Film

Film critic Justin Chang is not attending the Cannes Film festival, but he's still seeing a lot of films from it. He says "it's been a typically mixed bag of the good, the bad and the sometimes great, but it's also been wonderful to see so many bold, ambitious movies on the big screen — like experiencing a mini-festival of my own."

By curious coincidence, two of the lovelier movies I've seen so far this summer — the family-friendly animated fable Luca and the German art-house fairy tale Undine — tell stories about mythic sea creatures making contact with the human world.

The first time actor Antony Ramos saw In the Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway production about a Latinx community in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood, he was floored. Now Ramos is starring — and singing and dancing and rapping — in the film adaptation of In the Heights.

Whether you go to see it now or wait until it begins streaming, A Quiet Place Part II is likely to make you a little jumpy. It doesn't have the same claustrophobic intensity as its predecessor, but it's just as taut, suspenseful and beautifully made.