A comprehensive analysis in Science Advances reveals that humans have explored less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor — an area equivalent to merely one-tenth the size of Belgium. Oceanographer Katherine Bell and colleagues at the Ocean Discovery League compiled data from approximately 44,000 deep-sea dives conducted between 1958 and 2024, finding that expeditions have concentrated overwhelmingly around waters near the United States, Japan, and New Zealand.
The study exposes significant gaps in ocean exploration, with vast regions — particularly the Indian Ocean — remaining virtually untouched by direct observation. Much of the existing dive data remains inaccessible to scientists, locked away by private companies.
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Our hearts beat faster when we exercise, which is why heart rate training can be so useful. But when we aren’t doing anything, our heart rate can still be useful to know. If you have a wearable that measures your resting heart rate (RHR), here’s how to understand what it’s telling you.
Medical professionals usually consider anything between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm) to be a “normal” resting heart rate. But they are usually measuring resting heart rate in people who are in a healthcare setting, sitting quietly. Notably, they are awake, and some may be a bit nervous about being in a doctor’s office.
Your smartwatch or other wearable device may be able to capture lower numbers, especially if you wear it while you’re sleeping. Oura, maker of smart rings, reports that its members tend to have a resting heart rate between 50 and 60 bpm. Whoop says that its users average 59 bpm for women, 55 for men.
Users of Oura, Whoop, and similar devices probably have lower than average heart rates, because these platforms are popular among athletes and the health-conscious. The more typical 60 to 100 figure is meant to apply to the entire population a healthcare professional might encounter. So it’s OK if you’re not hitting those lower numbers.
Athletes and people in good cardiovascular health tend to have lower resting heart rates. People who improve their cardio fitness tend to see their resting heart rate decrease over time, and that’s often considered a good sign that what you’re doing is working.
In the short term, a heart rate a few beats higher than your usual may mean:
You are stressed, either mentally or physically (for example, fatigued from hard workouts)
You’re in your follicular phase, if you’re a person with a menstrual cycle
You’re getting sick
You’re taking medication that affects your resting heart rate (including some stimulants and decongestants)
Something disrupted your sleep, if your RHR is measured during sleep—for example, drinking and staying up late can both result in a higher RHR reading.
I find resting heart rate (along with HRV, which is different) to be a useful number to track for understanding how stressed or recovered my body is. If it goes up, that’s fine, so long as it comes back down within a few days. A resting heart rate that stays elevated for weeks may indicate illness or other issues that may call for medical attention.
As tempting as it is to want a “good” resting heart rate, it’s not useful to treat RHR as a competition. People are built differently, and just as your friend might be taller or shorter than you, they may have a naturally higher or lower heart rate, even before you take fitness or health factors into account.
In general, smaller people tend to have slightly higher resting heart rates, which is why the average RHR for women is a few beats higher than the average man’s. Resting heart rates can also change with age, increasing slightly in early adulthood and then leveling off. (Note that your resting heart rate doesn’t necessarily say anything about your maximum heart rate or exercise heart rate, which I discuss in more detail here.)
If you’re using a watch or wearable to tell you your resting heart rate, there’s also a difference from device to device. When I wore five different devices to track my RHR and HRV for several nights in a row, the Fitbit gave a resting heart rate number that was often 10 beats higher than the reading from Oura. The other devices—a Garmin, a Whoop, and an Apple Watch—were in between.
Ultimately, the best way to use your RHR data is to keep an eye on long- and short-term trends. If your RHR is lowering gradually over time as you exercise a little more, that’s a good sign. And when it varies from day to day, you can use those changes as a nudge to check in on your health, stress, fatigue, and sleep. And of course, if you’re ever concerned about your heart rate being unusually high or low, check with a medical professional.
President Donald Trump said he is killing a broadband grant program that was authorized by Congress, claiming that the Digital Equity Act of 2021 is racist and unconstitutional.
“I have spoken with my wonderful Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and we agree that the Biden/Harris so-called ‘Digital Equity Act’ is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL. No more woke handouts based on race! The Digital Equity Program is a RACIST and ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway. I am ending this IMMEDIATELY, and saving Taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post yesterday.
