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    ‘Migration’ Review: Is It a Road Trip if You Have Wings?

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    An animated feature written by Mike White (“The White Lotus”) stars Awkwafina, Elizabeth Banks and Kumail Nanjiani as birds, but it never fully gets off the ground.Classic cartoon wisdom deems that ducks are brash and brazen creatures. See Donald and Daffy, ill-tempered anthropomorphic animals who aren’t afraid of making a display of their displeasure.Mack Mallard, the waterfowl patriarch voiced by Kumail Nanjiani in the animated family picture “Migration,” is not exactly a shy bird himself. He displays a rapid-fire volubility when telling his kids a bedtime story at the movie’s opening. But he’s very timid in one respect. The emphatic point of the bedtime story is: Never leave the pond. It’s the only place that’s safe.But when his kids, Dax and Gwen, encounter a flock flying from their home in upstate New York to Jamaica for the winter, Mack’s wife, Pam (Elizabeth Banks), takes the kids’ side.Even when the highways are in the sky, it’s not an American comedic road trip without a crusty older relative coming along for the ride, and this is where Uncle Dan (Danny DeVito) comes in. The Mallards spend a lot of time trying to avoid being eaten, first by a couple of grotesque herons, and then in a Manhattan restaurant run by a thoroughly obnoxious chef.The movie was directed by Benjamin Renner, but the dominant artistic voice is that of the screenwriter Mike White, the creator of the satirical HBO series “The White Lotus.” White is vegan, which explains the insistent meat-is-murder angle throughout, although considering that “Lotus” is so disdainful of tourism, the perspective on travel here may be surprising. The stellar voice cast also includes Awkwafina as a tough New York City pigeon and Keegan-Michael Key as a captive parrot.This Illumination-produced feature is preceded by a “Minions”-adjacent short called “Mooned,” which overexerts itself trying to approximate a vintage Looney Tunes gag-fest. In the end, “Migration” moves along at jet speed while often feeling labored.MigrationRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bottoms’ and the Tricky Tone of a Horror-Indie-Drama-Action-Teen-Sex Comedy

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      The director Emma Seligman took a big leap from her buzzy feature debut, “Shiva Baby.” But this is the film she wanted to make all along.In “Bottoms,” a pair of teenagers start a fight club in their high school gym. The twist: The pugilists are lesbians, and they are whaling on each other — in the guise of self-defense — as a way to attract the hottest cheerleaders. (It’s a satire on many levels.)The writer-director Emma Seligman had the idea and sold the script — to Elizabeth Banks’s production company — even before her feature debut, “Shiva Baby,” put her on the indie filmmaker map in 2021.“I really love teen adventure movies,” Seligman said in a phone interview, “and giving queer kids the chance to be in that story.”Seligman, 28, grew up in Toronto in a family of film buffs. “Everyone here is always just talking about movies,” she said. By 10, she was a judge at a children’s film festival; later she got involved with the Toronto International Film Festival. She studied the subject at New York University, where she met the two stars of “Bottoms” — Rachel Sennott (who co-wrote the film) and Ayo Edebiri, a breakout actress from “The Bear.” (Seligman has an eye for talent: “Bottoms” also features Nicholas Galitzine, of “Red, White & Royal Blue,” as a quarterback boyfriend; and the former N.F.L. player Marshawn Lynch as a teacher with questionable methods.)“Shiva Baby,” about a young woman who encounters her sugar daddy at a shiva, was based on Seligman’s experience of Jewish life and on her college milieu. “I went on one sugar date,” she said. “Not everyone was doing it, but so many people were doing it to the point where it was so normal.” (It wasn’t ultimately her thing.) “Bottoms,” though it exists in a heightened world, is also personal. “It’s just wanting to see yourself,” said Seligman, who is gay. As she recalled Banks telling her: “You can’t underestimate how much young people want to see themselves onscreen.