By the time the groundbreaking HBO series The Sopranos aired its final episode on June 10, 2007, the medium had been transformed. During its six years on the air, The Sopranos changed everything about the way we watch and think about television and it marked the unofficial start of the era now known as Prestige TV, where television is thought of as highly as film, and the width and breadth of its content is as varied as the audience who watches it. And what would we have been without this whole new universe of television content last year, during a pandemic that forced us all into our homes, desperate for stories and escape. In more than a few ways, we have The Sopranos to thank for the caliber of shows that saved our lives in 2020.

The Sopranos broke the mold in so many ways, eschewing previously-standard ways of thinking and approaching television series. Because it was on cable and HBO desperately needed it, creator and showrunner David Chase could make the show he wanted to make, and that meant breaking all the rules. No more adhering to the rules of broadcast television, no more being slaves to the September to May season, the strict one-hour format, the 24-episode season. The first season of The Sopranos aired in January and the final episode in April, just thirteen episodes. The gap between seasons 4 and 5 was a year and a half, the gap between 5 and 6 nearly two years. (So we can thank David Chase for this long wait for the new season of Better Call Saul!) It was a new world, where the showrunners called the shots, had total artistic control, and ended it when they wanted to. Remember when Lost, one of the best shows on television, kept going and going and became laughable because it just didn’t know how or when to end? That’s because, on network television, on which Lost had the misfortune to be, if you have a good thing, you keep it going, as long as its successful, damn the story. When Chase announced he was ending The Sopranos because it was time, even though it was at the height of its success, it ended.

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There is much to admire about Titane, the Cannes Film Festival Palm d’Or Prizewinner from director Julia Ducournau. It is haunting, captivating, unique, and beautifully shot and acted. But it is also exceedingly disturbing, the kind of film that can only be appreciated by those who are ultra-committed to their cinephile status. Much like Ducournau’s first film, Raw, Titane is a twisted look at obsession, violent and flesh-filled, plumbing the depths of humanity’s darkest recesses. Don’t be fooled by the sexy poster, this film is as far from sexy as you can get.

The somewhat misleading publicity materials are not the only ways Titane fools its audience. Ducournou, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jacques Akchoti, puts literally four movies into one. The film begins as a glimpse into a dysfunctional family, then morphs into a serial killing spree, then turns into a heartbreaking examination of grief, all the while, in the background, sustaining a horror movie/sci-fi plot element that raises the stakes for everything else. Tonal whiplash is the least of our worries as we are taken through this mad journey via Alexia, a sociopathic woman who barely speaks, played by Agathe Rousselle (in her feature film debut). We are taken through Alexia’s story, first as a child who needs to have a metal plate inserted in her skull after a car crash, then as a sullen adult, still living at home, who is distant from her parents and paying the bills by modeling at car shows (and dancing seductively on those cars, but more on that later). When we soon realize that Alexia is a serial killer, and one who likes to commit her murders up close and very personal, our sympathies for her wear thin, and they disappear completely when, in an effort to hide from the police, she disguises herself to look like the 17-year-old version of a child who had disappeared ten years earlier. What she didn’t expect was to have the lost child’s father, played brilliantly by Vincent Lindon, show up and fully accept her as his lost son, Adrien, and take her home with him.

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As the world awaits the return of the groundbreaking Matrix film franchise in December, it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate the 25th anniversary this month of the release of Bound, the iconic debut film from The Wachowskis. While this low-budget, classic Hollywood-inspired neo-noir thriller may not seem to have much in common with the blockbuster science fiction masterpiece that was to come for the sibling directors, the artistry, themes, style and visionary genius all contained in this small gem of a film—easily one of the best films to come out of the last decade of the twentieth century—signaled that The Wachowskis were artists of immense talent and vision. Although the scale of their artistic ambition may not be easily seen in Bound, it can arguably be still considered the Wachowski’s most complete, most emotional and most personal work of their careers. And, for all it means to the world of cinema, Bound signifies even more as a representation of what art can mean in a much larger sense.

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We may not be around for it, but all signs point to a future where artificial intelligence will be able to fully replicate human thought and behavior. It’s only a matter of time. Robots are becoming more and more prevalent, and computers already are integrated into our lives (hi, Alexa), so it’s not such a large leap to someday have some sort of human-appearing replicant that is able to mimic or even replace us. Such a concept has been a plot device in Hollywood for decades already, with human-like robots who can act and think like us being the subject of drama in everything from Star Trek: The Next Generation and AI: Artificial Intelligence to Alien, Blade Runner, Westworld and Ex Machina, just to name a few. In most Hollywood portrayals of humanistic robots, there is something threatening just below the surface, or something goes horribly wrong and the evil androids must be destroyed. It is a natural human instinct to assume that human thought and behavior cannot be fully replicated in artificial intelligence and that only bad can come of it when we try.

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Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” is a key player in CODA, the new film from writer/director Sian Heder which kicked off the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Taking the song literally, it’s about seeing the world from different perspectives, and there is no better way to encapsulate CODA’s themes. In a time when our differences are continuing to divide us, Heder’s heartwarming film is about things that are eternally universal.

CODA refers to “child of a deaf adult,” and the film’s protagonist, Ruby, played winningly by Emilia Jones, is just such a person, the only hearing member of her deaf family, made up of father Frank (Troy Kotsur), brother Leo (Daniel Durant) and mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin). The family owns and runs their own fishing boat in rough-and-tumble Gloucester, Massachusetts, and they rely heavily on Ruby to be their connection to the world, as she interprets for them everywhere. But Ruby, a senior in high school, has pursuits and desires of her own, such as the crush on her class-mate Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), and her passion for singing, which makes her join the school’s choir club. Encouraged to apply to the prestigious Berklee College of Music by her supportive music teacher, played by Eugenio Derbez, Ruby must decide if she will pursue her passion or stay behind to support her family, whose business she fears may not survive without her.

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If there’s one thing that was made clear in this year’s hit Sundance documentary, The Sparks Brothers, it’s that Russell and Ron Mael, better known as the alternative rock band Sparks, best-known for their work in the ‘80s, continue to be unique and fascinating artists today. The critically-acclaimed documentary, by director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Baby Driver) revived an interest in the duo, whose quirky, iconic, ironic, subversive and poppy music has received somewhat of a renaissance, riding a wave of nostalgia for the decade of excess and eccentricity.

Timing is everything, because now, less than two months after the release of The Sparks Brothers in theaters, comes Annette, a new musical from visionary French director Leos Carax (Holy Motors), written by the Mael brothers, featuring more than 40 original songs by the duo. Nearly completely sung-through, Annette stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard as a celebrity couple who are dealing with the strains on a marriage that fame and success can bring. The only other significant cast member is Simon Helberg, who plays an admirer of Cotillard’s character. The rest of the cast is an ensemble, a chorus, if you will, who wander in and out, commenting and reacting to the story. Nothing about this film is cinematically traditional, it feels experimental while still maintaining a narrative structure. Is it weird? Yes. Is it amazing? Also yes.

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