Are you thinking about your next move? Maybe you’re empty nesters and you hardly use half the rooms in your house. Maybe you want to move, but not too far from your kids and grandchildren. Or maybe you’re thinking ahead and want a place that offers independent living with more care in the future. Luckily our area offers plenty of choices.

Purchasing A CCRC
Former astronaut 75-year-old Mary Cleave had a very exciting career. She went into space twice on Atlantis, and worked at NASA-Goddard and NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “When I went to work at Goddard, my cousin suggested I move to Annapolis,” she says. Cleave lived in her house for 30 years. “I would have kept living there, but one night my hearing aids were out when the low battery on the fire alarm kept beeping, and I never heard it. My sister happened to be visiting and said, ‘You can’t live alone anymore, it isn’t safe.’”

“Since I love the water, I knew I wanted to stay in Annapolis,” she continues. After visiting several communities and talking to people at each, Cleave decided on Bay-Woods of Annapolis, a Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC).

“In the morning I sit and watch the sunrise over the Bay Bridge. . .”

Cleave moved in 2017. What attracted her to BayWoods is that it is a resident-owned-and-run co-operative community where residents provide vital input on operations. (In Maryland there are only two co-op CCRCs.) Also a must for Cleave was that it was pet-friendly. “I think for people who live alone, a pet is very important,” says Cleave, who lives with her dog Brinx.

“In the morning I sit and watch the sunrise over the Bay Bridge,” says Cleave, who has a one-bedroom with a patio. “It’s a great way to start the day.” Although downsizing can be difficult, Cleave found getting rid of a lot of her stuff to be liberating. And when she has company, she reserves a guestroom at BayWoods.

Elizabeth O’Conner, director of marketing and sales at Blakehurst, says, “Today’s residents are very active.” A gym is a must-have, and many CCRCs have more than equipment and classes. They may offer trainers, indoor pools, hot tubs, steam rooms, walking trails, a putting green—even gardens where residents can grow flowers and vegetables.

BayWoods has plenty of activities and amenities, some unique to that community, such as swimming in the bay off their dock. Cleave says, “With the gym right here, I take classes three times a week and do tai chi once a week. And Brinx, my ‘trainer,’ makes sure we get out and walk,” laughs Cleave.

Is a CCRC Right For You?
A CCRC is a type of retirement community that is part independent living, part assisted living, and part skilled nursing home. Today, many communities offer memory care too, and on-site rehabilitation therapy. According to AARP, a CCRC offers a tiered approach to the aging process, accommodating residents’ changing needs. Upon entering, healthy adults can reside independently in single-family homes, apartments, or condominiums. When assistance with everyday activities becomes necessary, they can move into assisted living, memory care, or nursing care facilities. These communities give older adults the option to live in one location for the duration of their lives, with much of their future care already figured out.

“I came in needing a walker, graduated to a cane and, thanks to the in-house physical therapy, I now need nothing.”

When you choose a facility, it’s also important to know what type of contract it offers. These contracts can be very complex; treat this decision like you would any major investment, including seeking assistance from a lawyer or someone very knowledgeable. In addition, you should determine that the finances of the CCRC are healthy so that your present and future services are safeguarded.

Ray, 83, and Phoebe Sachs, 80, are no strangers to moving. “We’ve lived in New York, Chicago, Delaware, D.C., and moved about 10 or 12, times,” says Ray. While living in a Baltimore condo, with their three children living all over the country, the couple decided a CCRC would give them the future security they wanted. Their children agreed.

“We are very active and decided we’d make the move while we could participate in the activities and be part of the community,” says Ray. After checking out several CCRCs, they chose Blakehurst. “It had what we wanted—care if we need it, attractive surroundings, lots of activities including woodworking (where my wife is the only woman), walking trails, and we were able to make changes to the apartment.”

Making changes was very important to Phoebe, who was a builder and does interior design. “We made our second bedroom into a library and totally redid the kitchen,” she says. “We can cook, but they do such a remarkable job with the food and it’s so convenient, we don’t.”

“Our new appliances aren’t getting much of a workout,” admits Ray.

Typically, residents in independent living get at least one meal a day. In assisted living, memory care, and nursing, there are three meals provided. “At BayWoods the food is fabulous and healthy,” says Cleave. “I’m eating better than I ever did. And I don’t have to think about what I’m going to make for dinner, shop for it, and cook it.” Many CCRCs offer a variety of dining options beyond a dining room, including informal choices such as a café, bistro, deli, or pub. Some even have outdoor dining.

A Rental CCRC
Kathryn Lewis, age 72 and retired from working for the State of Maryland, was living with her son and his family. But after she had a knee replacement and ended up in rehab, she knew she could not return to her son’s house and its stairs. “The staff at the rehab facility suggested I consider moving to the Atrium Village in Owings Mills,” she says. Lewis moved there in 2021.

“I came in needing a walker, graduated to a cane and, thanks to the in-house physical therapy, I now need nothing. What was so great was that I didn’t need to leave Atrium Village and didn’t need family to take me to therapy,” says Lewis. As an ordained minister, Lewis loves volunteering at Atrium Village and doing activities: Bible study, choir, trivia, happy hour, movies, games, discussions, and exercise classes including Zumba and yoga.

At Atrium Village there are no entry or buy-in fees, or a commitment of retirement assets, as with most senior living communities. The cost of an apartment, dining options, all activities, fitness, housekeeping, and other services is included in a monthly lease.

Atrium Village has independent, assisted, and memory care. And it just underwent a $13 million renovation. Angela Spence, senior divisional director of sales and marketing for Senior Lifestyle, the company that manages Atrium Village, was involved in the renovation. According to Spence, the multimillion-dollar renovation is part of a 20-year anniversary transformation to create a next generation senior living experience.

“There are still some people who think of senior living communities as nursing homes. We need to overcome that stigma. Since COVID and with the renovation, our goal is to have programs that help residents get back into life and find a purpose. Living well is all about having a purpose,” says Spence.

Anyone visiting many of today’s CCRCs would never think of them as nursing homes. Many who live there say it’s like living on a cruise ship; it just doesn’t move.

Part of the renovation at Atrium Village included an array of new services and upscale amenities. In addition to two restaurant-style dining venues, there are two new bistros, a library, wellness center, salon, art studio, hospitality lounge, movie theater, and family center.

Happy hour is also big at many CCRCs. Spence says, “We added more happy hours after the residents requested them.”

Many of the CCRCs have continuing education. At BayWoods there are lectures given by neighboring St. John’s College scholars. Atrium Village partners with the Community College of Baltimore County to offer instructor-led classes.

CCRCs arrange trips, art classes and, yes, the list of activities and amenities goes on and on. But don’t worry, you can be as active as you want, or if you prefer a quieter experience, you can have that too. It’s all up to you.

An Over-55 Community
The Weidmans, Hope, 70, and Tim, 69, were no strangers to life at a 55-and-over community. They had lived in one in New Jersey for seven years and loved it. “When I retired after 38 years of teaching, we decided to move to a place that would be fun. A 55-and-over community fits the bill,” says Hope.

But trips to visit their son and his family in Virgina became too much. “So we started looking. We checked out Delaware, Virginia, and Maryland. When we visited Four Seasons on Kent Island it was everything we wanted.” There were single-family units and condos, walking trails, a pool, pickleball, and, best of all, there were other people their age for socializing. The Weidmans moved into a two-bedroom, two-and-half-bath home with a den and screened-in porch in 2021.

According to Veronica Lawson, an associate broker at Real Broker, LLC, these communities are ready-made for like-minded individuals for whom physical and emotional well-being are key.
Things like social activities and planned trips to local events create a strong sense of community that in turn create a fun and safe environment. Fifty-five-plus communities are becoming more and more popular as many healthy retirees look for active communities once retired.

And for some, buying before they retire is part of their long-range retirement plan. That was true for Gamini Dharmasena, 62, and his wife Desilva, 59, both scientists living in New Jersey. “We aren’t planning to retire for five years but thought prices would only keep going up. For my wife, who grew up in Sri Lanka, being by the water was a must. We checked out several places on the East Coast but were afraid of hurricanes in North Carolina,” says Gamini.

After filling out information online for Four Season on Kent Island, they got a call from a realtor. They visited and fell in love with the area and were attracted to a 55-plus active community with lots of activities and opportunities to be social.

The Dharmasenas purchased a single family, 3,500-square-foot home with the master bedroom on the first floor and a screened-in porch. It backs on trees and is a five-minute walk to the water. “Our 5,000-square-foot home on five acres is a lot to look after. When we retire, we’ll be ready to downsize,” says Gamini. Plus, they love to travel and won’t have to worry about the house. For now, the Dharmasenas plan to use it as a vacation home twice a month until it becomes their permanent home.

To learn more about retirement options check out these helpful websites:
• aging.maryland.gov
• continuingcarecommunities.org
• aarp.org/caregiving/basics
• seniorliving.org/continuing-careretirement-communities

It’s almost impossible to imagine now, but world-renowned, Baltimore-based cinematographer Bradford Young came this close to being a mortician.

“I come from a long tradition of morticians,” he explains. “My uncle was a mortician. My great-grandfather was a mortician. My grandfather. My cousins. My aunts were in the game, as well. It was expected—in my mind that’s what I was always going to do.”

Growing up in Louisville, he’d always been exposed to the arts, especially Black-focused arts. His grandparents took him to see Porgy and Bess at The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. There was work by mainly Black artists on the walls. He had an uncle, Leon Bibb, a musician, activist, and actor, who was close friends with Paul Robeson and had marched at Selma. (In a full circle moment, of sorts, Young was the cinematographer on Ava DuVernay’s Selma). His cousin Eric Bibb is an internationally famous blues guitarist and songwriter.

Still, the 43-year-old Young admits, “I was too scared to be in that narrative.” At that point in his life, he had yet to see himself as an artist.

As a “crusty little weird kid” growing up in the South in the ’90s, he found a small pocket of friends like him—kids who were into art, and especially hip-hop music, which shaped his worldview.

“Hip-hop was teaching us how to be African-centered,” he says. “How to be Black.”

