FILMS from AFAR

This lyrical meditation on life in a specific time and place relies on a subtle and expressive lead performance by Edgerton and majestic cinematography to craft a melancholy yet mystical tale. Train Dreams is reminiscent of an artful piece of historical fiction like Roma . There's no grand action to hook viewers, no predictable formula to follow. Instead, the film feels very much a literary adaptation, especially with its somewhat superfluous voice-over filling in narrative gaps. This sweeping epic captures not just one man's tough, tragic life, and not just the human exploitation and development of the still-wild Pacific Northwest, but rather the deep and unbreakable connection between the two. Read the full review on Common Sense Media Images courtesy of Netflix

Published November 2025

Published September 2025

Your partner has three friends: a college roommate he hasn’t called in a year, his brother, and you. Guess who’s carrying the weight? If this scenario sounds familiar, you might be “mankeeping.” When Mankeeping Gets a Name The term, coined last year by a pair of Stanford researchers , describes the social and emotional imbalances in many male-female relationships today. “I expected my kids to rely on me, but not so much my husband, for emotional support, encouragement, and counsel,” one woman told me. “If he acted on my suggestions, it would be easier. Instead, it’s draining.” And nobody’s talking about it. We’ve had the conversation about women’s unequal, unpaid, often underappreciated roles managing childcare and keeping house. But what about the emotional cost of our role in the “male friendship recession”? The Loneliness Epidemic It turns out otherwise potentially healthy heterosexual relationships are one more casualty of the loneliness epidemic , and women are bearing the burden. “It’s completely untenable and exhausting, and all the cracks in the relationship open that much wider and deeper,” said Marcus Berley , a licensed mental health counselor. The “male friendship recession” isn’t great for men either. They’re facing “increasing isolation, stunted emotional life, more bypassing of what their needs might be, and just defaulting into either what they think they’re supposed to do or into fantasy of how they’re going to solve it all,” Berley said. No Laughing Matter I admit I started this article a little tongue in cheek. The term “mankeeping” made me smirk, kind of like “manscaping” or “manosphere.” Then I began hearing from friends, and I realized just how serious, widespread—and, yes, exhausting—this phenomenon is. I sent an anonymous five-question survey to almost two dozen female friends, asking about their friend networks, social calendars, and the impact of relationship imbalances on these fronts—versus that of their male partners’. Email and text reactions came in fast and furious. They’d just been talking about this with a friend! They’re living this! Yes, they want to discuss it! Two women told me that the burdens of mankeeping had led, at least in part, to their divorces. Continue article here ---> https://provokedmagazine.com/mankeeping-is-real-and-women-are-exhausted/ Photo by Tim Mossholder: https://www.pexels.com/photo/male-and-female-signage-on-wall-1722196/

This sequel furthers the character evolutions of the  original  and brings in enough globetrotting action to satisfy fans. The fighting in  The Old Guard 2  is so choreographed you're constantly reminded of just how choreographed (and gory) it is, meaning the action can get a little tedious by the end. Maybe that's because the idea of immortality removes some of the usual tension of fight scenes. What continues to be more compelling in this franchise are the very human stories fueling the superhuman characters' motivations. These are developed with some nuance. The film asks you to think about what gives a mortal life purpose. No easy answers, but the mere exercise infuses this otherwise by-the-book action film with a bit of higher meaning. A cliffhanger ending suggests #3 is on the way. Read the full review on Common Sense Media Images courtesy of Netflix

The directors of the new HBO documentary Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print talk about the magazine’s storied history and why its “consciousness-raising” is needed now—more than ever. “Try to imagine a life where you are owned by or controlled by the men in your life.” This opening line of the documentary Dear Ms. pulls viewers into a past reality that, for many women, isn’t so hard to imagine today. Rights we thought were assured—control over our bodies, our money, our choices—once again feel as flimsy as a page torn from a magazine. While 64 percent of Americans see feminism as empowering, nearly half also call it polarizing, and a third consider it outdated, according to Pew Research . So how did we get from Ms. to this, and what does the turbulent, radical story of the magazine reveal about the unfinished work of feminism now? Inside the Ms. Documentary The story of Ms . is told through the eyes of three directors: Salima Koroma, Alice Gu, and Cecilia Aldarondo. They each bring a different lens to this history, starting from iconic covers of the magazine and delving into the complicated backstory of the fledgling feminist movement and its new mouthpiece. “We’re a movement, which means we’re messy, which means we disagree, which means we need to have hard discussions,” Aldarondo said. The documentary captures those tensions and contradictions, portraying Ms. not as a perfect movement, but as a living, evolving experiment in consciousness-raising. One that’s still unfolding in today’s fights over whose voices get heard, what feminism means, and who it’s for. Continue reading on Provoked . Images courtesy of Getty Images and HBO.

Middle-Aged Women Get Their Young Lovers on Screen, But They Deserve So Much More In Amazon Prime’s The Idea of You , a 40-year-old single mom falls for a 24-year-old boy-band idol. And the internet loses its mind. She’s called a cougar, a stalker, the “sleaziest mom of the year.” He’s questioned about the relationship, while she’s shamed. The mom—played by Anne Hathaway—has to hide out until the hate subsides. The sequence points to a truth we all know: When women date younger men, people get weird. The man might be teased. The woman? She’s despised—at least in America. Older man, younger woman? That’s not news—it’s tradition. On screen, it’s standard casting. Off screen, it’s barely a headline. Cue the Double Standard But flip the ages, and now it’s a spectacle. Sure, real-life couples like Cher and Alexander Edwards, or Helena Bonham Carter and Rye Dag Holmboe, are shaking things up. But Madonna? Demi? They got mocked for trying. The cultural cynicism still clings. And yet—something is shifting. Streaming platforms are starting to flip the script on May-December romances. Maybe because they know who’s watching : older, often female audiences who’ve had enough of invisibility. Continue reading on Provoked. Images courtesy of Amazon Prime and Netflix

