The Lost Bus (2025)

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that this movie was nominated in the area of special effects for the 2026 Academy Awards and it certainly fits that bill. It is a "telling the story of a disaster" movie, which adheres largely to the facts even if some of the people and their circumstances are changed. This is about the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which went from a small fire to a devestating fire in no time at all, aided and abetted by dry conditions and very high wind. Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) is a relatively new school bus driver, back in Paradise for a number of reasons and struggling. He answers a call from his dispatcher to pick up 23 kids at an elementary school and get them to safety. At first, it doesn’t seem that difficult, but everyone in the area of Paradise, California, underestimated how quickly this blaze would move and how hard it would be to evacuate as it did. Stuck in traffic with enough smoke in the air to block the sun, Kevin and a teacher named Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) do their best to keep the kids calm, even as their own panic rises. Cutting through traffic, trying shortcuts, and blocking the children from seeing people literally on fire. The actual action of is white-knuckle riveting. It’s powerfully immersive stuff, so much so that while there isn’t a bus of children actually avoiding a deadly blaze, the viewer gets so caught up in the immediacy of what they are facing that it is hard to watch and hard to look away. There’s a scene where Mary actually gets off the bus to find water that will had me wanting to yell at her to get back to the bus--NOW. THe bad news is that the beginning of the movie is completely unnecessary and clunky. We do not need to know Kevin's backstory to care about whether he gets these kids, himslef and the teacher to safety. Instead of glossing over that we spend quite a bit of time learning Kevin recently underwent a bitter divorce, his teenage son hates him, his mother is cognitively declining, and icing on the life stressor cake, his dog died. Ugh, really? Maybe it even describes the real story but wow, not needed. Overall this was a good edge of your seat action movie, and if you haven't seen it, you should watch the short documentary, Campfire, which shows actual footage of the Camp Fire and how it unfolded in real life to see just hoe true to form this rendition is.

The Secret Agent (2025)

The disappearance of people believed to be dissidents in Argentina in the late 1970's and early 1980's was well known to those of us who live in North America, albeit after the facts. There are still people protesting that part of their history in Buenos Aires to this day. The fact that is happened in Brazil as well was not known to me. The film I'm Still Here details the mostly true story of a high profile Brazilian who was killed by the government and his wife went to great lengths to prove that. This one is a little different. Set in 1977 Brazil, roughly at the midpoint of a 21-year military dictatorship, this is a drama, a satire, an intriguingly laid-back espionage film, and a recreation of a time and place, with expressionistic and surreal flourishes that must be accepted on their own terms. Wagner Moura stars as Marcelo, a tall, bearded fellow with gentle energy and sad eyes. He arrives in Recife, the state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, in a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. We don’t know why he’s come to Recife. We won’t know for a long time. You have to pick up on subtext in order to understand certain conversations. Marcelo and the other characters in his orbit try to avoid saying exactly what they mean, because someone might be listening. There is a casualness to the killing that I think is probably a true capture of what happened, and is what we are experiencing in 2026 in the United States with ICE, where people are being dissapeared without warrents, cause, trial, or due process. It can happen antwhere and at any time.

No Other Choice (2025)

This Korean film was short listed for the 2026 Academy Awards in the Foreign Language category, and in my mind the Koreans can give the Danes a run for their money when it comes to dark dark comedy. It does not get bleaker than this. It opens in happier times for Man-su and his family, including a supportive wife, Lee Mi-ri, two beautiful children, Si-one and Ri-one, and two gorgeous dogs. As they celebrate their perfect lives outside of their perfect home, storm clouds appear on the horizon. The symbol becomes real when Man-su is downsized from his paper company, forced back into a brutal job market. Man-su realizes that the only way to beat the competition for the job he wants is for them to be unable to apply for it, so he puts in motion a series of plans to literally eliminate his competition. What starts as relatively playful and almost silly, a tone enriched by Lee’s layered performance that mingles Man-su’s desperation, intelligence, and broken pride, eventually gets much darker, but also angry, a commentary on what happens when fragile masculinity is fractured by corporate greed. Something has to give. And it does. This did not make the final cut to be nominated, but it is well worth seeking out.

