his housing situation was unstable. And she wouldn’t be surprised if, in the intervening time, that housing had fallen through.
That terrified feeling, along with a myriad of other ideas, spurred the creation of “Seahorse,” a film written by and directed by Evelyna that played at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival. It stars Evelyna as Nola, a sous chef at a high-end new restaurant run by her friend Adelaide (Ruth Goodwin) and her awful fiancé, Rob (Brett Donahue). After a particularly terrible shift, she runs into her estranged and unhoused father, Cyrus (Joseph Marcell, of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” fame), on the way home. The film wrestles with Nola’s relationship with her father and the weight of her own mental health issues.
“Seahorse” was one of the more fascinating films I saw at the festival, and I got the opportunity to speak to Evelyna about the making of the film after the in-person screening.
👩🍳 You can check out our conversation here.
A nostalgic summer vacation at Lake Oconee
SPONSORED BY VISIT LAKE OCONEE
🏖️ Looking for things to do this summer or planning a weekend getaway near Atlanta? Just over an hour away, Lake Oconee is one of Georgia’s top summer destinations, offering everything from boating and fishing to berry picking and small-town charm.
🌞 Whether you’re planning a relaxing lake vacation or hoping to recreate the “good old days” with your kids or grandkids, Lake Oconee is the perfect place to slow down and make lasting summer memories.
Creating a soundscape of anxiety and rage in ‘Beef’
🍔 When we watch films and television, our attention, understandably, focuses on the visuals. The colors and the performances, or – if we’re more cinematically literate – maybe the cinematography, or the editing. Sound is never the first thing that comes to mind, even though it might be one of the most important tools at a filmmaker’s disposal when it comes to shaping how we feel.
The second season of “Beef,” the anthology show created by Lee Sung Jin, relies on sound to create an environment wracked with tension, rage, and anxiety. The show follows an escalating feud between two couples – wealthy Joshua (Oscar Isaac) and Lindsay (Carey Mulligan), and the much poorer Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton) – that kicks off when Ashley and Austin decide to blackmail Joshua and Lindsay with footage of a heated argument.
Supervising sound editor Christopher Gomez and re-recording mixers Penny Harold and Andrew Garrett Lange are part of the team that brought the soundscape of “Beef” to life. I spoke with the trio about their creative processes and their favorite sonic moments.
⛳ Check out the full piece here.
‘Blue Heron’ is a beautiful treatise on memory and grief
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🇨🇦 “Thank you for the memories. They’re all that I have now.” This line, at the beginning of Sophy Romvari’s feature film debut “Blue Heron,” offers the perfect encapsulation of what you’re about to see. Although you don’t know quite how perfect until later.
“Blue Heron” is based on Romvari’s 2020 documentary short “Still Processing,” which follows her and her family as they process unresolved feelings of grief surrounding the deaths of her two older brothers. The short never explicitly states how Romvari’s brothers passed, instead focusing on her and her family’s feelings in the aftermath, playing out as she discovers old photographs and film that her parents hid after the fact.
If “Still Processing” is a treatise on the intersection between memory and grief, “Blue Heron” pushes that concept forward and morphs it into a memory play of sorts, one that ruminates on the fragility and fickleness of memory, and then tries to confront that head-on. The film begins as something fairly familiar, ostensibly dealing in coming-of-age conventions we’ve seen before. But its originality becomes apparent gradually and then all at once. In its latter half, Romvari recontextualizes what you’ve already seen and rips your heart out in the process.
📹 Read my full review here.
‘The Sheep Detectives’ is a surprisingly poignant children’s movie
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🐑 There are many surprises in my job. One of them was when I learned that something called “The Sheep Detectives” was a real movie and not a weird dream I had. The other was when I watched said movie, and actually enjoyed it.
For a film critic with no children to speak of, I find myself ruminating on the status of children’s entertainment quite often these days. As I’ve stated before, I think we’re in a pretty dire spot – with a few exceptions, most things aimed at children are either interested in making it impossible for them to turn their eyes away from the screen, are secretly aimed at their parents, or are live-action remakes of Disney movies that are barely 10 years old.
“The Sheep Detectives” (written by Craig Mazin and directed by Kyle Balda) might seem like an unlikely antidote to this problem. But the film walks a fine line between sweet and cloying, touching on tough themes about grief and death in a kid-friendly manner – and with plenty of humor along the way.
🔍 Check out my review here.
‘Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour’ is a masterclass in connection
WEEKLY FILM REVIEW
🎤 In 2021, the documentary “Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry,” followed Billie Eilish in the lead up to her 2019 debut album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?” – right as she, at the ripe age of 17, became a worldwide phenomenon.
