vox--2020-06-25--Money Talks: The friends who met raising money to feed Black Lives Matter protesters

A few weeks ago , Christina Wairegi , 29 , a cinematographer , and Tiffany Armour , 37 , a digital imaging technician , were complete strangers .
Their only connection was a mutual friend in the film industry who recommended that Tiffany followed Christina on Instagram .
Then , when the killing of George Floyd sparked worldwide protests , Tiffany saw that Christina was asking her friends over Instagram Stories to chip in so she could buy supplies for protesters .
Tiffany DMed Christina to donate $ 100 — and to offer up her van to help move water @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sites .
Neither were working with organizers or specific organizations , but were looking for ways they could help out .
The Brooklyn-based pair quickly became inseparable , texting every morning to find out where protests would happen , then going to grocery stores to fill Tiffany ’ s van with supplies .
Every night , Christina would keep a detailed spreadsheet of the money coming in via Venmo and Cash App — and tracked receipts on what they were spending .
After nine days , the pair raised $ 12,712.53 for supplies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute .
( A friend ’ s company then tripled the donation . )
Here ’ s how Christina and Tiffany became fast friends — and how they used the power of social media to fundraise a lot of cash during the current protests .
Christina : We met in person for the first time at a grocery store , and it was the second morning I started buying supplies .
Tiffany just volunteered ; I hadn ’ t even asked anyone to help !
I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ van would mean we could get more supplies out to people .
We just dove right in .
And then it just became Tiffany and I strategizing for like 10 hours every day .
Tiffany : What was so great about Christina is every night she did accounting .
She recorded every receipt , so you could track your dollars .
We wanted to be very honest and fair .
Christina : It was kind of like almost an accident , how much money we raised .
It started when I was talking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ d been at the memorial for George Floyd .
No one could really shake this feeling of wanting to do more .
And so Rachel and I started talking about buying some waters and handing them out .
We came up with the idea because in 2014 , I was protesting Eric Garner ’ s death , and I was really emotional while I was leading chants .
A really lovely person I ’ d never met before just happened to have extra waters .
He gave me one , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s a really small aspect that can have a really powerful impact .
That was over six years ago , and I haven ’ t forgotten it .
Tiffany : Especially in times like this , a lot of us are out of work .
A lot of us are upset with the system .
A lot of us are out there protesting , and some of us don ’ t have money for food while we ’ re out there .
It ’ s true .
The energy Christina has is incredible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to follow her lead .
Christina : I joked with Tiffany that I ’ ve never had so many white people hand me money !
I felt so responsible [ for it ] .
I also never dreamed that we would get as much money as we did .
We thought we ’ d get 60 bucks or something .
On the first day alone , we raised $ 3,140 .
Tiffany : Social media was a big part of it because it has the power to get your message to a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything , like shop or set up at a location , I would tell Christina , “ Let ’ s post this !
” And after showing people what we were doing , they wanted to give the money — I didn ’ t even have to ask .
Also , when you donate money to places , there ’ s often not a lot of transparency .
You hope the money is used for good , but maybe because ours was so social media-centric , we could show like upload pictures of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things we bought .
Our spreadsheet was getting live updates , and there ’ s photos of all the receipts .
We just wanted to be accountable .
Christina : A lot of people are out of work , especially a lot of our friends because we ’ re all artists , but it ’ s nice that people can give $ 1 , $ 5 , or $ 10 .
I made it super clear from the beginning that $ 1 buys one person a bottle of water .
So maybe you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but if you can give three bucks , you help three people .
And the math actually ended up being that $ 1 buys six bottles of water because water is that cheap .
The one thing I really never expected was that at the protests , people were just handing us twenties left and right .
Tiffany : Our main concern was getting supplies to the protesters while trying to prevent the spread of coronavirus and making sure everyone felt they had a place to go if they needed Gatorade or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : There were others [ handing out supplies ] , many with just what they could carry in backpacks .
The first day we walked several miles with protesters and marched .
As the operation got bigger , we started setting up at the speeches and we would flood the road at the start , making a line basically of people handing out supplies into the crowd to get to as many people as we could .
We were in different locations each day .
We did 16 marches in 10 days in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the crowds before we were handing out supplies , but rededicated myself to doing the work of support once all the money came in .
We had adults coming up to us crying that we were offering them free water and Cheez-Its .
Others were like , “ What organization are you guys ?
” And we finally got to a place where we just started saying , “ We ’ re just friends !
” Every step of the way there were incredible surprises that were so humbling .
We got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pathmark on Albany Avenue that they would send us to the front of the line and tell all the shoppers that we were essential workers buying things to give away .
And at the Super Foodtown on Fulton street , the manager got us free waters and free bags of ice multiple times .
The employees even helped pack the cars with us .
Tiffany : It ’ s inspiring .
Since doing this , I do want to volunteer more , especially in the film industry .
I want to go into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well and do a little film program .
I want to help out .
Christina : First of all , I ’ ll work with Tiffany on anything .
I love her .
I miss her .
While we were doing it , we would text each other first thing in the morning : “ What time are we meeting ?
” “ We got to get there to get XYZ.
” “ We ran out of Oreos too early yesterday.
” We always have strategies .
We ’ d have to wait @ @ @ @ @ @ @ posted where the marches would be and we ’ d make sure we got out on social and coordinated all the volunteers we could get .
We were in communication basically all day every day for , for eight or nine days .
Tiffany : I ’ ll work with Christina anytime !
We are so in sync .
There were times we didn ’ t even need to talk to each other .
We knew exactly what needed to be done .
Christina : Funny enough , on our last day we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of people had been working with us for like over a week .
When I said that I met Tiffany on Day 2 , people were shocked .
They really thought we ’ d known each other for years !
If you have a compelling story about how money comes into play in one of your relationships — whether with a partner , a friend , a sibling , a coworker — we want to hear about it !
Email alanna.okun @ vox.com and karen.turner @ vox.com with a little about yourself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

A few weeks ago, Christina Wairegi, 29, a cinematographer, and Tiffany Armour, 37, a digital imaging technician, were complete strangers. Their only connection was a mutual friend in the film industry who recommended that Tiffany followed Christina on Instagram.
Then, when the killing of George Floyd sparked worldwide protests, Tiffany saw that Christina was asking her friends over Instagram Stories to chip in so she could buy supplies for protesters. Tiffany DMed Christina to donate $100 — and to offer up her van to help move water, snacks, and PPE to protest sites. Neither were working with organizers or specific organizations, but were looking for ways they could help out.
The Brooklyn-based pair quickly became inseparable, texting every morning to find out where protests would happen, then going to grocery stores to fill Tiffany’s van with supplies. Every night, Christina would keep a detailed spreadsheet of the money coming in via Venmo and Cash App — and tracked receipts on what they were spending. After nine days, the pair raised $12,712.53 for supplies, and donated the $4,800 left over to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute. (A friend’s company then tripled the donation.) Here’s how Christina and Tiffany became fast friends — and how they used the power of social media to fundraise a lot of cash during the current protests.
Christina: We met in person for the first time at a grocery store, and it was the second morning I started buying supplies. Tiffany just volunteered; I hadn’t even asked anyone to help! I was overjoyed because having another person and a van would mean we could get more supplies out to people. We just dove right in. And then it just became Tiffany and I strategizing for like 10 hours every day.
Tiffany: What was so great about Christina is every night she did accounting. She recorded every receipt, so you could track your dollars. We wanted to be very honest and fair.
Christina: It was kind of like almost an accident, how much money we raised. It started when I was talking with my friend, Rachel, and we’d been at the memorial for George Floyd. No one could really shake this feeling of wanting to do more. And so Rachel and I started talking about buying some waters and handing them out.
We came up with the idea because in 2014, I was protesting Eric Garner’s death, and I was really emotional while I was leading chants. A really lovely person I’d never met before just happened to have extra waters. He gave me one, and it was like lifesaving. It’s a really small aspect that can have a really powerful impact. That was over six years ago, and I haven’t forgotten it.
Tiffany: Especially in times like this, a lot of us are out of work. A lot of us are upset with the system. A lot of us are out there protesting, and some of us don’t have money for food while we’re out there. It’s true. The energy Christina has is incredible, so it’s hard not to follow her lead.
Christina: I joked with Tiffany that I’ve never had so many white people hand me money! I felt so responsible [for it]. I also never dreamed that we would get as much money as we did. We thought we’d get 60 bucks or something. On the first day alone, we raised $3,140.
Tiffany: Social media was a big part of it because it has the power to get your message to a lot of people. Whenever we would do anything, like shop or set up at a location, I would tell Christina, “Let’s post this!” And after showing people what we were doing, they wanted to give the money — I didn’t even have to ask.
Also, when you donate money to places, there’s often not a lot of transparency. You hope the money is used for good, but maybe because ours was so social media-centric, we could show like upload pictures of us shopping and the cars full of things we bought. Our spreadsheet was getting live updates, and there’s photos of all the receipts. We just wanted to be accountable.
Christina: A lot of people are out of work, especially a lot of our friends because we’re all artists, but it’s nice that people can give $1, $5, or $10. I made it super clear from the beginning that $1 buys one person a bottle of water. So maybe you think it’s not a lot, but if you can give three bucks, you help three people. And the math actually ended up being that $1 buys six bottles of water because water is that cheap. The one thing I really never expected was that at the protests, people were just handing us twenties left and right.
Tiffany: Our main concern was getting supplies to the protesters while trying to prevent the spread of coronavirus and making sure everyone felt they had a place to go if they needed Gatorade or any kind of medical supplies.
