- Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” Gets Back on the Pitch For a Welcome Season 4 (August 5, 2026)
After an unlikely beginning as a series of NBC Sports TV commercials in 2013 and a spectacular, awards-spangled run on Apple TV as a beacon of mental health positivity and Capra-esque optimism, “Ted Lasso” ended on a near-perfect note. The Season 3 finale in May 2023 leaned into the time-honored rituals of TV finales, with Jason Sudeikis’ iconic title character and a half-dozen beloved supporting players finding closure—or moving on to the next chapters of their lives.
The original plan was for a three-season arc, and the instincts were spot on.
I thought it was the right time to say goodbye, especially to Ted. Had he chosen to remain in London after spending nearly three years away from his adolescent son Henry in Kansas City, all of his heartfelt angst about their separation would have started to ring hollow.
Fast forward more than three years later, after Sudeikis said he had finally found a new story worth telling, and good news is that despite a few credulity-defying plot points that slingshot Ted back to London, where he’s once again a fish getting used to the water, Season 4 is vintage “Ted Lasso.” It’s like returning to your hometown and finding out that your favorite restaurant, which had been closed for the last few years, has reopened with the same management and key staffers, but with some fresh new additions to the personnel and the menu. Nothing will top the original experience, but it’s still a breezy good time that brings a glow to your heart.
Season 4 picks up the story two years down the road, with Ted indeed living back home in K.C., and enjoying a close relationship with Henry (now played by Grant Feely from “Five Nights at Freddy’s”). I’m going to avoid specific spoilers that weren’t revealed in the trailer, but I will say I found Ted’s new job to be slightly inconsistent with the character we’ve come to know (though solid material for gentle laughs). The series’ brief stay in Kansas City includes the expected jokes about outsiders being confused by Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS, and stops at local touchstones including Gates BBQ on Main Street in Midtown; CPKC Stadium, home of the Kansas City Current of the NWSL; and a particularly poignant interlude at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, where a visitor from across the pond who knows nothing about the national pastime but is moved and inspired upon learning about the likes of Satchel Paige.
Just as Ted is experiencing a serious case of ennui, his old friends (and fan favorites) Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), Keeley (Juno Temple) and Higgins (Jeremy Swift) come calling with an offer he won’t refuse because if he did refuse we wouldn’t have a Season 4: Ted will return to Richmond to coach the Lady Greyhounds, a new second-division women’s football team. Cue the familiar themes of optimism in the face of daunting odds and the emotional healing that can come from being part of a found family, combined with old-fashioned sports action and pop culture-infused humor. (A partial list of references from just the first few episodes: Public Enemy, “Do the Right Thing,” “Casablanca,” the sentimental Chicago ballad “You’re the Inspiration,” Susan Boyle, the Beastie Boys, “Mean Girls,” “The Lost Boys” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”)
A number of series regulars are absent, either because the actors weren’t available or their characters had exited at the conclusion of Season 3, but in addition to the aforementioned trio, it’s a treat to be reunited with Brett Goldstein’s still-growling Roy Kent and Brendan Hunt’s deeply weird and equally endearing Coach Beard, among others. The writing remains top-tier, whether it’s one character noting without irony, “I finally watched ‘Breaking Bad.’ Hilarious,” or something as simple as Keeley saying, “Can we talk?” and Rebecca responding with “Always,” which melts our heart because we know the history of the friendship between these two.
Still, Season 4 would have been nothing but a Greatest Hits collection without the infusion of new cast members who quickly create indelible, sympathetic, and unique impressions. Tanya Reynolds (“Sex Education”) is a breakout star as Alice Chilton, a reserved, seemingly humor-impaired coach trying to find her footing alongside the bromance duo of Ted and Coach Beard, Abbie Hern resonates as a new star striker, and Jude Mack has a kind of Roy Kent-esque blunt charm as Boots, a talented goalkeeper who refuses to wear gloves because she relishes the sharp painful sting of making a save with her bare hands. (Comedic legend Tracey Ullman contributes scene-stealing work as well.) It’s remarkable how quickly we come to embrace the quest of the Lady Greyhounds.
In an era where the world—and much of prestige television—is filled with darkness and cynicism, “Ted Lasso” continues to make the case for empathy, not as hopelessly naive ideals, but as everyday choices and life goals. Season 4 wasn’t necessary, but it’s a welcome added time.
The first four episodes of “Ted Lasso” Season 4 were screened for review.
- “Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi” Expands the Animated Potential of a Galaxy Far, Far Away (August 5, 2026)
One of the few ingenious ideas Lucasfilm has had across its increasingly stale Disney+ “Star Wars” era has been handing various animation studios their own lightsabers via the anime anthology “Star Wars: Visions.” Unlike their live‑action and Lucasfilm Animation counterparts, studios like Trigger, Aardman, Science SARU, and Kinema Citrus found their own creative universes within the galaxy, breeding newfound innovation and delivering striking animated tales—marking some of the best stories the franchise has told, at least before “Andor.”