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Shiva Baby” had a small cast and essentially one set. “Bottoms” has an ensemble and multiple locations. How did you prepare to scale up?The jump was quite challenging. I knew there were going to be a million and one lessons I was going to have to learn, but I just didn’t know what they were going to be. It’s like knowing you’re about to get hazed but not knowing how.I tried to have conversations with as many directors as I could to get their advice — Adam McKay, Greg Berlanti, who directed “Love, Simon,” and Atom Egoyan. It was helpful, but most of them were like, “You’re not going to know until you’re just doing it.” I went to [Elizabeth Banks’s] house before we shot, and we talked about costume and hair and improv — it wasn’t her giving didactic advice. It was me asking: “As a director, how do you prepare to do this?” And everyone was like, stop asking questions. Stop getting in your head.Edebiri and Sennott in “Bottoms.” Seligman said she “wanted to satirize the way female friendship is often shoved down our throats onscreen with teen girls.”via Orion Pictures IncRachel Sennott has starred in both your films. What clicked with you two?Neither of us were in the industry or came from industry families. Her level of ambition and organization and her intense work ethic was really inspiring. It’s a wild thing to be like, “I’m going to devote all this time to writing two screenplays, when there’s nothing in the world telling me that this will work out.” Her energy was: “It’s not crazy, we will do it, and we will make a living.” It’s rare for someone to want to see you succeed as much as they want themselves to succeed.How did you envision Ayo Edebiri in this role?I met Ayo at a party before I met Rachel. I had a vague idea of “Bottoms” in my head. And I was like, “Oh, if I ever made that high school movie, that girl would be so funny in it.” It’s been really incredible to watch her grow into the success that she’s become. It’s not a surprise at all to me, but I feel a little bit like I have street cred because I’m like, “Yeah, I knew.” She’s just so funny. We finished “Bottoms,” and “The Bear” came out a month later and her world changed.Where did you want to focus your satire?The way queer teen characters are always so innocent in teen movies. Whether they’re being traumatized or finding love, they’re so sweet and often don’t have any sexual thoughts at all — or if they do, they’re not expressing it, or they’re not talking in a vulgar way. And we also wanted to satirize the way female friendship is often shoved down our throats onscreen with teen girls — characters that are like, “I love you, queen! You’re the best thing ever!” We wanted to make fun of that.“Bottoms” builds on a lot of the teen movie canon, starting with “Heathers.” What else did you use as a reference?We pulled from that era of the ’90s — I guess “Heathers” is the ’80s — but that kind of female, campy, driven, high school and murder [comedy].“Bring It On” was a big reference. That movie strikes such a beautiful tone of campiness while caring deeply about the characters — it’s right on the edge. “Pen15,” definitely — looking at the show about this beautiful female friendship, that was so ridiculous and stupid at the same time, and so relatable. That came out right around when we started writing. “Wet Hot American Summer” was a big one. There’s not murder in that. But they do get addicted to heroin for the day. And Liz is in it, which is also great.How did you find the right tone?It took a long time to figure that out. I don’t think Rachel and I originally intended to have the audience care about the characters that much. We actually felt like in female comedy, there’s too much stress on, “Care about these girls” and “Care about the friendship.” We wanted to give the female characters a chance to be so [terrible] that you’re not supposed to care about them at all. But I think over the years, as we would get notes from our producers or the studio, we let up a little bit.I really think tone is always the trickiest thing to master. And I would love one day to do a movie that’s just one genre, to see if it’s any easier than a horror-indie-dramedy-action-teen-sex-comedy, or whatever we did. More

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      ‘The Beanie Bubble’ Review: Caught in a Fad Romance

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      This dramatic comedy about Beanie Babies, starring Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks and Sarah Snook, arrives at the tail end of a summer of corporate biopics.John Updike once described writing as a matter of “taking a deep breath, leaning out over the typewriter and trying to drive a little deeper than the first words that come to mind.” Unfortunately, the writing in “The Beanie Bubble,” a dramatic comedy based loosely on the true story of the short-lived Beanie Baby toy craze, sits on the surface.This is a movie that uses stock footage of the Bill Clinton inauguration and the O.J. Simpson trial to demonstrate that it’s the 1990s, and which, to show a flashback to the ’80s, has a character ask, “Did you pick up any Tab?” It deploys every storytelling cliché in the book, from “you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation”-style voice-overs to pat last-act monologues that reiterate the themes.The story of Beanie Babies is not especially interesting: In 1993, Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis), the creator of Beanie Babies, introduced the plush animal dolls for $5, and then, owing to a confluence of opportune internet savvy and a nascent secondary market on the web, they became coveted for their scarcity.