Christina: There were others [handing out supplies], many with just what they could carry in backpacks. The first day we walked several miles with protesters and marched. As the operation got bigger, we started setting up at the speeches and we would flood the road at the start, making a line basically of people handing out supplies into the crowd to get to as many people as we could. We were in different locations each day. We did 16 marches in 10 days in different Brooklyn neighborhoods. I was protesting in the crowds before we were handing out supplies, but rededicated myself to doing the work of support once all the money came in.
We had adults coming up to us crying that we were offering them free water and Cheez-Its. Others were like, “What organization are you guys?” And we finally got to a place where we just started saying, “We’re just friends!”
Every step of the way there were incredible surprises that were so humbling. We got so close with the employees of the Pathmark on Albany Avenue that they would send us to the front of the line and tell all the shoppers that we were essential workers buying things to give away. And at the Super Foodtown on Fulton street, the manager got us free waters and free bags of ice multiple times. The employees even helped pack the cars with us.
Tiffany: It’s inspiring. Since doing this, I do want to volunteer more, especially in the film industry. I want to go into communities where schools aren’t funded well and do a little film program. I want to help out.
Christina: First of all, I’ll work with Tiffany on anything. I love her. I miss her. While we were doing it, we would text each other first thing in the morning: “What time are we meeting?” “We got to get there to get XYZ.” “We ran out of Oreos too early yesterday.” We always have strategies. We’d have to wait till late in the night when organizers posted where the marches would be and we’d make sure we got out on social and coordinated all the volunteers we could get. We were in communication basically all day every day for, for eight or nine days.
Tiffany: I’ll work with Christina anytime! We are so in sync. There were times we didn’t even need to talk to each other. We knew exactly what needed to be done.
Christina: Funny enough, on our last day we were wrapping up and by then a lot of people had been working with us for like over a week. When I said that I met Tiffany on Day 2, people were shocked. They really thought we’d known each other for years!
If you have a compelling story about how money comes into play in one of your relationships — whether with a partner, a friend, a sibling, a coworker — we want to hear about it! Email alanna.okun@vox.com and karen.turner@vox.com with a little about yourself.


vox--2020-06-25--Facebook’s war against one of the internet’s worst conspiracy sites

It ’ s been a year since Facebook deleted the page for Natural News for violating the company ’ s rules about spam .
This was a big deal for Natural News , a conspiracy site that had attracted nearly 3 million followers on its Facebook page .
Then in May , Facebook took further action by banning the Natural News domain so that any link to the site would be blocked , along with some pages that frequently shared its content .
Still , Natural News content has found ways to stick around .
As one of the internet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of health misinformation and conspiracy theories , Natural News is a hub for climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers .
While it poses as a news outlet , Natural News is actually a network of sites filled with bylined articles and flanked by ads for survivalist gear and dodgy health cures .
The internet trust tool NewsGuard reports that Natural News “ severely violates basic standards of credibility and transparency.
” Various fact-checking organizations have repeatedly flagged Natural News content as false .
A new investigation from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , finds that there are hundreds of active and inactive domains that point to websites associated with Natural News .
It ’ s through some of these domains that Natural News content can still end up being shared on Facebook , the researchers found .
Facebook , meanwhile , has said that Natural News was banned “ for spammy and abusive behavior , not the content they posted.
” Most recently , Facebook said its pages had used abusive audience-building tactics , including posting frequently and trying to evade the company ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stopped Natural News from crying censorship and urging readers to appeal to Facebook and even the federal government over the bans .
Meanwhile , researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue say that it flagged several pages and groups that have frequently shared Natural News content to Facebook , but those pages and groups remain up .
The persistence of misinformation is not so surprising .
The 2016 presidential campaign highlighted the extent to which fake news , extremist content , and conspiracy theories pervaded Facebook .
Since then , the company has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prominent sources of false information when it removes their pages and content .
But it ’ s typical for Facebook to ban these sources for specific policy violations , not the spreading of misinformation .
That a network like Natural News can continue to spread misinformation on Facebook shouldn ’ t be surprising .
Years after learning about the dangers and pervasiveness of fake news and conspiracy theories on its platform , the most powerful tool Facebook is using against these outlets appears to be booting their pages or banning specific domains for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for spreading misinformation .
As he has expressed multiple times , Mark Zuckerberg does not want Facebook to appear as an arbiter of truth .
Infowars , a far-right outlet known for pushing conspiracy theories , is perhaps the most famous example of this .
Citing its glorification of violence and violations of the company ’ s hate speech policies , Facebook removed several pages associated with Infowars and its founder Alex Jones in 2018 .
At the time , Facebook explicitly said that the removal was not about false news .
Jones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later under the platform ’ s “ dangerous individuals and organizations ” policy , though pages associated with him continued to pop up on Facebook after that .
Then there ’ s the Epoch Times , a right-leaning media outlet associated with the Falun Gong religious movement that has also published conspiracy theories .
Facebook banned the Epoch Times from advertising on its platform last year after it violated the company ’ s political advertising transparency rules while pushing pro-Trump content and conspiracy theories .
Facebook also shut down a network of fake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Media Group for violating its coordinated inauthentic behavior rules ( the Epoch Times denies the connection ) .
Despite the bans , the Epoch Times has continued to spread misinformation on Facebook , largely through its popular Facebook page .
Similarly , Facebook has banned a slew of Natural News-affiliated domains and pages .
Over the past year , Natural News links attracted more interactions on the platform than both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , according to findings from researchers at the nonprofit activist network @ @ @ @ @ @ @ announced action against the network — which included banning links from the main Natural News domain and those from two sister sites , as well as taking down several affiliated pages — seemed like an assertive move against a notorious spreader of fake news .
But again , Natural News links were not banned for their content but rather other violations , and so the misinformation operation still managed to spread fake news on Facebook after those takedowns .
The mastermind behind the Natural News network is a man named Mike Adams , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” and claims to be an “ activist-turned-scientist.
” In the early 1990s , Adams founded an email-marketing business called Arial Software , through which he ran an anti-spam campaign .
Things really took a turn when Adams also started a newswire service focused on preparing for Y2K , and he started pushing survivalist products .
Eventually , Adams began building out the Natural News network , affording him more opportunity to develop his particular brand of viral paranoia as well as to build connections with other conspiracy theorists and members of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For a sense of the coverage on Natural News network , consider some of what it published last week .
There ’ s a post urging people to “ activate ” their Second Amendment rights and “ retake ” downtown Seattle ; an “ exclusive ” revealing that the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) is illegally targeting small businesses selling colloidal silver , a dangerous supplement marketed as a miracle cure ; and a piece warning that “ Communist China ” has infiltrated the United States by using solar energy farms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ They promote everything from the vaccine-autism link to natural cancer cures to the dangers of GMOs — all of that is in Natural News ’ s purview , ” explains John Gregory , a senior analyst focusing on health for NewsGuard , adding that the site ’ s combination of far-right , extremist content with health information makes it “ almost innovative.
” Technology platforms have been responding to Natural News and its unorthodox methods for years .
The site was blacklisted from Google in 2017 for using a prohibited “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Natural News sites from showing up in certain search results ( that de-indexing was soon reversed ) .
A year later , the Health Ranger channel was apparently kicked off YouTube for violating the video platform ’ s community guidelines .
Now the channel is still accessible but has not uploaded a new video in two years ( it ’ s still easy to find other Natural News content on YouTube ) .
Despite pushback from the major tech platforms , Natural News content continued to find an audience .
The links even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many bans , namely those imposed by Facebook .
During the first three months of 2020 , the Institute for Strategic Dialogue reports , there were 18,000 links to Natural News-affiliated sites in public Facebook pages and groups .
Adams , meanwhile , continues to complain that technology companies are censoring Natural News content .
Several of the network ’ s sites have recently urged readers to join “ the movement to end censorship by Big Tech.
” “ Misinformation players trying to use the takedowns to mobilize their base is becoming a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campaigner Luca Nicotra .
“ They create the fake , they publish it , they know it will be removed , and so they mobilize a base [ and ] create copies of it to re-upload it.
” Natural News did not respond to Recode ’ s request for comment .
Why Natural News stories can keep showing up on Facebook The mobilization effort appears to be working , and enlisting a growing number of websites to spread its content is central to the approach .
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reports that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entities related to the Natural News network as well as 496 active and inactive domains .
These domains often have themes — Extinction.news , Mind.control.news , and Veggie.news are just a few examples — and the sites themselves curate specific content from other Natural News sites .
Many of these sites are not blocked on Facebook , which means that Natural News content can find its way onto the platform by way of these domains .
Facebook ’ s recent announcement that it had banned three Natural News-related domains came after it majorly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ video , which pushed a wide range of falsehoods about the novel coronavirus .
Facebook said it began taking down the video because its claim about mask-wearing causing Covid-19 could lead to imminent harm .
But , again , Facebook did not ban the Natural News domains for spreading false information .
A Facebook spokesperson told Recode that the pages were removed for “ spammy and abusive behavior , not the content they posted , ” and added that the pages were using content farms in Macedonia and the Philippines .
When describing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher called Natural News “ a conspiracy theory site that uses a range of deceptive techniques to boost their popularity ” and said by banning Natural News , Facebook hoped to “ stop financially motivated scammers and fraudsters.
” Mike Adams responded to Facebook ’ s latest actions by broadcasting his network ’ s multiple domain strategy .
He even suggested that readers could get around the Facebook ban by using links from sites or domains that would mirror content from Natural News .