As Disney+’s long‑form storytelling has evolved, it seems even “Visions” had to follow suit. The spin‑off banner “Star Wars: Visions Presents” expands on the shorts, blowing them up to complete miniseries lengths. It made logical sense to call on Production I.G (“Ghost in the Shell”, “Haikyu!!”, “FLCL”), given that their Visions short “The Ninth Jedi” introduced an ongoing space-western-styled story about a powerful young Jedi named Kara (Kimiko Glenn) learning the way of the Jedi when it’s nearly nonexistent—particularly after the “Child of Hope” episode in Season 3 ended on a cliffhanger. The eight‑episode anime miniseries, simply titled “The Ninth Jedi,” follows up in a moving, action-packed spectacle brought to life with astonishing animation.
Following the events of “Child of Hope,” the balance between the Jedi and Sith has been dismantled. Today, they either operate as merchants or warlords. There’s no functioning Jedi Order to bring peace throughout the galaxy, and lightsabers are practically extinct following the imprisonment of Kara’s sabersmith father/former Jedi Knight Lah Zhima (Simu Liu). His captor is the mysterious imperialist Lord Nawaam (Young Mazino), a Shredder‑like tyrant on a conquest to take control of the galaxy using a destructive crystal as a weapon. As Nawaam seizes planets by force, a ragtag group of Jedi warriors—including Kara, her Jedi master Margrave Juro (Andrew Kishino), Ethan (Masi Oka), Homen (Patrick Seitz), and Kara’s droid Four‑Nines—try to restore order.
(L-R) Homen, Kawana, Margrave Juro, and Lah Kara in a scene from Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm. © 2026 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
The first episode, “A New Threat,” leaps right into the visual splendor as the Jedi rebels evade Nawaam’s second‑in‑command, the last Sith Gennoh (Fedor Chin). After a successful escape, the team searches for allies across planets, starting with Juro’s old Jedi colleague Lord Dunbai (Brent Mukai) to aid their cause. Meanwhile, Ethan and Four‑Nines are sent to pose as spies aboard Nawaam’s ship to rescue Zhima.
While all of that may sound like a typical Star Wars setup, the first episode ends on a shocking twist regarding Nawaam and his lightsaber that poses an intriguing variable to the entire principles of morality, especially in this lawless realm. However, it takes a while for its saber to find its spark.
The first few episodes set aside our relationship with Kara across the two shorts, so it can expand on its standalone worldbuilding. But with that, the series falls into the generic war‑oriented “Jedi vs. imperialist” confines, wavering between “assembling allies” beats, its heroic protagonists like Juro bearing much resemblance to Obi-Wan, and dedicating much of its runtime to long‑winded lore. The third episode, “Voices of the Past,” delivers on its title by introducing a Zelda‑like Tafflah (Chase Sui Wonders), a former Jedi whose entire existence is dedicated to expository details of the Jedi’s past.
The thin characterization across the season’s first half is bothersome, especially since “The Ninth Jedi” presents a strong direction for its conversation—at least excluding Zhima, whose role as the miniseries’ catalyst follows through on a nuanced take on the Jedi Knight archetype.
Frankly, “The Ninth Jedi” looks phenomenal. Director Kenji Kamiyama (“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim,” “Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045”) presents a more finely polished visual style than the preceding shorts. He and his animators balance 2D characters across 3D environments under a stronger, more cohesive presentation, with superior character designs and consistent, fluid movement. It’s the best‑realized vision Production I.G has offered of the galaxy, with sweeping, vibrant backgrounds and thrilling lightsaber battles. It brought me back to being a kid, remembering how stellar Star Wars in the animation medium can truly be in 2D. No franchise show has been this visually mesmerizing since Genndy Tartakovsky’s “Clone Wars” series.
(L-R) Nawaam and Lah Kara ( in a scene from Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm. © 2026 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
By the season’s midpoint, “The Ninth Jedi” finally finds its Force strength once it drops lore and refocuses on character. Once it realizes this is Kara’s story and brings her back to the forefront, it becomes a powerful and exhilarating coming‑of‑age tale of self‑discovery that takes smart thematic directions. The series disrupts the black-and-white morality of traditional “Star Wars” stories with moral gray areas, with even the Jedi’s lightsaber colors playing an integral role. There are shocking story turns, and certain colors take on certain meanings; Jedis are described as “giving into nothingness,” introducing an element of nihilism to the Jedi philosophy we haven’t seen in this respect before. By the end, the story becomes a thought‑provoking, triumphant fable against nihilism in a time very reflective of our desolate sociopolitical moment. It doesn’t just let its characters and themes find unity—it roots itself in earnest emotion, evolving into something profoundly above some of its other live‑action or animation counterparts.