In an age when any millionaire can go to space, women can vie for any career, and being gay shouldn't result in public ridicule or hate, Sally Ride's story reminds us of a different time. Sally tells that story, using those closest to her to fill in the pieces that Ride intentionally left blank on her own life tale. As one interviewee puts it, how sad that a person admired so broadly felt she had to hide such an important part of herself from the public eye. What is disclosed here provides interesting insights into Ride's personality as well as the rarified life experience of an astronaut. She is described as competitive, cocky, rough around the edges, and intensely private about her emotions—characteristics that, it's said, made her exceptional at work and difficult at home. She "lived on her own terms," even despite intense media scrutiny. Footage of press conferences singling her out among her colleagues for overtly sexist questions is downright embarrassing by today's standards. The film makes its point and is engaging and informative. What could potentially have been weeded out are gratuitous dramatizations of past events. Read the full review at Common Sense Media . Images courtesy of Disney+.

Tense and well-acted, this thriller weaves a captivating story of fatally flawed characters getting lost in their own bad decisions. Echo Valley lags a little bit in the third act but comes to a satisfying twist ending. Moore carries the film with a nuanced performance as the manipulatable mom, lonely, still grieving her wife's death, and yearning for any connection with the daughter she once knew. Sweeney is also powerful in a disturbing role that wavers between loving daughter, fearful tears, stoned detachment, and violent outbursts. This film is as much about the toll addiction takes on relationships as it is the plot points of the action, and both will replay in your mind well after the film ends. Read the full review at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of AppleTV+

Honest, affecting, tender, and inspirational, this documentary is a wholly unique piece of work. Perhaps it shouldn't, but it does still feel unexpected to see a male rocker open up so freely about his emotions, as Bono does quite dramatically in Bono: Stories of Surrender . He calls it "navel-gazing," but the revelations and reenactments carry real value—not just in getting to know the innermost thoughts and feelings of this public figure, but also in normalizing the public sharing and exploration of a man's sentiments. The theatrically stark black-and-white staging of the stories and songs, including some gorgeous a cappella belting, adds to the drama. Bono describes his father's standard life question whenever they would meet at the pub: Anything strange or startling? The answer is yes—this documentary. Read the full review at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of AppleTV+

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy do their best to keep this implausible action film (and equally improbable romance) from sinking into absurdity, and they sort of succeed. The stars of AppleTV+'s  The Gorge  take their roles seriously, despite some wild shifts in tone between romance and horror. (When their flirting is interrupted by crazy-looking creatures attacking them, they snap right back to their dalliance as if without further thought. What?!) They also carry off the action sequences with aplomb. Their efforts compensate for an ambitious script that isn't totally sure of the tone it's going for, and a farfetched storyline forced to explain itself too simplistically through a found video. Sigourney Weaver is also disappointingly underused. Read the full review at Common Sense Media Images courtesy of AppleTV+

When film industry magazine Screen International broke a story at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday about a group of middle-aged women who were turned away from a film screening for wearing flats rather than heels, the web-fueled backlash was resounding. Some were calling it “Flatgate.” It brought back a lot of memories for me as I used to cover the Cannes festival every year as a correspondent for Screen. In flats. What’s interesting is that this year’s 68th edition of Cannes, running May 13 to May 24, was shaping up to be remembered as “the year of the woman.” It may still be remembered as such, just not in the way organizers might have hoped. Cannes made a statement by opening this year with a French film, “Standing Tall” (“La Tete Haute”), by director Emanuelle Bercot, only the second woman ever to receive the honor. The choice appeared to have been a response to past years’ criticism of a lack of female directors at the festival. And it struck a clear chord: the lack of opportunities and stories for women in the film industry has been a theme across the festival this year, from press conferences, interviews and industry announcements to a notable number of female-focused films and casts.​​ And now, the poor ladies in the rhinestone flats. ​​ Under the red carpet​​ It seems there’s always something to divert the attention away from the actual films at Cannes. Earlier this spring, Festival Director Thierry Fremaux made headlines when he announced plans to crack down on people taking selfies on the red carpet, a practice he bigheartedly labelled “extremely ridiculous and grotesque.”​​ It’s a sentiment that encapsulates Cannes’ not always comfortable fusion of the commercial and the creative, industry and art, high and low culture, market and festival. Cannes is glamorous, there’s no doubt about it. There are bashes on the beach, interviews in limousines and parties at hilltop estates. There are receptions on yachts and cocktails on hotel patios. There are multi-course meals, bucketloads of wine and that sapphire Mediterranean eternally twinkling on the horizon. And of course, there is constant talk of movies. For journalists covering the event, there are also mandatory crack-of-dawn editorial meetings, merciless daily deadlines, bandaged feet from perpetual pavement pounding, and a lack of sleep that can shorten the fuse of even the gentlest reporter. This is (apologies, former colleagues) the indisputably less glamorous side of Cannes. Where flat shoes reign supreme. Underneath the Palais theater, where the official film screenings take place, downstairs from the packed press conference halls, deep below the much-photographed red carpet, lies a basement labyrinth of makeshift cubicles plastered with movie posters and teeming with sweaty sales agents, bleary-eyed buyers and amped-up journalists searching for a story. Because, as “Flatgate” and “Selfiegate” make clear, the story out of Cannes isn’t only what’s happening in the theaters. This column originally ran in The Daily Record .