The Digital Equity Act provided $2.75 billion for three grant programs. As a National Telecommunications and Information Administration webpage says, the grants “aim to ensure that all people and communities have the skills, technology, and capacity needed to reap the full benefits of our digital economy.”
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A quick public service announcement: Mother’s Day is this Sunday. If this holiday snuck up on you again this year (I’m in the same boat), it’s not too late to grab a thoughtful gift. Here’s a list of gift ideas for the chef, baker, coffee connoisseur, and everyone in between. While you may not have time to get something engraved or monogrammed, these gifts still say “You deserve to do more of what you love.”
The vendors listed below offer expedited shipping so your gift will arrive on time. Just make sure to check the two-day shipping option during checkout.
Maybe you’ve watched your mom slowly wear down that thin plastic cutting mat, or you’ve seen her eyeing those fancy cutting blocks at Home Depot but never buying one for herself. Anyone who cooks a lot at home deserves to have great tools to work with. Hardwood cutting boards are a thoughtful way to step up from the worn out plastic ones, and the end-grain cutting blocks are a real treat for the knives. Prized among chefs for their durability without damaging a knife’s edge, end-grain wood boards are a worthwhile investment. (They’ll last a while too, if you care for them correctly.)
It’s 2025 now, and anyone who hates sourdough bread-baking has long since given up, but there are some home cooks who found a new best friend (and they feed and discard it every day). For the mothers who love their “mother,” a bread banneton will be a practical gift that everyone can benefit from when the pain au levain comes out of the oven.
You’d be surprised how much easier it is to assess if a roast is finished cooking when you use a meat thermometer. Okay, maybe that’s no surprise for you, but your mother might very well be impressed by the new confidence that comes with a proper meat thermometer. I’m a big fan of the Thermapen One, which gives you a reading in one second and has a light up digital screen.
My mom manages to cook up a storm with the dullest knives I’ve ever seen. While avid cooks may just need to sharpen their knives, it’s important that said knives also don’t suck. Instead of resorting to the mysterious knife block gift set—half of the set never gets touched anyway—choose a set with fewer, more useful blades. This set from Wüsthof includes only the important knives—a chef’s knife, utility knife, and a bread knife.
Coffee-loving parents who have been fussing around with the same irritable drip machine or espresso pods are long overdue for an upgrade. Having an espresso machine used to mean dealing with a noisy, bulky contraption, but they’ve since become more compact and intuitive.
A new set of pots and pans is always a good idea. It may come as a surprise to your mom that the bald spot of scraped off non-stick coating in the middle of her pots is a sign they should be replaced. Treat her to a set of cookware that’s made to last, like this All-Clad set.
Electronics aren’t for everyone. In fact, cooking can be a meditative way of working purposefully with your own two hands. A medium-sized mortar and pestle is a great size for small jobs like grinding popcorn spices, and making larger recipes like guacamole.
Some folks aren’t makers—they’re enjoy-ers. For parents who like to get out and enjoy good weather with some snacks, picnic accessories are just the thing. This portable charcuterie board packs up securely with a clip-on lid and has adjustable compartments so you can keep your snacks organized. Keep the lid handy between snacking sessions so you can keep away the little buggies that try to share the blanket with you.
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that became a household name after causing a massive global IT outage last year, has announced it will cut 5% of its workforce in part due to “AI efficiency.” From a report: In a note to staff earlier this week, released in stock market filings in the US, CrowdStrike’s chief executive, George Kurtz, announced that 500 positions, or 5% of its workforce, would be cut globally, citing AI efficiencies created in the business.
“We’re operating in a market and technology inflection point, with AI reshaping every industry, accelerating threats, and evolving customer needs,” he said. Kurtz said AI “flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster,” adding it “drives efficiencies across both the front and back office. AI is a force multiplier throughout the business,” he said. Other reasons for the cuts included market demand for sustained growth and expanding the product offering.
