It is about family, but mostly it is about what it means to be sisters and what it means to be women.

We are now in 2026, and God, do we need it. We have a deep urge to know that women can find our power again and that it cannot be stripped from us, broom after broom. That no matter what forces surround us or try to do us in, if we stick together, we can overcome every one of them.

Robert De Niro is amazing in The Whisper Man. The script does not give him much to work with, so apparently he decided to write the rest of it with his face. A tightening around the mouth. A pause before answering. A look that lasts half a second longer than it should. He shows us a man with enormous regrets about his family and what his work with a serial killer did to undo it. He also shows us his intelligence. You can practically watch his mind moving around the room, pick

Every now and again, I love running across a review of something that would never otherwise have crossed my path. Meet my friend and client Andrew Singer, who brings China to America, and America to China, without the filter of our political environment, which just might be skewing the presentation toward one side or the other. I have learned so much from reading his column. But this is simply a film review, and it made me want to see the film. I hope it does the same for yo

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson star in The Drama, a film marketed as a quirky romance that quickly becomes something far darker and more unsettling. We discuss the performances, the film’s exploration of gun violence and moral judgment, and why difficult films should not be dismissed simply because they make audiences uncomfortable.

The Invite. A marital autopsy, only they are all still alive.

Is it a success? That depends on what you were looking for when The Odyssey started rolling.

You cannot watch The Testaments in a vacuum. You simply can’t. It has to be viewed in relationship to The Handmaid’s Tale because the emotional weight of the entire series depends on what we already lived through with June, with Hannah, with Gilead itself. I came into this series carrying years of fear, grief, rage, and exhaustion from The Handmaid’s Tale, and The Testaments smartly uses that history instead of trying to recreate it. What surprised me was how many people appa

Wilder and Merser discuss the extraordinary emotional depth of Hamnet, exploring a film layered with grief, marriage, motherhood, memory, art, and the mysterious relationship between loss and creation. In this deeply thoughtful episode of Screen Thoughts, they unpack one of the most moving and beautifully crafted films they have seen in years.

Christine Merser reviews Netflix’s Remarkably Bright Creatures, starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman, reflecting on grief, friendship, aging, and the quiet emotional power of the film’s unforgettable octopus, Marcellus.

And so the deeply human characters unwind in front of us. And just as she has so many times before, Sally Field unveils her inner self, not miming a character laid out for her on the pages, but finding her own character from her own past and showing it in every line on her face, every tone of voice, and every slow-moving movement of her aging body.

In theaters, marketing is everything. If the campaign does not land, the film effectively does not exist. On streaming, the platform replaces the campaign.

First, I need to start with a bone to pick. I waited ten years for season two. Ten. By now, Jonathan Pine would have been promoted out of night manager at least a dozen times. Worse, I had to spend two hours reviewing season one just to remember what the hell even happened, and that still felt optimistic for a show I last watched a decade ago. And the bigger question is why should I have to. Either commit to releasing seasons within a reasonable window or I am gone. Gone gone

“Screenwriters today are being told directly to write with simpler arcs and less complex plots. The notes are explicit. Assume the audience is half watching. Assume they are looking at their phones.” - Christine Merser

In this episode I take a deep dive into The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a film that should have been front-row center but never got its moment. I talk about Riz Ahmed’s extraordinary performance, the quiet brilliance of Mira Nair’s direction, the music that pulls you into another cultural syntax, and the way the film exposes America’s post-9/11 blind spots without shouting. It is a story about identity, belonging, and the small humiliations that shape a life. And maybe more tha

Merser and Wilder could not wait to unpack Season Three of The Diplomat, which Merser calls “the best of the three, by a diplomatic mile.” After a quick walk through Seasons One and Two, they dive into the complex and ingenious storytelling that defines this season. You cannot talk about The Diplomat without invoking The West Wing and Homeland, and Debora Cahn, who wrote for both, shows how to fuse the best of those worlds while making something singular in The Diplomat. The

Diane Keaton was part of the wallpaper of the women in my generation's lives.

Is anyone watching season four of The Morning Show? I hope it doesn’t get buried in the fourth season, “I don’t need to bother with this series anymore, it’s going on too long.” Spoiler alerts if you haven’t seen the third episode. It’s easy not to notice Mia. She’s got a profound role, and has through all the seasons, but she’s never standing at the front of the line. Why, you ask? Because she’s trying so hard to get to the ceiling, and because she has nothing else in her li

Half a century later, its themes feel prophetic. Identity, systemic inequity, and a culture addicted to media spectacle are even sharper in today’s world, where every crisis is broadcast and replayed in seconds. Dog Day Afternoon isn’t just a time capsule of the 1970s — it’s a mirror, reminding us how spectacle, desperation, and humanity intertwine.

Released in 1995, The Net imagined a world where one woman’s identity could be erased with a keystroke, long before we understood just how much power the internet would hold over our lives.