Then, in 1993, something happened that rocked his world—and changed the trajectory of his life. His mother, who was divorced from his dad, got sick, and, after a long illness, she died. Young was 15. He moved to Chicago to live with his dad. And living in the Windy City changed everything.

“Leaving Kentucky was difficult, but in a way, it was also the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says.

If he had stayed in Louisville, followed that family business, he says, “I would’ve been living a lie.”

“I BEGAN TO SEE HOW IMAGE CONNECTS TO STORY …THAT’S HOW IT ALL STARTED.”

In Louisville, it had been easy to find the kids like him—because there were so few of them. But Chicago was different—lots of kids were into hip-hop. But not all were into art and culture like he was. He admits things could’ve gone badly for him—especially since he was new in town and grieving. But he was supported by his father, his two sisters, the rest of his family, his friends.

“They held me up. I could’ve gone in a totally different direction,” he says. “I could’ve gone down a self-destructive route. Dropped out of school. But that never happened.”

One day, he went to a Common show (another full-circle moment: Young would go on to direct the film short companion to Common’s Black America Again album). He saw a girl there—her name was Candace. He liked her vibe. They exchanged numbers and became friends (they’re still good friends to this day). One night, she invited him to her apartment in Hyde Park, where she lived with her mother. When he got there, he fell in love with the space—the books, the music, the art on the walls.

Her mother was watching a movie, Like Water for Chocolate, which he’d never seen before. His knowledge of film was fairly limited, especially when it came to “indie” film, where the only director he was really familiar with was Spike Lee.

On the coffee table, there was a book about the groundbreaking Julie Dash film Daughters of the Dust. He started flipping through the book, fascinated by the beautiful images of mostly Black women in pastoral settings, dressed in flowing white garb. In the back of book, there was an essay by the film’s cinematographer, Arthur Jafa.

“I learned he was from Mississippi, which made me feel a connection,” Young says. “The language he was using to describe the images of the film was so smart. I never thought about movies that way. It really stuck with me.”

The next year, Lee’s Crooklyn came out. “And I realized that [Jafa] shot it, and it was just like, ‘Wow, this film thing is amazing.’”

Another time, he was driving with his father when, out of the blue, his dad began talking about Spike Lee’s other famous cinematographer, Ernest R. Dickerson.

“The cinematography thing kept coming up,” Young says. “But I was like, “That’s not me. I don’t even know what film school is. How do you do that?”

From Chicago, he went on to Howard University with plans of becoming a writer, though the notion of pursuing film was definitely rattling around in his head. It just so happened that he was at Howard the same time as the late actor Chadwick Boseman, the producer and curator Kamilah Forbes, and the public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates. They were his age, but he looked up to them.

“I always felt like I was the little brother. These were 18-year-old kids who were already fully realized, fully robust artists,” he says. “I was just like a little skinny kid walking around observing all these giants.”

Young joined the Howard University Film Organization, not necessarily to be a filmmaker, but to hang out with the students in the department.

A professor at Howard, the filmmaker Haile Gerima, expanded his film vocabulary. Gerima showed him his own film, Sankofa, as well as other Black-helmed films such as Killer of Sheep and Black Girl.

Suddenly Young realized there was this whole world of Black film out there that he had not been privy to—a thriving universe outside the mainstream. He began to think about how the exclusionary world of white film was a “weapon against my humanity.”

“I WAS JUST THIS LITTLE SKINNY KID WALKING AROUND AND OBSERVING ALL THESE GIANTS.”

He took a year abroad in England and expanded his filmic horizons even further, feasting on the works of Godard, Tarkovsky, and others.

“I started watching films for images. I began to see how image connects to story and how story connects to image,” he says. “That’s how it all started. And I decided, I’m going to finally claim this. I’m a cinematographer.”

Back at Howard, he made three student films with Boseman.

“He was such a force of nature,” Young says. “He was no less positive and bright and brilliant then. I loved him.”

Boseman, Forbes, and Coates taught Young a lot about how to be an artist, and how to value and nurture Black art and culture, he says. He left Howard with the understanding that, “If there’s no art, there’s no culture, and if there’s no culture, there’s no people.”

After graduating in 1999, he moved to Brooklyn and started getting his first gigs as a professional cinematographer. There was his debut feature, Mississippi Damned, about growing up poor and Black in the south.

There was also a short film, Pariah, directed by a friend of a friend, Dee Rees. Thanks to a Sundance grant, Rees was able to turn her short into a feature. That was a turning point. Pariah became a buzzy Sundance hit.

Young won Best Cinematographer there in 2011 (he would win again the following year). And around that time, he caught the attention of a rising young director named Ava DuVernay. With her, he ended up making some of the most critically acclaimed work of his career: Middle of Nowhere, Selma, and the gut-wrenching miniseries about the Central Park Five (now the “Exonerated Five”), When They See Us.

Young credits DuVernay with a lot—he talks about her “wisdom and wonderfulness”—but he especially appreciates that she, “left her foot in the door”—that is, allowed more young Black artists to follow her into the Hollywood mainstream. Which is something Young is more than slightly ambivalent about.

If Young’s relationship with Hollywood were a Facebook status, it would read: “It’s complicated.”

That moment in college when he realized there was rich, dynamic Black film world outside the scope of so-called cinematic canon was revelatory for him. He realized that he needed to carve out his own space in the film world, with his friends, with the people he wanted to collaborate with, the ones who inspired him.

“We want real freedom for ourselves to tell stories the way we wanted to, structurally and artistically,” he says. In other words, he wasn’t chasing Hollywood success. He was building success on his own terms.

“What makes Bradford great is his commitment to his ancestors backward and forward in time and his faith in cinema,” says the filmmaker Terence Nance (Random Acts of Flyness), who, along with Young and director Jenn Nkiru, cofounded the Ummah Chroma (“community of color”) artists’ collective.

But as that success grew, Hollywood came calling. Young was the cinematographer on Arrival. He was asked to join the Lucasfilm project Solo: A Star Wars Story. (Despite some of the well-documented tensions on the set, he says he had a great and fulfilling time and would happily work with Lucasfilm again.) In fact, he was in London, on pre-production for Solo, when a co-worker turned to him and said, “Congratulations.”

“For what?” Young said.

He had been nominated for an Oscar for his work in Arrival. He was the first African American to receive a Best Cinematography nomination.

His 2017 Oscar nomination, Young says, was “bittersweet.”

“I’ll be honest. I have a very contentious relationship [with the Oscars]. Maybe there’s something to appreciate about them, but I haven’t found that space for myself yet,” he says. He admits that he didn’t even want to attend the ceremony.

“I just wanted to stay in London and focus on my work,” he says. But a conversation with his friend, the filmmaker Malik Sayeed, changed that.

“He said, ‘You’re being put in this place for a reason. I’m going to send you something.’ And when I hung up, he sent me a picture of four kids in alleyway somewhere in Africa, and there’s a kid with a broom pole and a camera made from a box and here’s two kids facing off like an action film. And I was like, ‘Yeah, okay, for those kids, or the kid in Baltimore who has faith in the country that they can be part of the culture, for them, maybe it’s important for me to be there.’ And I decided to go.”

“SHE SAID, ‘COME TO BALTIMORE. IT’S A COOL SCENE…IT’S EVERYTHING WE’VE ALWAYS IMAGINED.’”

Young moved to Baltimore with his wife, Stephanie Etienne, a midwife and maternal activist, in 2016, right before he went to film Solo. They already had two young sons and a daughter on the way. As a cinematographer, Young had gone where the work had taken him—and the family had always packed up their stuff and gone with him.

There were stints in London and Hollywood. He had lived in Brooklyn for a while but hated how gentrified the neighborhood had become. The family also lived in Takoma Park, an area Young was familiar with from Howard University. It was his friend, the producer, artist, and filmmaker Elissa Blount Moorhead, who had suggested Baltimore.

“She basically said, ‘Come to Baltimore. It’s a cool scene…[There are] all these Black families here. All these Black children running around. It’s everything we’ve always imagined.’”

So he came. Bought a house in Reservoir Hill, specifically choosing that neighborhood not just for its beautiful architecture but because it wasn’t fully gentrified yet. “I want my kids to see their people,” he says. “I want them to walk outside their house and see low-earning Black people and high-earning Black people. A lot of American cities don’t have that. And that’s their loss.” He fell in love with the city.

“Baltimore has such a beautiful vibe,” Young says. “What’s great about Baltimore is that all the people that are from here, they really welcomed us here. We’re still in this process of asking permission to be in a town that has such a beautiful, sacred culture.”

He immediately found a community of Black parents and artists and makers—“framily,” Moorhead calls them. He and Moorhead collaborated on an experimental art film, Back in Song, that was installed at the BMA. They’re working on another, top secret project, right now. She explains what’s so great about Young’s work.

“He doesn’t possess a disingenuous bone in his body,” she says. “His lens is a reflection of his heart. He has a deep understanding of who he is and where he fits on the continuum of Black history and Blackness. The biggest thing is that he doesn’t lie in his work. Also, he works really hard, and he’s a master craftsman.”

And what Young is doing in Baltimore represents what he hopes is the next chapter of his career. When asked if he wants to direct, he hesitates and says, “Yeah, I have stories I want to tell.” But not necessarily in the traditional sense. “I don’t want to create in the space of the push and pull of filmmaking culture. I just want to make it private with a few friends and let it be what it’s going to be. What I’m really looking for now is uninterrupted freedom to tell stories however I want to.”

He says he’ll keep making commercials to make money between projects. (He rattles off some of the brands he’s lensed for, some you may have heard of: Apple, Audi, Nike, IBM, and Facebook.)  He’ll continue to make “Hollywood” films that call out to him and work with artists and directors he admires and trusts. But he’s not courting mainstream success.

“I’m happy to make films that may not ever open in a theater,” he says. “That may only open in Sankofa Video and Book store in D.C. or the Underground Museum in L.A. Or maybe we project it on a wall somewhere in Sandtown. That’s all it needs to be for me.”