“ In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ URLs and domain names that will allow you to share Brighteon videos , ” Adams wrote in a post that appeared on multiple Natural News sites .
“ But those domains will of course be eventually banned by Facebook and the other tech giants , all of which are criminal operations that are complicit in communist China ’ s war against humanity.
” Adams followed through on his promise and encouraged readers to continue sharing the “ Plandemic ” video by posting links from the Natural News-affiliated domain Trump.news .
He also told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ banned.news , to “ take action ” against Facebook .
In early June , PolitiFact published a report about a Natural News story that had been duplicated on Trump.news .
The link to the duplicate was shared about 4,000 times on Facebook .
Following the PolitiFact report , Facebook banned the Trump.news domain .
Banned.news has also since been banned .
Facebook did not respond to Recode ’ s questions about why these new domains are getting banned , but it appears the company has resorted to a game of whack-a-mole with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ especially those Adams specifically instructs readers to use in order to evade the bans .
Facebook has already started blocking content from additional domains associated with Natural News , but what exactly is banned — and why — remains unclear .
When Recode tested 56 domains flagged by NewsGuard for novel coronavirus misinformation , about 35 were flagged .
Recode also tested the 295 domains that Avaaz researchers linked to Natural News , and Facebook only blocked about 170 of those links .
When Recode tested the 496 other domains identified by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were blocked by Facebook , though it ’ s worth noting that many of the sites could be inactive .
Facebook says it knows that spammy networks constantly change their approach , and that those networks can respond to domain bans by creating new sites with unique URLs .
In monitoring attempts by these networks to return to Facebook and find new audiences , Facebook says it focuses on reducing a spam network ’ s ability to reach an audience , even if they can technically get their content onto Facebook by using @ @ @ @ @ @ @ different process from Facebook ’ s approach to misinformation , which it typically avoids removing .
If a page or group repeatedly shares content that ’ s flagged and labeled by the platform ’ s fact-checkers , Facebook can reduce its distribution and remove it from recommendations .
Pages can also have their ability to monetize and advertise taken away .
In the midst of the pandemic , Facebook has taken to removing false content that could lead to imminent physical harm , but not what BuzzFeed News calls “ inevitable harm , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ allows to remain up .
In 2018 , Facebook told New York Times journalist Kevin Roose , “ We just don ’ t think banning Pages for sharing conspiracy theories or false news is the right way to go.
” So while Facebook is taking action against Natural News , the company is not doing so under the auspices of fighting against misinformation .
From a policy perspective , Facebook is fighting spam .
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network .
All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

It’s been a year since Facebook deleted the page for Natural News for violating the company’s rules about spam. This was a big deal for Natural News, a conspiracy site that had attracted nearly 3 million followers on its Facebook page. Then in May, Facebook took further action by banning the Natural News domain so that any link to the site would be blocked, along with some pages that frequently shared its content. Still, Natural News content has found ways to stick around.
As one of the internet’s oldest and most prolific sources of health misinformation and conspiracy theories, Natural News is a hub for climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. While it poses as a news outlet, Natural News is actually a network of sites filled with bylined articles and flanked by ads for survivalist gear and dodgy health cures. The internet trust tool NewsGuard reports that Natural News “severely violates basic standards of credibility and transparency.” Various fact-checking organizations have repeatedly flagged Natural News content as false.
A new investigation from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that focuses on countering extremism, finds that there are hundreds of active and inactive domains that point to websites associated with Natural News. It’s through some of these domains that Natural News content can still end up being shared on Facebook, the researchers found. Facebook, meanwhile, has said that Natural News was banned “for spammy and abusive behavior, not the content they posted.” Most recently, Facebook said its pages had used abusive audience-building tactics, including posting frequently and trying to evade the company’s rate limits.
That hasn’t stopped Natural News from crying censorship and urging readers to appeal to Facebook and even the federal government over the bans. Meanwhile, researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue say that it flagged several pages and groups that have frequently shared Natural News content to Facebook, but those pages and groups remain up.
The persistence of misinformation is not so surprising. The 2016 presidential campaign highlighted the extent to which fake news, extremist content, and conspiracy theories pervaded Facebook. Since then, the company has ramped up its fight against the most prominent sources of false information when it removes their pages and content. But it’s typical for Facebook to ban these sources for specific policy violations, not the spreading of misinformation.
That a network like Natural News can continue to spread misinformation on Facebook shouldn’t be surprising. Years after learning about the dangers and pervasiveness of fake news and conspiracy theories on its platform, the most powerful tool Facebook is using against these outlets appears to be booting their pages or banning specific domains for spam or other violations, not specifically for spreading misinformation. As he has expressed multiple times, Mark Zuckerberg does not want Facebook to appear as an arbiter of truth.
Infowars, a far-right outlet known for pushing conspiracy theories, is perhaps the most famous example of this. Citing its glorification of violence and violations of the company’s hate speech policies, Facebook removed several pages associated with Infowars and its founder Alex Jones in 2018. At the time, Facebook explicitly said that the removal was not about false news. Jones himself was banned from Facebook a year later under the platform’s “dangerous individuals and organizations” policy, though pages associated with him continued to pop up on Facebook after that.
Then there’s the Epoch Times, a right-leaning media outlet associated with the Falun Gong religious movement that has also published conspiracy theories. Facebook banned the Epoch Times from advertising on its platform last year after it violated the company’s political advertising transparency rules while pushing pro-Trump content and conspiracy theories. Facebook also shut down a network of fake accounts and pages linked to the Epoch Media Group for violating its coordinated inauthentic behavior rules (the Epoch Times denies the connection). Despite the bans, the Epoch Times has continued to spread misinformation on Facebook, largely through its popular Facebook page.
Similarly, Facebook has banned a slew of Natural News-affiliated domains and pages. Over the past year, Natural News links attracted more interactions on the platform than both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to findings from researchers at the nonprofit activist network Avaaz. Facebook’s latest publicly announced action against the network — which included banning links from the main Natural News domain and those from two sister sites, as well as taking down several affiliated pages — seemed like an assertive move against a notorious spreader of fake news. But again, Natural News links were not banned for their content but rather other violations, and so the misinformation operation still managed to spread fake news on Facebook after those takedowns.
A brief history of Natural News
The mastermind behind the Natural News network is a man named Mike Adams, who calls himself “the Health Ranger” and claims to be an “activist-turned-scientist.” In the early 1990s, Adams founded an email-marketing business called Arial Software, through which he ran an anti-spam campaign. Things really took a turn when Adams also started a newswire service focused on preparing for Y2K, and he started pushing survivalist products. Eventually, Adams began building out the Natural News network, affording him more opportunity to develop his particular brand of viral paranoia as well as to build connections with other conspiracy theorists and members of the far right, including Alex Jones.
For a sense of the coverage on Natural News network, consider some of what it published last week. There’s a post urging people to “activate” their Second Amendment rights and “retake” downtown Seattle; an “exclusive” revealing that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is illegally targeting small businesses selling colloidal silver, a dangerous supplement marketed as a miracle cure; and a piece warning that “Communist China” has infiltrated the United States by using solar energy farms as a front for its military officers.
“They promote everything from the vaccine-autism link to natural cancer cures to the dangers of GMOs — all of that is in Natural News’s purview,” explains John Gregory, a senior analyst focusing on health for NewsGuard, adding that the site’s combination of far-right, extremist content with health information makes it “almost innovative.”
Technology platforms have been responding to Natural News and its unorthodox methods for years. The site was blacklisted from Google in 2017 for using a prohibited “sneaky mobile redirect.” The ban prevented Natural News sites from showing up in certain search results (that de-indexing was soon reversed). A year later, the Health Ranger channel was apparently kicked off YouTube for violating the video platform’s community guidelines. Now the channel is still accessible but has not uploaded a new video in two years (it’s still easy to find other Natural News content on YouTube).
Despite pushback from the major tech platforms, Natural News content continued to find an audience. The links even appear to find their ways around the many bans, namely those imposed by Facebook. During the first three months of 2020, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue reports, there were 18,000 links to Natural News-affiliated sites in public Facebook pages and groups. Adams, meanwhile, continues to complain that technology companies are censoring Natural News content. Several of the network’s sites have recently urged readers to join “the movement to end censorship by Big Tech.”
“Misinformation players trying to use the takedowns to mobilize their base is becoming a constant thing,” warns Avaaz senior campaigner Luca Nicotra. “They create the fake, they publish it, they know it will be removed, and so they mobilize a base [and] create copies of it to re-upload it.”
Natural News did not respond to Recode’s request for comment.
Why Natural News stories can keep showing up on Facebook
The mobilization effort appears to be working, and enlisting a growing number of websites to spread its content is central to the approach. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reports that there are 21 current or historical corporate entities related to the Natural News network as well as 496 active and inactive domains. These domains often have themes — Extinction.news, Mind.control.news, and Veggie.news are just a few examples — and the sites themselves curate specific content from other Natural News sites. Many of these sites are not blocked on Facebook, which means that Natural News content can find its way onto the platform by way of these domains.
Facebook’s recent announcement that it had banned three Natural News-related domains came after it majorly promoted the infamous “Plandemic” conspiracy video, which pushed a wide range of falsehoods about the novel coronavirus. Facebook said it began taking down the video because its claim about mask-wearing causing Covid-19 could lead to imminent harm.
But, again, Facebook did not ban the Natural News domains for spreading false information. A Facebook spokesperson told Recode that the pages were removed for “spammy and abusive behavior, not the content they posted,” and added that the pages were using content farms in Macedonia and the Philippines. When describing these actions last week, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy Nathaniel Gleicher called Natural News “a conspiracy theory site that uses a range of deceptive techniques to boost their popularity” and said by banning Natural News, Facebook hoped to “stop financially motivated scammers and fraudsters.”