With all its flaws, “The Ninth Jedi” is a stunning and sometimes poignant “Star Wars” story. It also seems to be the right course for the Star Wars franchise: letting other creatives realize their own visions of the galaxy across the animation medium. It’s surely more enticing than whatever Dave Filoni is doing at the moment.
All episodes screened for review. Premieres on Disney+ August 5th.
- Female Filmmakers in Focus: Julia Hart on “Don’t Say Good Luck” (August 5, 2026)
How do you navigate the highs and lows of high school when you also have a terminally ill parent? This is the question at the center of Julia Hart‘s latest musical drama, “Don’t Say Good Luck,” which stars Sunny Sandler (star of the delightful 2023 comedy “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah“) as a young woman navigating this difficult situation.
Writer-director Julia Hart was born with Hollywood in her blood: her father James V. Hart wrote the screenplays for Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” (1991) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992). But she still took a long and winding road back to Tinseltown.
After college, Hart worked as a high school teacher for eight years before shifting to screenwriting. She mined her experiences as a teacher for her acclaimed feature film debut “Miss Stevens” (2016), starring Lily Rabe, pre-fame Timothée Chalamet, and pre-“Riverdale” Lili Reinhart, which debuted at SXSW.
Hart returned to the Austin-based festival two years later with the superhero drama “Fast Color” starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lorraine Toussaint, Saniyya Sidney, and David Strathairn. Her neo-noir drama “I’m Your Woman” (2020) starring Rachel Brosnahan made its world premiere at AFI Fest in 2020. Hart has also helmed two romantic teen films for Disney+: “Stargirl” (2020) and “Hollywood Stargirl” (2022), both starring Grace VanderWaal as the titular teen.
Her latest feature, “Don’t Say Good Luck,” reteams her with her producing partner (and husband), Jordan Horowitz, whose credits include the Oscar-winning musical “La La Land” (2016), and brings her into the fold of Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions and its long-standing relationship with Netflix.
Sunny Sandler plays Sophie Birenbaum, a teen looking forward to her high school’s upcoming production of “Waitress: The Musical,” only for her plans to be dimmed by the return of her mother’s medical issues. Hart deftly weaves Sophie’s big teen emotions with those of her family’s drama with ease, never sinking to maudlin melodrama or tacky exploitation. Melanie Lynskey, Max Greenfield, Stephanie Beatriz, Bebe Neuwirth, and Steve Buscemi round out the film’s excellent supporting cast.
For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Hart over Zoom about infusing teen movies with real-life emotions, working with her enormously talented ensemble cast, and why there is no one in Hollywood quite like Adam Sandler.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
This film is really sweet. How did you balance the big emotions of teenagedom with the big emotions entangled with what’s happening in Sophie’s home life?
The script first came into Jordan’s and my life about three or four years ago now. We ended up all working on the script, but the first draft of the screenplay was by Laura Hankin. It was based on her real-life experience of getting the lead in her high school musical at the same time that her mom’s cancer came back. Also, we actually first received the script when Jordan’s mom had been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, and she ended up passing three years ago, while we were working on the project.
Having Laura’s real-life experience and ours was obviously incredibly informative in terms of the big feelings. Truly, the only way to move through something like that and to survive something like that is with a lot of humor and a lot of perspective. Our north star was wanting the movie to be merciful, full of joy, and not maudlin or heavy-handed. So the key to the movie was that idea of balance.
Sophie’s push-and-pull and her mom’s support of her dream in this movie resonated with me in a way that is really honest to how parents, regardless of what’s going on with them, want their kids to achieve their dreams, even in the midst of something as horrible as facing the end of their life.
And that art is the thing that helps us continue and allows us to find meaning and joy when life feels like it’s too hard or that something too terrible is happening. This idea is that, as sad and as difficult as what Sophie is going through, you know that she’s going to be okay because she has her community and she has the ability to create with that community. That has certainly been the thing that’s gotten me through a lot of the hard times in my life, too.
You have in this film some of the beats you expect from a John Hughes film, but you see those Gen Z and Gen Alpha morals come through. Sonny won’t put up with the guy’s bad behavior. I think even our generation, elder millennials, we would have just been heartbroken and locked ourselves in a closet and cried. I love that we’re seeing teenage girls stand up for themselves in movies now. Can you talk about bringing teen film tropes into modern times?