As we roll through week 11 (yes, you read that correctly) of quarantine, you’ve probably blown through a good chunk of your watchlist, read a stack of books you never thought you’d have time to crack open, or picked up a new hobby or two. If you’re in need of some more inspiration while we await the next phase of Governor Hogan’s reopening plan, here are a few ways that Baltimore staffers have been passing the time at home:

Deborah Best, Advertising Operations Manager

In addition to enjoying the extra time with my baby son, this has become a time to revisit old epics! My husband and I have rewatched (among other things) the first six Star Wars movies, and I’m two-thirds of the way through a re-read of The Lord of The Rings trilogy. It’s somehow fitting and comforting to visit tumultuous times in imaginary lands.

Amanda Brown, Director of Marketing and Audience Development

I started making bracelets and keychains inspired by my son, Harrison, who a few months ago asked to make rainbow bracelets for our whole family. Friends then started asking for them, so I bought more sophisticated beads and, at night when the kids went to sleep, I started playing around with things (glass of wine in tow).

It quickly became something I looked forward to doing every night—it’s helped me to wind down, relax, use my creative energy, and most of all, it’s been an amazing distraction. My talented husband kindly said, “I’m going to take pictures of a bunch of these bracelets for you, you should start an Instagram account.” And that I did! I’ve been using a platform we used a bit at the magazine to schedule posts, did some hashtag research, and have been getting orders from both friends and family I know, as well as those I don’t. Many are ordering for gifts and sending directly to loved ones as an “I miss you” gesture.

I’ve really enjoyed bringing some bright colors, fun, and smiles to people during this unbelievable challenging time.

Ron Cassie, Senior Editor

In lieu of actual baseball, I started reading the old daily game accounts of the 1970 Baltimore Orioles in April. Right now, they’re in first place in the AL East and Boog Powell looks like he could win the MVP award. Ain’t the beer cold? Can’t wait to see how the rest of the season turns out.

Lauren Cohen, Digital Senior Editor

After 11 weeks I finally finished all seven seasons (plus the Netflix mini-series) of Gilmore Girls. The famous mother-daughter banter has provided many much-needed laughs throughout the lockdown. I’m also enjoying going on walks, getting out of my comfort zone in the kitchen (cocktails included!), and hanging around our backyard fire pit.

Emily Kunisch, Marketing Coordinator

I’ve been diving into some great books—like Valentine and one of my favorites, Cat’s Cradle. I’m also in the midst of an A24 movie marathon, watching some greats like Midsommar, Lighthouse, and Hereditary (with just 88 movies left to watch!)

Angeline Leong, Assistant Art Director

I’ve been a bit hooked on River Monsters, pun intended! Nature is wild. Pun also intended. Besides that: I’ve been cooking quite a bit more since I’m quarantining with a couple of friends. Learning new recipes has been fun—I even made (and tried) gnocchi for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

Jane Marion, Food and Dining Editor

With the help of my daughter, Sophia, I have Marie Kondo-ed my closet. I am also re-growing scallions, binge-watching Mad Men and drinking martinis (they go together), and developing a huge crush on Chris Cuomo. It’s an odd assortment of activities that provide escape—and a sense of comfort and control.

Jennifer Marsh, Senior Account Executive

I’ve been eating lots of cheese, talking to my cats like they are people, and learning how to TikTok! Watch out!

Linda Mileto, Integrated Advertising Executive

I’m a little late to the party but, I binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and loved it! I’ve also been playing H-O-R-S-E outside and spending a lot of time in the garden, as well.

Zach Papesh, Finance Manager

During quarantine, I’ve been binge-listening to Audible audio books. Specifically, the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child and the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn.

Stephanie Shapiro, Director of Advertising

I’ve watched Unorthodox, Ozark, Hollywood, and Dead to Me all on Netflix. And I’ve been playing Hearts with cards.

Michael Teitelbaum, President

I take a one-hour walk every day to separate the work day from my evening. Otherwise they just blur together. Besides that, I’m doing a lot of Facetiming/Zooming with my brand new grandbabies.

Max Weiss, Editor-in-Chief

Like everyone else, I’ve been watching lots of TV during the dog days of quarantine. My favorite, so far, was Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever (Netflix), about Devi (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a brainy Indian-American teenager grieving the death of her father, crushing on a popular boy, bonding with (and fighting with) her two best friends, and clashing with her strict mother.

Another one I loved was also on Netflix: Unorthodox, which takes you deep inside Brooklyn’s cloistered Hasidic Jewish community. We follow Esther (Shira Haas), who tries to escape this oppressive community. It’s exciting, involving, and manages to show compassion for all involved. Then there’s Normal People, on Hulu, an adapation of Sally Rooney’s great novel about star-crossed lovers. The two young actors are amazing, they create an intimacy that almost makes us feel like voyeurs.

The final show I’ve been digging is Hulu’s Mrs. America, about the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment and emergence of Phyllis Schlafly (a deliciously icy Cate Blanchett), who mobilized an army of housewives to oppose the ERA. Once you get past Rose Byrne’s bad wig as Gloria Steinem, it’s pretty riveting stuff.

Oh, favorite new musical discovery: King Princess, who writes dreamy, smart, complex pop music.

Lydia Woolever, Senior Editor

The Sunday edition of The New York Times has been a guidebook through these strange times—a constant source of inspiration, from the words to the photography to the special feature sections, and a reminder of the growing importance of the work of newspapers, and magazines. I’ve also been giving all of the belly rubs to my dog (who doesn’t know what he did to deserve this extra time at home together) and taking advantage of spring produce from the farmers market (lots of radishes, garlic scapes, and strawberries these days).

The entertainment industry—and movies in particular—has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus.

Tons of films have shut down production or been delayed. And then there’s the larger, perhaps even more concerning question: Will people want to go back to movie theaters, where we’re all sitting in close proximity, munching on snacks, laughing, and breathing the same air?

Of course, there is one way to see a movie in public without having to sit near a bunch of strangers: You guessed it, drive-in movie theaters.

Drive-in theaters, once a staple of American culture, have waned to the point of near extinction today. (There are reportedly 350 left in the country, down from a peak of about 4,000 in the 1950s.) But is it possible that the theaters of the past might become the theaters of the future?

There is one famous drive-in movie theater right here in Maryland—Bengies Drive-In in Middle River, in business since 1956—which is sure hoping that’s the case.

“It does make a lot of sense,” says Ken Adam, Bengies’ general manager. “I’d love to see more drive-ins.”

Adam has even heard that some of the big chain theaters—“the indoors” as he calls them—are considering some sort of model where they show films in their parking lots. But that would take a complete reinvention for those chains. Bengies already has the infrastructure.

Adam says that many customers have assumed that Bengies is open—and are “itching” for the theater to start showing movies again.

“We get lots of messages throughout the week from people asking if we’re open, asking about showtimes,” he says.

For now, they’re abiding by Governor Hogan’s social distancing guidelines, but they are discussing strategies for when the theater does reopen. And they do suspect they’ll get the green light before the big chains—with a caveat.

“Film studios are not going to release their big titles until everybody’s open,” he says. “So [when we do open], we’ll be limited to older films and revivals.”

As for the concessions stand, he says it’s unlikely they will turn to a carhop style model. He likens the Bengies concessions to a take-out restaurant.

“It’s a large snack bar in an open field,” he says, noting that it will be easy to stand six feet apart while getting your Coke and popcorn.

Meanwhile, the theater is doing its best to stay positive and use what it has at its disposal—namely its iconic art deco marquee—to send out a message of encouragement to its customers.

An earlier marquee message read: “Governor Hogan’s Rules To Live By. Avoid Crowds. Stay Home. Practice Distance. Wash Hands. Wash Hands. Wash. Protect Others By Protecting You.”

The current marquee reads: “Don’t Leave Home Without It!: The Mask” and “Stuck At Home? Dwell on What You Can Do, Not What You Can’t.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Everyone comforts themselves during a crisis in a different way. Some people obsessively clean and organize the house. Some people cook elaborate pies and stews. Some people immerse themselves in the news because the only thing worse than knowing about all the scary coronavirus stuff? NOT knowing.

Me? I’m a movie girl, myself—and I’m particularly drawn to that sweet spot of films that are cheery, not too deep (but not flat-out stupid either), and are populated by beautiful people looking for love.

In other words, what I’m looking for is He’s Just Not That Into You, which the benevolent (and perhaps prescient) Netflix gods chose to release on March 1 and which—bonus!—takes place entirely in Baltimore.

In a way, I’m surprised that He’s Just Not That Into You, originally released in 2009, is not a bigger cult classic, along the lines of Love Actually, a film that it glancingly resembles. It’s a charming ensemble film, certainly not without its flaws (some of its sexual and gender politics feel very dated), but undeniably fun to watch. Plus, it features a veritable who’s who of famous actors, some who had already achieved peak fame (Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Ben Affleck) and some who were still on the rise, like Bradley Cooper and Scarlett Johansson.

I wonder if the silly title—the film, if you don’t know, is based loosely on the popular self-help book of the same name—was a deterrent for people. The book basically lays out the cold, hard truth for women: When a guy likes you, he lets you know. He calls. He asks you out. He has sex with you. No need to do a CSI investigation of his every text message or phone call (or lack thereof). No need to make excuses for him (he’s busy…he’s shy…his feelings are actually too strong). He’ll make his intentions clear. And if he doesn’t? Say it with me: He’s just not that into you. (Dear readers, I regret to inform you that in this, the Year of Our Lord 2020, women are still falling into this same trap.)

The anthology-style movie version looks at a series of typical love and dating miscommunications. Our main heroine is Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin), who is a case study in optimism and thinking the best of guys who are clearly blowing her off. One night, she heads to the bar to seek out Conor (Kevin Connolly), the real estate agent she had one great date with (alas, no follow up call), and instead falls into a conversation with Conor’s roommate, bar manager Alex (Justin Long).

Alex immediately recognizes Gigi for the kind of girl she is: a hopeless romantic who refuses to read the signs. As something of a jaded lothario himself, he’s seen it all too many times. He takes it upon himself to advise Gigi in the ways of the male psyche. (While delightful, Gigi is not the brightest bulb on the tree—she’s positively gobsmacked when it’s pointed out to her that men don’t always mean what they say). Alex’s job is to basically lay out the premise of the book—which would make him something of an insufferable mansplainer if Long weren’t so appealing.

It’s also rather ingenious of the film to make Alex a cynic who takes a thoroughly clinical approach to dating and love. Can you begin to guess what might happen between him and Gigi?