Mike Adams responded to Facebook’s latest actions by broadcasting his network’s multiple domain strategy. He even suggested that readers could get around the Facebook ban by using links from sites or domains that would mirror content from Natural News.
“In the future, we will also have alternate URLs and domain names that will allow you to share Brighteon videos,” Adams wrote in a post that appeared on multiple Natural News sites. “But those domains will of course be eventually banned by Facebook and the other tech giants, all of which are criminal operations that are complicit in communist China’s war against humanity.”
Adams followed through on his promise and encouraged readers to continue sharing the “Plandemic” video by posting links from the Natural News-affiliated domain Trump.news. He also told his followers to use another domain, banned.news, to “take action” against Facebook. In early June, PolitiFact published a report about a Natural News story that had been duplicated on Trump.news. The link to the duplicate was shared about 4,000 times on Facebook. Following the PolitiFact report, Facebook banned the Trump.news domain. Banned.news has also since been banned.
Facebook did not respond to Recode’s questions about why these new domains are getting banned, but it appears the company has resorted to a game of whack-a-mole with the new sites affiliated with Natural News, especially those Adams specifically instructs readers to use in order to evade the bans.
Facebook has already started blocking content from additional domains associated with Natural News, but what exactly is banned — and why — remains unclear. When Recode tested 56 domains flagged by NewsGuard for novel coronavirus misinformation, about 35 were flagged. Recode also tested the 295 domains that Avaaz researchers linked to Natural News, and Facebook only blocked about 170 of those links. When Recode tested the 496 other domains identified by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, about 80 were blocked by Facebook, though it’s worth noting that many of the sites could be inactive.
Facebook says it knows that spammy networks constantly change their approach, and that those networks can respond to domain bans by creating new sites with unique URLs. In monitoring attempts by these networks to return to Facebook and find new audiences, Facebook says it focuses on reducing a spam network’s ability to reach an audience, even if they can technically get their content onto Facebook by using new domains.
That’s a different process from Facebook’s approach to misinformation, which it typically avoids removing. If a page or group repeatedly shares content that’s flagged and labeled by the platform’s fact-checkers, Facebook can reduce its distribution and remove it from recommendations. Pages can also have their ability to monetize and advertise taken away. In the midst of the pandemic, Facebook has taken to removing false content that could lead to imminent physical harm, but not what BuzzFeed News calls “inevitable harm,” among the other misinformation that it allows to remain up. In 2018, Facebook told New York Times journalist Kevin Roose, “We just don’t think banning Pages for sharing conspiracy theories or false news is the right way to go.”
So while Facebook is taking action against Natural News, the company is not doing so under the auspices of fighting against misinformation. From a policy perspective, Facebook is fighting spam.
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.


vox--2020-06-26--The best movies of 2020, so far

The best movies of 2020, so far

What a bizarre year it ’ s been so far — including “ at ” the movies .
Scarcely a month after the raucous Korean social thriller Parasite unexpectedly won Best Picture at the Oscars , movie theaters around the world were shutting down due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic .
In many places — including the US — they remain closed , well into what is traditionally the summer movie season .
Film production went on hiatus and film festivals were delayed , canceled , or shifted to digital editions .
Highly anticipated blockbusters have been pushed into the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oscars have moved to April .
And the future of the film industry , this year and beyond , is still very much up in the air .
But in the midst of great uncertainty , excellent films have still been coming out — in “ virtual ” cinemas , on streaming and digital platforms , and even in drive-in theaters .
From dramas and documentaries to comedies and romances , they ’ ve stood toe-to-toe with critically acclaimed releases from any year , exploring what it means to be human and to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time of tension and uncertainty .
Below are the 28 best films from the first half of 2020 and how you can watch them .
( All but one are available to stream , rent , or purchase on digital platforms . )
It took more than two years since the story of Harvey Weinstein ’ s history of sexual assault broke for a truly great movie to come out about the case , and Kitty Green ’ s The Assistant is it .
Julia Garner ( Ozark , The Americans ) plays @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tribeca offices of a high-powered movie studio executive .
The Assistant follows Jane as she makes coffee and copies and also witnesses , to her growing horror , what she thinks might be her powerful boss ’ s inappropriate behavior .
We don ’ t see the “ Weinstein ” character directly .
Instead , we hear his voice and see his back from a distance ; we also see the fear he provokes in his subordinates .
He isn ’ t the point of the story , though .
The point , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that he gets away with his behavior because of the people around him .
It ’ s one of the best , smartest , and most gripping films of 2020 .
How to watch it : The Assistant is available on demand from digital services including iTunes , Amazon , Vudu , YouTube , and Google Play .
Movies about teen romance , disaffected youths , and dysfunctional families are a dime a dozen , but Shannon Murphy ’ s Babyteeth is something special .
Milla ( Little Women and Sharp Objects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facing a cancer diagnosis .
Her parents ( Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis ) love each other but are starting to spin out of control from the stress .
One day , Milla meets Moses ( Toby Wallace ) , a 23-year-old tattooed drug addict with a winning smile and a childlike affect , and she falls for him .
A story like this can easily turn maudlin , but Babyteeth ( adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her own play ) unspools like a series of often very funny vignettes that treat the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weight .
How to watch it : Babyteeth is playing in select theaters and on-demand services such as iTunes and Amazon .
You can see the full listing at the movie ’ s website .
It ’ s challenging to describe the frenetic , confounding Brazilian film Bacurau , which plays out like a particularly wild episode of Black Mirror crossed with a Western .
Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho ’ s film veers from action to horror to dystopian sci-fi to gallows comedy .
Centering on a tiny Brazilian village named @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threat endangering the lives of the residents — who then decide they have had just about enough of being exploited by that threat .
How to watch it : Bacurau is in virtual theatrical release , and a list of participating theaters is available on the Kino Lorber website .
( You ’ ll receive a rental link , and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page . )
Bad Education is a tale of intrigue and larceny in the most drab of locations : a Long Island public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terrific .
Based on a true story from the early aughts and directed by Cory Finley ( Thoroughbreds ) , the film stars Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone , superintendent of the fourth-best school district in the state of New York .
Tassone soon finds himself at the center of a massive fraud investigation , thanks in part to reporting by a student journalist ( Geraldine Viswanathan ) .
Bad Education expertly traces the effects of the complex pressures placed on administrators and faculty , suggesting that this scandal is unlikely to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to watch it : Bad Education is streaming for subscribers on HBO and HBO Max .
In Beanpole , from Russian director Kantemir Balagov , the struggle never ceases .
It ’ s a period piece about two young women living in Leningrad just after the war .
They met in combat and now work in a hospital , and both bear the physical and mental scars of their young , troubled lives .
Beanpole tells the story of their stormy relationship as it ’ s crunched and crushed by life , much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The film — which won Balagov the Best Director Prize in the Cannes Film Festival ’ s Un Certain Regard competition last year — is not easy to watch .
But it ’ s achingly beautiful , with unnerving performances .
How to watch it : Beanpole is in virtual theatrical release , and a list of participating theaters is available on the Kino Lorber website .
( You ’ ll receive a rental link , and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page . )
Crip Camp starts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Camp Jened , an almost magical-seeming “ summer camp for the handicapped run by hippies , ” as the film ’ s co-director ( and former camper ) Jim Lebrecht explains early on .
But soon , it becomes a chronicle of a movement , sparked by the young people whose lives were changed by their experience in that place .
Crip Camp shows how the vision that young Jened attendees experienced at camp — that the world could be open to them , too — led them to become activists and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and inspiring , a tale of people working together through difficulty and opposition to change the world .
How to watch it : Crip Camp is streaming on Netflix .
Spike Lee ’ s Da 5 Bloods stars Norm Lewis , Clarke Peters , Isiah Whitlock Jr. , and a magnificent Delroy Lindo in a story about four black Vietnam vets who return to the country , decades after their tours of duty , in search of gold and their fallen buddy ’ s remains .
Da 5 Bloods takes on myriad issues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sharply disproportionate number of whom are black and who were left to live with the remnants of a pointless war long past when the rest of us had moved on .
Lee weaves that strand of history into the broader canvas of the 1960s and ’ 70s , from the civil rights movement to the moon landing .
Then he extends it into today , all the way to the Black Lives Matter movement .
Lindo gives a staggering performance as Paul , whose traumas have turned him into a MAGA-hat-sporting spout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ both his friends and his son , David ( Jonathan Majors ) , a Morehouse alum who comes looking for his father after he returns to Vietnam .
That narrative choice alone means that Da 5 Bloods , while political to the bone , refuses to be stuffed into partisan pigeonholes .
What it means to be black in America does not fit into tidy fables .
How to watch it : Da 5 Bloods is streaming on Netflix .
Driveways is surprising at every turn .
It ’ s a modest and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Lucas Jaye ) who feels out of place , and his friendship with the Korean War vet named Del ( Brian Dennehy , who passed away in April ) who lives next door .
But it ’ s not the film you might expect from that setup .
Instead , the shifts that come from Del and Cody ’ s friendship are muted , almost imperceptible .
Del finds something new to live for .
Cody discovers a new community .
They both gain a little confidence .
Driveways is profound in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life , and it explores , with exquisite sensitivity , the guards we all put up between us and others to keep us protected from the things we fear .
How to watch it : Driveways is available to digitally rent or purchase on services including iTunes , Amazon , Google Play , and various on-demand providers .