I was a high school teacher for five years, and I absolutely loved it. I loved the relationships that I developed with my students. I was pretty young at the time. I was 25 when I was teaching 17- and 18-year-olds, and of course they were looking to me for the answers, yet I was still figuring it out. It was an incredibly important and special time in my development and my growing up. I felt like they were teaching me as much as I was teaching them. I also choreographed the high school musical when I was teaching English.
So while working on this film, I actually went back to the school where I taught before we started shooting, and I sat in on the after-school rehearsals for their musical. It was really special to be back there.
For me, creating stories and telling stories that contain characters who, as you said, exist in the common tropes and plots that we expect from movies about teenagers, but showing them that there are different ways to handle things or different outcomes. Part of it is inspired by the relationships I had with teenagers in my first career, but also by wanting to show aspirational ways to show up for themselves and each other.
DON’T SAY GOOD LUCK. (L to R) Sunny Sandler as Sophie and Melanie Lynskey as Elizabeth in Don’t Say Good Luck. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026.
Speaking of the musical, was “Waitress: The Musical” always the musical in the script?
Laura Hankin had put “Waitress: The Musical” in her screenplay as a placeholder. She wanted to write an original musical to go along with the script, but she was using “Waitress: The Musical” to show how the musical would exist within the film.
Then, when Jordan first read the script, he said to Laura that it should be “Waitress: The Musical” because it’s so perfect. She then said she secretly really wanted to use it the whole time, but didn’t know what the rights situation would be. So that was hers from the beginning, and I think it’s so brilliant. She did such a good job of weaving the story of the musical and the music into Sophie’s life, her world, and what she’s going through.
In the “Stargirl” films, music was also such a big part as well, and then obviously “Miss Stevens” was inspired by your time as a teacher. Why do you think you continue to be drawn to these films about creative kids going through a lot? So many of your films focus on that aspect of coming of age.
I think we’re all still that creative kid going through stuff and trying to figure it out. I feel really seen by those movies, and I love it when young people tell me that they do, too, and that other adults can relate to it, too. There’s something so elemental and so magnetic about a coming-of-age story. Even though Sunny’s character, Sophie, is a teenage girl, I think if you’re doing a good job, everyone can feel seen by her journey and her discovery as she is learning, screwing up, and figuring it out. As I said, as a former high school teacher and now a mom, I love what young people have to say and to teach us.
And honestly, the thing that I feel most proud of is when a young person tells me that a movie of mine made them feel seen, or that they learned something from it, or that they got something from it. Because I do think that so many adults telling those stories get it wrong, as you said, and fall into the cliché, or they make it completely dark and edgy and maudlin. I really try to create these worlds that feel authentic and these characters that feel authentic for young people, but again, I think anyone can connect with them, too.
DON’T SAY GOOD LUCK. (L to R) Melanie Lynskey as Elizabeth, Matan Friedman as Caleb, Sunny Sandler as Sophie, Eltan Friedman as Ethan and Max Greenfield as Ted and in Don’t Say Good Luck. Cr. Jaclyn Martinez/Netflix © 2026.
With this film, you also have interesting adult dynamics, like with Sophie’s mom, played by Melanie Lynskey, and her own mother, played by Bebe Neuwirth. They clearly have very different ideas of how to parent. So you end up with sort of three layers of how people process things, and specifically how women process things. Can you talk about crafting a family unit with Bebe, Melanie, and then Sunny?
Melanie Lynskey was my first and only choice for Elizabeth. She was the one for me, and thank God she said yes because I really couldn’t imagine anyone else in the role. She’s just so extraordinary. And then Bebe Neuwirth was literally my hero when I was growing up. I actually dressed as her in “Chicago” for Halloween one year when I was in high school.
Then Sunny is literally hands down one of my most favorite actors I’ve ever worked with. She is so talented and so special and so hardworking. So juggling these three generations and these three stories and these three different perspectives was great because I had such incredible star power from mother to daughter to granddaughter. It was amazing.
And then you have Steve Buscemi playing a grandfather!
This was his first time playing a grandfather.
I loved the way the relationship between him and Sophie slowly revealed itself as well. Was that something that was always in the script?
It was always in the script, but the grandfather in the original script was a smaller character. When Steve Buscemi signed on to do it, who has known Adam [Sandler] and Sunny forever and worked with them a bunch, we knew we needed to do more with the character. So there were some newer scenes once he was cast because we really wanted to deserve and earn the fact that he was playing this character. A lot of those scenes were written explicitly for Steve, which is so cool.
He’s one of those actors that it doesn’t matter how big the role is, it doesn’t matter what the film is, he brings so much of himself to every role.
He’s so wonderful, and it was such an honor to work with him. He’s so lovely, and as you can imagine, such an incredible presence on set. He brings so much pathos even to those little moments.
Adam Sandler’s been a producer now for at least a decade with his company Happy Madison and these films that he’s been making with Netflix. How did this film end up with Happy Madison?