“The Beanie Bubble” contrives to add intrigue by embellishing various personal dramas behind the scenes at the company, including infidelities, a fraught love triangle and the ethical quandaries of three women who worked with Warner and in some cases were involved with him romantically: Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), Sheila (Sarah Snook) and Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan).Each of these women has exactly one defining feature — they’re eager to get rich; they love their children; they know a lot about computers — and they mention this feature every single time they’re onscreen. The directors, Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash, Jr., make several embarrassing efforts to cast them as feminist superheroes at odds with the cluelessly patriarchal Warner, which might have been more effective had they been fleshed out as anything more than paper-thin Girl Boss caricatures. As it stands, the celebratory montages that herald these women’s professional triumphs are about as rousing as a Sheryl Sandberg TED Talk.Much of the film’s running time is dedicated to graphics detailing Beanie Baby sales figures, archival news footage showing mall shoppers going crazy and oversimplified explanations of Beanie-related milestones and achievements, such as how the company became an early pioneer of e-commerce.These elements are, of course, reminiscent of “Air,” “Tetris,” “Flamin’ Hot” and “Blackberry,” among other recent making-of marketing pictures. It’s not the fault of “The Beanie Bubble” that it arrives at the tail end of a summer of similar corporate biopics, but seen after so many other marketing making-of dramas, the familiar beats of novel invention to overnight phenomenon can’t help but feel all the more hackneyed.Like those films, “The Beanie Bubble” attempts to extrapolate some more substantive social meaning from what is otherwise an amusing but ultimately insignificant moment in time. The best it can do is to conclude, feebly, that there will “always be another fad,” with references to cryptocurrency and NFTs. This conclusion is hard to square with the movie’s earlier claim that the Beanie Baby craze ushered in “a new era of capitalism,” but that paradox is typical of its shaky approach. In any given moment, the movie is either overstating the importance of its subject or trivializing it.Can we learn anything from this? “The Beanie Bubble” proves that there will always be movie fads, but some of them will be worse than others.The Beanie BubbleRated R for strong language and some mild sexual content. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Cocaine Bear’ Review: She Never Forgets Her Lines

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      The greatest joke of this blood-spattered horror-comedy from Elizabeth Banks is that it exists.When you were in high school or college, did you know someone who would stay up late, get stoned and wonder what would happen if you got a pet high? That person went to Hollywood. How else to explain “Cocaine Bear,” a chaotic, blood-splattered major studio horror-comedy whose greatest joke is that it exists.The title, which has drawn comparisons to the equally functional “Snakes on a Plane,” says it all. The year is 1985. After a pratfall in a plane leads a smuggler to drop a ton of drugs on the mountains of Georgia, a bear discovers it, snorts it up and turns into a mix of Tony Montana and Jason Voorhees.Directed by Elizabeth Banks from a script by Jimmy Warden, this movie arrives in theaters with considerable anticipation, based on the title and its terrific trailer. For an audience desperately looking for a good time, they’ll find it. More discerning fans of junk might see an opportunity missed.The Grisly Tale of ‘Cocaine Bear’The blood-spattered horror-comedy directed by Elizabeth Banks is based loosely — very loosely — on real events.Review: “For an audience desperately looking for a good time, they’ll find it,” our critic writes. “More discerning fans of junk might see an opportunity missed.”An Apex Predator Star: The film is inspired by a real story, but Banks and the screenwriter, Jimmy Warden, gave their furry lead a different ending.The Back Story: In 1985, a 175-pound black bear found and ingested cocaine in a Georgia forest. Here’s the true story behind the movie.A Taste for Human Goods: The strange but true tale that inspired the film is the result of an unusual confluence of events. But wild animals consume just about everything.At its best, “Cocaine Bear” has the feel of an inside joke. It consistently invites you to laugh at it. The producers are clearly