Jane Austen practically invented the romantic comedy , but few adaptations of her books lean into the wicked satire that drips from nearly every page .
Emma , helmed by photographer and music video director @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just right .
With a delightful Anya Taylor-Joy performance at its center , this new Emma doesn ’ t play too fast and loose with the story or its most familiar beats .
It instead digs out the absurdities of being wealthy ( or adjacent to wealth ) around the turn of the 19th century — the affectations , the frills that cover up the crudeness of real life , and above all , the vast , unmitigated boredom .
How to watch it : Emma is available to digitally rent or buy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including iTunes , Google Play , Amazon Prime , and FandangoNow .
Eurovision Song Contest : The Story of Fire Saga takes the grand prize for weirdest , funniest , and most delightful comedy of the year so far , hands down .
Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams star as Lars and Sigrit , childhood friends whose greatest dream is to win the Eurovision Song Contest and claim glory for their tiny Icelandic hometown .
The big problem : They ’ re not very good .
Through a series of unexpected events @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the competition , and while there they go on a journey of self-discovery and a whole lot more .
Other stars include Pierce Brosnan and a ( truly fantastic ) Dan Stevens in this sweet-natured comedy from David Dobkin ( Wedding Crashers ) .
Best of all , it will give you some tunes to hum all summer long .
How to watch it : Eurovision Song Contest : The Story of Fire Saga premieres on Netflix on June 26 .
Kelly Reichardt ’ s First Cow is set in a 19th-century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Oregon , near the Columbia River , populated by people who are trying to scratch out a living in the New World , as well as the First Nations people who ’ ve been living there for generations .
Into that settlement , a cow arrives , setting off a chain of events that are both momentous and small .
But the film is about much more than just that .
First Cow is also a gentle ( and gently devastating ) tale about male friendship , about finding someone to share your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most deliciously , about cooking .
And it ’ s also about the kinds of constructed hierarchies — based on factors like race , class , money , and firepower — that seem to be imposed on the world wherever new civilizations pop up .
How to watch it : First Cow was briefly released in theaters in March .
It is awaiting digital release .
Mara ( Tallie Medel ) and Jo ( Norma Kuhling ) have been friends since they were 14 .
Now , as young women in New York @ @ @ @ @ @ @ free-spirited Jo is a drain on practical Mara , and the relationship verges on codependent .
Fourteen tracks the slow unraveling of the girls ’ friendship through a series of scenes and depends on the audience to connect the dots between the events .
The result is an engaging and at times heartrending meditation on friendship , growing apart , and what we owe to one another .
How to watch it : Fourteen is in virtual theatrical release , and a list of participating theaters is available on the Grasshopper Film website @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rental link , and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page . )
The Invisible Man seemed eerily well-timed , originally releasing in theaters mere days after Harvey Weinstein ’ s conviction on two sex crimes charges , including rape in the third degree .
Elisabeth Moss stars as a woman trying to escape the clutches of her abusive husband , who has found a way to turn himself invisible .
Living inside The Invisible Man for two hours , we get to experience the existential terror of being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t believed , as well as witness the many ways that crafty predators can manipulate their prey , making it seem as though they ’ re the victim and the accuser is the one who ought to be punished .
It ’ s an old , old story , and an all too familiar one .
How to watch it : The Invisible Man is available to digitally rent or buy on a wide variety of on-demand services , including iTunes , Google Play , Amazon Prime , and FandangoNow .
Pete Davidson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s The King of Staten Island , a movie about a young man who ’ s worked his way into a dead-end life .
Scott ( Davidson ) lives with his mother Margie ( Marisa Tomei ) and his younger sister Claire ( Maud Apatow ) , and while Claire is heading to college , Scott is a textbook case of failure to launch .
Scott and Claire ’ s father was a firefighter who died in a hotel fire when they were children .
( In real life , Davidson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was a firefighter who died as a first responder in the 9/11 attacks . )
But things change when Margie begins dating a firefighter named Ray ( Bill Burr ) .
Steve Buscemi , Bel Powley , and Pamela Adlon also star in a sneakily mature movie about growing despite trauma and loving people even when they ’ re imperfect .
How to watch it : The King of Staten Island is available to digitally rent or purchase on digital and on-demand platforms such as Apple TV and Amazon .
For a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movie ’ s website .
Never Rarely Sometimes Always Autumn ( Sidney Flanigan ) is a 17-year-old who decides to terminate her pregnancy .
But because she ’ s a minor , she can ’ t do it in her home state due to Pennsylvania law .
So she buys a bus ticket to New York City , where she can legally get an abortion , and her cousin Skylar ( Talia Ryder ) comes along .
Writer and director Eliza Hittman ( Beach Rats , It Felt Like Love ) tells the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polemics and recalling bleak dramas like the 2007 Romanian drama 4 Months , 3 Weeks and 2 Days .
But Hittman ’ s view feels more in tune with what young women face in the world , with the fear and difficulty inherent in navigating the labyrinthine medical system .
Never Rarely Sometimes Always , which won a prize for “ auteur filmmaking ” at Sundance in January , focuses on the many obstacles and menaces the girls encounter — mostly from men who feel far more comfortable and safe in the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us breathe too easy .
How to watch it : Never Rarely Sometimes Always is available to digitally rent or purchase on platforms including iTunes and Amazon .
On the Record is a bombshell of a documentary , in which a large group of women allege that Def Jam record label founder and “ godfather of hip-hop ” Russell Simmons sexually assaulted or raped them .
On the Record is absolutely damning of Simmons , who continues to insist he did not commit the crimes he ’ s accused of .
Directed by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film is at its best when exploring the reasons that women in America , and particularly black women , often hesitate to accuse a powerful black man of a crime like sexual assault .
It also points to what ’ s been missing from the Me Too movement : the voices of black women .
How to watch it : On the Record is streaming on HBO Max .
Onward is the charming tale of two brothers on a quest to spend time with their late father , set in a world that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now pretty normal , even boring .
The movie ’ s plot cleverly employs the structure of the sort of campaign you might see in a fantasy role-playing game such as Dungeons & Dragons .
Onward ’ s fantastical , Tolkien-lite elements are mixed with more banal workaday realities .
Yet its true strength is in how it portrays the love between brothers , which brings its own kind of magic .
One of Pixar ’ s most profound abilities has always been confronting the bittersweet along with the purely sweet and funny @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can watch together — and Onward delivers on that promise .
How to watch it : Onward is streaming on Disney+ .
It is also available to digitally rent or buy on a wide variety of on-demand services , including iTunes , Google Play , Amazon Prime , and FandangoNow .
The Other Lamb ( from director Małgorzata Szumowska ) is eerie and starkly beautiful .
The film melds two familiar territories for horror — cults and women ’ s bodies — into one dread-soaked Bildungsroman centered on teenaged Selah ( Raffey Cassidy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cult in the woods , where they raise sheep and live off the grid and serve a man called Shepherd ( Michiel Huisman ) as their adored , unquestioningly obeyed leader .
Selah has been raised in this strange family , but now her beliefs are beginning to shift .
What makes The Other Lamb feel fresh is how Szumowska renders her world — in vivid colors and inky blacks , with slow zooms that turn their placid , pastoral lives into something uncanny .
The feeling that something very wrong is going @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , unnerving shot .
How to watch it : The Other Lamb is available to digitally rent and purchase on digital platforms including Amazon , Google Play , and YouTube .
The Painter and the Thief The Painter and the Thief is a stunning film about young Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova and Karl-Bertil Nordland , the thief who stole two of her paintings from an Oslo gallery .
He says he was so high at the time that he can ’ t remember why he did it — or what he did with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interested in the thief himself than in where he took her paintings , but eventually she meets him and decides to paint his portrait , after which they form a friendship and creative partnership of sorts .
The Painter and the Thief actively challenges what we think we understand about its characters based on their appearance , class markers , or behavior .
It highlights the way artists of all kinds , from painters to filmmakers , turn reality into something that ’ s at least a little fictionalized in order to make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the truth a little .
How to watch it : The Painter and the Thief is in virtual cinemas , streaming on Hulu , and available on digital platforms including iTunes , Fandango Now , and Google Play .
The Platform ’ s opening moments establish it as more of a conceptual thought experiment than a story ; it ’ s an allegory about inequality , and it borrows on some concepts that have been used before .
People on the top levels of a prison-like building , euphemistically called the “ Vertical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ run it , are more comfortable than those at the bottom , whom they despise .
And while those at the top believe they ’ ve earned the right to be there by their wits and work , the movie suggests the systems that put them there also traffic in chance and fortune .
Directed by Spanish filmmaker Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia , it ’ s a cross between sci-fi and horror , brutal and disturbing and sometimes flat-out gross , but undeniably imaginative and thought-provoking .
How to watch it : The Platform is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and perceptive about the battle of just getting through the day when you ’ re a teen , Selah and the Spades follows Paloma ( Celeste O ’ Connor ) , who is the new girl at Haldwell School , a prestigious boarding school .
When she arrives , she ’ s taken under the wing of Selah ( Lovie Simone ) , a sophisticated upperclassman and the leader of the most powerful of Haldwell ’ s “ factions , ” the Spades .
Selah and the Spades mixes the classic tropes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of high school films , but with a twist that ’ s all director Tayarisha Poe ’ s .
It ’ s the multitalented artist ’ s first feature film , and it signals a strong voice and vision for filmmaking — one that doesn ’ t take itself too seriously .
How to watch it : Selah and the Spades is available on Amazon Prime Video .
Stylistically , director Josephine Decker ( Madeline ’ s Madeline ) is a perfect match for Shirley .