Hamnet (2025)

Chloé Zhao is a master at translating a book into a movie. I was very impressed with her adaptation of Nomadland and this is even more impressive. Maggie O'Farrell's book comes to life in this movie in a in a beautiful and cinematic way. I don't often say this but while I loved the book the movie was more emotionally on target. In addition to being a visually stunning, emotionally devastating movie it is also a deeply sensorial exploration of grief, anchored by exceptional performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. This is the story of William Shakespeare at home. This comes from a work of fiction but attempts to explain both Shakespeare's attraction to a woman who is uneducated as well as to hypothesize the egis for his one of his greatest plays. Agnes, is the daughter of a forest witch, and her connection to the earth, the trees, and the sky feels tangible and powerful. She meets Will --who will eventually turn out to be The Bard—their connection feels just as alive and free. They frolic and flirt joyfully, and the qualities that make her an outcast to everyone else make her wonderful to him. In no time, they’re married, then have a daughter named Susanna, and then twins: a boy and a girl, Hamnet and Judith. They have a blissful home life when Shakespeare is home and this is shattered when Hamnet dies. The grief that they that he experiences leads to the tragic play Hamlet.

Last Days On Lake Trinity (2025)

This short documentary was shortlisted in that category for this for the 2026 Academy Awards. South Florida is facing a housing crisis, and that is one focus that this documentary brings to light. In March of 2022, Trinity Broadcasting Network, who owned the land, informed residents of Lakeside Park Estates that they had until December 31, 2022 to move out. Cooley centers on three women–Nancy Sanderson, Laurie Laney, and Nancy Fleishman–as they begin their hunt for another place to live after, it appears, that the county cannot combat TBN’s order. There are three things that I noticed watching rather than listening to this story. The 1st is that the place that they have which is waterfront is very beautiful and would be very hard to replicate. The second is that the mobile homes that these women live in are well beyond their sell by date. They are living in conditions that would be condemned I believe and then the third is that they have very few financial options and so this is a story of David and Goliath where the corporation holds all the cards. At the beginning of the film, Laney tells us that her first big purchase was her mobile home, but the real sense of belonging came within the community of Lakeside. Community and the collective experience is at the heart of Trinity. Fleishman worked off and on for TBN for years, and the silence from the company is troubling, especially when she calls to speak to someone about following up on the help they allegedly said they would provide.

If I Had Legs I Would Kick You (2025)

I watched this movie because the actress was nominated for an Academy Award. It is about the unraveling of Linda, a wry, worn-down mother and therapist played magnificently and unflinchingly by Rose Byrne. I 100% agree with the award going to Jesse Buckley for her work in Hamnet which was incredible but Rose Byrne was my second choice. Like unbandaging a cut too soon, leaving it oozing and throbbing, a red gash for the world to see that you clearly lack self-control, Linda seriously struggles to juggle the mysterious illness of her daughter and the sudden collapse of her literal and metaphorical ceiling, leaving her with no pillars to support her. There are some very smart things that are said in this movie about shame and hiding things. It's a cautionary tale to do neither. It is better to RIP off the Band-Aid than to leave things unattended to for literally everyone’s sake. Ane lest you think it would take months for things to get this bad, as a mental health professional myself, it can all go bad in a blink of an eye.

The Three Sisters (2025)

There are two stories here for this short animated film that was nominated in that category for the 2026 Academy Awards. The first is the story itself, told in 2-D animation and perhaps the most whimsical and weird of the five nominees. It imagines the isolated life on an island shared by three sisters when a stranger arrives and changes their day-to-day in unexpected ways. He's a burly sailor and, well, these ladies have been living alone for quite some time, so they find themselves each drawn to him, changing their appearance and doting on him in ways they haven't had a reason to before. It is without dialogue but with plenty of expressive animation, we come to appreciate these three sisters and their desire for more on this little island of theirs. Our dashing interloper is just that, however, and as the women have to face reality, it could be we're all headed for heartbreak. The second is that the film was submitted under a fictional name. Russian animation director Konstantin Bronzit, who is a celebrated animator from a shunned country may have been seeing if quality is identified or he may have feared he would have been side lines based on his country of origin. Afterall, if there is an anti-Russian documentary on offer, it is more likely than not to win, so he may have a point. In any case, he outed himself before the awards, and this was not a winner--nor was it my first or second choice.