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The only thing that’s certain about the current tariff situation is that a lot of things are about to get more expensive for U.S. consumers. The impact of the new tariffs is estimated to be more than $5,000 per year for the average household, which means all the work you’ve put into figuring out your home budget and personal finances is going to go out the window. All the metrics are about to change—and mostly not in your favor.
If you’re smart, you already have an emergency fund to protect yourself against life’s little surprises, from a job loss to an unexpected medical bill. Right now, it’s also a good idea to start building a fund to protect yourself against sudden and persistent tariff-fueled hikes in the cost of living. Here’s how to approach setting up a tariff emergency fund.
Tariff rates are public information, but tariff schedules can be a difficult read if you’re not an economist. But you can use a few key pieces of information to figure out how much extra money to set aside to protect yourself from tariff-related cost increases:
Blanket tariffs. There’s pretty much a base tariff of 10% on just about every country in the world at the moment (the big exception is China, which currently faces tariffs as high as 145%). You can see a list of countries and tariff rates here, so if you know that something you buy is being imported from a specific place, you can see the extra cost imposed on the importer for that country of origin. This is a good upper metric to go by.
Average cost increase. Most companies will pass tariff costs on to the consumer in some way—that’s why tariffs are considered a form of tax on the consumer. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everything will be 10% more expensive due to the blanket tariffs, because a product may only use a few ingredients or components that are subject to the tariffs, and different ingredients might come in under different tariff rates. The Budget Lab at Yale University has calculated that consumer prices are going to go up by about 3% as a result of the tariffs, so that’s a good lower metric to use.
You could spend time researching tariff rates and where your food, clothing, and other items come from in order to craft an extremely specific tariff fund, and then look for domestic products you can substitute to eliminate the tariff costs from your budget. But the way the tariffs are shifting on a near-daily basis means you might do better to skip that meticulous product-by-product analysis and just assume that your costs are going to go up by anywhere from 3% to 10% on just about everything.
Targeting something in the middle of that range—say, 5% of your current household grocery and shopping costs—should give you the extra padding you’re going to need as long as these tariffs remain in place. For example, if your average grocery bill is about $500 per month, a tariff emergency grocery fund of about $180 (3% of $500 is $15, multiplied by 12 months) would cover a year’s worth of extra tariff-related costs (or you could try to find a supermarket that’s not raising prices at all, if you can). If you want a little more protection against unexpected costs, you could go the full 10% and make that $300. You can apply a similar formula to everything else you purchase on a regular basis that could be impacted by tariffs.
Another option is to consider major purchases you’re planning for—say, a new refrigerator or a home remodeling project—and setting aside extra money to cover possible increased costs. Consumer Reports estimates appliance prices could increase by as much as 30% to 40% over the next 9 months, so you’ll want to be ready: If you were planning on buying a refrigerator with a price tag of around $2,000,.stick another $600 to $800 into your tariff emergency fund.
Another approach would be to assume the tariffs will cost you about $5,000 per year, and start putting that amount aside to cover the increased costs, if you can manage it. It’s important that this be a separate amount from your emergency fund, which you still need to maintain to hedge against, well, emergencies—and if tariffs are lowered or you don’t spend as much as you expect, you can roll it into next year’s fund, or add it to your regular emergency fund.
Preparing for tariff chaos isn’t going to be easy, but putting aside some extra money now will give you the necessary runway to handle what’s coming.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Panasonic will undertake a major restructuring across a range of its business, including consumer electronics, cutting 10,000 jobs globally, as the Japanese company plans to streamline, spinning out struggling divisions in hopes of reversing its dwindling market share and fending off fierce Chinese competition. Panasonic did not say which businesses it intended to shrink. The company expects to book structural reform costs of roughly $900 million this business year. Panasonic ended the fiscal year
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Schools across the US are warning parents about an Internet trend that has students purposefully trying to damage their school-issued Chromebooks so that they start smoking or catch fire.
Various school districts, including some in Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington, have sent letters to parents warning about the trend that’s largely taken off on TikTok.