The other storylines are as follows: Aniston plays Beth, who’s in love with Neil (Affleck), who doesn’t believe in marriage. They have a happy domestic partnership. Does she really need that bling? Then there’s Ben (Cooper), who is contentedly married to his longtime sweetheart Janine (Jennifer Connelly), until he meets human temptation in the form of yoga instructor/singer Anna (Johansson). He resists—until he doesn’t.

Anna, meanwhile is being pursued by Conor—yes, that Conor—who doesn’t take the signs that she’s indifferent to his charms. (“You see? It works both ways!” the film seems to argue, although clearly this is more of a XX chromosome phenomenon.) Finally, there’s the woefully underused Drew Barrymore, as a woman who sells classified ads at the (made up) Baltimore Blade and who gets lots of “you go, girlfriend!” dating advice from her gay male cohorts (I told you the film’s sexual politics were whack.)

All in all, it was fun to watch all of these comely people have extreme social contact while I was practicing social distancing and contemplating not taking a shower for the third day in a row. And the best part of all? I didn’t think about the coronavirus ONCE when I was watching it.

But now for the important part: How does it rate on the Baltimore Movie Scale?

How Baltimore Is It?: Extremely Baltimore. They mention Baltimore several times. And it actually was filmed in Baltimore, mostly around the Canton and Brewers Hill neighborhoods, it would seem. This is not one of these cases where Baltimore is standing in for some other city (we’re looking at you, House of Cards)—we are loudly and proudly playing ourselves.

What They Got Right: Beth can see the Domino Sugar sign from her apartment. Ben is seen drinking Clipper City beer. Drew Barrymore shops in a CVS. At one point, we see the Brewers Hill/Mr. Boh sign. During Beth’s sister’s wedding, her father (Kris Kristofferson!) advises crab-eating guests that the “yellow stuff is not hot mustard. It’s the crab’s hepatopancreas.” Way to drop the knowledge, Beth’s dad.

What They Got Wrong: Beth, Janine, and Gigi work for a spice company (good!) named…New Colony Spice? Couldn’t they at least have gone with McConnor’s or something? Beth’s brothers-in-law watch Terps sports on TV (good!)—but they also watch hockey(?) and football, not basketball or lacrosse. The biggest problem, of course, is that, according to this film, Baltimore is largely packed with attractive, affluent, white people. Not one of the leads is black or Latino. It’s amazing films could get away with that crap as recently as 2009. Yeesh.

By projecting movies on buildings or piers, Baltimore has developed a summer tradition of hosting movies in the fresh air. While the city continues to add to the history of free summer movies, there is a new celebration going on this season.

Eddie’s of Roland Park will show Wallace and Gromit and Jaws outside of its Charles Street and Roland Ave. locations to celebrate the store’s 75th anniversary. Founded in 1944 by the late Victor Cohen, the store has become beloved for its specialty food and locally inspired sandwiches. Still family owned, it is now led by second- and third-generation family members.

“Chances are, if you’re a fan of Eddie’s of Roland Park, you’re also a fan of food,” says marketing director Jared Earley. “So it’s not a far leap to assume we can all identify with the cheese-obsessed Wallace and Gromit, or the insatiable appetite of a monstrously ‘hangry’ fish.”

But that’s just one of many movie series gracing the walls and screens of Baltimore institutions this summer. Mark your calendar for these film fanatic events.

Eddie’s of Roland Park Celebrates 75 Years: Bring a chair or blanket and head to Eddie’s of Roland Park for a free neighborhood screening of films. At dusk, the independent grocer will encourage the community to join them in celebration of its 75th anniversary. Store hours will be extended and refreshments will be available for purchase inside. Free. July 17-18, July 24-25.

Mt. Vernon Movies: The picturesque Mount Vernon Place is the ideal backdrop to escape into cinema. First up is the wildly popular Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, followed next month by the Hitchcock classic Rear Window, and concluding with favorite fantasy film Labyrinth. As an added bonus, MVP will offer free popcorn. Free. June 27, July 26, August 22, 7:30-11 p.m.

Federal Hill Flicks: Visit The American Visionary Art Museum for Flicks from the Hill, which projects outdoor movies every Thursday night during July and August. The Hughes Family Outdoor Theater puts on a show with a 30-foot screen that you have to see from the massive hill to believe. Come early for free admission to the museum before the main feature at 9 p.m., which this year includes family favorites Coraline and Mrs. Doubtfire. Free. July-August, 9 p.m.

The Wine Bin Screenings: Wine Wednesdays have been moved to Saturdays. Join the Wine Bin for a sip and a flick June through September. Every Saturday, the outdoor movie series opens up parking 90 minutes before the show for drive-in style viewing. After that fills up, there is still plenty of room for to set up camping chairs and blankets. This summer is filled with a wide range of films including A Star Is Born and Beauty And The Beast. Free. June-September, 9 p.m.

Fells Point Films: Another year of films on the pier starts up on July 10 with a showing of a childhood classic—The Princess Bride. Bring your own chairs, wine, and food to turn this event into a romantic date or a night out with friends. Take part in this weekly, Wednesday event through August and enjoy other movies like Oceans 8 or Captain Marvel. Free. July 10-August 28, 8:30 p.m.

Lakefront Summer Shows: What better setting for an outdoor event than Columbia’s idyllic Lake Kittamaqundi. Check out a different movie every Monday and Friday this summer, including Disney’s Tangled and the Avengers blockbusters. Free. Through September 7, 8:30 p.m.

Bel Air Airings: Join The Bel Air Downtown Alliance for fun, film, and—now—food. For the first time, summer movie nights include Bel Air’s only food truck rally. Try some local fare from the trucks parked along Lee Street from 5-8 p.m. Six times a year, the community comes together to watch family-friendly movies like Incredibles 2 and Trolls under the stars. These movies are not only free, but also come with popcorn and face painting. Free. June-August, Sunset.

Moonlight Movie Series: Spend time with the whole family this summer in the parking lot of the Shops at Kenilworth. Every other Monday from June 24-August 19, enjoy a movie playing at sunset in the open air, including animated features like Minions, Zootopia, and Inside Out. Free. Sunset.

Merriweather Movie Nights: Normally, you would catch your favorite band at Merriweather Post Pavilion, but now you can enjoy the lawn throughout the summer with its movie nights in Columbia. After kicking off the series in May with a Sound of Music sing-a-long, the next showing is Smallfoot on July 7. The film will be screened on the lawn, so grab a blanket and friends to join the fun. In the event of rain, the movie will be screened inside the pavilion. $10. May 25, July 7, August 16, 5:30-8 p.m.

Pics in the Park: Join the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore for feature film night, on select Saturdays in June through August on the lawn in downtown’s Center Plaza. Movies begin at sunset, but exact start times will be posted on the event’s Facebook page on movie nights. The plaza is bike-, stroller-, and pet-friendly and movie-goers are encouraged to bring a picnic, lawn chairs, and blankets. Free. Times vary.

Edward Norton is talking about Bob Dylan. This is significant for a few reasons. For starters, when you spend the day with Edward Norton, he will talk about a lot of things. He will casually quote C.S. Lewis and Cyril Connolly; he will hold forth on solar energy and the environment; he will go into elaborate detail about a prehistoric tribe of miniature people that may or may not have been a separate species from homo sapiens. (Asked if he is researching this tribe for any particular reason, he will look at you curiously and say, “No, I’m just interested.”)

He will speak to the Japanese clothing stylist—in Japanese, mind you—trying to find out where he can find the best scallion pancakes in Manhattan, where he now lives. He will talk about the evil Yankees. (“I’d sooner vote for Bush than root for the Yankees,” he’ll say, playing off his well-documented lefty politics.)

And yes, he will talk about film-directors Martin Scorsese and Terrence Malick and Spike Lee, who are among his heroes. And Steven Spielberg, whom he considers to be a “paint-by-­numbers” director.

So if you spend the day with Edward Norton it is advisable that you bring your A-game, intellectually speaking. It’s also advisable that you bring a pen to jot down some of his passion­ately recommended books and lecture series and films.

Which brings us to Dylan.

“You haven’t seen Scorsese’s Dylan documentary?” Norton exclaims at one point during the discussion. “Oh, you can not miss that. That is one of the most riveting things I’ve seen in a long time.”

It has just been a few days since he’s seen the documentary, No Direction Home, so he admits that it is still rattling around in his head quite a bit. But his fascination with the iconic folk singer is not insignificant.

What Norton admires about Dylan is his unshakable integri­ty; the singer’s fidelity to his own vision and his refusal to, in the idiom of his time, “sell out to The Man.”

“At 21 years of age, he clearly became this point onto which an entire generation was projecting its hopes and needs for an expression of who it was,” says Norton. “And he just went, ‘No [freaking] way! You got the wrong guy. I’m an artist, I’m not a politician.’ And when he did things that he didn’t think his audi­ence wanted him to do, like plug in an electric guitar, he did it with the supreme confidence of, ‘Yeah, you’re booing, but you’ll catch up. And I don’t really care anyway.'”

A smile plays at Norton’s lips. He clearly loves the defiance of that thought.

“Anybody pursuing a creative life should watch that film,” he says. “It’s one of the best portraits I’ve ever seen of a person who is totally committed to his own muse.”

The notion of following one’s own muse is a very basic con­cept for Norton. He comes across as someone who is not at all susceptible to outside influence, almost preternaturally self­ possessed. When asked if he has ever gotten swept away by the Hollywood machine, he matter-of-factly replies, “I’ve never really been swept away by anything.”

As a result, he has no professional advice-givers—none of the typical coterie of agents, managers, reporters, hangers-on­ whispering in his ear, telling him what to do. He goes his own way.

However, if he did listen to outside influences, they would probably tell him that it wouldn’t be the best idea to take a three-year hiatus in the middle of a red-hot career.

Which, of course, is exactly what Edward Norton did.

The notion of following one’s own muse is a very basic con­cept for Norton.

Can it be just 10 years ago that we first laid eyes on him? It seems like our native son, our point of collective pride, has been around forever. But it was just 1996 when the Columbia-raised actor with the squinty eyes and the insinuat­ing voice imprinted himself indelibly onto the cinematic land­scape.