aiming to capture the lightning in a bottle that “M3gan” pulled off earlier this year, another Universal horror-comedy whose slick special effects elevated its B-movie conceit. Whereas “M3gan” steered clear of too much onscreen violence, angling for a PG-13 rating, “Cocaine Bear” wallows in it. Viewers with a taste for tastefulness (those weirdos) will balk. But gorehounds, myself among them, appreciate a studio playing around in the muck. Inspired by the slasher films of the 1980s, not to mention great horror-comedies from that era like the “Evil Dead” films, Banks grasps the comic potential of the gross-out.In the blunt spirit of the title, let me get right to the point: Two severed legs, two fingers shot off, a decapitation, some splattered brains, a grotesquely contorted wrist and all kinds of guts and blood and human innards. Banks doesn’t always dole out the viscera artfully (better to follow a leg with an arm, not another leg) but she commits to the too-muchness necessary for comedy.While it beats out “M3gan” in levels of gruesomeness, “Cocaine Bear” doesn’t have that film’s mean streak or moments of acid weirdness. Or its steadily building momentum. In fact, “Cocaine Bear” too often feels like a one-joke movie, stretched thin. Gifted dramatic actors are tasked with thankless roles, including Keri Russell as a protective mom, Isiah Whitlock Jr. as an irritated cop with a bland side plot involving a pet; and by far the best, Margo Martindale as a love-hungry park ranger, who takes more punishment than anyone. The plot twists can seem irrelevant, including a betrayal that has the impact of a soft sneeze. And the script becomes dutifully sentimental at the end with characters forced to say things like “You’re more than a drug dealer. You’re my friend, my best friend.”Nothing comes close to upstaging the bear, an animal perfect for this genre-blurring role, because it moves so seamlessly in the public consciousness between cute (teddy, Yogi) and terrifying (“The Revenant”). At one point, Cocaine Bear sniffs a hint of white powder and emerges with renewed strength. A gutsier movie might have drawn this out and given us an ursine Popeye, with cocaine as spinach.As fun as this movie can be — one chase scene in an ambulance makes up for a few rote jump scares — there are frequently hints of a better one inside it. The best version is a raucous, transgressive comedy, the kind they supposedly don’t make anymore. Banks does seem to get away with some giddy, dangerous moments, like a scene in which two preteens try to do cocaine. It gets a few laughs, but leaves plenty more on the table.The actor who does not is a snarling, gun-toting Ray Liotta (in one of his final roles) as a desperate man trying to regain cocaine for his cartel bosses. But making the drug dealer the one truly villainous character gives “Cocaine Bear” the morality of an after-school special. Early in the movie there’s a clip of the old “This is your brain on drugs” ad, a reminder that the story takes place against the backdrop of the drug war of the 1980s, a catastrophic policy failure with severe human ramifications that we are still living with. That “Cocaine Bear” is cautious about touching on this theme is understandable, maybe even preferable. But it’s also symptomatic of a studio sensibility that seems only willing to risk so much.Cocaine BearRated R for brains on drugs and brains on floor. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      The Real Story of ‘Cocaine Bear’

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      Nearly 40 years after a 175-pound black bear found and ingested cocaine in a Georgia forest, the drug binge has inspired a movie.The trailer for a new movie called “Cocaine Bear” was released on Wednesday, and the film’s title is not a metaphor or clever wordplay: The movie is about a bear high on cocaine.The bloody spree that follows the bear’s cocaine binge, as depicted in the trailer, is fictional, but the story about a high bear is very real. Its lore is likely to grow with the movie, which was directed by Elizabeth Banks and is set for a Feb. 24 release.“Cocaine Bear” stars Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and Ray Liotta, who died in May, in one of his final film roles. It depicts the bear’s drug-induced trail of terror and the victims he leaves behind.The real story is less bloody.It all began, as you might guess, in the 1980s. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced in December 1985 that a 175-pound black bear had “died of an overdose of cocaine after discovering a batch of the drug,” according to a three-sentence item from United Press International that appeared in The New York Times.A United Press International item on the cocaine bear appeared in The New York Times in December 1985.