Olivia Blaustein, who was our agent at the time, although she’s now a manager, brought Laura’s script to Jordan and me, and then it was her idea to go to Sunny. She’s really the magic fairy dust behind all of this. We thought it was a brilliant idea, because we had seen Sunny in “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.” So we went to her first, and we had this wonderful meeting. I’ve spent a lot of time with a lot of teenagers, and she’s an amazing teenager, truly. After she was attached to the movie, Adam said he wanted to come on and produce with us and take it to Netflix.
Working with him, he was like my entire bucket list. He and Laura Dern. There’s a reason he is one of the most beloved and prolific storytellers and characters in our entire industry. He is so special, and there’s no one else like him. He was involved from start to finish in every aspect of the filmmaking. I feel so privileged that I got to learn so much from him. He worked with us on the script. He’s super involved in casting. He’s on set every day. He’s in the edit room every day. He helped choose our first look image and worked on the poster and the trailer. He cares so much and is so detail-oriented. And, of course, he wrote some of the funniest jokes in the movie. But he also wrote one of the most heartbreaking lines in the movie.
He starts from a place of family and works with his family. Jordan and I also start from a place of family. So bringing our two families together was incredible. His wife Jackie [Titone] was also a producer on the movie. She’s incredible. Working with Happy Madison was a really unique and special experience. It was this one big happy family.
DON’T SAY GOOD LUCK. (L to R) Steve Buscemi as Dale and Sunny Sandler as Sophie in Don’t Say Good Luck. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026.
This is your sixth film as a director, and you are about to make your seventh film in just about a decade. It’s unfortunately very rare for women to get so many films made and off the ground so quickly. What has it been like in this tough industry, getting to make seven films, and really keeping your voice throughout them all?
It is crazy, and it’s also crazy because there was a four-year break there during COVID and the strike and all of the shifting of our industry. I made my second Disney movie [“Hollywood Stargirl”] in 2021, and then didn’t make another movie until “Don’t Say Good Luck” here in 2026. I feel like I should have made even more by now.
This industry is hard, especially for women; it’s even more of a challenge. It’s hard getting a movie made. Period. As the industry is changing, it’s only become more and more rare. There was a minute where so many streaming movies were being made by all of these different companies, and that’s obviously changed.
I think for me, though, being a writer and always writing to make something has been helpful. There are spaces in our industry where people are writing to write, and I think I’m always writing to make. I think that has a lot to do with it. I think about what people are looking for, and I keep budget, realism, and production in mind when I’m writing. I try to stay really focused on getting things made.
Also, building relationships is important. We have a really special relationship with Disney. We made several movies with them. We’re developing something else with them now. I am really grateful that we had this experience with Adam where he brought us to Netflix, and now we’re making another movie with Netflix.
Also, not for nothing, I happen to be married to who I think is one of the best young producers. He’s just so driven and works so hard to bring these movies into fruition. So I’m incredibly lucky. I tell any filmmaker who’s going to work with him that they’re lucky to have him in their corner because he fights for all the right things, pushes things through, and gets the movies made.
Are there any films directed by women that have inspired you as a filmmaker, or just that you think are really cool and maybe not enough people have seen?
Elaine May was very formative for me, and also Nora Ephron. I’m about to go make my first rom-com, so I am revisiting all of her work. Also Nancy Meyers, as a writer as much as a director, is such an inspiration to me. “Baby Boom” is one of my favorite movies. For Nora Ephron, “Heartburn,” and then Elaine May, like literally everything: “A New Leaf,” “Mikey and Nicky,” “Ishtar,” “The Heartbreak Kid.” I just think she’s incredible.
Her movies get funnier every time you watch them because she’s so smart that there’s just something else you notice every time you rewatch her films. Solely as a screenwriter, too. “The Birdcage” is one of the funniest movies ever written.
Those are all women who are also writers, and that is part of what inspires me so much about them: they were creating their own stories at the time when that wasn’t very easy. It’s still not easy now; I can’t even imagine how they did what they did back then.
What do you hope people will take from this film into their own lives?
I hope that it can show them, remind them, or teach them, if they don’t already know it, that art and having a personal outlet for whatever you are going through is so important. In Sophie’s case, obviously it’s singing and performing. A creative outlet can help you get through anything. I hate when people say, “It will get better” or “You will get through this,” although you can get through this, and it can get better, especially if you look to your community and you look outside of yourself and find that outlet that can quite literally save you.
On my sets I talk a lot about how important safety is to me, and I used to say “We’re just making a movie. It’s not a war zone. It’s not an emergency room. Everybody can move slowly enough that everybody stays safe.” But then I think about that episode of “The Studio” where Seth Rogen’s character says, “We are saving lives, you know.” Obviously, safety is still incredibly important to me on my film sets, but it really changed my perspective. I’ve had people reach out to me over the years about my film.