His role in Primal Fear called for a virtuoso perfor­mance-one where Norton’s sweet stuttering Aaron Stampler turned out to be a skeevily malevolent criminal—and Norton delivered. His first film out of the gate and he was nominated for an Academy Award. Pretty heady stuff.

“It was an extraordinary performance,” says Washington Post (and former Sun) film critic Stephen Hunter. “I had been told, ‘There’s this kid from Columbia and he will blow you away.’ Sometimes, when you have those kinds of expectations, quite the opposite happens. But I immediately realized that this young man has a fierce and powerful talent.”

The funny thing was, Norton’s friends from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia didn’t even know he was that into acting. He performed at Toby’s Dinner Theater and plied his craft there, but at school, he was an under-the-radar kind of guy.

“He hung out with the popular kids,” says Maureen Grace Antill, a Realtor and mother of two, who was friends with Norton in high school. “But he wasn’t technically popular. He was very laid back, kind of quiet. He didn’t strike you as somebody showy or flashy.”

Antill says that he was primarily known for being part of Columbia’s First Family—Norton’s grandfather was famed visionary developer James Rouse—and because of that, he kept his nose to the grindstone.

“He was very focused,” she says. “He took a lot of AP classes. He was more involved in community affairs than the average high schooler.”

Norton says that he felt no special pressure being the grand­son of James Rouse: “It certainly wasn’t negative. [My grandfa­ther] was beloved. He wasn’t like Peter Angelos, a divisive figure. He was seen as this person who had success on a national level but who had stayed at home and committed to his hometown.”

Plus, Norton says that James Rouse was a fantastic grandfa­ther—a “ballpark and fishing trips kind of granddad.” He adored him. (Norton is also quick to point out that he didn’t live the life of privilege that many assume he did. His father was a federal prosecutor and his mother, who passed away in 1997, was a school teacher. They were solidly upper middle class.)

After Wilde Lake, Norton went to Yale, where he majored in history. He did some development work with the family’s Enterprise Foundation in Osaka, Japan. Then he moved to New York, got seriously into acting and auditioned for the role in Primal Fear that would change his life.

He invited his high school friends to the film’s benefit pre­miere at The Senator. “He was funny about it,” says Antill. “He was like, ‘Can you believe I’m here?”‘

One thing that Antill—and others—were shocked by was the ferocity of Norton’s performance. In his career, he has gravitat­ed to dark roles; he has played a neo-Nazi, a killer, and at least two career criminals.

“Given his very pleasant upbringing in Columbia and his [time] at Toby’s, his four years in New Haven, his work for the Rouse company in Japan, he can play down and dirty,” chuck­les Hunter. “He can play tough and mean.”

In person, Norton is slighter than you might think. On the day of the interview, he is dressed in jeans, a gray thermal shirt with a corduroy shirt-jacket over it, and motorcycle boots. His hair is cut short-nearly buzzed-and he has a closely trimmed goatee that gives him a vaguely Teutonic appearance. He has been pumped up for roles in Fight Club and American History X, but this more wiry, slender build is his true physique.

He smiles infre­quently, but when he does, he projects an irresistibly boyish sweetness. He is a keen listener-there is an alertness about him. One thing he doesn’t look like, though, is a bad ass. Guess that’s why they call it acting.

“I haven’t seen a lot of his movies,” admits Antill. “They’re too violent.”

Norton’s friends from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia didn’t even know he was that into acting. He performed at Toby’s Dinner Theater, but at school, he was an under-the-radar kind of guy.

After Primal Fear, Norton could’ve done a lot of things. He could’ve pursued a profitable franchise, like Spiderman or The Bourne Identity. He could have sought out the kinds of safe, middlebrow, status-quo confirming parts that win Academy Awards. He could’ve done a genre pick—maybe action or horror or a buddy com­edy.

Instead, he followed his own path—working with directors he admired like Spike Lee and Woody Allen and David Fincher; choosing scripts that inspired him; going his own way.

“I really honestly don’t think about how I want my career to go,” explains Norton, now 36. “I don’t even really know what that means. That sounds very confining, the idea of ‘Oh, this is my career.’ I don’t look at doing things that are creative that way. It’s too conscious, too cerebral. My agent, the reason I work with this guy, he never says things to me like, ‘It would be really good if you mixed in one of these.’ Cause I’d fire him. I just don’t want that kind of thinking around me. I don’t think that way myself.”

So Norton insists that the fact that he has not technically appeared on screen in almost three years (last year he did play the role of the leper king in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, but his face was obscured by a mask), is not part of some master plan.

He was just doing other things: an off-Broadway play—Lanford Wilson’s incendiary AIDS allegory, Burn This—for one; his con­tinued charity work, which includes a board membership at Baltimore’s Enterprise Foundation and founding the BP Solar Neighbors program, for another. He wasn’t looking to work for the sake of work, or to advance his career, or to please anyone other than himself.

“In 2002, I made a big popcorn movie [The Italian Job], and then I made The 25th Hour and then I made a play, that was prob­ably one of the most intense performance things I’ve ever done,” he says. “I was just content. I was satiated. You do a play like Burn This and what are you going to do? Walk off and walk onto anoth­er movie set? It’s like, no way.”

Then, one day, he got a script from his agent for a little film called Down in the Valley. The movie focuses on a lonesome cow­boy named Harlan who is living in the present-day San Fernando Valley. With his laconic charm and old-fashioned chivalry, the cowboy is able to ingratiate himself to a directionless teenage girl (Evan Rachel Wood) and her sad-sack kid brother (Rory Culkin). As the film progresses, it becomes clear that the cowboy is not all he claims to be, and that the film is actually a kind of deconstruc­tion of the romantic myth of the West.

The film’s writer/director David Jacobson, who had one film under his belt, the cult biopic Dahmer (yes, about that Dahmer) was skeptical that he’d get his dream star Norton for the role of Harlan, but figured it was worth a shot.

“To me, he’s far and away the best actor of his era,” says Jacobson. “I admire his creativity and his choices he makes as an actor. He has the charisma and chops to be a leading man yet he can sink into these character roles. And I love that.”

Much to Jacobson’s delight, Norton agreed to meet with him. Jacobson admits to being nervous, but the two men were almost immediately simpatico.

“I’m not friends with tons of celebrities, but he doesn’t seem very much like an actor to me,” Jacobson says. “There is a definite actor type. He’s not ‘me, me, me, look at me!’ If you sit down with him, he’ll talk about everything. We’d often talk about the envi­ronment or politics, and finally get to the film.”

They became collaborators. Norton was a producer and editor and even helped with the rewrites. And the developer’s grandson saw how this film fit in neatly with his family’s life work:

“I said to David, ‘Why don’t we make a Western about our West? The West that people our age actually experience and what has that actually become? You can’t ride a horse across it anymore. It is this wilderness of sprawl. It’s a very community-less, sprawling environ­ment of concrete and highways and tiny little pockets of former communities that are now all fragmented. It’s totally bankrupt.”

The film, like so much of Norton’s work, is challenging. By the end, you don’t know if Harlan was the destroyer or the savior of the two kids. Which is just fine by Norton. He hates films that spoon-feed the audience.

“If you really think about the films that sort of hang around in your head and sort of tickle at you over time, they are usually the ones that don’t answer the questions for you,” he says. “They are usually the ones that aren’t ersatz ‘disturbing’ films. They’re films that are in fact disturbing because they don’t resolve them­selves neatly for you. They leave you with as many questions as they do answers.”

“To me, he’s far and away the best actor of his era.”

Down in the Valley isn’t the only film that Norton has coming out in ’06—his The Illusionist played at the Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews—but it is the one he is ushering into theaters most carefully.

Because the film is complex, and because it has no major stars (maybe Norton would’ve qualified as a major movie star three years ago, but film fans notoriously have the memory of gnats), Norton knows that there’s a chance that Down in the Valley will have just a brief stint in Baltimore before it ulti­mately finds a second audience on DVD.

“Most of the films that I’ve done that I considered artistically successful have been massive failures financially,” he says with a weary grin. “And yet, in the long run have not been at all. Because video gave them a second life.”

Still, he hopes that Down in the Valley will buck that trend to become one of those magical indie films that strikes a chord across the country, particularly in his hometown.

“I really do hope that Baltimore will go see this film. Because if they do…” he tries to draw an analogy: “It’s like your vote. You don’t think your vote matters, but it does. If people go and see it, it sends messages. It does go up the pipe. And then Baltimore would get more of those kinds of movies.”

At press time, it wasn’t clear yet whether or not the film would have a gala benefit screening at The Senator (as seven of Norton’s films have, raising $750,000 for Baltimore-area causes). But Norton does have a longstanding relationship with that grand old movie house, and its ever­intrepid owner, Tom Kiefaber.

Those who caught The Senator’s recent run of Heart of Gold, the Neil Young con­cert film, might’ve heard Kiefaber crypti­cally thank Norton before each showing.

So what did Norton have to do with Heart of Gold? Nothing, directly.

You see, Kiefaber felt passionately that the film should play at The Senator and asked Norton if he could pull any strings to make it happen. Norton did more than pull a few strings; he called director Jonathan Demme personal­ly and lobbied on The Senator’s behalf.

“I will always be grateful to him for that selfless act of kindness and concern on our behalf,” says Kiefaber. ”When we find our­selves really up against it, Edward has always responded to our ‘SOS.'”

You can probably count on one hand (heck, maybe on one finger of one hand) the number of movie stars who would make that phone call to Demme. But that’s the beauty of Norton.

There’s this massive machinery of Hollywood that manages to consume everyone who encounters it. And yet, somehow Norton stays above the fray-making the films he wants to make, advocating the causes he wants to advo­cate, and caring enough about his home­town theater to drop everything and make that emergency phone call.

He seems almost constitutionally incapable of sell­ing out.

Bob Dylan—and, more important­ly, James Rouse—would be proud.

The marvelous Maryland Film Festival is back tonight (through May 6). Here’s a great chat I had with festival director Jed Dietz and filmmaker Matt Porterfield. And below are capsule reviews of a few of the titles playing at the fest, including Porterfield’s Sollers Point.

