Essays on TV and film — exploring stories, characters, and the choices behind them.
The bear survives Cocaine Bear, along with her cubs. By the end of Elizabeth Banks’s horror comedy, keeping this dangerous animal alive has become part of the happy ending. The film gets there by giving her a final opponent, drug dealer Syd, whose determination to recover his cocaine puts everyone around him at risk. Against … Read more
Maya leaves because staying close to people has become frightening. After her husband Charlie dies in Love of Your Life, she retreats into an old conviction: depending on herself is safer than depending on anyone else. Margaret Qualley describes that return to self-protection in her Harper’s Bazaar interview. It gives Maya’s departures a reason, although … Read more
Ultron is a peculiar choice of confidant. In VisionQuest on Disney+, Vision keeps a backup of the villain inside his mind and consults him while trying to understand himself. Paul Bettany’s explanation, in his Den of Geek interview, is unusually simple: Vision finds Ultron interesting, particularly his chaotic impulses. That curiosity makes sense for someone … Read more
Stanley kills Wayne, a member of his own isolated community, near the end of One Mile: Chapter Two. That killing exposes the problem with his claim to be protecting his people. His pursuit of Danny and Danny’s daughter, Alex, has become a personal vendetta, and someone inside the group can become a target too. Keeping … Read more
The Top Gun enthusiast in Mayday is the man an American fighter pilot needs to get home. Nikolai Ustinov, Kenneth Branagh’s former KGB operative, loves American culture. When Ryan Reynolds’s Navy pilot Troy Kelly is stranded in Soviet territory, Nikolai gets a less glamorous version of his favorite movie hero: an American who needs his … Read more
In The Love Hypothesis, Olive’s best friend Anh tells Adam, Olive’s estranged romantic partner, about Tom Benton’s harassment after discovering that Adam does not know what happened. Her intervention gives him a reason to confront a man he trusted. That conversation helps bring Olive and Adam back together. It also leaves a question for Adam … Read more
Sean’s childhood friends have a good reason to be furious with him in Matchbox The Movie. His return gets them caught up in a CIA operation involving a missing nuclear warhead. Once they become suspects themselves, helping him offers a way to reclaim their own lives. Their decision to stay involved gives the reunion a … Read more
In Luc Besson’s Dracula, the count accepts death because keeping Mina, his wife’s reincarnation, with him would bind her to his curse. He allows the priest to stake him, ending his own immortality and freeing her from vampirism. After centuries spent trying to recover his lost wife, he gives up the future their reunion seemed … Read more
In Hokum’s ending, Ohm Bauman changes his novel as he begins to forgive himself for his mother’s death. The author played by Adam Scott survives the haunted hotel with a different understanding of the childhood accident that killed her. Back at his keyboard, he changes the fate of the boy in his Conquistador story. The … Read more
Calvin Penney saves Mudder because moving the giant sea creature out of Snook’s Arm gives his family and neighbors a way to stay. In the ending of Netflix’s Below, killing her would also mean an attack on the harbor they depend on. Once Calvin understands that she is guarding eggs trapped in an iceberg, he … Read more