I Saw the TV Glow (2024)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on November 22, 2025

 

Anyone who’s ever gotten into a show or received a mixtape can find something in I Saw the TV Glow.

For half of the film, Owen and Maddy (Justice Smith and Brigitte Lundy-Paine) are unlikely teenage friends bonding over a supernatural TV series called The Pink Opaque. Neither one fits in at their suburban high school; this one shared interest bonds them. That their interest features silly dancing baddies, fro-yo monsters, and pink glowing tattoos is beside the point. The show’s fictional midnight realm is their anchor to the real world.

The other half of the film challenges my adjective “real”. Is their show actually their past? Are Tara and Isabel characters on the Young Adult Network or proxies for Maddy and Owen? Who actually is Maddy and who actually is Owen? Years later, when the two reunite, fact and fiction blur into a surrealist slurry of neon pink nineties nostalgia and abject terror over what’s underneath each character’s surface.

Marketed by A24 as an intellectual horror film, I’m selling it to you as a mystery. After four watches and hours of discussion and rumination, that feels like the fairest pitch. I Saw the TV Glow is arthouse fare where the color of the giant tarp matters. This won’t be to every person’s tastes; for some, its cilantro will taste like black-light soaked soap.

But the mysteries in Jane Schoenbrun’s film beg to be unraveled. Viewers will hypothesize over the surface-level mysteries of what happened and what’s real, but the true mysteries are deeply personal. This is a film about transformation but also the tragedy of fearing transformation. At one point, Owen says “It feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all my insides,” but that somber self-awareness isn’t authentic—he’s too afraid to look inside himself and discover he’s buried something his entire life. But what could it be?

If this all sounds a bit cryptic, that’s my presentation, not the movie’s. Even if you don’t recognize the tarp’s colors, the film wears its metaphors like a glowing pink tattoo. Characters tell you what’s really happening; they talk about TV shows and industrial freezer hearts, but that’s Schoenbrun varnishing the film with a popular media finish. Ultimately, this is a surrealist story about an old teen TV series, but it’s also a highly personal story about the treacherous veering path to self-acceptance some among us traverse.

I Saw the TV Glow probably isn’t a film to throw on while digesting turkey, but nobody wants or needs my help identifying crowd pleasers. This is a gorgeous, challenging film to inspire introspection and empathy. No film from 2024 has stuck with me more than this one.

No film from 2024 begs to be shared more, either.

 

Conclave (2024)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on November 8, 2024

As the facilitator at Diamond Day, I need to believe that powerful, transformative change can happen in a singular confined space. I tell the participants that we want the day to feel like a day apart from school and the rest of their lives. I call it a bubble; what’s learned there leaves there, but what’s said there stays there.

 

Released two weeks ago, director Edward Berger’s Conclave traces its story around a similar principle. Substitute the generously-shared small gym for the musty annals of the Vatican and you have your tight quarters; instead of 140 students, staff, and alumni, drop in 110 Cardinals gathered together to vote for and elect a new Pope.

 

Like Diamond Day, Conclave is full of twists and turns. You can feel the foundation being laid for unexpected intrigue in both. At Diamond Day, it’s the interjected “If you really knew me” phrasings and the emotional hiccups that crop up out of nowhere. In Conclave, its the factions forming and whispered questions. Did the Pope fire him? Who appointed that Cardinal? Who paid for her flight? At Diamond Day, I as facilitator must stay ahead of the proceedings, anticipating needs and adjusting intended sequences; in Conclave, someone is always seemingly ahead, turning the crank, but it’s never clear who—and when it is, control lurches suddenly. The clergymen voting, squabbling, and backstabbing are nearly all old, wrinkled, and gray, but they connive like men half their ages.