“The cocaine was apparently dropped from a plane piloted by Andrew Thornton, a convicted drug smuggler who died Sept. 11 in Knoxville, Tenn., because he was carrying too heavy a load while parachuting,” U.P.I. reported. “The bureau said the bear was found Friday in northern Georgia among 40 opened plastic containers with traces of cocaine.”The bear was found dead in the mountains of Fannin County, Ga., just south of the Tennessee border.“There’s nothing left but bones and a big hide,” Gary Garner of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation told The Associated Press at the time.Dr. Kenneth Alonso, the state’s chief medical examiner at the time, said after an autopsy in December 1985 that the bear had absorbed three or four grams of cocaine into its blood stream, although it may have eaten more, The Associated Press reported that month.Today, the very same bear is said to be on display in Lexington, Ky., at the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall. The mall said in an August 2015 blog post that workers there wanted to know what happened to the bear and found out it had been stuffed. The blog post says the stuffed bear was at one point owned by the country singer Waylon Jennings, who kept it in his home in Las Vegas, before it was delivered to the store. (The New York Times could not independently confirm this account.)What happened to the bear in its final days, or hours, after the cocaine binge is a mystery, but the origins of the cocaine are not.Mr. Thornton was a known drug smuggler and a former police officer. He was found dead the morning of Sept. 11, 1985, in the backyard of a house in Knoxville, Tenn., wearing a parachute and Gucci loafers. He also had several weapons and a bag containing about 35 kilograms of cocaine, The Knoxville News Sentinel reported.A key in Mr. Thornton’s pocket matched the tail number of a wrecked plane that was found in Clay County, N.C., and based on Mr. Thornton’s history of drug smuggling, investigators guessed there was more cocaine nearby, The News Sentinel reported. The investigators searched the surrounding area and found more than 300 pounds of cocaine in a search that lasted several months.They also found the dead bear. More

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      ‘Call Jane’ Review: Abortion History That’s Being Repeated Now

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      A fictionalized drama about the Jane Collective, a clandestine group that helped women secure safe, illegal abortions before 1973, is of the moment.When I first saw “Call Jane” in January, I filed it away as an appealing if familiar period piece, more dusty than revelatory. It’s a fictionalized drama about the Jane Collective, a real-life clandestine Chicago group that, starting in the late 1960s, helped women secure safe, illegal abortions, stopping only in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision. Watching it again recently, four months after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, it felt like a different film. History can do that to a movie — and to a critic.The aesthetic qualities of “Call Jane” haven’t changed since my first viewing, of course. It’s an intimate, fine-looking work that has a lightly grainy visual texture (it was shot on film) and the usual era-appropriate swinging hair, skirts and the like. The director, Phyllis Nagy, making her feature film debut, has embraced unobtrusiveness as a style, perhaps to soft-pedal the material. She doesn’t overuse close-ups or indulge in irritating contemporary habits: The camera doesn’t hover pointlessly, there are no self-aggrandizing crane shots. The cast is as appealing as I remembered it; the awkward scenes still jar as do the upbeat music choices.Written by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi, the movie focuses on a fictional character, Joy (a solid Elizabeth Banks), a genial pregnant housewife with a nice husband, a teenage daughter, a pleasant home and not much else going on. Shortly after the movie opens, Joy’s doctor tells her that she has a heart condition that will probably kill her unless her pregnancy is terminated. Because abortion is criminalized in Illinois, she is forced to petition a hospital board to obtain one. At the meeting, her doctor makes the case for her — she brings a tight smile and some home-baked goodies — but the all-male board votes against providing the procedure, deeming that there’s a 50 percent chance Joy will survive the pregnancy.Joy is an appealing character, but she’s also about the most anodyne emblem for abortion rights imaginable: a pretty lady with a life-threatening condition who wants to carry her pregnancy to term but can’t. Nagy tries to push the story beyond its cautious framing, but it’s tough going. She wrote Todd Haynes’s “Carol” — about two women in love in the early 1950s — and here shows a similar interest in exploring the smooth surfaces of repression. The first time that you