Viva Verdi! (2024)

This documentary has a song that was nominated for Best Song in the 2026 Academy Awards--which it did not win, but I liked the song far more than the winner. This is a documentary which follows the lives of artists after their careers end but not before their lives end. Situated in Milan, the cradle of art, retired opera singers and musicians live together in harmony at Casa Verdi, a neo-Gothic sanctuary commissioned by Giuseppe Verdi in 1898 to honor artists who devoted their lives to music and the arts. The documentary opens to the soaring strains of La Traviata, the curtains opening to a quotation that captures the spirit of a compassionate humanist devoted music lover: “Among my works, the one I like best is the Home that I’ve built in Milan for accommodating old singers not favored by fortune.” The premise of his deed was simple: during Verdi’s time, there were no pensions for artists; they were sadly left to their own devices. Devoting one’s life to art was therefore a courageous choice, reliant on hard work and luck, and Verdi sought to host all of those who had dared to follow their artistic passions. The cinematography in Viva Verdi! is both intimate and evocative, capturing the soul of Casa Verdi and its residents with a painterly touch. This visual approach creates a warm and immersive atmosphere that reflects the enduring and unifying brilliance of music, shared across generations. Through their personal stories, we traverse time, theaters, countries, and librettos. A wide range of nationalities mingle in Casa Verdi, telling intimate chronicles marked by success and ovations, disappointments, loss, and discrimination. Most of all, the film shows how a love for music and performing does not end when the paychecks cease. Even though most of the performers in the film have died by the time it came out, you can see that they were engaged in activies they loved to the end.

The Girl Who Cried Pearls (2025)

Pearls are created by animals and are both precious and beautiful. They have been called mermaid's tears--the myths that surround them are the start of this short animated film from Canada that won the Academy Award in 2026 in that category. This story is told by an old man to his granddaughter, who has an eye for shiny things and who we suppose has pocketed a precious pearl herself. The story begins in his youth in Montreal, when he was a hungry orphan scavenging for food by the docks and sleeping in abandoned buildings. If one could find such a residence adjacent to one that was occupied, he explains, one might feel the heat of the fire through the wall. Naturally, sitting against the wall meant one might also hear what was going on in a house, and he talks about the time when he heard a stepmother repeatedly abusing a lonely girl. At night the girl would cry, and peering through a hole, he saw her tears, made of the purest sorrow, turn to pearls. Acquiring some of these, he took them to a pawnbroker and was paid better than he had ever been before. To get more, however, he was faced with a terrible dilemma--her unhappiness led to wealth for him, and what should he hope for? It is a classic tale of greed, the power of poverty to drive poor decisions, and a surprise ending.

Chasing Time (2025)

This short documentary was short listed for an Academy award in 2026, and while it did not make the final list, it is an excellent documentary all the same. Back in 2012, Jeff Orlowski documented famed photographer James Balog as he setup his Extreme Ice Survey, a series of remote cameras set to record the immediate effect of climate change on the world’s glaciers. With stunning visuals and pioneering use of time-elapsed photography, Chasing Ice served as direct evidence of the warming of the planet. Images showed millennia-old ice sheets radically transforming over just a few years, contributing to the rise of sea levels, and making manifest the way the world is undergoing fundamental transformation due to environmental changes. This film is slightly more philosophical and ruminative. Directed in collaboration with Sarah Keo, the film sees Jeff and James return to Jakobshavn Glacier to remove the camera and close a chapter in both their work and their relationship. It’s a touching film about mentor and mentee, and manages in its compact running time to provide a rich portrait of their collaboration, additional stunning views of their otherworldly locations, and an even more open-eyed look at the catastrophic changes that have occurred over the last decades in this majestic environ. It is all set in motion by James’ cancer diagnosis, which makes him aware of his own limited time frame. The story and the photography are both beautiful.