SOLLERS POINT
3.5 stars

Sollers Point might be local auteur Matt Porterfield’s most commercial film to date, while still retaining his astonishingly lived-in sense of working class Baltimore. Our hero is 26-year-old Keith (McCaul Lombardi), sweet, but not too bright, and handsome in a coiled, dirt-bag kind of way. He’s just out of Jessup and, after 9 months of house-arrest, is trying to stay clean, but forces are conspiring against him. All around, he encounters his past: disappointed loved ones and relatives, pissed off ex-girlfriends, gang-bangers who want him back in the fold. And he’s a master at self-sabotage, too, always seeming to take the wrong path when life offers him a crossroads. Lombardi plays Keith as taciturn, wary, and wounded. You sense the futility in rooting for him, but you do all the same.

WE THE ANIMALS
3 stars
 

Jeremiah Zagar’s dreamy coming of age film, based on Justin Torres’ semi-autobiographical novel, casts a hypnotic spell. In upstate New York, three young brothers are so close, they almost breathe as one. They all look alike—loose-limbed and shirtless, with matching dark-haired crew cuts—and they run free through their ramshackle house and neighborhood. All three brothers are rowdy and spirited, but the youngest, 10-year-old Jonah (Evan Rosado), is the most sensitive. He’s an artist and a worrier and he’s slowly coming to terms with his queer identity. Life at home can be volatile, as the boys’ father (Raúl Castill), while loving, has a dark temper and is prone to bouts of self-pity; their mother (Sheila Vand) yearns to escape. Throughout, Jonah cautiously observes it all, concerned for his brothers and wondering what his own future holds.
 

MADELINE’S MADELINE
3.5 stars
 

It’s hard to properly describe Josephine Decker’s Madeline Madeline. If I were to merely recount the plot—a troubled but brilliant girl gets deeply involved with a cult-like experimental theater troupe, much to the consternation of her mother—it would sound almost conventional, but it’s anything but. Instead, Decker combines dream-like imagery, improvisation, and even some elements of horror to create a thoroughly singular cinematic experience. Molly Parker, as the charismatic but exploitative director of the troupe, and Miranda July, as the overly protective mother (they are presented as unwitting doppelgangers of each other) are both wonderful. But it’s newcomer Helena Howard, as Madeline, who gives an utterly mesmerizing, star-making performance.

WOBBLE PALACE
2.5 stars
 

“They say we’re a generation of narcissists,” says Jane (Dash Nekrasova), one half of the doomed couple explored in the amusing but cringe-y Wobble Palace. “But it’s not like we have anything else besides student debt and front facing cameras.”

Jane and her boyfriend, Eugene (Eugene Kotlyarenko), are trying one last-ditch experiment to possibly save their relationship—they’re splitting up the apartment they share for the weekend (Eugene gets Saturday and Jane gets Sunday).

The film starts from the perspective of Eugene, a self-styled weirdo who wears an elaborate man bun/combover hybrid that he calls the “floating toupee.” He immediately logs onto Tinder and tries, ineptly, to romance a series of women. Eugene calls himself a nice guy, and maybe he is, but his desperation to get laid comes off as creepy.

Next we see things through the eyes of Jane, who is only marginally more appealing than her oddball beau. At least she seems to have some moderate talent as an artist—she decorated the couple’s aggressively quirky apartment (think Astroturf and baby doll heads). But she frets the whole film about whether or not she’s “basic” and is rather cruel to Eugene.

Wobble Palace, which Kotlyarenko directed and co-wrote with Nekrasova, is very much of its moment, almost to a fault. At times the film feels rather explicitly anthropological, like a treatise—albeit a funny one—on millennial narcissism in the mid-2010s. (Look for already outdated phrases like “Bernie Bro,” “cuck,” and “basic bitch”!)

Still, young audiences will recognize themselves and their friends and be amused. It’s hard not to laugh at these characters, but a little harder to care about them.   
 

SICKIES MAKING FILMS
3 stars
 
 

This stylish documentary, from local filmmaker Joe Tropea, chronicles the history of film censorship with a particularly close look at Maryland’s own censorship board, the longest-operating in the country. Of course, it was doubly ironic that Maryland, home of that infant terrible of cinema, John Waters, would have the most draconian such board, but it was kept alive by my many factors including one particularly colorful censor, Mary Avara, a true Baltimore character who made the national talk show rounds.

You’ll learn a lot watchng this film—for example, it was progressives who were the first to call for film censorship, in the name of protecting children and serving the greater good (eventually, that ground was ceded to conservatives, and in particular, the Catholic church). And you’ll see that Marylanders were largely embarrassed by the censorship board, which literally cut the naughty bits out of films all the way up until 1981. Tropea keeps things lively by deploying a combination of talking head interviews (including film historians, theater owners, politicians, and Waters himself), old film and TV footage, original illustrations, and the kind of kitschy tableaus of documents, pens, and clippings that would make Wes Anderson proud. In the end, the censorship board was shuttered due to indifference more than anything else.

“The lesson of the history of censorship is that it doesn’t work,” says former Maryland State Senator Howard Denis, who introduced the bill to abolish the censor board. “ . . . You really cannot censor art. Art will have a way of expressing itself.”

After last year’s unprecedented snafu, the Oscars were just hoping for a nice, uncontroversial show last night. They pretty much got it—from the jokes (mostly safe), to the performances (conventional), to the acceptance speeches (occasionally political, but in a polite way). That being said, let’s break it all down, shall we?

The Good

Frances McDormand’s amazing acceptance speech. I always love McDormand because, on top of being a phenomenal actress, she’s the essence of keeping it real. Even when she’s all dressed up, you strongly sense that she’d rather be home in sweats, possibly with a recreational cigarette, and she says what’s on her mind, whether you’re ready to hear it not. Last night, she did this great thing where she had all the female nominees stand—“C’mon Meryl, if you stand, they’ll all follow you”—and made sure they looked around the room and truly took in their collective power. She closed her speech with two words that initially had people scratching their heads: Inclusion rider. (Wait…did she say inclusion WRITER?). Turns out an inclusion rider is a clause an actor or actress can put in their contract, demanding diversity in front of and behind the camera. Inclusion Riders forever, y’all!

The Meh

Jimmy Kimmel’s performance. I love me some Kimmel, but he seemed super determined to play it safe here, so much so that his jokes felt a little bloodless. Of course, he ticked off the expected subjects: Harvey Weinstein, President Trump, the #MeToo movement, but his one-liners elicited little more than polite chuckles. Quick—name a single joke he told? Yeah, I can’t either. (I admit the jet-ski bit was kind of cute, especially with Dame Helen Mirren offering an assist.)

The Oh-So-Awkward

#MeToo was a theme leading up to the ceremony—and all across the country. So it was a bit disconcerting that Ryan Seacrest, recently accused of inappropriate sexual conduct by an E! stylist, was working the red carpet. (The TV station reportedly employed a 30-second delay, lest anyone confront him on it). E! should have put him on the shelf, at least until the allegations were fully vetted. The whole thing just felt really tone deaf. (See also the unfortunately timed wins for Gary Oldman and Kobe Bryant, who both have been accused of violence toward women in the past.)
 

The Good

Sometimes an awkward moment leads to something ah-mazing. Exhibit A: Taraji P. Henson, slyly confronting Ryan Seacrest on the red carpet. This was some Grade A shading. The 30-second delay guy didn’t know what hit him.

The Meh

Can we put a moratorium on the bits where big, glamorous stars mingle with the “little people”? They invariably seem patronizing, even if well intended. That being said, I’ve now seen Armie Hammer shoot a hot-dog gun into a crowded theater, so that’s one less item for the Bucket List.

The Oh-So Awkward

Oh, if you all could’ve seen my face when I realized that the moving #HereWeAre spot, featuring poet Denice Frohman imploring women to speak their truth, was an ad for Twitter. Yes, that Twitter—ground zero for female harassment. (Been there, been called the “C” word.) Nice try, Twitter executives. We’re not buying it.

The Good

Some absolutely gorgeous fashion last night. My faves: Jennifer Garner, Gina Rodriguez, pictured, Lupita Nyong’o, and Greta Gerwig.

Honorable mention: Tariji P. Henson and Jane Fonda. (Also, she wasn’t nominated or presenting, but check out the art-deco-inspired dress worn by actress Leslie Bibb, who is also Sam Rockwell’s partner. Wowsa!)

The Meh

I love you, Gael Garcia Bernal, but maybe you shouldn’t sing. (As I said on Twitter: Pitchy, but sexy.)

The Oh-So-Awkward

I stayed up late and watched the E! after party. They managed to score an interview with Guillermo del Toro, the man of the night, but were completely baffled when he mentioned “candy, sandwiches, and hot dog guns” (he participated in the celebrity movie theater raid). “I guess everyone has unusual snacks!” said one of the E! hosts, in a kind of baffled version of happy talk. Note to the after-party gang—watch the damn show!
 

Bonus Goods 

Co-presenters Tiffany Haddish and Maya Rudolph. Get those two ladies their own buddy comedy, stat!
 

Ashely Judd, Salma Hayek, and Annabella Sciorra discussing #MeToo. It was wonderful to see those outspoken heroines together on stage. “Hi, it’s nice to see you all,” said Sciorra, whose career had been derailed by an alleged Harvey Weinstein assault. “It’s been a while.”
 

The Walmart Box: I’ve got to hand it to them, when I think auteurism, I don’t generally think Walmart. But I loved all three of the “Box” mini films, especially Dee Rees’s.  

My picks!: Out of the 12 categories I took a stab at, I got 11 right. Not too shabby!
 

It goes without saying that the biggest entertainment story of the year was the #MeToo movement and how it took down—and continues to take down—some of the most powerful men in Hollywood. Kevin Spacey was replaced, at the eleventh hour, by Christopher Plummer in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World (a film I’ve yet to see) and, for his efforts—which he apparently did without breaking a sweat—Plummer was rewarded with a Golden Globe nomination. Louis C.K.’s I Love You, Daddy was yanked by its studio shortly before its release (I’ve seen it; trust me, you’re not missing much). The seemingly endless Harvey Weinstein stories continue to be stomach churning—and show that he wasn’t just an alleged sexual abuser and predator, but a man who wielded his enormous power to blacklist and intimidate intelligent actresses, including Salma Hayak, Mira Sorvino, and Ashley Judd.