 

Granted, that last bit severs the tenuous parallel I’ve cast between our wellness workshop and a film about church leaders grasping for power. Really, there’s no reason to connect the two at all: our tie-dyed shirt bears little resemblance to the cardinals’ cassocks, and our goal is empowerment for all rather than for elevating one purportedly “reluctant” man to the papacy. They’re fundamentally different.

 

Except for one thing. When students attend Diamond Day for the first time, they often have no idea what’s coming. One student last year confessed to thinking it was all-day homework help; another was certain we’d be playing soccer. When they sit down in their folding chairs, they have no idea what they’re about to see, hear, or feel.

 

That part resembles Conclave. I watch a lot of movies, and I think a lot about story structure; I relish anticipating the progression of any film, show, or novel I jump into. During the second half of Conclave, you can feel the thing building to something as Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and the rest of the cast ratchet up their frustration and paranoia—but you can’t tell when or how the shoe will drop. The story keyed me up as much as any action movie despite the screen being dense with creaky-kneed elder statesmen in cumbersome garb. I expected light intrigue and some behind-the-hymns glimpses of the Vatican in a stodgy drama, but I watched a pulpy thriller on-screen.

 

Conclave won’t be for everyone, especially with the way the story uses real issues affecting real people as glorified props for its characters’ posturing, and some will prefer the globe-trotting rush of The DaVinci Code or Angels and Demons over the claustrophobia of Berger’s film. But I had a great time learning about this world and its players. Watching them tear one another down in the name of the Church entertained me.

 

Again, that’s very different from Diamond Day, but still: while the workshop scratches an emotional itch, Conclave aims for the entertainment spot.

 

And delivers.

Arrival (2016)

 Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on October 11, 2024

…once.

 

My one time was on Thursday, November 24, 2016, which was Thanksgiving. I went with my sci-fi-obsessed family to an Amy Adams movie about aliens. The film disoriented me, blanketing over extraterrestrial thrills and international intrigue with a thick filter of indie haze and random clips interjected regularly, but it gripped me because the alien story is actually a story about linguistic problem-solving and brilliant people immersed in their process fascinate me. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, now the hotshot auteur behind Dune, Arrival wears its limited budget well thanks to strong performances from Adams and Jeremy Renner. It’s a grounded and ponderous take on first contact.

 

When the movie ended that night and we walked out to the car, I said nothing. Unlike every other holiday evening at the cinema we’d done, I had no questions, I made no observations, and I offered no feedback. Arrival, then and now, felt instantly foundational, like something that had always been in the fabric of me. I spent the drive home on my phone, pre-ordering two copies of the film on DVD. Already, I understood Arrival would be one I needed to share.

 

Which confirms that there’s something more to Arrival than merely a story about a lady talking to aliens. I can’t be more specific because that would threaten your experience. I turned on the film Saturday morning, and it took only a few notes of the Max Richter piano piece that opens the film to have its totality bubble to the surface. It had been several years since I last watched it, yet I knew every machination of the script. Still, my lack of surprise robbed nothing: I felt the film more powerfully than ever before. It’s fundamental that way. I won’t decode why for you—just report the most important piece of advice I have for your viewing:

 

You can only watch Arrival from beginning to end…

Robot Dreams (2023)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on September 27, 2024

My classes’ Question of the Day today was “How do you know if a person likes you?” It related to our lesson about inferring info from a derivative graph, but it was also fun to hear their thoughts. Unsurprisingly, most students who responded focused on romantic affection rather than platonic. That was fine, but it wasn’t my intention. We don’t celebrate platonic relationships with the same gusto. Romance gets an entire film genre. I get it.

 

Robot Dreams is a film that is romantic…about platonic connection. We see characters swept off their feet by the power of friendship. All the sweet things my classes chipped in that evidenced romantic likery we see between the protagonist and his pal. They glow in one another’s company. Each revels in the other’s joy. They dance together on roller blades like they’ve been listening to the same song their entire lives. It’s moving in the same way a good romance can be. I get chills when these two platonically hold hands the same way I get them when Anya Taylor-Joy’s hand finds Johnny Flynn’s in Emma. I hadn’t known that was possible.