see Joy, she is floating through a hotel like a soap bubble. Chicly dressed with a complicated upsweep that evokes Hitchcock’s blondes, she moves as if in a trance all the way through the front doors, where she sees people rioting. It’s 1968, and youth is in revolt.Joy soon is too, if slowly. She begins pushing back and breaking free after the medical board’s initial ruling, first by claiming to be suicidal so she can obtain a therapeutic abortion. She keeps pushing, and when she discovers the Jane Collective, the movie settles into a liberation story about women, emancipation, autonomy and power. Before long, Joy has joined the activist ranks of a vibrant organization made up of gutsy, opinionated, mouthy law-breakers, most notably Virginia and Gwen — the spiky tag team of Sigourney Weaver and Wunmi Mosaku — characters who amp the energy considerably. No more nice girls, well, almost.“Call Jane” squeezes a lot into its two hours, tethering Joy’s coming-into-consciousness arc to gobs of family drama, a touch of thriller-style intrigue (the Jane activists are always dodging the cops), legal questions, the larger political landscape (enter Nixon) and internecine feminist debates. Both Virginia and Gwen have to explain far too much, with each delivering chunks of exposition that are clearly more for the benefit of the movie’s audience than for any of its characters. Gwen, as the pre-eminent Black member in the collective, carries an additional burden because she has to deliver a righteous lecture about race and intersectionality, a lesson that the filmmakers should have heeded better themselves.If the references to race and class feel ritualistic, it’s because the movie largely centers on one woman, a focus that’s profoundly at odds with the political radicalism of the Jane’s collectivism. The real organization used Jane as a code name, as a generic moniker for a group of radicals, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, who were risking everything, including prison, to help women. Some of that background filters into “Call Jane,” but the movie’s embrace of the traditional heroic narrative is exasperating and does a disservice to the history it relates. To borrow the title of a relevant book, it’s “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”So, should you see “Call Jane”? You bet. And not just because it’s satisfying to watch Banks, Weaver, Mosaku et al as feminists fighting the patriarchy with wit, intelligence and medical know-how. This is a story that needs to be told, again and again. The Jane Collective has been the subject of several documentaries, including the very engaging recent one, “The Janes,” but in the years between Roe’s passage and overturning, fictional movies have largely avoided abortion and specifically avoided it as a means of female emancipation.“Call Jane” helps modestly correct that sorry history by showing women organizing, raising consciousness and helping one another at great personal cost. In many ways it’s a process movie. It’s also eerily of the moment. Because, by the time I saw the film a second time, its vision of direct action no longer looked musty, but instead resembled the new underground abortion networks operating in states that have banned abortion. It looked like now.Call JaneRated R for language and cannabis. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters. More

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      Elizabeth Banks Swears By Rob Reiner and Finger Sandwiches

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      The actress, Hollywood power player and host of a new sex and sexuality podcast discusses classic sitcoms, summer at Tanglewood and the revelation that is canned wine.“I’ve never met somebody who said, ‘Gosh, my parents talked to me about sex too much,’” Elizabeth Banks said.Banks, 47, an actress, writer, director and producer, is a mother to two boys. And as one of them neared puberty, she knew she would have to start talking soon. To prepare, she created “My Body, My Podcast,” an intimate, chatty series that Audible released on July 29. Its six episodes explore sex, sexuality, gender and body image with guests including Laverne Cox, Lindy West and Banks’s own mother. Peggy Orenstein stops in to discuss hookup culture; Jameela Jamil puts the diet industry on blast.Banks, speaking from Dalkey, Ireland, where she is shooting the comedy “Cocaine Bear,” refers to the podcast as her “continuing sex ed” and the most personal work she has ever created. Like all of her recent projects — the “Charlie’s Angels” reboot, the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, “Shrill” — “My Body, My Podcast” centers women’s stories, without apology. “I’m trying to be quietly revolutionary,” Banks said.Huddled in a cozy sweater and drinking a glass of warm tea with a few ice cubes tossed in — “They don’t have iced tea here. It’s not a thing,” she sighed — she discussed the art and ideas that influence her current work and the cultural experiences and artifacts that bring her pleasure. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Girls and Sex” and “Boys and Sex” by Peggy Orenstein These are books in which Peggy Orenstein interviews young people about all of their sexual experiences. I read “Girls and Sex” with my book club, and we were all a little bit devastated at how Peggy presented just how little fun any young women are having. It was a total wake-up call for me as a woman, as a parent, as an advocate and as an artist. It really inspired me to create “My Body, My Podcast.” Peggy followed it up with “Boys and Sex,” which I also read, which confirms that boys and men are desperate for connection and that the standards for them are just as insanely high as they are for girls and women.2. Female Athletes I was sporty as a kid. I’m a sporty person. I just celebrate every single woman who undeniably reaches the top of her field and then uses that platform to make the world better for the rest of us. For me, it started with Billie Jean King fighting for Title IX and pay equity. U.S. women’s soccer, Naomi Osaka, Simone Biles, Serena Williams. Even right now with the Olympics, these are women who are doing the absolute most and best with their female bodies. And yet those same bodies are still up for discussion and dissection.3. Tanglewood Tanglewood is a music venue in Lenox, Mass. I grew up in Pittsfield, a factory town just north of Lenox. Looking back, I can see how aspirational it was to go there as a kid. I got to listen to John Williams and the Boston Pops. It was fancy music for fancy people. True bliss for me is laying on the lawn on a warm summer night bathed in music, watching the stars with family and friends by my side.4. Jackson Browne, “Running on Empty” It was a favorite album of my aunt Barbara, Auntie Babs, who passed away during the early Covid lockdown. I started listening to honor her. She introduced me to that album on a road trip that she and I took together, and the album is all about a road trip. There’s a comforting feeling of nostalgia that I get listening to it.5. “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari “Sapiens” is a book about the history of humanity across culture. As a woman and a feminist, this book was an important reminder that we, as humans, just kind of decided that birthing and caring for babies was not as important as selling cows, tilling land, using weapons. So women don’t amass any of that wealth and power. This book clarified for me why I feel so strongly in my bones that reproductive rights are the basis for women’s equality.6. “Stand by Me” I love Rob Reiner’s films. I aspire to a filmmaking career like his. This one is an incredible treatise on the damage of toxic masculinity, which were not words when this movie came out, and the obvious antidotes, which are connection, support, brotherly love. My husband and I are raising boys, and we want them to feel connected to us, to their family, to their friends, to nature and to appreciate every day. All of those lessons are in that film.7. Nia DaCosta and Chloé Zhao There is this Hollywood narrative about men who make a small personal film that goes to a festival and then immediately get the keys to the kingdom, the big Hollywood job. The continuing narrative is that women either don’t want those jobs or can’t handle those jobs. Nia DaCosta and Chloé Zhao just busted that narrative all up. They made their personal films, and they also got the big jobs. Chloe’s doing “Eternals”; Nia is doing “The Marvels.” They’re being allowed to have ambition, which is very tricky for women in any industry. It’s that blatant ambition that inspires me the most. I want that.8. High tea I’ve recently rediscovered it, here in Ireland. Growing up, I would go to Boston and have high tea with my great-aunts. For me, it’s a scone with clotted cream and jam, finger sandwiches, petit fours, English Breakfast tea with a little milk and a sugar cube dropped in with real silver tongs. It’s something I love doing no matter where I am in the world.9. Canned wine We do so much hiking, biking, trails, lakes, rivers. And I just don’t really love beer. But I do love wine. A can of wine in the cooler floating down the river? It was like light bulbs going off. I saw how canned wine fit into my life immediately upon being introduced to it.10. Classic sitcoms David Wain, the writer-director on “Wet Hot American Summer,” we’re working on a project together right now. We just started talking about our appreciation for well-crafted jokes, starting with “I Love Lucy” and Jackie Mason. A well-crafted joke and the ability to deliver it, and the timing, it’s just something that is top of my mind as an artist right now. “Friends,” “30 Rock”? Those guys were perfect. More