Kokuho (2025)

This film is nominated in the category of Make Up for the 2026 Academy Awards, and it was short listed for Best International Movie. It is set in and around the world of Kabuki, the 400-year-old theatrical form that lies near the heart of Japanese culture. Spanning half a century and running close to three hours, this quiet epic is the top-grossing Japanese live action film of all time. When we first meet the hero, Kikuo, he's 14 and playing a female role in an excerpt from a famous Kabuki play. (Men play all the roles in Kabuki.) His performance is seen by a Kabuki star, Hanai who's impressed by his talent. When Kikuo's yakuza father is murdered by a rival gang, Hanai takes him in as a protégé, teaching him to become an onnagata — a male actor who plays female roles. There is one snag. Hanai already has a son of the same age, Shunsuke, who is slated to be his artistic heir, and, in the Kabuki world, artistic status passes from father to son. The story of what transpires between Kikuo and Shunsuke a compelling story about friendship, the weight of history, the quest for perfection and the torturous road to becoming a living national treasure — which is what the word "kokuho" means. Spanning their lives, it also is a portrait of post WWII 20th century Japan, where ideas about birth and cultural inheritance, which seem quite dated. Then in Kikuo's struggle to become Japan's greatest Kabuki actor, we feel the chilly isolation of devoting yourself to an art form so demanding that it leaves little room for ordinary human connectionanything else--his connection with Shunsuke is the closest thing he has to an ordinary relationship. This is lush and gorgeous, all the while having a creepy undercurrent. Don't miss it.

Classroom 4 (2025)

This short documentary was short listed in that category for the 2026 Academy awards--it did not make the final cut, but it is open source and available to for viewing by all. The documentary takes place inside the Columbia River Correctional Institution (CRCI) in Portland, where incarcerated students and Lewis & Clark undergraduates meet weekly over the course of a semester to study the history of crime and punishment in the United States. The Inside-Out course—which is part of the nationwide Inside-Out Prison Exchange program—meets in Classroom 4 at the facility. There, students explore ideas of justice, mercy, and the evolution of the carceral state. What emerges is not only a study of history but a shared experience of humanity. The course is taught by Reiko Hillyer, professor of history and department chair. Hillyer began teaching Inside-Out courses in 2012, a year after completing training through the Philadelphia-based program. Since then, she has taught the CRCI class every other year, guiding mixed cohorts of “inside” (incarcerated) and “outside” (college) students through lively weekly discussions and shared assignments. Each class usually includes 30 students—15 from CRCI and 15 from the college—who meet behind prison walls to learn, debate, and reflect as equals. It is a very good watch.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025)

This is a docudrama that is nominated in the Best International Film category for the 2026 Academy Awards. It is a re-enactment of events that happened. On January 29th, 2024, the Israeli Army ordered the evacuation of the Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. On that day, six members of the Hamadeh family, along with their six-year-old niece, Hind Rajab, were trapped in their car after the Israeli Army opened fire on them, killing five occupants of the vehicle immediately. Miraculously, a fifteen-year-old girl named Layan was able to call the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and ask for help before she too succumbed to her wounds. That left six-year-old Hind alone in the car, surrounded by the corpses of her slain family members, possessing a cellphone with shoddy reception as her only hope. The conversations that members of the PRCS had with her while they are trying to coordinate an ambulance safe passage to come get her to safety use actual recordings of Hind and the movie quite dramatically takes the audience into the day to day stresses of being helpless at the end of a phone while people are in danger and at the mercy of what seems like a merciless war. This was very painful to watch.