It ’ s a period psychodrama about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Young ) who moves with her husband Fred ( Logan Lerman ) to Bennington , Vermont , after he picks up a teaching post there while finishing his dissertation .
His supervisor is professor Stanley Edgar Hyman ( Michael Stuhlbarg ) , whose wife is the sardonic and brilliant author Shirley Jackson ( Elisabeth Moss ) ; her short story “ The Lottery ” has just been published in the New Yorker , and she ’ s starting work on the novel that will become 1951 ’ s Hangsaman .
Shirley is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ plays out like a mystery , the kind where you ’ re never quite sure where reality ends and delusion ( or maybe the truth ) begins .
How to watch it : Shirley is streaming on Hulu and available to digitally rent or purchase on platforms including iTunes , Amazon , and others .
You can also watch it through a “ virtual theatrical ” release at theaters around the country — see the Neon website for more details .
( You will receive a link after buying a virtual ticket , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a local theater . )
Sorry We Missed You Sorry We Missed You is an angrily searing piece of social realism set in modern-day Britain ’ s gig economy .
Director Ken Loach specializes in realistic dramas built atop roiling class-based anger , movies about the ways ordinary people ’ s lives are disrupted and upended by systems that leave them powerless to change even as they try everything in their power to change .
Sorry We Missed You is the story of a working-class English family trying to scratch out a living @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indignities they experience within a system of short-term contracts and gig work .
Ostensibly , employees get to be the “ masters of their own destiny ” ( to paraphrase an employer in the film ) , but in truth , companies are just trying to remove any responsibility the employers might bear .
It premiered at Cannes in summer 2019 , but it feels even more devastatingly , bitingly urgent now .
How to watch it : Sorry We Missed You is in virtual theatrical release , and a list of participating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ website .
( You ’ ll receive a rental link , and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page . )
South Mountain is the wise , sometimes bitter , sometimes overwhelmingly emotional tale of a woman learning to fall out of love .
Lila ( Talia Balsam ) and Edgar ( Scott Cohen ) live in the Catskills with their teenage children .
Life is tranquil there — but when that sense of tranquility is suddenly shattered by a revelation , Lila is forced to reckon with both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she plans to live now .
South Mountain is a bit like a coming-of-age film for middle age , and each scene feels vibrantly alive .
Director and writer Hilary Brougher has crafted a world in which nothing is cleanly resolved , but a future is still possible .
How to watch it : South Mountain is available via digital on-demand services such as iTunes ; see the film ’ s website for a full list .
The Surrogate , the debut feature from Jeremy Hersh , has a premise that sounds almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jasmine Batchelor ) has offered to be a surrogate and egg donor for her two best friends , Josh ( Chris Perfetti ) and Aaron ( Sullivan Jones ) .
They ’ re elated when the pregnancy test is positive , but a medical consultation reveals that the fetus likely has Down ’ s syndrome .
Immediately , the situation becomes much more complicated , given the array of options they must suddenly choose from .
Will they terminate the pregnancy ?
Carry the child to term ?
Who would be involved in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose choice is it to make ?
Without preaching solutions or offering answers , The Surrogate ’ s gentle empathy lets us feel the dilemmas each of the characters experience .
It recognizes that the sheer array of choices available to us today is part of what makes the situation so difficult .
How to watch it : The Surrogate is in “ virtual theatrical ” release at theaters around the country — see the film ’ s website for more details .
( You will receive a link after buying a virtual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the fourth ( and maybe final ) in a series of films in which actors and comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon head off somewhere for a week to eat extravagantly , tour the countryside , and have some fun .
Ostensibly the pair are there to “ review ” the restaurants , but the food and wine and comedy bits are really part of a tale of discovery and , at times , disquieting reflections on life , love , and regrets .
In The Trip to Greece , Brydon and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , from Troy to Ithaca , spouting Greek mythological trivia alongside jokes about “ The Poetics , by Ari Stottle ” and dueling impressions of everyone from Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman to Werner Herzog .
Of all four installments , The Trip to Greece — while certainly snort-through-your-nose funny in places — plays the most like a drama .
The whole series , taken together , is a meditation on middle age and mortality , on how our irrevocable life choices , even when they ’ re the right ones , will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to watch it : The Trip to Greece is available on a variety of digital platforms , including Apple TV and Amazon Prime .
You can find the full listing here .
The True History of the Kelly Gang In The True History of the Kelly Gang , director Justin Kurzel tells the bloody story of his homeland ’ s most famous outlaw , Ned Kelly , who ’ s either a folk hero in Australia or a villainous marauder , depending on whom you ask .
Kelly ( played by 1917 star @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a harrowing tale of abuse — from the English soldiers who took advantage of the family , to other thieves and robbers , to men sniffing around his mother ’ s door .
Kelly learned to fight back and fight hard .
Kurzel favors stylized images and the occasional anachronistic metal track to provoke a mood more than faithfully recreate history .
And his approach works well in this film , bolstered by a strong cast featuring MacKay , Russell Crowe , Nicholas Hoult , Charlie Hunnam , Thomasin McKenzie , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brutal watch from beginning to end , but one that shows how violence begets violence .
How to watch it : True History of the Kelly Gang is available on a wide variety of digital and on-demand platforms .
See the film ’ s website for more details and links .
At the start of The Vast of Night , set in a midcentury New Mexico town , a Rod Serling sound-alike intones to set up the film as a Twilight Zone-style tale about a mystery located in “ the frequency caught between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ McCormick ) is 16 and operates the town switchboard and is also interested in newfangled recording technologies ; her friend Everett ( Jake Horowitz ) is a DJ for the radio station in their small town .
One night , both are at their respective jobs while everyone else is at a basketball game at the local high school .
Listening to Everett ’ s show , Fay hears a strange noise .
She calls him to tell him about it , and the two start to investigate it , initially with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Everett ’ s show .
What ’ s great about The Vast of Night isn ’ t the story so much as the way it ’ s told ; there ’ s nothing flashy about The Vast of Night , no spectacle , but it ’ s showy in a way that ’ s delightful to watch .
And in the end , The Vast of Night aims to remind us that the mysteries of the universe go far , far beyond what we ’ ve begun to comprehend .
How to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is streaming for subscribers on Amazon Prime .
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What a bizarre year it’s been so far — including “at” the movies. Scarcely a month after the raucous Korean social thriller Parasite unexpectedly won Best Picture at the Oscars, movie theaters around the world were shutting down due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. In many places — including the US — they remain closed, well into what is traditionally the summer movie season. Film production went on hiatus and film festivals were delayed, canceled, or shifted to digital editions. Highly anticipated blockbusters have been pushed into the fall or next year. The 2021 Oscars have moved to April. And the future of the film industry, this year and beyond, is still very much up in the air.
But in the midst of great uncertainty, excellent films have still been coming out — in “virtual” cinemas, on streaming and digital platforms, and even in drive-in theaters. From dramas and documentaries to comedies and romances, they’ve stood toe-to-toe with critically acclaimed releases from any year, exploring what it means to be human and to connect with one another even in a time of tension and uncertainty.
Below are the 28 best films from the first half of 2020 and how you can watch them. (All but one are available to stream, rent, or purchase on digital platforms.)
The Assistant
It took more than two years since the story of Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual assault broke for a truly great movie to come out about the case, and Kitty Green’s The Assistant is it. Julia Garner (Ozark, The Americans) plays Jane, a new assistant in the Tribeca offices of a high-powered movie studio executive. The Assistant follows Jane as she makes coffee and copies and also witnesses, to her growing horror, what she thinks might be her powerful boss’s inappropriate behavior. We don’t see the “Weinstein” character directly. Instead, we hear his voice and see his back from a distance; we also see the fear he provokes in his subordinates. He isn’t the point of the story, though. The point, as The Assistant makes blindingly clear, is that he gets away with his behavior because of the people around him. It’s one of the best, smartest, and most gripping films of 2020.
How to watch it: The Assistant is available on demand from digital services including iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play.
Babyteeth
Movies about teen romance, disaffected youths, and dysfunctional families are a dime a dozen, but Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth is something special. Milla (Little Women and Sharp Objects’ Eliza Scanlen) is 16 and facing a cancer diagnosis. Her parents (Ben Mendelsohn and Essie Davis) love each other but are starting to spin out of control from the stress. One day, Milla meets Moses (Toby Wallace), a 23-year-old tattooed drug addict with a winning smile and a childlike affect, and she falls for him. A story like this can easily turn maudlin, but Babyteeth (adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her own play) unspools like a series of often very funny vignettes that treat the tragedy and joy of life with similar weight.
How to watch it: Babyteeth is playing in select theaters and on-demand services such as iTunes and Amazon. You can see the full listing at the movie’s website.
Bacurau
It’s challenging to describe the frenetic, confounding Brazilian film Bacurau, which plays out like a particularly wild episode of Black Mirror crossed with a Western. Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s film veers from action to horror to dystopian sci-fi to gallows comedy. Centering on a tiny Brazilian village named Bacurau, the film sees a mysterious threat endangering the lives of the residents — who then decide they have had just about enough of being exploited by that threat.
How to watch it: Bacurau is in virtual theatrical release, and a list of participating theaters is available on the Kino Lorber website. (You’ll receive a rental link, and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page.)
Bad Education
Bad Education is a tale of intrigue and larceny in the most drab of locations: a Long Island public school district. And it’s terrific. Based on a true story from the early aughts and directed by Cory Finley (Thoroughbreds), the film stars Hugh Jackman as Frank Tassone, superintendent of the fourth-best school district in the state of New York. Tassone soon finds himself at the center of a massive fraud investigation, thanks in part to reporting by a student journalist (Geraldine Viswanathan). Bad Education expertly traces the effects of the complex pressures placed on administrators and faculty, suggesting that this scandal is unlikely to be the last of its kind.