 

More incredible than the chemistry on display in Robot Dreams is its construction. The film is hand-animated by an independent studio, and there are no spoken words beyond the lyrics in its soundtrack. The protagonist is an anthropomorphic dog; his new companion is a robot he orders off an infomercial during an oppressively lonely night. Likewise, the film is set in a New York from the past, and the animators create a living, breathing city that feels as real as the NYC in so many live action films. Robot Dreams teems with the grand possibility and diversity of the Big Apple. The film’s 2023 Best Animated Film Oscar nomination came before securing a domestic release; that’s the kind of response this humble piece generates.

 

I’ve watched Robot Dreams three times now, including once in a theater with a friend…and I’ve reacted with the same emotion every time. A wordless cartoon about a talking dog and his analog pal shouldn’t land with the force it does, but there’s nothing destructive or traumatic here. There’s platonic peril, sure, but Robot Dreams might be the most hopeful movie about connection I’ve ever seen. I wipe away moisture, but I feel optimistic and resilient when the credits roll alongside my tears.

 

I won’t say more, except that you should watch it. Robot Dreams is a crowd-pleaser suitable for all ages, and it’s finally available to rent for $5.99 on most services. You’ll take something positive from celebrating platonic potential for a change.

Sing Sing (2024)

Originally published in Wildcat Weekly on September 6, 2024

If I told you there was a movie about imprisoned men awaiting clemency in New York’s Sing Sing prison, you would justifiably expect a difficult watch. Certainly, watching a movie set in a state penitentiary stirs up numerous questions, and none have easy answers. When is a person rehabilitated? What penance qualifies as sufficient punishment for a violent crime committed thirty years ago? What does permanent incarceration do to a psyche as time passes and one’s greatest freedom becomes a small window facing outward?

Sing Sing doesn’t answer these questions; I’m not sure it even tries. This is a film about men in prison for the foreseeable future, and we see them bear the brunt of their circumstances as they pay for the transgressions of their former selves from the inside of an oppressive prison compound, but the film refuses to reduce these men to their circumstances. Sing Sing is the setting for Sing Sing but not its subject matter. Sing Sing is a film about men in a place that smothers hope and joy…but who find hope, joy, and purpose anyway.

The men in Sing Sing participate in a Rehabilitation Through the Arts program that puts on theatrical productions within the prison. The film follows the participants as they prepare to stage an original comedy. The story of their show is silly—it features Freddy Krueger, Hamlet, and an Egyptian prince—but their commitment to the craft is serious. They interview prospective cast members and discuss the power of theatre. They collaborate on ideas and encourage one another as they perform while waiting for life-altering legal decisions. They are a team committed to a cause, but they are also a family that leans on one another when things get rough—and they often do. It’s moving to watch their rehearsals and see these very different men set aside so much misery to entertain their peers and nourish their souls.

Leading the cast is Colman Domingo, who portrays the group’s leader, Divine G. Decades into a sentence for a crime he didn’t commit, Divine G is a playwright and mentor but also wounded by the time he’s served. Domingo is magnetic but understated, which matches Sing Sing to a T: there’s plot afoot throughout, but the film progresses so organically it rarely feels scripted. Helping that cause is the remaining cast, packed with no-longer-incarcerated alumni from the RTA program. These men mostly lack Domingo’s professional polish, but that reality elevates the film: every scene feels real because it represents what was real for them.

There’s more to say—I haven’t even mentioned Clarence Maclin’s contributions!—but I can sum up the rest: Sing Sing is excellent. It takes a special film to walk this delicate line between the darkness of incarceration and the joy of theatre, but Sing Sing achieves success on every cinematic level. You laugh, you cry, you feel.

If the film interests you, there are a few more showings this weekend at Tower Theater; that might be it for a while. I can’t recommend it highly enough.