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After watching Vanessa Kirby (with the always delightful Pedro Pescal) in the latest mediocre Marvel outing, "Fantastic Four: First Steps", which is a good cast trapped in an inert story, we followed up with "Night Always Comes" on Netflix to see more of Kirby's formidable talent. This film was grim, gripping, and stressful, dropping us into the life of a woman trapped in the death spiral of the American working class. Kirby's Lynette is a fully realized creation: hustling, bargaining, and clawing for a better life with every choice shaped by the impossibility of choice, echoing Aileen Wuornos's bleak logic about doing what you must when hope is scarce. Portland's cityscape is shot with a stark, lived-in eye, and Jennifer Jason Leigh delivers another perfectly shabby deadbeat in a small but potent role. By the end, Lynette's hard-won escape feels like a redemption well earned in this raw, damning indictment of the myth of social progress in the U. S.

"The Paper" is the newest sitcom spun out of "The Office" universe, this time set at the Toledo Truth Teller, a scrappy local paper absurdly housed alongside a toilet paper company. It's bemusing, entertaining, and full of oddball characters you'd probably never want to work with in real life. Domhnall Gleeson is a standout; we've been so used to him as a villain that seeing him lean into pure comic energy is a treat. Sabrina Impacciatore (excellent in "White Lotus" S02 in Sicily) plays Esmeralda, a character some IMDb reviewers are inexplicably hating on, but I found her a terrific bit of comic relief. People forget how cringe Michael Scott was in those early seasons before he grew on you. Add in Oscar, everyone's favorite grouchy gay holdover, and you've got a cast that's fun, strange, and endearing. Local news jokes abound, and the result is a worthy workplace comedy.

During a recent (blissful) getaway to Pattaya, I read Lawrence Osborne's novel "The Ballad of a Small Player", then we watched the film adaptation written by Rowan Joffé when we got home. I've long admired Osborne's writing and even met him once at a party here in Bangkok, where he lives and moves in a writerly orbit I occasionally gently brush against. His lush, atmospheric prose brings Macau's gaudy glitz vividly to life, and the film captures much of that dreamy decay. Colin Farrell is magnetic as a gambler drowning in bad choices and ghosts, literal and emotional. It isn't really a film about addiction; it's about trying to repair what can't be repaired, chasing redemption you don't even believe in. Bleak, beautiful, and hauntingly honest, it lingers like cigarette smoke in a casino at 3 a.m. If you're a fan of Farrell or slow-burn character studies, it's definitely worth a watch.