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.

While the remainder of this piece will kind of forced to be All About Me, allow me to raise a figurative champagne flute – figurative because it's actually a glass of chillable red I'll be raising – in acknowledgment of others.

Did you know that UFOs (unidentified flying objects) are now, instead, routinely classified as UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena)? Until seeing Jordan Peele's Nope, I had no idea – just as I had no idea that the writer/director/producer could so successfully harvest the Spielberg/Shymalan oeuvres for his specific needs, or that the image of a monkey staring directly into the camera lens could so thoroughly freak me out.

Barring only a few minor plot twists and one major (terrible) one, I certainly felt as though I had read both of these un-read books, considering that their movie adaptations come off as under-imagined page-to-screen transfers terrified of alienating their fans with anything approaching spontaneity, surprise, or the intrusion of real-world complexity. Only in the case of one film, however, does that prove to be a deal-breaker.