A few people told me that certain films of mine quite literally saved their lives or made them hesitate in whatever demons they were dealing with. I think that’s a really important thing to remember: Yes, we are not doctors in an emergency room and we are not soldiers on a battlefield, but there is a place in the world where art can truly make a difference. So, I hope that is something that people feel when they watch this film.
- Silhouettes and Warnings: On Reading Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” On the Exact Day When It’s Set (August 4, 2026)
The events of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” occur today: August 4, 2026.
Like so many dates in science fiction, this one probably seemed far away when it was chosen, but once it was finally upon us, it passed like all days.
This morning, I re-read the story, which is sent in Allendale, California, in the last house left standing after a nuclear war. Bradbury doesn’t come out and tell us the cause was nuclear war. He lets us figure it out through his descriptions of the place: “The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.”
I first encountered “There Will Come Soft Rains” in the fourth or fifth grade, when I was a fledgling reader of science fiction literature. That’s old enough for a precocious child to read many Bradbury stories, but perhaps not this one. When I read it, in the late 1970s, the Cold War between the USA and the former Soviet Union was starting to heat up again, after several years of what was called detente. At school there were nuclear drills. We’d go into a basement, huddle in an area without windows, and shield our heads with our arms. The events of the story scared me because they envisioned what I was afraid of.
But the story itself scared me, too. It wasn’t like other Ray Bradbury stories. There were no people in it, just an AI system that had some humanoid characteristics but wasn’t a person, plus a dog. And it moved with a ruthless inevitability. Even though it seemed as if the absolute worst thing had already occurred, the story hadn’t hit bottom yet.
Bradbury formed many a writer’s consciousness, and conscience. He was one of the foundational English-language science fiction writers, in the pantheon with the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, and Harlan Ellison. Bradbury wasn’t interested the type of world building that’s honored in science fiction today: tediously prosaic, a spreadsheet in prose form. His novels and short stories were called science fiction, but might’ve been more fantasy or fable. Bradbury usually treated science fiction trappings as a shortcut to get the reader where he needed them to be. Think of The Martian Chronicles, a so-called “fix-up novel” composed of 15 Bradbury stories set on Mars. His version of the red planet has a breathable atmosphere, blue hills, and canals, and is mainly an imaginative space where the fiction equivalent of one-act plays can be set.
There was a substrata of science fiction buff that didn’t consider what Bradbury did to be science fiction. In an appreciation of Bradbury published after his death in 2012, Slate contributor John Plotz wrote, “Bradbury’s rocket ships were not souped-up fighter jets. Instead, they were the latter-day descendants of Joseph Conrad’s sailing ships: You traveled on them not so much to encounter adventures (‘Look, Buck, another Alien!’ ‘Shoot him!’) as to think about what the encounter might mean (Wait, who’s really the alien here?). His Mars was not an arid red desert, it was filled with towns where enigmatic old ladies puttered around on the same kinds of charming but pointless errands little old ladies do in Marcel Proust’s Combray.”
Bradbury seemed be of two minds on the matter, proudly claiming himself as a science fiction writer while also distinguishing himself, Plotz wrote, as “just about the only American science fiction writer to claim, proudly, the label ‘fantasy’ for his books.”
However you classified it, Bradbury’s work routinely did something that many of his esteemed peers could never attempt: it moved you. I doubt anyone came away from an Asimov or Clarke story weeping cathartically, however wondrous their visions were.
“”I’ve often been accused of being too emotional and sentimental,” he once said, ‘ ‘but I believe in honest sentiment, and the need to purge ourselves at certain times, which is ancient. Men would live at least five or six more years and not have ulcers if they could cry better.”
Bradbury’s best stories could make you cry, or look over your shoulder in case something wicked was coming. His fiction moved readers as a poet or songwriter might, through the sound of his chosen words and the way they flowed, stopped, and changed direction; and the images, which were so symbolically charged that they could bypass rational thought and reactivate that Anthropocene era forager inside us that’s delighted by rainbows and scared of thunder.
“There Will Come Soft Rains” is possibly the greatest example of Bradbury’s ability to summon the uncanny mainly with descriptions of panoramas, man-made objects, and the occasional nonhuman being, such as the dog that shows up to find its former caretakers, barking in desperation. “The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud.”
Like those episodes of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” that claim a permanent spot in viewers’ imaginations—such as “The Eye of the Beholder,” “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” and “Time Enough at Last”—Bradbury’s masterpiece has a twist and a lesson. The twist is small-scale and cosmic: the coup de grace that finally brings the house down is accidental, caused by the wind blowing a tree bough through a window, toppling a bottle of solvent onto a stovetop, which has been turned on by the AI system in anticipation of a family dinner. It’s very “Twilight Zone,” but years before that show debuted. As in “Time Enough at Last,” which also revolves around nuclear war, the protagonist (in this case, the house) thinks they’ve gotten through the worst of it, only to be undone by some mundane and random misfortune.
