Good morning 🐣

If you enjoyed playing Wordle, the popular word game that took the Internet by storm earlier this year, then you might be amused by Framed, a new game that presents six frames from a movie one at a time until you correctly guess the title.

I’m not gonna lie though: it’s kind of hard. So if you’d rather skip the game but still appreciate some beautiful images and moving sequences, a Twitter account that celebrates iconic moments from movies is now an actual TV show on HBO Max. Hosted by director Ava DuVernay, “One Perfect Shot” is six half-hour segments that each feature a filmmaker discussing the experiences and influences that went into crafting specific shots from their films:

1. Patty Jenkins on “Wonder Woman”
2. Aaron Sorkin on “The Trial of the Chicago 7”
3. Kasi Lemmons on “Harriet”
4. Jon M. Chu on “Crazy Rich Asians”
5. Malcolm D. Lee on “Girls Trip”
6. Michael Mann on “Heat”

A quick intermission 🍿

Talking about one movie a week is nice, but sometimes feels limiting, so every once in a while I’m going to make some quick recommendations:

• After a three-year hiatus, we’re already over halfway through season 3 of Donald Glover’s “Atlanta” (Hulu) and so far it does not disappoint.

• “CODA” (Apple TV+), which stands for “child of deaf adult,” is the winner of this year’s Best Picture and it’s definitely worth watching: hilarious and heartfelt.

• “Our Flag Means Death” (HBO Max) is a sweet, comedic pirate romp starring Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi that quietly breaks barriers.

• And if you’re looking for a scary movie, “X” (on demand) is a fun twist on the gender and age dynamics of ’70s and ’80s slasher films.

Now watch this 👀

Up in Northern California, somewhere along the highway to Reno, Nevada (the “Biggest Little City in the World”), lies one of my favorite places. There’s a beautiful lake fed by a small, trickling creek. The trees and grass and rocks are all perfectly placed. It is gorgeous and serene.

It was also the site, about 175 years ago, of a horrific tragedy — a wagon train stranded in the dead of winter, with some eventually resorting to cannibalism. You’d never know it if it weren’t for signage.

In Cambodia there’s an abandoned high school where countless students sat and learned. You can wander the classrooms and halls today and imagine kids running late, backpacks flopping around behind them. Again, if it weren’t for later generations acknowledging a place’s past, we’d never know it became a torture site for the Khmer Rouge.

These are both extreme examples of something that’s always fascinated me: place — the nexus of objects in space — and the time that runs through it.

You stand there, looking at these empty spaces — some beautiful, some mundane — but so many things happened there. Everywhere. They might have been horrific, or they might have been enchanting, most likely banal: a look, a kiss, a glance at a watch, someone crying, someone reading a newspaper — so many things over so much time, most long forgotten. Life just keeps moving forward. No matter how momentous the event, time has no sentiment, and meaning is only what we make of it.

I couldn’t help thinking of all these things while watching “Mass” (Hulu and on demand). For the first eleven minutes, we follow a woman into a small-town church. She briefly sits to pray, then heads past the music lessons and into a backroom. She’s obsessing over table and chair placement. She puts out food — is it enough? too much? — and what about the children’s arts and crafts hanging on the walls? Finally she sets down a box of tissues that will play a role in the back and forth to come.

What comes next, the entire rest of the movie, is four parents (played by Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Reed Birney, and Ann Dowd) sitting at this small table in this stark little room, talking about a violent tragedy that happened several years prior. Each of the actors disappears entirely into their roles. Even Harry Potter fans will not see Lucius Malfoy, but a grieving father trying his best to give meaning to his son’s life. And then they say goodbye and the room sits empty once more.

It’s raw and cathartic.

To me the title “Mass” implies at least three things: school shootings, Mass at a church and the sacrifice it represents, and lastly literal mass — an object in space — and how its presence can affect us and ripple through time. How do we give it meaning? If we give any at all. That tissue box I mentioned becomes a symbol of reaching across a divide.

But the absence of mass can be just as tangible. The idea of an object taking up space and then vanishing, having meaning in both states, is powerful. Who can’t feel that negative space inside the chalk outline of a body on the ground? That empty field outside a school? Wind blowing, calm, peaceful, empty — but full of meaning.

Thank you, as always, for reading and I’d love any feedback or movie recommendations you might have.

Until next time! 👋