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Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

There are, it goes without saying, a lot of movies out there. And so even for someone like myself, whose job is just to stay on top of them, sometime a title slips by. I had not taken much notice of “Is God Is” before it opened last week without playing any festivals in advance, but the reviews and conversation around it grabbed my interest. Once I realized that Tessa Thompson and Janicza Bravo were involved as producers, I made sure to carve out time to see the movie this week. And am I ever glad I did.

The debut as writer-director for Aleshea Harris (adapting her own play), “Is God Is” is among the most exciting movies released so far this year. Kara Young and Mallori Johnson are absolutely electric as twin sisters who set out to find the estranged, abusive father who abandoned them after leaving them and their mother horribly scarred in a fire. There is a volatile unpredictability to the storytelling that gives it a fresh energy. I saw it at a more-or-less empty matinee, but I’m glad I did. Catch this in theaters while you can.

35 years of ‘T2’

Linda Hamilton in the movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

(Rialto Pictures)

As far as I’m concerned, James Cameron’s 1991 “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” is the quintessential summer movie. You can pay close attention or not, the special effects and action are amazing, the villains are sentient machines (shades of our AI-addled present) and it has a song by freaking Guns N’ Roses.

The main cast of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong and Joe Morton are all perfectly tuned into the movie they are making, full of chaos, mayhem and just the right amount of thoughtfulness. (Morton and Hamilton in particular give the film an unexpected soulfulness.)

To celebrate the film’s 35th anniversary, the American Cinematheque is screening the film in 70mm, 35mm, 3D and DCP at different venues on different days. (Check carefully, as there have already been some schedule changes.) The Academy Museum will show the film on Wednesday in 4K with visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren and special effects creator Shane Mahan present. The film is also playing the Vista in 70mm June 6 and 7.

In his original 1991 review, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Most of all, what makes ‘Terminator 2’ come alive in a major way is Cameron’s intuitive understanding of the mechanics and psychology of action films. Unlike many of the wanna-bes who find themselves in charge of pictures these days, this is one director who really knows how to direct. … Cameron flamboyantly underlines, for those who may have forgotten, why the pure adrenaline rush of motion is something motion pictures can’t live for very long without.”

Lena Dunham before ‘Girls’

David Call and Lena Dunham in the movie “Tiny Furniture.”

(Joe Anderson / IFC Films)

Lena Dunham recently published her second memoir, “Famesick,” a portrait of her rise to cultural prominence and media ubiquity and subsequent retreat from it, which makes this a perfect moment to revisit a key component of her initial ascent, the micro-budget 2010 feature “Tiny Furniture.” Made when Dunham was in her early 20s, the film is a deadly accurate portrait of post-collegiate ennui, shot partly in her parents’ NYC apartment, and remains fresh and startlingly insightful.

The Eastwood Performing Arts Center will be screening the film Friday and Saturday. The film is showing along with the “Welcome to Bushwick a.k.a The Crackcident” episode of Dunham’s series “Girls.”

I profiled Dunham at the time, having first encountered her at SXSW the year before when she was there with her film “Creative Nonfiction.”

“That movie is so personal,” Dunham said of “Tiny Furniture” during an interview from the New York production office of the pilot for what would become “Girls.” “It’s like I wrote it, I directed it, I star in it — if you don’t like the movie you don’t like me.”

With the lacerating self-awareness that made her a star, she added, “And I also understand there is something essentially unappealing about ‘girl makes movies about being a loser and then gets un-loserly things to happen to her.’ It’s a little absurd.”

More onscreen Bob Dylan

Rupert Everett, Fiona Flanagan and Bob Dylan in a production still for 1987’s “Hearts of Fire.”

(Skinner / Mirrorpix / Getty Images)

It was just a few weeks ago that we wrote about a program of Bob Dylan live concert footage. In honor of his 85th birthday, the American Cinematheque will be putting on another program of two oddball rarities from his long career.

Rarely screened in theaters, the 2021 film “Shadow Kingdom,” directed by Alma Har’el, was originally released to a pay-per-view streaming site. Though it purports to be a performance at the Bon Bon Club in Marseille, France, the film was actually shot on a soundstage in Santa Monica. The musicians on screen are not playing live and are not even the same musicians who played on the prerecorded tracks.