All The Empty Rooms (2025)

This short documentary was seven years in the making. Media correspondent Steve Hartman used to work on finding something positive to report after mass school shootings, basically the silver lining after children have been killed in their classrooms. You could see how that would wear on you over time. Much like all the “thoughts and prayers” rather than real outrage and an effort to make change. So along with long-time friend and photographer Lou Bopp they visit families across the US who have been affected by school shootings and document all of their ‘empty rooms.’ We’re so used to seeing the media side of stories that this is where it gets very real in a way that puts us into the long term effects of the loss, the hole that dead children leave behind. Directed by Joshua Seftel and distributed by Netflix, the emotionally poignant untold stories have been nominated for ‘Best Documentary Short’ at this year’s Academy Awards. We step into the families lives. From keeping the lights on to hearing their voice recordings through teddies and keeping their rooms exactly how they left them. Alongside this we see Lou talking through the process of photographing his daughter every day to see her progression. This freedom of growing up serves as a reminder for the importance of life.

Arco (2025)

First of all, this animated French film, which was nominated for a 2026 Academy award, sees rainbows not just as a reflection of sunlight through water in the air, but rather as time travelers from the future. Arco is oe such traveler. He is a 10 year old who travels from the distant future back in time to 2075, when robots have taken over human tasks, suburbs evolved into fireproof domes, with the ecological crisis worsening—all of which have left humanity about as isolated as one might anticipate. Crash-landing in a forest, young Arco has the good fortune to encounter Iris, a girl his age, who takes him in. There’s an immediate joy and curiosity to their initial meeting, something warm beyond words. Iris lives with a nanny bot named Mikki, programmed by her parents—only accessible via video hologram—to help raise her and her baby brother, and she leaps at the chance to make a real friend, especially one who looks at her world so curiously. Iris works towards helping Arco get back to his time and his family. It is an overly optimistic but very pleasant tale.

Retirement Plan (2025)

This short animated film is nominated for a 2026 Oscar, and maybe it is because I am actively thinking about my own retirement (I am aiming for 3 years from now) that it seemed so poignant. This is a devastating yet optimistic piece of storytelling. It’s funny, endearing, relatable and playful but it also has a fierce undercurrent of melancholy. In the throes of his overstimulated, energy poor midlife, Ray fantasizes about everything he'd love to do in retirement, once he finally has the time. It plays with the idea that we’re taught to postpone living until retirement, until we have more time but in reality, that day may never arrive. Retirement Plan reminds us to live in the now, to stop living through lists and start embracing each day as it comes. Twice things happened to teach me that you should not put off today the things you really want to do—the first is when my youngest son had a brain tumor and the second is when I was diagnosed with a poor prognosis cancer myself. I am blessed with a job that has a lot of vacation as well as a fair amount of work related travel, and I have been active about doing things now rather than putting them off. Even still, I can relate to this. Aside from the thought provoking, personal narrative. Retirement Plan is also a beautifully animated feature that showcases the simplicity and power of animation. Stripping back the shots, playing with minimal movements and relying on the impact of the storytelling made the sentiment all the more beautiful. Finally, if you take anything away from this tender-hearted story, remember to embrace every day of life, don’t wait.

It Was Just An Accident (2025)

This was submitted to the Academy for consideration for ‘Best International Feature Film’ by Tunisia, it is a film by an Iranian filmmaker about the repressive and violent Iranian regime. The movie opens with a couple and their child travelling home. They run over a dog, and while the child is very sorrowful about it, the parents shrug and say, “It was just an accident.” Several miles after the impact, their car breaks down outside a modest factory. An employee offers to fix their car while his co-worker Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) talks on the phone in a backroom. Before he sees the driver, Vahid hears the shuffle and squeak of a prosthetic leg. His genial visage fades, and he sneaks around the corner to get a better look. From his vantage point, we only see the driver’s legs as he looks for a toolbox. When he asks for help, Vahid, hiding in another room, hooks his finger into his cheek to change his voice. Vahid believes this man is Eghbal, a former intelligence officer who tortured him years ago in prison. Vahid decides to act. He tracks the driver to a repair shop, hits him with his car, abducts him from the street, and drives out to the desert, where he digs a hole with the intent of burying him alive. When the man protests that he can’t be Peg Leg because his scars are recent, doubt creeps into Vahid’s mind. Does he actually have the right man? So, with Peg Leg in tow, he seeks out the opinions of others who he was imprisoned with, and that is the gist of the movie—the psychological damage inflicted cruelly and permanently by the torturer is explored in a surprisingly light hearted manner. I was dreading watching this, but very much enjoyed it.