Per reports from school districts and videos that Ars Technica has reviewed online, the so-called Chromebook Challenge includes students sticking things into Chromebook ports to short-circuit the system. Students are using various easily accessible items to do this, including writing utensils, paper clips, gum wrappers, and pushpins.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Major tech companies lobbying to salvage a tax deduction for research and development are warning they may pull back from high-profile pledges of new US investments if Congress doesn’t fully reinstate the break.
Big tech companies have pledged more than $1.6 trillion in investments in the US since Donald Trump took office, promising to build factories and data centers in alignment with Trump’s push to build in America. But industry representatives are signaling those promises will be imperiled if Congress doesn’t fully reinstate the R&D tax deduction, which was pared back to help offset the massive cost of President Donald Trump’s 2017 bill. At the time, it was estimated that limiting the provision would temporarily raise about $120 billion from 2018 to 2027.
“A lot of those announcements are predicated on an expectation the administration and Congress will partner together on reinstating those R&D provisions,” said Jason Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that includes among its members Amazon, Apple, Anthropic, Alphabet, and IBM. Lobbyists representing tech companies that announced US investments have made similar claims to congressional aides and lawmakers, according to people familiar with the conversations.
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When you’re planning a trip with friends, there’s a good chance your group chat will be full of links to and screenshots of places you want to visit or cafés you want to hit.
To help you keep track of all that, Google is now rolling out a new feature to add multiple locations to a Google Maps list for you using screenshots. This feature scans your phone and uses Gemini AI to work out the places mentioned in your screenshots. It’s starting out first first on iPhones (which is odd for Google), and it’s limited to the US for now. However, Android and global releases are planned for the future.
Here’s how the new feature works. After updating the Google Maps app to the latest version, head over to the You tab. Here, you’ll see a new list up top called Screenshots.
Tap on it, and Google Maps will ask for access to your photo library. Here, you can allow it full access to enable the auto-scan feature, or you can simply choose the photos you want it to scan manually. The feature works slightly differently based on what you choose. I’ll start with the auto-scan instructions.
If you’re on automatic, simply go about your life, taking screenshots of locations you’re interested in as you normally would. These can include the name of a location, an address, or even a photo of a place. Once you’re ready to add them to your Google Maps list, open the Google Maps app again. If the Maps app automatically recognizes a location, it will show a message saying that there are new places that are ready for you to review.
Tap the Review button and choose if you want to save the image and the places Google found to your Screenshots list or not. Once that’s done, you can also add the places to a different list.
Here’s a detailed video on how the feature works:
Alternatively, you can also manually add places to your Google Maps app using the Screenshots list, for more privacy.
Go to the You tab and choose the Screenshots list. Here, upload the screenshots that you want the list to pull from.
Now, Google Maps will analyze the images and will come back to you with the Review screen. Simply go through the locations that Google Maps found, and add the ones you want to the Screenshots list.
As useful as this feature can be, the question remains, should you let Gemini access all the photos in your iPhone library just to save a couple of seconds searching for a place on Google Maps?
If that makes you uncomfortable, be sure to deny Google Maps full access to your photo library, even if you’re not regularly using the Screenshots list feature. It’s also good practice to periodically check on your photo permissions, which you can read more about here.
Not that long ago, sending a message was final. It didn’t matter if you had an embarrassing typo, or you sent a message to the wrong person: Once you tapped that “send” button, you were locked in, and whoever that message was sent to would have it as long as they wanted.
These days, however, we have the technology to save ourselves from such embarrassment. Many chat apps now have options to retrieve a message after it was sent, whether by editing the message to fix a mistake, or the ability to delete a message from everyone in the chat. It doesn’t guarantee that the people who received the message didn’t see it, but it does remove that message from view. If they didn’t catch it, they never will.
Plenty of chat apps have this delete option today, from WhatsApp to iMessage. But one notable exception has been Google Messages. If you send a message you didn’t mean to send, you can edit it for up to 15 minutes, but you can’t undo it. Luckily, that’s beginning to change. 9to5Google originally spotted the ability to delete messages from everyone back in February. Now, it appears to be rolling out, slowly but surely.
