Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Despite clearly positive intentions, Rachel Lambert’s domestic drama Carousel (C) is a whole lot of the same. It’s nice to see Chris Pine in a dramatic role: here he portrays a sad dad coping with changes in the physician clinic where he works, with an anxious daughter (Abby Ryder Fortson) and a childhood love interest (Jenny Slate) re-emerging in his life. The plot just doesn’t spark and the dialogue doesn’t crackle as the film quietly observes the machinations of domestic life. Most confounding, the chemistry between Pine and Slate doesn’t manifest with much natural energy, and it’s unconvincing these lifelong connections had a palatable past relationship. Still, despite the inertia of this particular movie, Chris Pine’s presence in it should remind casting directors we want to see more of him challenging himself in future juicy roles.
Viewed as part of Virtual Sundance Film Festival 2026
Talk about men with a mission! J.M. Harper’s Soul Patrol (B+) is a moving documentary about a valiant recon team in Vietnam comprised of Black soldiers reuniting a half century later. It is enlightening and therapeutic for all involved, including this elite team’s wives endeavoring to pierce the veneer of bygone and often troubling memories. It is all the more poignant leveraging Super 8 camera footage captured by the Company F, 51st Infantry soldiers in action, many of them teenage innocents abroad facing adversity and experiencing a singular solidarity bonding them forever. The flashbacks are effective and in some cases quite tense as viewers learn the origins of the men and the challenges they faced on a variety of battlefields. Harper chronicles an abundance of history with craft and cunning, collapsing the past and modern day subjectively and with mastery. By the time the Blind Boys of Alabama’s “I Shall Not Walk Alone” plays as the heroes appear in modern day in the aisle of a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, it’s truly a stand up and cheer event.
