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 apparently did not...

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.