To get specific, RCS, the messaging protocol that Google Messages now defaults to, has had this option since last July’s “Universal Profile 2.7” update, which allowed users to “Edit, Recall and Delete [messages] that they sent earlier for themselves and the message recipient.”
When the feature hits your Google Messages app, you’ll now have two options when you delete a message. You’ll have the “Delete for me” option, which behaves the same as deleting a message always has: it’ll delete on your end, but not for anyone else. However, there’s also now “Delete for everyone,” which will delete the message for all users running a compatible version of Google Messages.
That’s the key here. While the message will be removed from users who have an updated, compatible version of Google Messages, it won’t be deleted from older app versions. It’s the Achilles’ heel of the feature, and it applies to most chat apps that offer it: You’ll never really know whether the message was deleted, unless you’re certain all parties involved are running an up-to-date version of Google Messages.
According to 9to5Google, the feature is also rolling out rather slowly at this time. They highlight one user running the Google Messages beta who has the feature for a group chat of 12 participants, but not for single chats. 9to5Google doesn’t have the option on their end.
For the best shot at trying out the feature as soon as possible, you might want to enroll in the Google Messages beta. If you’re OK risking a more unstable version of the messaging app, head to the Google Messages Play Store page, choose BECOME A TESTER, then follow the on-screen instructions to enroll.
The specialized role of prompt engineering, not long ago heralded as a promising new career path in AI, has virtually disappeared just two years after its emergence. Many companies are now considering strong AI prompting a standard skill rather than a dedicated position, Fast Company reports, with some firms even deploying AI systems to generate optimal prompts for other AI tools.
“AI is already eating its own,” Malcolm Frank, CEO of TalentGenius, told the publication. “Prompt engineering has become something that’s embedded in almost every role, and people know how to do it. It’s turned from a job into a task very, very quickly.” The prompt engineer’s decline serves as a case study for the broader AI job market, where evidence suggests AI is primarily reshaping existing careers rather than creating entirely new ones.
Further reading: ‘AI Prompt Engineering Is Dead.’
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Though relatively new on the Hollywood scene (its first original film was released in 2019), Apple TV+’s slate of original films has included not just charming indies, but award-winning prestige pictures. CODA was Oscar’s best picture just a couple of years ago (the first film from a streaming service to claim the honor), and the streamer’s movies earned it 13 nominations for 2023, even if it got nothing for 2024. (We all have off years.)
Given the complexities of film financing today, you might be excused for believing that many of these movies were typical theatrical releases—but, strictly speaking, these are all Apple TV+ originals. Sometimes they’re only available through the app, but other times they have small (or significant) theatrical releases built in to their distribution model, if only to ensure they’re eligible for major awards like the Oscars.
Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Sigourney Weaver star in this sci-fi/action/romance that became Apple TV’s most-streamed movie launch ever upon its February release. Teller and Taylor-Joy play snipers tasked by a mysterious woman (Weaver) with guarding two sides of the title’s gorge: He’s a former U.S. Marine with symptoms of PTSD, she’s a a Lithuanian covert operative with a dying father. The two are to stand watch for a full year in complete isolation to ensure that nothing comes out of the gorge, but things get complicated when the bored snipers start sending each other messages, increasing their communication until they start to question just what it is that they’re meant to be guarding. You can stream The Gorge here.
The sort of goofy rom-com that they don’t make anymore (or so it’s said), Fly Me to the Moon rides on the strong chemistry between leads Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, as well as a premise so outrageous that it just about works. Tatum is Cole Davis, a (fictional) NASA launch director during the Apollo 11 era. He finds himself saddled with Johansson’s Kelly Jones, a slightly unscrupulous marketer publicly charged with helping to sell the public on the importance of a Moon landing. But she has a secret mission, as well: She’s charged with preparing a fake landing video to air if the real one fails. These two lock horns as the actual launch approaches, with Kelly coming to question her methods in the face of true-believer Cole. Director Greg Berlanti, best known for about a million DC Comics TV shows, follows up 2018’s Love, Simon. You can stream Fly Me to the Moon here.