And of course, the less said about Dustin Hoffman, the better.

But let’s focus on the positive: 2017 was also a great year for film—with unusually good blockbusters (Thor: Ragnorak, The Last Jedi, and my beloved Wonder Woman), all sorts of interesting and weird art films, many of which you’ll see on my list, and some solid old-school cinema from the likes of Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg. For me, the biggest surprise of the year was how much Netflix continues to emerge as a powerhouse: Two Netflix films are in my Top 10; one receives honorable mention. Looking at my list, I don’t see any coherent theme, which is actually kind of cool. Film can be so many different things—and can move us so many different ways. The films below were the ones that moved me the most.

*Most of the blurbs are partially excerpted from my previous reviews. 
**As of press time, I had not yet seen Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Phantom Thread. 

1. Call Me By Your Name
Master sensualist Luca Guadagnino brings us this ravishing film about the exquisite agony of first love. In Northern Italy, a bookish young man named Elio (Timothee Chalamet) becomes obsessed with Oliver (Armie Hammer), the rakish graduate student staying with his family for the summer. The two young men trade barbs and try to impress each other until they eventually succumb to their desire. All the while, Elio’s intellectual parents watch, with concern for their son mixed with jealousy, because is there anything more heady than young love? 

As he did so well in A Bigger Splash, Guadagnino draws us into this bourgeois-bohemian life: the lazy days spent reading and playing music, sunbathing by the lake, eating al fresco, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes (so many cigarettes). As I watched the film, I’m not sure what I was longing for more: A passionate romance like the kind shared by Elio and Oliver; or a shabby chic summer house in the Italian countryside. (Spoiler alert: It’s the vacation house.) Michael Stuhlbarg, as Elio’s father, empathically delivers the film’s climactic monologue, where he tells his son to lean into his emotions, even the messy stuff. And young Chalamet, bringing all of Elio’s smarts, self-loathing, and romantic rapture to life, gives a performance for the ages.

2. The Florida Project
By all accounts, 6-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), the heroine of Sean Baker’s remarkable The Florida Project, should not be having a happy childhood. She lives with her young mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite) in a seedy motel in the shadow of Disney World. Halley is a dope smoker, a petty thief, a hustler, selling perfume knockoffs and anything else she can swipe on the streets. And yet Moonee is happy. She sees the series of motels as her own personal playground, with best friends—also children of broken families and poverty—as her co-conspirators. They run around freely, breaking into abandoned rooms and buildings; scamming for free ice cream at the local soft serve; spitting on cars in the parking lot to see who has the best aim—all done with an incredible sense of mischief and discovery and fun. Brooklynn Prince, the young actress who plays Moonee, is an absolute find—naturally funny and impish with an impeccable sense of comic timing. One of the best things about Moonee—and Baker’s film in general—is that she is actually funny, not just “kids say the darndest things” funny. The film is enormously respectful of her personhood.

3. Mudbound
Something about Dee Rees’ epic Mudbound is so elemental, so deeply humane, so steeped in the soil and sins of the South, that it already feels like a work of great American cinema. The story is deceptively simple: Two families, one black and one white, share a muddy slog of a farm in the early ’40s south. The white family, while poor, owns the farm. The black family are sharecroppers. They both have young men who go to war. Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) is handsome with a quicksilver charisma. Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) is a devoted son and brother; he bears the extra burden of knowing how much his family needs him to work the farm. The film is narrated, in a kind of sing-song near poetry, by many of the characters, primarily the women. The matriarch of the black family is Florence (Mary J. Blige), a midwife and paragon of unsentimental strength.  Laura (Carey Mulligan), married to the solid, unglamorous Henry (Jason Clarke) dutifully endures this life she never asked for. The performances, top to bottom, are unfussy, clear-eyed, and note-perfect. Particular props to Blige, who gives such a confident, understated performance, you’d think she was a canny screen veteran. And Garrett Hedlund and Jason Mitchell will absolutely wreck you.

4. Dunkirk
Christopher Nolan’s stunning WWII saga is an injection of pure cinema: It’s filled with arresting images which it uses to stir, to terrify, and at times to nearly overwhelm its audience. During World War II, thousands of Allied soldiers—the majority of whom were British—were stranded on the shores of Dunkirk, France and surrounded by Nazis, who could easily pick them off from the skies. Their only hope is to be rescued—by fighter pilots and, in a remarkable true twist, by everyday fishermen, who brave the journey across the English channel save them. The story, told by Nolan on three surfaces—land, sea, and air—is, in many ways, about the simple honor of surviving—and, of course, about the stiff upper lip and indomitable pluck of those regular British seamen, embodied perfectly here by the ever-wonderful Mark Rylance. On land, Nolan gives us the single most memorable cinematic image of the year: Overhead, a German bomber approaches, and the allied troops—all 400,000 of them—duck in a kind of harrowing and beautiful choreography of doom, their helmets providing only illusory cover against the assault that’s about to come.

5. Okja
South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho may be a vegetarian, but I can only assume he is a cinematic omnivore, influenced by B-movies, Spielberg, Kurosawa, Miyazaki, Kubrick, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and everything in between. His own cinematic vision is a wonderful mishmash of these styles—sentimental yet edgy; dreamy yet caustic. In this film, a line of superpigs are being bred as a potential future food source. When 13-year-old villager Mija (adorably poker-faced Ahn Seo Hyun) finds out the fate of her beloved pig, Okja, she embarks upon an adventure to save him—first to Seoul, then New York, eventually teaming up with a renegade group of animal activists called ALF led by the true believer, Jay (Paul Dano). Tilda Swinton and Jake Gyllenhaal ham it up wonderfully as the villains from the multinational corporation hoping to the breed (and eat) Mija’s pig. As for the computer animation, it’s stunning. Okja, in all her snouty, wrinkly enormity, feels as real as the mutt currently farting and snoring at your feet.

6. Get Out
In Jordan Peele’s excellent horror-cum-satire, he takes a lowkey nightmare—a black man having to endure his white girlfriend’s performatively “woke” parents—and turns it into an actual horror of body snatching and would-be eugenics. The genius of the film is watching our hero, Chris (an excellent Daniel Kaluuya) realize these are not the microaggressions as usual. With Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener as the super attentive parents, Allison Williams as the breezy post-racial cool girl, Lakeith Stanfield as a zombified black man barely clinging to his humanity, and the wonderful (and criminally overlooked) Betty Gabriel as the eerily submissive maid.

7. Beach Rats
With It Felt Like Love and now Beach Rats, Eliza Hittman has arguably become our greatest chronicler of teenage ennui. It’s summer in Brooklyn and Frankie (Harris Dickinson) spends his long, listless days getting high with his buddies on the beach and his nights prowling the internet looking for older men to hook up with. He’s still deeply in the closet—to his friends, to his mother, even to himself—and he hopes against hope that the feelings will go away. A flirty, pretty girl (Madeline Weinstein) falls for him and he begins to date her—both as an alibi to his friends and to try to will himself to be straight. Meanwhile, his father has just died of cancer, giving him something of a built-in excuse for his moodiness. In a way, the film is about the battle for Frankie’s soul—will he succumb to his friends’ toxic masculinity or will he be true to his own delicate heart? And Dickinson—a Brit!—is extraordinary in his film debut. He plays Frankie as sad and still and wary, with just a barely discernible yearning to be truly seen and understood.

8. Personal Shopper
The beauty of Kristen Stewart—well, aside from her literal beauty, that is—is that she can do almost nothing on camera and still be arresting. I think this is partly because of all the fascinating contradictions she embodies: both feminine and masculine, aloof and inviting, fragile and tough. In Personal Shopper, her second collaboration with French writer/director Olivier Assayas, she plays Maureen, an artist and would-be medium who is also a personal shopper for a spoiled celebutante. Maureen’s twin brother Lewis recently died of a rare heart defect and, thanks to a pact the two shared, she expects him to contact her from the beyond. One day, Maureen is sitting on a bus when she gets a text message from an unknown number. The texter seems to be omniscient—it knows where Maureen is going and claims it’s watching her—and encourages Maureen to ask it questions. “Are you alive?” Maureen asks, chillingly. On Twitter, I noted that Personal Shopper was the most French horror film I’d ever seen (it’s mostly in English, with the occasional French subtitle) and this is because of its obsession with fashion and surfaces, its languid rhythms, and its comfort with ambiguity. The film is largely about loss—how we can essentially haunt ourselves through grief.

9. Ingrid Goes West
Ingrid Goes West focuses on an especially au courant obsession—Instagram,
that little corner of the social media universe where we post images of
perfectly pedicured toes on sandy beaches, cute corgis in hats, and
crave-worthy waffles. But for Instagram to work there has to be a yin and yang:
both the person who curates an idealized version of themselves and the person
who buys into that persona, hook, line, and sinker. Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza) falls
into the latter category. Early in the film, she drives to southern California
to meet and attempt to ingratiate herself into the life of her current
Instagram obsession: boho-chic social media influencer Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth
Olsen). Director Matt Spicer has obviously spent a lot of time lurking on
Instagram pages and he gets the lingo, the forced fun, the desperate attempt to
seem like you’re not desperate. The message of Ingrid Goes West is a fairly standard one—people
aren’t what they seem on social media. But the execution is spot-on. The cast
is stellar. Plaza makes Ingrid’s unhinged desperation both a little scary and a
lot heartbreaking. As for Olsen, she’s the perfect foil—utterly believable as a
self-styled So-Cal princess.

10. A Ghost Story
It’s hard to quantify the
audacity it took for David Lowery to make this film. It’s a ghost story, a
haunting meditation on life, loss, and mankind’s place in the universe, that
features a man under a sheet with the eye holes poked out. Yes, the ghost of
the title is your last minute Halloween costume from when you were a kid—and
somehow, improbably, that’s part of the film’s poignancy. When the film starts,
we meet a married couple, played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara—called C and
M in the credits. 