The whole thing is very confusing in a very Bob Dylan way, but also kind of incredible. With its Dust Bowl “Twin Peaks,” last-nightclub-on-Earth vibes and spare, haunting arrangements of many Dylan classics that he rarely plays at his own concerts anymore, it is a truly one-of-a-kind document.

The same could be said of the 1987 film “Hearts of Fire,” directed by Richard Marquand (who also helmed “Return of the Jedi!”) and screening in 35mm. In a rare acting turn, Dylan plays a reclusive musician who takes a young singer (Fiona) under his wing, only to have her fall for a pop star played by Rupert Everett. Let’s charitably call Dylan’s performance singular as he delivers every line as if he isn’t sure why he is in the movie. It’s still fascinating.

Kurosawa’s late masterpiece

Mieko Harada in Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 epic “Ran.”

(Rialto Pictures)

One of the highlights of the Academy Museum’s ongoing series on Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa will be this weekend’s 35mm showing of 1985’s “Ran,” a retelling of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” shifted to 16th century Japan. Playing in 35mm in the big David Geffen Theater, it’s a chance to see a truly epic-scaled film under ideal conditions.

Reviewing the movie on its initial release, Kevin Thomas wrote, “‘Ran’ is a heroic saga of human destiny, a war movie with some of the greatest battle scenes in the history of the cinema, a costume drama of the utmost magnificence — and a crackling good samurai movie chock full of swordplay and palace intrigue.”

David Fincher’s secret soft heart

Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried in the movie “Mank.”

(Netflix)

The last couple months have been a real feast for Fincher-heads out there, with high-profile screenings of “Seven,” “Fight Club” and “Zodiac.” Now, David Fincher’s 2020 film “Mank” will be playing this weekend at the Vista. Because it came out during the pandemic (and was launched by Netflix), the film has only ever played a limited number of theaters, let alone in 35mm, which should do wonders for its black-and-white photography.

From a screenplay by Fincher’s father Jack, the film stars Gary Oldman as writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, working on the script for “Citizen Kane” with Orson Welles. Amanda Seyfried gives a vibrant performance as actor Marion Davies, who attempts to save Mankiewicz from his own worst instincts when it comes to her own paramour, mogul William Randolph Hearst.

In his review Justin Chang called the movie “very much a story about class divides and clashing egos, outsiders and insiders, striving and ambition, creation and authorship, and the thrill and loneliness of being the smartest guy in the room. … The off-kilter rhythms feel both immersive and agitated, as if Fincher were trying to both hypnotize you and jolt you awake with his lustrous Old Hollywood homage.”

New this week

Director Boots Riley, photographed in Los Angeles in May.

(Ian Spanier / For The Times)

• Amy Nicholson and Joshua Rothkopf finished out their time at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. (The awards will be announced over the weekend.) Amy took a look at what many have felt to be a weak program this year, while Josh spoke to Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin, whose sci-fi action film “Hope” has a cast that includes Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander as space aliens.
• I spoke to Boots Riley, a musician and political activist turned filmmaker whose new movie is “I Love Boosters.” Riley maintains a deep sense of political commitment in his work, one which he does not feel he has to betray by also making things that are entertaining and enjoyable.
• The first new “Star Wars” movie in theaters since 2019, Jon Favreau’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu” is now playing. As Robert Abele put it in his review, “The brand is back together for ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu,’ which is a movie, a hoped-for franchise revival, a fourth season of sorts and an affable throwback. But it’s never quite riveting enough as canon or fodder to supplant anyone’s memories of [insert favorite “Star Wars” film here].”

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

This newsletter is about going to the movies, of course, but it’s about writing and reading about movies, too. And so it was exciting news this week that Film Comment, the venerable but shuttered publication that helped foster cinephilia in America, would return as a quarterly online publication.

A complete archive is now available online, going all the way back to the earliest issues in 1962. Looking for landmark writings by Manny Farber, Paul Schrader, Richard Corliss, Amy Taubin, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Kent Jones or countless others? It’s all there and well worth digging into. I began my career as an intern at Film Comment, publishing some of my own earliest pieces, and still consider it a North Star for writing about movies. Its return is most welcome.

Agnès Varda’s bruising brilliance

Sandrine Bonnaire in the 1985 movie “Vagabond.”

