​Let’s not pretend that there’s a vast wealth of movies about the trans experience, but for the viewer who stays plugged into the world of independent cinema and has access to the theaters that program them, there are more and more examples every year.  In the first 9 months of 2024, there’s been Crossing, Monkey Man, National Anthem, and The People’s Joker, with Emilia Perez soon to come.  These films have been some of the best of the year, and the hope is that there are more and more onscreen ways into trans lives that use the medium as more than just a visual memoir, which feels like the most boring outcome.  Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow is one of the best possible outcomes, as it is plainly about the writer/director’s own feelings as a trans woman, but can also be read as an allegory for the kind of teenage alienation that fails to dissipate with age.  Its personal specificity is so precise that it does the classic thing and taps into the universal.

​Still smarting from 2023’s major disappointment, Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, Maestro suffers from the same fatal flaw that doomed Scott’s latest historical epic.  A movie about a famous male figure doesn’t want to submit to the out-of-fashion great man of history framing, so he shares the cinematic spotlight with his wife.  While this gives actresses equal opportunity for prestige filmmaking, it’s the rare biopic or docudrama that makes a marriage as interesting as whatever the central figure accomplished, accomplishments which are the reason the movie is being made in the first place.  I knew a lot about Napoleon going into that movie, but all I really knew about Leonard Bernstein is that he inspired Lydia Tar to take up conducting.  Bradley Cooper’s thirsty Oscar play leaves this viewer without much to add to that biography, except that he was sweaty, semi-closeted, and sparred with his wife who was also in the public eye.  Seems like music would be an important part of the whole picture.

​Enacted in WWI nationalistic fervor, the Espionage Act is a blunt tool that the government can break out whenever it wants to bring the hammer down on leakers, including those who expose crimes by the US government at home and abroad.  In the War on Terror era, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden are only the most well-known conscientious leakers.  Amongst many others, Daniel Hale, descendant of Revolutionary icon Nathan Hale, released documents about the drone program, John Kiriakou disclosed information about torture, and Terry Albury exposed the surveillance and infiltration of American Muslim communities.  These men weren’t trying to sell out the government to foreign adversaries, but inform the American public of crimes done in their names and felt there was no alternative way to do so that precluded them serving jail time.  Reality Winner is an interesting addition to this clan of whistleblowers, as what she gave to the press was malfeasance from a foreign government towards the same government that tapped Angela Merkel’s personal phone.  It’s harder to feel righteously indignant about her actions, understandable as they might be.  Who wouldn’t find it difficult to be in a position to shut up Sean Hannity and do nothing?  Tina Satter’s Reality, adapted from a play that is itself adapted from the FBI transcript of Winner’s initial interrogation, doesn’t portray Winner in the way Oliver Stone portrayed Snowden.  She’s not wracked by guilt over what her bosses are doing, but is a little too trusting and a little naïve and tired of hearing bloviating conservative voices.  Reality is a character study and a smaller film befitting Winner’s more impulsive actions, but the insignificance of her actions doesn’t stop her from looking like a nail to the government’s hammer.

​With his 34th film, Steven Spielberg isn’t going for spectacle or the weight of grand historical events.  In the Fabelmans, Spielberg is changing all the broken family subtext in so many of his movies into text, finally making an autobiographical film about his childhood unencumbered by aliens, friendly or otherwise.  As he approaches his ninth decade, Spielberg is still able to connect to the wonder of a child, only this time, the child is him.  A combination of finding the passion that will sustain a life and uncovering adult messiness, the Fabelmans is likely to be Spielberg’s only crack at his upbringing though there’s enough material there for another attempt.  While this go is imperfect in its broad scope, one of the great American artists and perhaps the greatest pop artist is incapable of making anything less than a thoughtful and propulsive film, as long as we agree that Ready Player One never happened.