Though it didn’t take home Oscar gold (let’s put Lily Gladstone in more movies, please), Martin Scorsese’s latest has more than proven the octogenarian filmmaker hasn’t lost a step. A story of creeping dread and existential terror in the American west, it chronicles the injustices that follow the discovery of oil on Osage tribal land in the 1920s. A good thing quickly goes bad when white political leaders plot a string of murders to keep the wealth from staying where it belongs. The film might have gone deeper in presenting the true story from its natural Indigenous perspective, but the finished product still represents an important and harrowing story well told. You can stream Killers of the Flower Moon here.
Joel Coen’s sole (thus far) solo directing project represents a bold choice: a beautiful, strikingly minimalist adaptation of the Scottish play—lean and mean in its production and its impact. Only a director of Coen’s confidence would mount a production like this without feeling the need to reinvent the wheel, letting Shakespeare dialogue and the performances of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand do the heavy lifting. During the 2021/22 awards season, it received far more nominations than wins, but still stands as one of the best cinematic takes on Macbeth since Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. You can stream The Tragedy of Macbeth here.
British director Steve McQueen (Hunger, 12 Years a Slave, Widows) takes on the Blitz in this historical drama that’s rousingly old-fashioned while also being revisionist in its willingness to upend our notions of the fighting spirit of British civilians during World War II. Saoirse Ronan plays Rita, single mom to a biracial son—her Grenadian partner was hounded by racists until he was forced to leave the country. She’s a factory worker and a singer, struggling to survive in London’s East End, where the poor are offered less protection than those in better-off parts of the city, and a single mother with a biracial child is treated a bit less well than that. It’s not an entirely downbeat movie, and it’s full of uplifting moments, but it’s also not afraid to suggest that the Blitz of 1940 wasn’t all “Keep Calm and Carry On.” You can stream Blitz here.
A full cinematic adaptation of this musical about the events that unfolded at a rural airport on 9/11 was in the works before the pandemic put a stop to them. Thus, a special stage production was mounted using members of the original cast, filmed before an audience of 9/11 survivors and frontline workers. While it’s impossible to know what that other version might have been like, this one is probably better. The musical, which opened on Broadway in 2017, takes place in the Newfoundland town of Gander following the 2001 attacks. Gander had once been a major refueling hub, but that changed over time, leaving the town with an enormous airport and relatively little traffic—until airplanes were diverted there in the wake of the terrorist attacks. The stranded plane passengers briefly more than doubled the town’s population, and Gander leaders and residents pulled out all the stops to care for the unexpected guests. Based on a true story, the show has a smart sense of humor and, while it’s not cynical, it never succumb to schmaltz either. You can stream Come from Away here.
Jon Watts steps away from Marvel’s Spider-Man movies to direct this action comedy led by George Clooney and Brad Pitt; it’s still a little hard to process that we’re in a world where two A-list stars would get paired with a director whose grosses are in the multiple billions, and yet we’re direct-to-streaming (technically, this did get a one-week pro forma theatrical release). Regardless, the finished product is quite fun: Amy Ryan plays Margaret, a Manhattan District Attorney who meets a young man in a bar who ends up dead(-ish) in her hotel room. She contacts a fixer (Clooney) to help clean up the mess and keep her out of trouble. Meanwhile, the hotel’s owner (voiced by Frances McDormand) witnesses much of what went on, and has brought in a person of her own (Pitt) to protect her hotel from blowback. The two very solitary fixers are forced to work together, and, naturally, things get increasingly complicated: The dead young man isn’t entirely dead, as it happens, but was involved in shenanigans that include drugs and the Albanian mafia. You can stream Wolfs here.
Sacha Jenkins does an awful lot right in this biographical documentary about the American jazz legend, starting by offering new and archival interviews with musicians who’ve been influenced by Satchmo and his art: Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, Amiri Baraka, Ossie Davis, etc. But what he really gets right is in allowing Armstrong to tell his own story—the legend kept shelves worth of diaries on reel-to-reel tape, and it’s quickly clear that there’s no one better suited to tell his story, his instantly recognizable voice offering frank insights that no one else could. It’s a love letter to the jazz giant, one that, smartly, doesn’t try to smooth out the rough edges. You can stream Black & Blues here.