As for the message: “nuclear war is should be avoided no matter what” seems self-evident now. But it wasn’t in 1950, five years after the United States became the first (and so far, only) country to use nuclear weapons against a civilian population, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since that day, the militaries of the world’s most prosperous nations had been drawing up plans to inflict proportionate atom bomb damage on whatever foe attacked them (assuming they weren’t the ones that shot first) while protecting high-level officials and enough citizens to maintain a bare-bones government and resurrect society.
Bradbury saw through that nonsense. In “There Will Come Soft Rains,” there’s nothing left but charred landscapes, the remains of living beings, and one miraculously preserved house. The house eventually dies, too. The message under the message is, I think, something like, “Don’t assume you’ll be the exception for whatever reason—wealth, power, connections, the latest technology, your own supposed cleverness. No one will be spared.”
I also think it’s possible to read this story as a more generalized cautionary tale (even though Bradbury said he hated cautionary tales) that was spurred by the threat of atomic warfare but provokes other associations. There’s a touch of the ancient tale of Atlantis, destroyed with floods and fire by the god Poseidon as punishment for the Atlanteans’ corruption, depravity, greed, and insatiable desire to conquer other lands (Athens, specifically). Plato formalized the story as a warning that empires could fall.
Bradbury might’ve been thinking of Plato in connection to the nuclear arms race, a rivalry perpetrated by colonial powers and driven, like so many ill-fated and grandiose schemes, by hubris. And what is the nuclear bomb but the ultimate expression of hubris? “I am become death, destroyer of worlds,” Robert Oppenheimer said after seeing the first mushroom cloud—and not in celebration. The power to incinerate cities in a single blow, long ascribed only to gods, was now an option for the species that invented bloodletting, the cholera belt, and the electric tablecloth.
Readers might also think about the stories of the Titanic, the Hindenburg airship, and the old World Trade Center, all of which were touted as the biggest-ever examples of a particular kind of thing, and a testament to the cleverness and ambition of the human race. The AI system in Bradbury’s story is capable enough to continue running every aspect of the house even after society is reduced to cinders, but is incapable of understanding that the rituals are for naught. “Fire, fire!” the alarm system helplessly screams, as if the house itself has ceased to be what it actually was and become a living creature itself—one that had been whistling through the graveyard, so to speak, ever since the bombs fell.
The title is a tribute to the title of a poem by Sara Teasdale published in 1918, the year before the signing of formal agreements ending World War I, and shortly after Germany started its spring, 1918 offensive, which made much of the world worry there was no end in sight.What I take from it is that we imagine human affairs to be the most important thing on the planet, but they are only large- and small-scale movements of a species that’s one element in an ecosystem but deludes itself into thinking it’s the only one that matters. The poem starts with a parenthetical, ‘(War time)’. The first half describes a few of nature’s minor splendors (swallow, frogs, plum trees, robins) before delivering the knockout blow.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor treeIf mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,Would scarcely know that we were gone.
- Fantasia 2026: Wrapping Up (August 4, 2026)
And so the doors close on another year of the Fantasia International Film Festival—my seventh or eighth year covering in general, and the third covering for this site (and, blissfully, in person). It’s always a surreal experience to be back in Montreal each year, seeing the same faces and fellow critics I’ve admired and called friends, or even worked with as editors and employees (Horror Queers co-host Joe Lipsett, who used to edit for me at The Spool) and coworkers and publicists, albeit from afar. (Of course, it’s also nice when fellow Chicagoans accompany me to the fest; looking at you, Dede Crimmins of Rue Morgue.)
But Fantasia lasts so long, and I can only really be there for one week out of the whopping two-and-a-half, which means the latter part of my journey is often spent reflecting on what I’ve seen, catching up on what I couldn’t see in person, and doing so much writing. But mostly, this has been a year of growth for me: These weeks happen to fall on some pretty bittersweet anniversaries, and there are a few places in Montreal that are colored with the pain of those memories. It’s fun, but can be taxing, and I lean on loved ones (including my spouse, whom I’m lucky to get to accompany me each year) to get me through the harder moments.
Each year I go, it gets just a bit easier; the halls of the hotel I stay at don’t feel quite as haunted with the echoes of anguished phone calls from now-broken friendships, or glimmers of best friends now long since passed. Hell, I watched the moment Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race on Canadian news channels my first year there. It has been, as the French-Canadians presumably say, un montagnes russes.
