Four Ways a Movie Can Win … and Lose
How 'Michael,' 'Lee Cronin’s The Mummy,' 'Apex,' and 'Blue Heron' represent the four sides of modern cinema.
This weekend, I took my daughter to a local video store, Vidéothèque, to rent a few movies. Even in 2026, it’s a tradition I am attempting to instill, that movies can be discovered not just on a screen at home or in a theater, but in a third place, where you can run your hands along the racks lining the aisles and pull something that you’ve never heard of off a shelf. It’s always a lot of fun—this weekend, we grabbed The Boxtrolls (we watched it right away and she is obsessed), Hotel Transylvania 2 (sure), and 1995’s live-action Casper (cannot wait to ghost-pill this spooky-curious little kid). One neat feature of Vidéothèque is a classic table-top arcade cabinet. My daughter has grown interested in this for obvious reasons—flashing lights, cute characters—and so this time we brought quarters to play. She chose Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. It was challenging—timing and joystick issues, general dexterity, etc. She’s not yet 5. But she raised a vital question: “How do I win?” I don’t think I’ve ever won Ms. Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, and I’m not quite sure what it would mean if I did. You get added to an all-time scoreboard? In my experience at the arcade, it’s a zero-sum game. You either win or you die. Video games are helpfully instructive about life in that way.