You might have missed Cooper Raiff’s 2020 indie Shithouse, a movie that earned great reviews on a $15,000 budget but couldn’t overcome its unfortunate title. His follow-up, Cha Cha Real Smooth, got a bit more attention. Andrew is a bar/bat mitzvah party planner who falls for Domino, a mom 10 years his senior (Dakota Johnson). It’s occasionally cloying, but Raiff’s complex script and range of characters make for a charming movie from a filmmaker to keep an eye on. You can stream Cha Cha Real Smooth here.
The easy route would have been a tearjerking portrait of an inspirational American figure—One-time Hollywood golden boy bravely faces life with a debilitating illness. There’s a bit of that in this documentary, but whenever that mood does overtake the film, it feels earned. Director Davis Guggenheim documents Fox’s life with a thematic narrative through-line (an actor who could never be still in body or mind now struggles to do just that), even as it refuses to shy away from the knocks and bruises that attend any life with Parkinson’s, nor from Fox’s own complicated personality. The film works best when dealing with the overlaps, and disconnects, between Fox as a person and Fox as a public face of Parkinson’s. You can stream Still here.
I’m not sure it was the most worthy Best Picture Oscar winner, that doesn’t detract from CODA as a charming and altogether likable film about Ruby (Emilia Jones), a young musician who is the only hearing member of her family. She struggles with the demands of the family’s fishing business even as she discovers a passion for singing and a new boyfriend. The premise involves a worn and silly trope about deaf people not understanding music, but it also depicts its characters as capable, complicated community leaders with actual sex lives. Emilia Jones is great in the lead, as are Marlee Matlin and Oscar-winner Troy Katsur as her parents. You can stream CODA here.
In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a dying engineer named Finch (Tom Hanks) works to build a robotic companion—not to serve as his companion, but to take care of his dog when he dies. Which is 1000% relatable, and more or less the extent of the plot. As end-time movies go, this one is surprisingly charming and family-friendly—Tom Hanks is a genial companion at the end of the world, and you won’t be surprised that a story of a man having adventures just to make sure that his dog has a friend is definitely going to make you cry. You can stream Finch here.
Sandwiched between 2021’s superior The Last Duel and Gladiator 2, Ridley Scott’s 2023 somewhat-accurate biopic about the one-time emperor of France proves his is the only name in town when it comes to historical epics. The shorter, theatrical version of this one is a slightly muddled affair, turning on a sly, subtly comedic lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix while also building to a number of massive, more traditional set pieces (Scott smartly doesn’t ask us to be overly enamored of the man himself). When it works, it offers up the old-fashioned thrills of a gorgeously designed period drama, with the types of grand battle sequences that we don’t get in a world where every movie fight involves superheroes and spaceships. The director’s cut (my preferred version), also on Apple TV+, is, surprisingly, sharper and funnier—but it adds nearly an hour to an already-long movie, so manage your time accordingly. You can stream the theatrical cut here, and the longer director’s cut here.
The great Errol Morris (Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, The Fog of War) turns his camera on writer David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré, one-time spy and preeminent writer of espionage novels. The title comes from a memory from the author’s youth: visiting his father who was part of a pigeon-shooting concession—the pigeons were bred in captivity and then forced through a tunnel so that they’d be right in line for rich men to shoot them, just at what seemed like their moment of freedom. The metaphor of an escape that’s actually a trap became a potent one in the author’s life and work, and Morris drives into that lifelong theme with his typical depth and style. You can stream The Pigeon Tunnel here.