(Criterion Collection)

Though she became better known for her free-spirited, pixie-ish persona later in life, French filmmaker Agnès Varda was also capable of the bruising emotions of 1985’s “Vagabond,” arguably her greatest fiction feature and winner of the Golden Lion at Venice and the César for best actress for star Sandrine Bonnaire. Opening with the lead character found dead in a ditch, the film flashes backward to piece together her life from the memories of others, creating a fragmented portrait of an enigmatic young woman’s life.

Mezzanine will screen the film on Saturday at 2220 Arts + Archives, followed by a conversation between art critic Megan O’Grady and former Times staffer Carolina Miranda. Writing about the film in 1986, Sheila Benson said, “Just how Agnes Varda has kept ‘Vagabond’ from being a monumental downer is interesting, but she has. It is haunting. It is melancholy … but ultimately, beyond its central tragedy, it is an exhilarating film, the sort you leave burning to talk about with friends.”

A cartoon comes to life

Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall in the 1980 movie “Popeye.”

(Paramount Pictures / Getty Images)

It is one of the most deranged credit blocks imaginable: an adaptation of “Popeye” directed by Robert Altman, produced by Robert Evans, with a screenplay by Jules Feiffer, music by Harry Nilsson and starring Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall. When it was first released in December 1980, it was seen as too weird for kids and too naive for adults, but it has since been reconsidered as a unique snapshot of intersecting talents — a strange, wonderful, one-of-a-kind movie.

Vidiots will screen the film on Saturday afternoon with actors Paul Dooley and Donovan Scott, who played J. Wellington Wimpy and Castor Oyl. In our original 1980 review that is more positive than one might expect, Charles Champlin wrote, “Its difficulties arise not from a lack of ambition and innovation but from excesses of them.”

Neil Young + Devo = gloriously weird

Neil Young in the 1982 movie “Human Highway.”

(Shakey Pictures)

Neil Young’s place as a singer-songwriter and musician is unassailable — he’s an irascible, restless troubadour. But his sidebar work as a filmmaker, typically under the name Bernard Shakey, has had more sporadic and unpredictable output.

Young’s 1982 film “Human Highway” is probably the pinnacle of his work as a director, starring Young himself in an offbeat story of a small community in the shadow of a nuclear power plant. Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Devo and even former Times music critic Robert Hilburn all appear. Now Instant Image Hall will be screening the film on Saturday and Sunday along with a selection of Devo music videos in celebration of an exhibition at the MutMuz gallery.

After Young premiered a new cut of “Human Highway” a decade or so ago, I somehow found myself sitting across from him at a diner on a rainy midnight in downtown Toronto. (This job does have its moments.)

“My films are not super commercial, but they mean something to me,” Young said.

An Oscar-winning debut

Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger and Jack Nicholson in the 1983 movie “Terms of Endearment.”

(Paramount Pictures)

Part tearjerker, part family drama and part comedy, 1983’s “Terms of Endearment” trademarks a certain bittersweet tone that is still just pure magic. The story of a mother (Shirley MacLaine) and daughter (Debra Winger) across many years of ups and downs in their relationship, the film was the feature debut for James L. Brooks as writer-director and won five Oscars, including three for Brooks. The Academy Museum will play the film in a new 35mm print on Sunday afternoon.

When the movie came out on 4K disc in 2023, I spoke to Brooks about it. He talked about how even though it does have moments of great emotional weight, it was intended to play with a lighter tone overall.

“The whole thing was to make it as a comedy,” Brooks said. “The whole thing was to clock laughs. You had to, in order to do it right. And of course, once the audience leaves and it has its afterlife, it’s a drama because people are watching it alone. But I swear to you, in the theaters it was a comedy.”

A ’90s noir ripe for rediscovery

Jason Patric, left, Bruce Dern and Rachel Ward in the 1990 movie “After Dark, My Sweet.”

(Kino Lorber)

Set in the Coachella Valley with the woozy feel of a day drunk and a sense of uneasy menace, 1990’s “After Dark, My Sweet” is an adaptation of the novel by pulp icon Jim Thompson, directed by James Foley.

Jason Patric, then only 23, stars as Kevin Collins, known as Collie, a former boxer who escapes from a mental institution and is now just drifting. He falls in with Fay (Rachel Ward), an enigmatic, lonely alcoholic widow, who in turn introduces Collie to a shady man known as Uncle Bud (a delightfully sleazy Bruce Dern). Soon Collie is ensnared in a plot to kidnap a sickly rich boy that immediately goes off the rails.