Armed Only With A Camera (2025)

There is so much to care about in this documentary and so much tragedy to go along with it. Brent Renaud is a photo journalist who was purposely targeted and killed by the Russians in Ukraine. There is so much to dislike about Putin, Russia, and the soldiers fighting for things that do not belong to them, but that is not what this is about. This short documentary, which is nominated in that category for the 2026 Academy Awards, is more of a celebration of a photo journalist's life. The span of where he went, what he filmed, and how important the brave work that he accomplished in his too short life is what the film is about.We meet Brent Renaud as he trudges through a shallow, fast-moving river on the border of Guatemala and Mexico. He films a 16-year-old boy as he makes the arduous trek from his former home of Honduras to what he hopes is his future home, the United States. The boy says he has no parents and no future in Honduras, but believes the U.S. will be a place where he can build a new family and find some hope. That is another tragedy best left untalked about right now but the camera and the man behind it are so sympathetic to the underdog you can feel him routing for the boy when he has to part ways with him, and it is more than what he says. He survived many scary situations before he met his death, and I was left bereft when he was shot down. Much like Tim Featherington, who's full length documentary Restrepo, filmed when he was embedded with a U.S. platoon in Afghanistan, took us into one war before another war left him dead, it seems that the very best of them are heroes who show us what we are missing about the world and violence, but they too are so slow to it that more than a few of them get burned. This is worth every minute of time watching it.

The Singers (2025)

This film is nominated for a 2026 Academy Award in the Live Action Short category, which is filled with interesting nominations this year. What is notable about this is that it is a modern and updated version of an Ivan Turgenev short story of the same name. It was published in a collection of short stories and dates to 1850. In the text, a group of gruff men at a bar finds connection by baring their souls in an impromptu singing competition. In an interesting twist, the filmmaker was inspired to adapt the old work when juxtaposing it with a modern medium. The only thing that I have read by Turgenev is Fathers and Sons, which is a reflection on that relationship and is very good--I read it a decade ago when I was headed to Russia as a tourist destination, something not to be repeated and not a good idea at this point--which is a shame on many levels, but Russia has a deep and interesting history and is home to many beautiful treasures. In any case, I digress. Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, translator and popularizer of Russian literature in the West. His first major publication, a short story collection titled A Sportsman's Sketches, was a milestone of Russian realism. He is now dwarfed by Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy--rightly so--but he was a master at what he did, especially when exploring male relationships. This modern take on that mid-nineteenth century story is one that is as moving as it is bizarre. Men who are into a world unto themselves come together with the group activity of a singing competition and become a little bit less alone as a result.

Perfectly A Strangeness (2024)

This quiet and strangely beautiful short documentary is nominated for a 2026 Academy Award. The film maker has done this before, or something like it. In her 2017 feature length documentary Cielo, which was also shot in Chile’s Atacama Desert, her cameras follow the simple, sauntering gait of the donkeys to allow audiences to take in vast mountainous terrains by day and by night the marvels of the Milky Way filling the Atacama Desert sky. She is aware that light pollution that keeps most people from seeing starlit galaxies at night, recalled the first time she saw the cosmic movements in the Atacama Desert nighttime sky. This time around we follow the donkey trio, where they come upon a building--no people, no vehicles, just the building. Her cameras did interior shots at the Paranal Observatory run by a consortium of European astronomers at around 2,635 meters above sea level. The whole experience of watching these eerily calm animals saunter in and around the observatory, never seeing anything--no food, no water, where do they get sustenance? It left me with more questions than answers, but also at peace.