As a couple, they have a natural physical intimacy, a nearly
wordless simpatico. And then, there’s a car crash and C dies. M goes to ID the
body; she’s not histrionic, just slow and sad, in keeping with the film’s
rhythms. After, C gets up from the gurney in the morgue, the sheet draped over
him, the eyeholes poked out, and follows her home. Mostly, he just stands
there, useless, sad, silent. Time passes, because that’s what time does. M
leaves the house, but C is stuck there. The film is almost defiantly slow. But
your patience will be more than rewarded. A
Ghost Story has images, ideas, a deep reservoir of sadness about
life, death, and grief, that will stay with me for a while. It unsettled me,
deeply, and rocked me way out of my comfort zone. More films should do that.

11. Battle of the Sexes
A perfectly timed film: In the midst of the women’s lib movement, tennis player Billy Jean King (Emma Stone) breaks away from the patriarchal ATP and forms a free-wheeling, all female tennis league of her own, while also taking tentative steps toward coming out of the closet. Meanwhile, professional irritant Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell), a former pro, several years her senior, challenges her to an exhibition tennis match, to once and for all prove the athletic dominance of men. She has no choice but to agree. The final showdown—about so much more than sports—had my audience on the edge of its seat and cheering lustily for the feminist hero to beat the two-bit conman. 

12. The Post 
Just as Spotlight showed how dangerously close the Archdiocese was to The Boston Globe, The Post shows how chummy the D.C. press corps can be with politicians and political operatives they covered. Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep), who inherited The Washington Post from her late husband (who, in turn, had inherited it from her father), was as much socialite as newspaper woman, until she is forced to make the most crucial decision of her life. On the eve of her newspaper going public, and to the mortification of her advisors and investors, she agrees—egged on by her tenacious editor Bill Bradlee (Tom Hanks)—to print the Pentagon Papers, the leaked documents proving that the government long-knew the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Helmed by the great Steven Spielberg, The Post is, of course, a snappy newspaper-intrigue movie, filled with last-minute scoops and hush-hush meetings. But watching Streep as Graham come into her own, find her voice as a journalist, a woman, and a moral leader, provides the film’s greatest thrills.   

13. The Lost City of Z 
James Gray’s has directed the most overlooked film of the year—a true story of obsession and near madness in pursuit of an important archeological and sociological truth. Early in the 20th century, reluctant British cartographer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) goes deep in the Amazonian jungle and finds what he believes to be evidence of an ancient, civilized society. The problem is, no one believes him. He keeps returning to the jungle—risking his life, sullying his already fragile reputation, and abandoning his family for long stretches of time. The Brits, of course, can’t stomach the idea that brown people may have been civilized before they were, which makes Fawcett’s journey as righteous as it is wildly impractical.  With shades of Apocalypse Now and Mosquito Coast, this film deserves its place among the best of the man’s-obsessive-quest genre. 

14. The Disaster Artist
James Franco’s comedy about the making of the worst film of all time is both a riveting portrait of a singular weirdo and a sneaky celebration of movie-making and the American dream. As Wiseau, Franco is hilarious and oddly touching, especially in the scenes he shares with Tommy’s increasingly disenchanted best friend (played by Franco’s real-life brother, Dave Franco).

15. Step
The sneaky genius of Amanda Lipitz’s documentary Step is how it manages to tell an important story—about how hard it is to thrive academically when your home life is chaotic and how it takes a village to nurture and support under-served children—in the form of a triumphant “Big Game” narrative. Yes, the Step team at the Baltimore Leadership Academy for Girls has an all-important competition at the end, just like what you might see at the end of a film like Pitch Perfect or Remember the Titans. But the story is really about these girls—the first graduating class of the academy whose goal is to send every student to college—and the amazing group of Baltimore women who raised them.

16. The Big Sick
One of the funniest, warmest, and most closely observed films of the year essentially tells two love stories: The one between Pakistani stand-up comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his grad-student girlfriend Emily (Zoe Kazan) and the one between Kumail and Emily’s squabbling parents (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) when Emily has a major health scare and is put in a medically induced coma. Based on the unlikely true story of Nanjiani and co-writer Emily Gordon’s own courtship and marriage, the film has lots to say about love, family, and faith. It also has a true generosity of spirit—the characters, flawed as they may be, are all completely endearing. 

17. Baby Driver
Edgar Wright’s wildly inventive and entertaining film—part winking heist flick, part musical—about a reluctant getaway driver (Ansel Elgort) who moves, drives, and lives to the beat of his own soundtrack is a pure rush of cinematic adrenaline.  

18. Wonder Woman
While so many super hero films feel like they were created in a boardroom, Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman vibrates with passion and authenticity and life. It wears its influences on its sleeve—a little Raiders of the Lost Ark here, a little Wizard of Oz there—but manages to be its own special triumph. The now-legendary No Man’s Land scene, where Diana/Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) ignores the protests of her cohort Steve (Chris Pine) and leaps boldly into the battlefield to save a village is the “f**k yeah!” moment of the year.  
 

19. My Cousin Rachel 
I call this one Gothic Lite. It has all the elements of the genre: a mysterious death, a desiccated mansion in the hills, a forbidden romance. But it’s remarkably light on its feet—and quite funny. It would work best at a midnight screening, so the crowd can scream “nooooo!” as our dimwitted young hero (Sam Clafin) gets slowly sucked in by the wiles of the mysterious woman he’s convinced killed his cousin. But the film, which will keep you guessing until the end, defies the tropes of the genre at every turn, and provides a perfect showcase for Rachel Weisz’s beguiling charms. 

20. The Lovers
 A middle-aged couple, played delectably by Debra Winger and Tracy Letts, are each having extramarital affairs. They sneak around, creating elaborate stories about working late and overdue drinks with friends, but all of that is unnecessary—they’ve stopped seeing each other. Then, one day, they watch an old movie and drink wine together on the couch—by their tentative behavior you can tell they haven’t done this in ages. A few days later, they wake up, face-to-face to bed and accidentally kiss each other. Soon, they are cheating on their lovers—with each other. Azazel Jacobs’ film is drolly funny and insightful about the ways marriages ebb and flow. The film would be higher on my list were it not for a bizarre sequence involving the couple’s rage-filled son. But it’s refreshing to see a film that takes the desires and inner lives of 50somethings so seriously.

Runners Up: Blade Runner: 2049; Colossal; Dawson City: Frozen Time; Girls Trip; Lady Bird; The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected); Motherland; Nocturama; Only the Brave; Rat Film. 

When it’s cold outside, there’s nothing like a trip to the movies. With popcorn and Junior Mints in hand, we sink into those plush seats as the lights dim around us and the film begins to roll. For just a moment, we forget about the day—the weather, the work, those bills—and let the bold sound and big screen immerse us in another world.

Baltimore has a number of great theaters—from historic cinemas to massive movieplexs—and this month, they’re featuring the new Oscar buzz as well as some of the best oldie-but-goodies. Take a date for Valentine’s Day. Show the kids a classic they’ve never seen. Either way, get out of the cold and cozy up with a fountain soda and a friend at one of these favorite flicks.

FEB. 4: FUNNY GIRL (1968)
Cinemark Towson, 111 East Joppa Rd., Towson. 2 & 7 p.m. $8.25-11. 410-828-1217. cinemark.com. This Oscar-winning, romantic musical stars the legendary Barbra Streisand in her one of her most famous movie roles as a young actress climbing the Broadway ranks in New York City.

FEB. 5: BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S (1961)
Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. 7:30 p.m. $9-12. 410-276-1651. creativealliance.org. The Creative Alliance and Wear It Out Baltimore are putting on an all-out affair for this Audrey Hepburn classic. Dress like the iconic Holly Golightly and enjoy a cocktail hour before the film.

FEB. 7: STAND BY ME (1986)
The Senator Theatre, 5904 York Rd. 10 a.m. $5. 410-323-4424. thesenatortheatre.com. Based on a novel by Stephen King, this Rob Reiner film tells the nostalgic, coming-of-age story about four best friends who set off on an adventure in search of a dead body.

FEB. 10: LA DOLCE VITA (1960)
The Senator Theatre, 5904 York Rd. 8 p.m. $9-11.50. 410-323-4424. thesenatortheatre.com. This Oscar-winning Italian dramedy features a series of stories about a paparazzi journalist in Rome.

FEB. 11: LADY AND THE TRAMP (1955)
Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. 6 p.m. $5-15. 410-276-1651. creativealliance.org. This screening of Disney’s classic canine cartoon is fun for the whole family, as the Creative Alliance offers kid-themed food like mac ‘n’ cheese, pigs in a blanket, and fish sticks.

FEB. 14, 16: THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
The Charles Theatre, 1711 N. Charles St. Sat. 10:30 a.m., Mon. 7 p.m. $7.50-9.50. 410-727-3464. thecharles.com. William Wyler’s seven-time Oscar-winning film tells the tale of three World War II veterans returning home to their families and small-town American life.

FEB. 14: THE CLOCK (1945)
Enoch Pratt Central Library, Wheeler Auditorium, 400 Cathedral St. 10:30 a.m. Free. 410-396-5430. prattlibrary.org. Grab a date and a box of peanut M&Ms and head to the Enoch Pratt Library for this Valentine’s daytime screening of this 1945 Manhattan romance, starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker.

FEB. 15: GIANT (1956)
Cinemark Towson, 111 East Joppa Rd., Towson. $8.25-11. 410-828-1217. cinemark.com. The legendary James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor star in this Oscar-winning epic drama about the life of a Texas cattle rancher.

FEB. 25: THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001)
Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave. 7:30 p.m. $9-12. 410-276-1651. creativealliance.org. Enjoy a newer “oldie” with Wes Anderson’s 2001 cult comedy about an estranged family forced to reconcile with one another, starring Ben Stiller, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Murray, Gene Hackman, and more. Like Breakfast at Tiffany’s, dress as your favorite character. Best costume wins a prize.

FEB. 28: IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
Enoch Pratt Roland Park Branch, Meeting Room, 5108 Roland Ave. 10:30 a.m. Free. 410-396-6099. prattlibrary.org. Ride over to the Roland Park branch of the Enoch Pratt Library for this breakfast screening of Frank Capra’s Oscar-winning comedy about a runaway heiress and a dogged reporter, starring Clark Gable.