On Tuesday at Vidiots, there will be a screening of Patric’s personal 35mm print of the film — a gift he received some 20 years ago and has never watched before. (It is said to be in pristine shape.) Along with a video introduction from actor and filmmaker Alex Winter, there will be a Q&A afterward with Patric moderated by critic and scholar Travis Woods, who contributed a commentary track to a recent Australian Blu-ray release of the film.

Patric organized the screening as a tribute to director Foley, who died in May 2025 at age 71. “After Dark” landed in between Foley making “Who’s That Girl” with Madonna and the David Mamet adaptation “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Among his other credits are “At Close Range,” “Fear” and the last two “Fifty Shades” movies.

“He was a good friend of mine at the time,” says Patric on a recent phone call from Santa Monica. “I know this was his favorite movie and it was closest to him. It’s the only movie that he had actually written that he directed. And I thought the best way to do that is just to show the movie.”

Patric, who says Collie is his favorite character in a career that also includes “The Lost Boys,” “Rush” and “Your Friends & Neighbors,” was first given the script and in turn gave it to Foley; developed it further together, trying to retain the language of Thompson’s novel. (The screenplay is credited to Foley and Robert Redlin.)

“It’s really a subjective piece of filmmaking,” says Patric. “So as Collie’s figuring things out, the audience is figuring things out.”

In her original review of the film, Sheila Benson wrote that “Collie is one of those roles actors lust after, the damaged dreamer, maybe dumb, maybe dangerous, and Patric demolishes the conventions of the role with breathtaking skill.”

“After Dark, My Sweet” landed just ahead of the Tarantino-inspired crime movie boom of the mid-’90s, alongside such noir-influenced precursors as Dennis Hopper’s “The Hot Spot,” John Dahl’s “Kill Me Again” and Stephen Frears’ Thompson adaptation “The Grifters.”

“This is just such an exciting film to want to reintroduce to audiences,” said Woods in a call. “And to get the opportunity to see this film on the big screen, which most people haven’t had that opportunity for 36 years, it’s just one of those really cool, really only in Los Angeles cinematic moments.”

New this week

Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, photographed at the Sunset Marquis in April.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

• The unlikely duo of James Cameron and Billie Eilish co-directed a 3D concert film drawn from Eilish’s 2025 tour, “Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D).” Film critic Amy Nicholson and pop music critic Mikael Wood traded their thoughts on the movie.
• Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel is among the world’s most accomplished filmmakers and the true crime tale “Our Land (Nuestra Tierra)” is her first documentary. Carlos Aguilar spoke to Martel about it.
• “Mad Bills to Pay” expands to multiple Laemmle venues after a weekend run in the Vidiots microcinema. Carlos Aguilar spoke to director Joel Alfonso Vargas about portraying the Dominican American community in the Bronx.

MOSCOW — President Reagan, standing within the fortress walls of the Kremlin with a smiling Mikhail S. Gorbachev at his side, said Tuesday that he no longer sees the Soviet Union as “the evil empire.”

“You are talking about another time, another era,” he said in an exchange with a handful of reporters clustered around a 39-ton cannon dating from 1586 that stands in a plaza in the center of the Kremlin.

Reagan was disavowing one of his most famous indictments of the Communist state–a description of the Soviet Union that seemed to symbolize his ultraconservative, anti-Communist views when he used it seven years ago in one of his first presidential speeches.

The change seems to reflect an evolution in his views on the Soviet Union. It has been noticeable in his statements and policy decisions for some time but has emerged with dramatic vividness here in the President’s face-to-face encounter with Moscow.

The question about the “evil empire” statement came near the end of a walking tour of the Kremlin grounds and fabled Red Square, with all its memories of celebrations of the Bolshevik Revolution and May Day parades of Soviet military power.

Explains His Position

Asked if he still considers Moscow to be the seat of evil, Reagan answered, “No.” Surprised, reporters asked why.

Reagan hesitated, leaned his head to one side and thought a bit. Soviet leader Gorbachev tried to prompt him. “Are you happy with that concept?” he asked in Russian. The President then responded by saying that the phrase belonged to an earlier time.

