With the latest collection of titles in the Figge Art Museum's Film at the Figge series, the Davenport venue will be screening international, award-winning works that deal with death, loss, and grief in unexpected ways, beginning with its September 29 showing of Departures, the acclaimed Japanese drama from 2008 that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

A couple weeks ago, in my review of The Invitation, I opened by saying that the fright flick felt like a bunch of different fright flicks – none of them good – rolled into one. Writer/director Zach Cregger's Barbarian feels a bit like that, too, except in this instance, the quality is significantly higher, and not all of the complimentary/competing movies are horror movies.

No one wants to get mugged, but I was delighted to have Three Thousand Years of Longing sneak up on me and knock me out.

Interestingly, in a weekend that saw the arrival of precisely zero new major-studio movies, the three local releases we did get all featured significant characters who earned a living through their podcasts, YouTube channels, and/or Instagram accounts. Once upon a time, on-screen professionals focused on careers in advertising and architecture. Now they're only focused on themselves. Eh, it's 2022. Guess that makes sense.