Robyn Goodfellowe is apprenticed to her father as a hunter, the two of them traveling to Ireland to wipe out the last of the land’s wolves. Going off on her own, she encounters a free-spirited girl who needs Robyn’s help to find her mother; the girl’s tribe is rumored to have the ability to change into wolves, and Robyn’s alliance with her new friends threatens her relationship with her father. This stunningly hand-drawn animated film received a well-deserved Oscar nomination, and follows a thematic trilogy that began with the same filmmakers’ The Secret of Kells (2009) and Song of the Sea (2014). They’re all independent of one another story-wise, but if you love this one, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy all three. You can stream Wolfwalkers here.
Most audiences seemed to overlook Apple’s first original narrative movie when it was released back in 2019, and that’s too bad. Written and directed by Minhal Baig, a native of Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, the movie has a distinctive sense of place, particularly for anyone who grew up in the Chicago area. But its primary strength is as a smart, sensitive coming-of-age story. Geraldine Viswanathan plays the title’s Hala Masood, a teenager from a strict Muslim family who falls for a non-Muslim boy at school, setting up a conflict that also brings a few family secrets out into the open. You can stream Hala here.
Chiwetel Ejiofor narrates this nature documentary from directors Victoria Stone and Mark Deeble, following 50-year-old mother elephant Athena as she leads her family from their bucolic home into more treacherous terrain after a drought threatens their survival. The team kept track of the family in the African savannah over the course of four years, charting the intelligence and familial bonds of the animals, as well as the harsh choices imposed on them by the natural environment. You can stream The Elephant Queen here.
Writer/director Benjamin Cleary presents a poignant existential dilemma in this low-key science fiction drama starring Mahershala Ali as Cameron Turner, a husband and father suffering from a terminal illness. To spare his wife (Naomie Harris) and children from the trauma and pain of his impending death, he’s considering a new procedure offered by Dr. Scott (Glenn Close): He’ll continue to hide his illness from his family, and be replaced by a clone with all of his memories. He’ll spend his last months alone, but knowing his family won’t have to confront his loss. In the best sci-fi tradition, the film explores the questions of identity, meaning, and loss that such hypothetical technology raises—without feeling like an overlong episode of Black Mirror. You can stream Swan Song here.
It’s only around 40 minutes, so this blend of live-action and animation is more of a short than a feature, but its length and refusal to belabor its own point are strengths, not weaknesses.Seven-year-old William (Phoenix Laroche) moves with his family to a new home, where he struggles to settle in and make friends. A Christmas gift of the titular rabbit sets William’s imagination free, and the boy’s love gives the rabbit a life of its own alongside the other toys in the playroom. When William gets sick, the Velveteen Rabbit has a tough choice to make and, if you know the story, this is approximately when the tears start welling up in your eyes. The animated segments use a variety of gorgeous animation styles, which really sells the complexity and variety of William’s imagination. You can stream The Velveteen Rabbit here.
Reginald Hudlin (House Party, Marshall) directs this straightforward, nevertheless essential portrait of actor, director, and diplomat Sidney Poitier. The film not only captures the scope of one of the most significant and consequential figures in film and American culture in the 20th century—it also has the poignant virtue of being Poitier’s last onscreen appearance before his death at the age 94. You can stream Sidney here.
Alex Mashinsky—the disgraced founder of the Celsius Network cryptocurrency bank who deceived hundreds of thousands into losing billions with the catchy slogan “unbank yourself”—was sentenced to 12 years in prison on Thursday.
Back in December, Mashinsky pleaded guilty to securities fraud and commodities fraud. Federal prosecutors slammed him for reaping $48 million in profits while causing billions in investor losses by artificially inflating the value of his network’s token, Cel. The Department of Justice and dozens of victims urged the court to order a maximum sentence of 20 years, while Mashinsky hoped the court would agree that he had shown remorse and should only serve one year and one day, Reuters reported.
Mashinsky’s downfall started in 2022, when the Celsius Network suddenly stopped allowing withdrawals, claiming that “extreme market conditions” were to blame, a shady move that caused some customers to question the crypto bank’s financial health. One month later, the bank filed for bankruptcy, exposing a $1.19 billion deficit in its balance sheets and still holding onto customers’ funds while scoffing at supposed “misinformation” that their money would be lost.