For as emotional as the fest gets, though, there’s always the movies; I’m always so struck by how genial and scrappy Fantasia gets. Sundance, Cannes, etc. are all prestigious festivals, and you’ll see the stuff there that ends up becoming awards fodder, or even box-office hits, months down the road. But Fantasia is a celebration of the scrappy, the scary, the endearingly local, true working-class filmmaking at work from artists all around the world (and, most charmingly, in Montreal itself) just looking to cobble together some money and make something work. The Louise Weards and Alice Maio Mackays and Adams Families of the world aren’t raking in A24 dollars for their works; they just want to express something, and will throw together whatever financing they can muster from crowdfunding, patrons, or even their own personal savings just to put something together they can screen in a repurposed lecture hall at Concordia University. And it’s so often worth it.
I’ve been happy with the films I’ve seen here and the experiences I’ve had, and I wish I had time to give all the pictures I witnessed the space they deserve on these here pages. But here are some that deserve mention:
“Insectacy”: “I don’t want to make love. I want to be eaten alive.” Sadie (Tirion Healy) can’t get off unless she feels insects crawling all over her body, which is maybe the most succinct way I can describe Angus Silver’s dreamlike, kinky debut. There’s something of the Czech Weird Wave in Silver’s stately, folkloric tale of an antisocial nurse slowly coming undone (or metamorphosed?) by her unconventional desires; he captures Healy’s enigmatic visage not unlike Jaroslava Schallerová in “Valerie and her Week of Wonders.” It’s darkly funny, occasionally to the point of anti-humor, but through all of its deadpan approaches, it shows a very radical agency toward the desires of its protagonist, and centers her desires in a way that feels very empowering.
“Home Bodies”: Locked-room sci-fi horror flicks are my catnip (See my irrational love for Vincenzo Natali’s “Cube”), and Casey Walker’s high-concept premise seems tailor-made for me. The film centers on a pair of young twins (Ian and Emma Ho, from the final season of “The Expanse”) who’ve been raised their whole life in an isolated bunker-like smart home, nourished only by the food, water, and entertainment provided by the computer-like voice of their “Papa” (Walker).
But their quiet equilibrium is disturbed by the arrival of a mute, teenage-looking android called “Pal” (Ess Hödlmoser), whose provenance and purpose threaten their delicate balance. Love the scrappy production design and the central performances; there’s something here about the social isolation of COVID kids during lockdown, as well. But the film doesn’t do as much with the premise as I’d like, and it’s let down by a final act that offers solutions that are a bit too predictably neat and tidy. (Shame about that credits font, too; it screams “1990s PC space combat simulator game,” and it’s barely readable.)
“I Love Paris”: If you’re looking for something to scratch that “What We Do in the Shadows” itch, with an added dash of “Bones and All” and maybe “Euphoria,” Nicky Murphy’s “I Love Paris” is a welcome balm. Where “The Vampire Lestat” injects vampirism with a big dose of glam rock, Murphy’s mockumentary-style film imagines a young, hopeful Billie Eilish type: Aminata Thiboult’s Paris, a young, brash pop musician who’s still struggling to get into festivals, and sees her recent love bite just another tool in her arsenal to achieve the fame she truly hungers for.
Murphy and Thiboult (who co-write) take us on a whirlwind tour through Paris’ underground nightlife scene, capturing its own innate nocturnal rhythms while Paris and her rapidly growing entourage look for new necks to open and new contacts to further her career. Thiboult is so very magnetic in all her laid-back recklessness; it’s a commanding performance that draws you in with each tossed-off excuse or frustrated roll of the eyes. Vampirism and the attention economy have hardly ever felt so intertwined as here.
“Tight Lettuce”: Now this one surprised me, a sobering but winsome addiction dramedy from Harrison Houde, who adapts a real-life story of a friend’s lifelong efforts to help his father overcome his addictions and self-destructive spirals. It’s the kind of tale that would feel pat and overly sentimental in the wrong hands; here, with a small crew, modest aims, and the cultural specificity of its Quebec setting, there’s something magical here. Think “Beautiful Boy” in reverse, with a caring, empathetic son (a soulful Dakota Daulby, who co-writes) staying close to his father (Emmanuel Bilodeau) as he smokes crack and does fentanyl and turns everywhere he lives into a dump.
Houde’s command of his cast is supreme here, teasing out gentle, lived-in performance from all of his actors. The real standout here, though, is Bilodeau, offering a real warts-and-all performance of a man who gets people to ignore his addictions with his irrepressible charm, grinning through yellow-stained teeth, pain barely contained in his wrinkled, drug-ravaged face. His gravelly voice, sounding somewhere between Québécois Gru and Larry David, also offers some of the most unusual, invigorating line readings I’ve heard in a minute.