That documentary offers a vulnerable, sometimes uncomfortable portrait of a very young star on the rise, openly struggling with her mental health. In one scene, her mother asks her if her lyrics about jumping off a bridge reflect how she really feels. She nods, then points out that having a creative outlet to express those feelings is part of why she doesn’t. Those songs, the film supposes, are also what help her millions of fans feel seen – fans who are struggling with the very same feelings that she is.
“Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour,” directed by Eilish and James Cameron, is not the same kind of film. While it gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the tour itself, those moments are not nearly as revealing. But the concert itself offers a firsthand look at the connection between Eilish and her fans that “The World’s a Little Blurry” highlights, and shows us an artist with the gravitas to command a crowd with no help from anyone but herself.
👊 Click here to read my review.
At the Movies!
If you’re looking for a movie to see in theaters this week, here’s what you’ve got to look forward to!
Movies releasing this weekend:
💙 “Blue Heron”
🎤 “Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour”
🐑 “The Sheep Detectives”
🥷 “Mortal Kombat II” (pictured)
🇵🇱 “Erupcja”
☕ “Baristas v. Billionaires”
🚗 “Omaha”
Special Events:
🀄 WABE Cinema Social: “The Joy Luck Club” @ The Plaza (Saturday)
🇺🇸 Cineprov Riffs Invasion USA @ The Tara (Saturday)
🍅 “Fried Green Tomatoes” 35th Anniversary @ Tara (Sunday-Wednesday)
🏴☠️ “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” @ Landmark Midtown Art Cinema (Sunday)
🎉 Win local experiences, goods, and treats. The Root Ball 2026 silent auction is open now, and bidding ends Thurs., May 14 at 9 p.m. Anyone can browse and bid. All proceeds support Trees Atlanta. SPONSOR MESSAGE
Spotlight: Alana Haim in ‘The Drama’
👰 While it’s only May, I think I can say with confidence that Kristoffer Borgli’s “The Drama” will end up being one of the most divisive films of the year. But, whatever your thoughts about the film, there is one thing that most reasonable people seem to be able to agree on: Rachel (Alana Haim) is the worst!
Being “the worst” in a movie like “The Drama” is truly a feat. Without spoiling anything (but if you haven’t seen this movie yet and you subscribe to this newsletter, really, what are you doing?), the film takes place over a few weeks leading up to the wedding of Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson). The lead-up is thrown into disarray when Charlie learns a secret about Emma that changes everything he thought he knew.
Haim plays Rachel, Charlie’s friend Mike’s (Mamoudou Athie) wife, and (by default), a built-in friend for Emma. In the film, Rachel functions as a paragon of performativity – a former mean girl who grew up to be a mean woman, and now hides her cruelty behind a mask of moral superiority.
From the moment Rachel appears on screen, there is a sneering quality to Haim’s performance that is so viscerally familiar – so incredibly high school – that it sent an electric shock of recognition straight through me. Rachel is present when Emma’s secret comes out, and her behavior becomes outwardly hostile in that moment. But even before the big reveal, there is no question in your mind that Rachel had no designs on being Emma’s friend.
Haim carries Rachel’s ruthlessness and righteousness in equal measure, with the distrusting air of someone who was raised rich and doesn’t trust the new girl on the block as far as she can throw her. In her early scenes with Emma, you can feel her waiting for the other shoe to drop. Her smile is laced with venom, and every word that falls from her mouth rings false.
Before Emma’s secret is revealed, Rachel shares with her the worst thing she’s ever done. It’s morally repulsive, but Haim delivers the news with the sly wink of someone who thinks something monstrous is only just a little bit naughty. It’s a masterclass in – for lack of a better term – b*tchiness, and one that all actors looking for a play on mean girls should take note of.
Lights, Camera, Action!
🐃 Since May 1, I’ve been doing nothing but listening to Kacey Musgraves’ new album “Middle of Nowhere,’ which is quickly shaping up to be my favorite album of hers since “Golden Hour.” Check out Craig Jenkins’ thoughtful review of the new album for Vulture, and – if you aren’t already obsessed like me – take a listen.
⭐ Like anyone with eyes, I love Zendaya. We all love to complain about the lack of modern movie stars, and in a lot of ways, I think we’re right to. But Zendaya, along with a few others in her cohort, has emerged as a new type of star. We might not ever get back to the heyday of the 90s, but this is an actor who helped propel “The Drama” – a very thorny movie, to say the least – to over $121 million worldwide. On a recent episode of the “Little Gold Men” podcast, the hosts discuss what makes Zendaya such a star of the moment.
🎸 I loved the recent new film “Mile End Kicks,” starring Barbie Ferreira as a young music critic, and I really loved this IndieWire interview that Kate Erbland did with Ferreira back in April. This is not the most important tidbit in this piece, but it’s nice to know that there’s someone else in this world who saw 2002’s “The Ring” far too young and was permanently scarred by it.
🖋️ Today’s Scene was edited by Julie E. Bloemeke.