How to watch it: Bad Education is streaming for subscribers on HBO and HBO Max.
Beanpole
In Beanpole, from Russian director Kantemir Balagov, the struggle never ceases. It’s a period piece about two young women living in Leningrad just after the war. They met in combat and now work in a hospital, and both bear the physical and mental scars of their young, troubled lives. Beanpole tells the story of their stormy relationship as it’s crunched and crushed by life, much like the patients in the hospital. The film — which won Balagov the Best Director Prize in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard competition last year — is not easy to watch. But it’s achingly beautiful, with unnerving performances.
How to watch it: Beanpole is in virtual theatrical release, and a list of participating theaters is available on the Kino Lorber website. (You’ll receive a rental link, and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page.)
Crip Camp
Crip Camp starts out as a movie about a place: Camp Jened, an almost magical-seeming “summer camp for the handicapped run by hippies,” as the film’s co-director (and former camper) Jim Lebrecht explains early on. But soon, it becomes a chronicle of a movement, sparked by the young people whose lives were changed by their experience in that place. Crip Camp shows how the vision that young Jened attendees experienced at camp — that the world could be open to them, too — led them to become activists and community organizers. It’s buoyant and inspiring, a tale of people working together through difficulty and opposition to change the world.
How to watch it: Crip Camp is streaming on Netflix.
Da 5 Bloods
Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods stars Norm Lewis, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and a magnificent Delroy Lindo in a story about four black Vietnam vets who return to the country, decades after their tours of duty, in search of gold and their fallen buddy’s remains. Da 5 Bloods takes on myriad issues, starting with the Vietnam veterans, a sharply disproportionate number of whom are black and who were left to live with the remnants of a pointless war long past when the rest of us had moved on. Lee weaves that strand of history into the broader canvas of the 1960s and ’70s, from the civil rights movement to the moon landing. Then he extends it into today, all the way to the Black Lives Matter movement. Lindo gives a staggering performance as Paul, whose traumas have turned him into a MAGA-hat-sporting spout of paranoia, to the discomfort of both his friends and his son, David (Jonathan Majors), a Morehouse alum who comes looking for his father after he returns to Vietnam. That narrative choice alone means that Da 5 Bloods, while political to the bone, refuses to be stuffed into partisan pigeonholes. What it means to be black in America does not fit into tidy fables.
How to watch it: Da 5 Bloods is streaming on Netflix.
Driveways
Driveways is surprising at every turn. It’s a modest and gentle story about a boy named Cody (Lucas Jaye) who feels out of place, and his friendship with the Korean War vet named Del (Brian Dennehy, who passed away in April) who lives next door. But it’s not the film you might expect from that setup. Instead, the shifts that come from Del and Cody’s friendship are muted, almost imperceptible. Del finds something new to live for. Cody discovers a new community. They both gain a little confidence. Driveways is profound in its simple focus on everyday, neighborly life, and it explores, with exquisite sensitivity, the guards we all put up between us and others to keep us protected from the things we fear.
How to watch it: Driveways is available to digitally rent or purchase on services including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and various on-demand providers.
Related Driveways is a gentle masterpiece
Emma
Jane Austen practically invented the romantic comedy, but few adaptations of her books lean into the wicked satire that drips from nearly every page. Emma, helmed by photographer and music video director Autumn de Wilde, gets the balance just right. With a delightful Anya Taylor-Joy performance at its center, this new Emma doesn’t play too fast and loose with the story or its most familiar beats. It instead digs out the absurdities of being wealthy (or adjacent to wealth) around the turn of the 19th century — the affectations, the frills that cover up the crudeness of real life, and above all, the vast, unmitigated boredom.
How to watch it: Emma is available to digitally rent or buy on a wide variety of on-demand services, including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and FandangoNow.
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga takes the grand prize for weirdest, funniest, and most delightful comedy of the year so far, hands down. Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams star as Lars and Sigrit, childhood friends whose greatest dream is to win the Eurovision Song Contest and claim glory for their tiny Icelandic hometown. The big problem: They’re not very good. Through a series of unexpected events, they actually end up representing Iceland at the competition, and while there they go on a journey of self-discovery and a whole lot more. Other stars include Pierce Brosnan and a (truly fantastic) Dan Stevens in this sweet-natured comedy from David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers). Best of all, it will give you some tunes to hum all summer long.
How to watch it: Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga premieres on Netflix on June 26.
First Cow
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow is set in a 19th-century frontier settlement of tiny houses somewhere in Oregon, near the Columbia River, populated by people who are trying to scratch out a living in the New World, as well as the First Nations people who’ve been living there for generations. Into that settlement, a cow arrives, setting off a chain of events that are both momentous and small. But the film is about much more than just that. First Cow is also a gentle (and gently devastating) tale about male friendship, about finding someone to share your aspirations and dreams with, and, most deliciously, about cooking. And it’s also about the kinds of constructed hierarchies — based on factors like race, class, money, and firepower — that seem to be imposed on the world wherever new civilizations pop up.
How to watch it: After a brief theatrical run in March before theaters closed, First Cow is available on platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, and other on-demand providers.
Fourteen
Mara (Tallie Medel) and Jo (Norma Kuhling) have been friends since they were 14. Now, as young women in New York, their friendship has endured. But free-spirited Jo is a drain on practical Mara, and the relationship verges on codependent. Fourteen tracks the slow unraveling of the girls’ friendship through a series of scenes and depends on the audience to connect the dots between the events. The result is an engaging and at times heartrending meditation on friendship, growing apart, and what we owe to one another.
How to watch it: Fourteen is in virtual theatrical release, and a list of participating theaters is available on the Grasshopper Film website. (You’ll receive a rental link, and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page.)
The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man seemed eerily well-timed, originally releasing in theaters mere days after Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on two sex crimes charges, including rape in the third degree. Elisabeth Moss stars as a woman trying to escape the clutches of her abusive husband, who has found a way to turn himself invisible. Living inside The Invisible Man for two hours, we get to experience the existential terror of being a survivor of abuse who isn’t believed, as well as witness the many ways that crafty predators can manipulate their prey, making it seem as though they’re the victim and the accuser is the one who ought to be punished. It’s an old, old story, and an all too familiar one.
How to watch it: The Invisible Man is available to digitally rent or buy on a wide variety of on-demand services, including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and FandangoNow.
Related The Invisible Man gives a classic horror story new life in a fable about abusers
The King of Staten Island
Pete Davidson co-wrote and stars in Judd Apatow’s The King of Staten Island, a movie about a young man who’s worked his way into a dead-end life. Scott (Davidson) lives with his mother Margie (Marisa Tomei) and his younger sister Claire (Maud Apatow), and while Claire is heading to college, Scott is a textbook case of failure to launch. Scott and Claire’s father was a firefighter who died in a hotel fire when they were children. (In real life, Davidson’s father, who was also named Scott, was a firefighter who died as a first responder in the 9/11 attacks.) But things change when Margie begins dating a firefighter named Ray (Bill Burr). Steve Buscemi, Bel Powley, and Pamela Adlon also star in a sneakily mature movie about growing despite trauma and loving people even when they’re imperfect.
How to watch it: The King of Staten Island is available to digitally rent or purchase on digital and on-demand platforms such as Apple TV and Amazon. For a complete listing of services, see the movie’s website.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) is a 17-year-old who decides to terminate her pregnancy. But because she’s a minor, she can’t do it in her home state due to Pennsylvania law. So she buys a bus ticket to New York City, where she can legally get an abortion, and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) comes along. Writer and director Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats, It Felt Like Love) tells the story sparingly, favoring naturalism rather than polemics and recalling bleak dramas like the 2007 Romanian drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. But Hittman’s view feels more in tune with what young women face in the world, with the fear and difficulty inherent in navigating the labyrinthine medical system. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which won a prize for “auteur filmmaking” at Sundance in January, focuses on the many obstacles and menaces the girls encounter — mostly from men who feel far more comfortable and safe in the world than women do — and never lets us breathe too easy.
How to watch it: Never Rarely Sometimes Always is available to digitally rent or purchase on platforms including iTunes and Amazon.
On the Record
On the Record is a bombshell of a documentary, in which a large group of women allege that Def Jam record label founder and “godfather of hip-hop” Russell Simmons sexually assaulted or raped them. On the Record is absolutely damning of Simmons, who continues to insist he did not commit the crimes he’s accused of. Directed by Amy Ziering and Kirby Dick, the film is at its best when exploring the reasons that women in America, and particularly black women, often hesitate to accuse a powerful black man of a crime like sexual assault. It also points to what’s been missing from the Me Too movement: the voices of black women.
How to watch it: On the Record is streaming on HBO Max.
Onward
Onward is the charming tale of two brothers on a quest to spend time with their late father, set in a world that was once ruled by magic but is now pretty normal, even boring. The movie’s plot cleverly employs the structure of the sort of campaign you might see in a fantasy role-playing game such as Dungeons & Dragons.
Onward’s fantastical, Tolkien-lite elements are mixed with more banal workaday realities. Yet its true strength is in how it portrays the love between brothers, which brings its own kind of magic. One of Pixar’s most profound abilities has always been confronting the bittersweet along with the purely sweet and funny, in stories that kids and parents can watch together — and Onward delivers on that promise.