Reagan recanted even though Gorbachev had told a crowd of Russians that he did not mind Reagan’s criticisms over the years. “We are so critical of our own country that even the President’s criticisms are weak,” the Soviet leader said. “We know what our problems are.”

In some ways, the President’s walk across Red Square was just as symbolic as his rejection of the concept of “the evil empire.” It would have been hard at the outset of his presidency to conceive of Reagan taking in the sights of Red Square and enjoying them. But on Tuesday the President said:

“I have always heard of Red Square. Mr. Gorbachev was kind enough to show it to me. And now I have seen it and set foot on it. It was much more impressive than I had imagined.”

Reagan’s determination to show how his mood had changed in recent years was evident later in the day when he spoke with writers and artists at the House of Writers in Moscow. In a short but warm speech that described his philosophy of acting and how it had helped prepare him for the White House, Reagan described the importance in the theater of avoiding rigid, stereotyped thinking and instead understanding the unique character of each situation and individual.

No Straitjacket

“Pretty soon,” he said, “at least for me, it becomes harder and harder to force any member of humanity into a straitjacket, into some rigid form in which you all expect to fit.

“In acting . . . you become in an intimate way less taken with artificial pomp and circumstance, more attentive to the core of the soul–that part of each of us that God holds in the hollow of his hand and into which he breathes the breath of life.”

Whatever view he may once have had of Soviet leaders and citizens, he could not be accused now of keeping them in a straitjacket. There was little doubt about the President’s warm feelings for many of them now, and this could be seen on his morning walk.

After meeting for more than an hour in the Kremlin, Reagan followed the Soviet leader on a tour of the grounds and Red Square. As the two men walked slowly, Gorbachev, with sweeps of his hand, pointed out the turrets, churches, palaces and other buildings. A cluster of aides and a long line of limousines trailed behind.

Red Square, an enormous plaza alongside the northeast wall of the Kremlin, is known to the outside world as the site of the massive demonstrations of Soviet military power on the annual May 1 celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution. But it has existed for five centuries, and its name has nothing to do with communism.

‘Red’ Means ‘Beautiful’

The plaza has been known as Red Square for three centuries. When the square was first named, the present-day Russian word for “red” meant “beautiful.”

Gorbachev pointed out the sights of the square: St. Basil’s Cathedral with its famous onion domes, the huge GUM department store, the Historical Museum and the Lenin Mausoleum that contains the body of V. I. Lenin, the first Soviet leader.

“We are not going to change anything here,” Gorbachev said as the two leaders stood outside the tomb. “There is no perestroika needed.”

Reagan made no attempt to enter the mausoleum to honor a man who has become a god-like figure in the Communist world, and Gorbachev made no attempt to try to persuade him.

The exchanges of Reagan, Gorbachev and some of the Russians in the square left little time for true sightseeing, but they were consistent with both leaders’ efforts to surround the tough negotiations over arms control with an aura of better feeling.

Need for Dialogue

At one point, Reagan and Gorbachev, talking with some Soviet citizens, turned philosophical about the need for face-to-face dialogue.

“What we have decided to do,” the President said, “is to talk to each other and not about each other, and that’s working just fine.”

Gorbachev used a Russian proverb to make the point: “If arguments are at the boiling point, then truth evaporates. So we should have dialogue.”

During this conversation, Reagan put his arm around Gorbachev and said, “I’m glad we are standing here together like this.”

In talking with one group of Russians, the superpower leaders said they had discussed annual student exchanges. “I have a dream,” the President said, “that if all young people of the world could get to know each other, it would be a better world.”

‘Grandfather Reagan’

At another point, a woman holding a small child told the President, “We want our children to live in peace.” Gorbachev then took the child from the mother’s arms and told the child, “Shake hands with Grandfather Reagan.”

Reagan took the child’s hand in his.

After the walk in Red Square, Gorbachev led Reagan back within the Kremlin walls, directing him to a small group of journalists and camera crews waiting near the huge cannon, which had never been fired. Gorbachev evidently had an announcement for Soviet television.

“We have received several important telegrams to tell the Reagans that newly born boys and girls are being named Ronald and Nancy and Reagana,” the Soviet leader said.

But the foreign journalists were interested in other issues. “Do you still believe you are in the evil empire?” Reagan was asked. “No,” he replied, surely and quickly.