How to watch it: Onward is streaming on Disney+. It is also available to digitally rent or buy on a wide variety of on-demand services, including iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Prime, and FandangoNow.
The Other Lamb
The Other Lamb (from director Małgorzata Szumowska) is eerie and starkly beautiful. The film melds two familiar territories for horror — cults and women’s bodies — into one dread-soaked Bildungsroman centered on teenaged Selah (Raffey Cassidy). She lives with an all-women cult in the woods, where they raise sheep and live off the grid and serve a man called Shepherd (Michiel Huisman) as their adored, unquestioningly obeyed leader. Selah has been raised in this strange family, but now her beliefs are beginning to shift. What makes The Other Lamb feel fresh is how Szumowska renders her world — in vivid colors and inky blacks, with slow zooms that turn their placid, pastoral lives into something uncanny. The feeling that something very wrong is going on here is inscribed into every exacting, unnerving shot.
How to watch it: The Other Lamb is available to digitally rent and purchase on digital platforms including Amazon, Google Play, and YouTube.
The Painter and the Thief
The Painter and the Thief is a stunning film about young Czech painter Barbora Kysilkova and Karl-Bertil Nordland, the thief who stole two of her paintings from an Oslo gallery. He says he was so high at the time that he can’t remember why he did it — or what he did with the paintings. Kysilkova’s less interested in the thief himself than in where he took her paintings, but eventually she meets him and decides to paint his portrait, after which they form a friendship and creative partnership of sorts. The Painter and the Thief actively challenges what we think we understand about its characters based on their appearance, class markers, or behavior. It highlights the way artists of all kinds, from painters to filmmakers, turn reality into something that’s at least a little fictionalized in order to make their work, and how everyone conceals the truth a little.
How to watch it: The Painter and the Thief is in virtual cinemas, streaming on Hulu, and available on digital platforms including iTunes, Fandango Now, and Google Play.
The Platform
The Platform’s opening moments establish it as more of a conceptual thought experiment than a story; it’s an allegory about inequality, and it borrows on some concepts that have been used before. People on the top levels of a prison-like building, euphemistically called the “Vertical Self-Management Center” by the bureaucrats who run it, are more comfortable than those at the bottom, whom they despise. And while those at the top believe they’ve earned the right to be there by their wits and work, the movie suggests the systems that put them there also traffic in chance and fortune. Directed by Spanish filmmaker Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, it’s a cross between sci-fi and horror, brutal and disturbing and sometimes flat-out gross, but undeniably imaginative and thought-provoking.
How to watch it: The Platform is streaming on Netflix.
Selah and the Spades
Both deliciously wicked and perceptive about the battle of just getting through the day when you’re a teen, Selah and the Spades follows Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), who is the new girl at Haldwell School, a prestigious boarding school. When she arrives, she’s taken under the wing of Selah (Lovie Simone), a sophisticated upperclassman and the leader of the most powerful of Haldwell’s “factions,” the Spades. Selah and the Spades mixes the classic tropes of mobster movies with the cliques and concerns of high school films, but with a twist that’s all director Tayarisha Poe’s. It’s the multitalented artist’s first feature film, and it signals a strong voice and vision for filmmaking — one that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
How to watch it: Selah and the Spades is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Shirley
Stylistically, director Josephine Decker (Madeline’s Madeline) is a perfect match for Shirley. It’s a period psychodrama about a young woman named Rose (Odessa Young) who moves with her husband Fred (Logan Lerman) to Bennington, Vermont, after he picks up a teaching post there while finishing his dissertation. His supervisor is professor Stanley Edgar Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose wife is the sardonic and brilliant author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss); her short story “The Lottery” has just been published in the New Yorker, and she’s starting work on the novel that will become 1951’s Hangsaman. Shirley is a thoroughly engrossing, sometimes disorienting tale that plays out like a mystery, the kind where you’re never quite sure where reality ends and delusion (or maybe the truth) begins.
How to watch it: Shirley is streaming on Hulu and available to digitally rent or purchase on platforms including iTunes, Amazon, and others. You can also watch it through a “virtual theatrical” release at theaters around the country — see the Neon website for more details. (You will receive a link after buying a virtual ticket, and part of the proceeds will support a local theater.)
Sorry We Missed You
Sorry We Missed You is an angrily searing piece of social realism set in modern-day Britain’s gig economy. Director Ken Loach specializes in realistic dramas built atop roiling class-based anger, movies about the ways ordinary people’s lives are disrupted and upended by systems that leave them powerless to change even as they try everything in their power to change. Sorry We Missed You is the story of a working-class English family trying to scratch out a living any way possible, and of the indignities they experience within a system of short-term contracts and gig work. Ostensibly, employees get to be the “masters of their own destiny” (to paraphrase an employer in the film), but in truth, companies are just trying to remove any responsibility the employers might bear. It premiered at Cannes in summer 2019, but it feels even more devastatingly, bitingly urgent now.
How to watch it: Sorry We Missed You is in virtual theatrical release, and a list of participating theaters is available on Zeitgeist Films’ website. (You’ll receive a rental link, and profits help support the independent theater you select on the page.)
South Mountain
South Mountain is the wise, sometimes bitter, sometimes overwhelmingly emotional tale of a woman learning to fall out of love. Lila (Talia Balsam) and Edgar (Scott Cohen) live in the Catskills with their teenage children. Life is tranquil there — but when that sense of tranquility is suddenly shattered by a revelation, Lila is forced to reckon with both what she believes about herself and how she plans to live now. South Mountain is a bit like a coming-of-age film for middle age, and each scene feels vibrantly alive. Director and writer Hilary Brougher has crafted a world in which nothing is cleanly resolved, but a future is still possible.
How to watch it: South Mountain is available via digital on-demand services such as iTunes; see the film’s website for a full list.
The Surrogate
The Surrogate, the debut feature from Jeremy Hersh, has a premise that sounds almost like a thought experiment. Jess (Jasmine Batchelor) has offered to be a surrogate and egg donor for her two best friends, Josh (Chris Perfetti) and Aaron (Sullivan Jones). They’re elated when the pregnancy test is positive, but a medical consultation reveals that the fetus likely has Down’s syndrome. Immediately, the situation becomes much more complicated, given the array of options they must suddenly choose from. Will they terminate the pregnancy? Carry the child to term? Who would be involved in the child’s life? And whose choice is it to make? Without preaching solutions or offering answers, The Surrogate’s gentle empathy lets us feel the dilemmas each of the characters experience. It recognizes that the sheer array of choices available to us today is part of what makes the situation so difficult.
How to watch it: The Surrogate is in “virtual theatrical” release at theaters around the country — see the film’s website for more details. (You will receive a link after buying a virtual ticket.)
The Trip to Greece
The Trip to Greece is the fourth (and maybe final) in a series of films in which actors and comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon head off somewhere for a week to eat extravagantly, tour the countryside, and have some fun. Ostensibly the pair are there to “review” the restaurants, but the food and wine and comedy bits are really part of a tale of discovery and, at times, disquieting reflections on life, love, and regrets. In The Trip to Greece, Brydon and Coogan follow in the steps of Odysseus, from Troy to Ithaca, spouting Greek mythological trivia alongside jokes about “The Poetics, by Ari Stottle” and dueling impressions of everyone from Marlon Brando and Dustin Hoffman to Werner Herzog. Of all four installments, The Trip to Greece — while certainly snort-through-your-nose funny in places — plays the most like a drama. The whole series, taken together, is a meditation on middle age and mortality, on how our irrevocable life choices, even when they’re the right ones, will haunt us all our lives.
How to watch it: The Trip to Greece is available on a variety of digital platforms, including Apple TV and Amazon Prime. You can find the full listing here.
The True History of the Kelly Gang
In The True History of the Kelly Gang, director Justin Kurzel tells the bloody story of his homeland’s most famous outlaw, Ned Kelly, who’s either a folk hero in Australia or a villainous marauder, depending on whom you ask. Kelly (played by 1917 star George MacKay) retells his own story, a harrowing tale of abuse — from the English soldiers who took advantage of the family, to other thieves and robbers, to men sniffing around his mother’s door. Kelly learned to fight back and fight hard. Kurzel favors stylized images and the occasional anachronistic metal track to provoke a mood more than faithfully recreate history. And his approach works well in this film, bolstered by a strong cast featuring MacKay, Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult, Charlie Hunnam, Thomasin McKenzie, and Essie Davis. It’s a brutal watch from beginning to end, but one that shows how violence begets violence.
How to watch it: True History of the Kelly Gang is available on a wide variety of digital and on-demand platforms. See the film’s website for more details and links.
The Vast of Night
At the start of The Vast of Night, set in a midcentury New Mexico town, a Rod Serling sound-alike intones to set up the film as a Twilight Zone-style tale about a mystery located in “the frequency caught between logic and myth.” Fay (Sierra McCormick) is 16 and operates the town switchboard and is also interested in newfangled recording technologies; her friend Everett (Jake Horowitz) is a DJ for the radio station in their small town. One night, both are at their respective jobs while everyone else is at a basketball game at the local high school. Listening to Everett’s show, Fay hears a strange noise. She calls him to tell him about it, and the two start to investigate it, initially with the help of a stranger who calls in to Everett’s show. What’s great about The Vast of Night isn’t the story so much as the way it’s told; there’s nothing flashy about The Vast of Night, no spectacle, but it’s showy in a way that’s delightful to watch. And in the end, The Vast of Night aims to remind us that the mysteries of the universe go far, far beyond what we’ve begun to comprehend.
How to watch it: The Vast of Night is streaming for subscribers on Amazon Prime.