Month: March 2021

A man is stuck in a time loop and doomed to repeat the same day over and over again, all while being hunted by a group of deadly assassins, in Boss Level. We've been deluged with time loop-centric fare the last few years, with Happy Death Day (2017), Happy Death Day 2U (2019), Russian Doll (2019), and Palm Springs (2020) representing the best of the recent offerings. Add Boss Level to that list, not because it's particularly deep or because it boasts an innovative new twist but because everyone on-screen is clearly having a blast, and their enthusiasm is contagious, making this film just plain fun to watch—and ultimately that's what entertainment is all about.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

Director Joe Carnahan (The Blacklist, The Grey) started working on a script for a film with the working title Continue back in 2012. He envisioned making "Groundhog Day as an action movie," but the project apparently foundered at 20th Century Fox. Later that year, he posted footage from screen tests with eventual star Frank Grillo—who had worked with Carnahan on 2011's The Grey—"to show you how cool this movie could have been." (Carnahan deleted his Twitter account in 2019 after attacking multiple critics who gave his film, El Chicano, mixed reviews and receiving considerable blowback for doing so. His account is currently listed as "suspended.") Fortunately, the project was revived in 2017, and Hulu snatched up the distribution rights last year.

At this point, a dozen years into the platform's existence, Kickstarter documentaries are by no means a new thing. Projects originating on it have gone on to earn virtually every big film accolade, from debuts at major festivals to Oscars. But for every Elstree 1976 or I Am Big Bird, it feels like Kickstarter offers at least 50 projects that seem a bit too niche, a bit too low-budget, or a bit too amateurish. At the beginning of this very month, you could back a film about the life of a UK-based, skateboarding Staffordshire Bull Terrier or about what common weeds you can eat, for instance. (Disclosure: I once backed a Kickstarter documentary about a group of friends traveling to see LCD Soundsystem play "All My Friends," because... I was a foolish college kid?)

On paper, Mother to Earth sounds like it belongs among the 50s, not the ones. It's a video game documentary not about Earthbound, not about the franchise that game belongs to (the Mother trilogy), and not even about the original release in the trilogy that inspires the documentary name. Instead, directors Joshua Bone-Christian and Evan Butler had a hyperfocus in mind within this (admittedly already niche) realm: they wanted to track down the story of how a specific English-language Mother prototype cartridge. It leaked out of Nintendo headquarters in the early 1990s before landing online in a ROM dump around the turn of the century, then ultimately encouraged Nintendo to release the game on the WiiU virtual console as Earthbound Beginnings in 2015. (Phew.)

To put it bluntly, Mother to Earth is the kind of documentary you almost can't believe exists. It's a niche project about a niche project, the kind of thing the production team probably wouldn't have been able to make in an era before crowdfunding. But if you have even a moderate interest in online fandom, Earthbound, or video game-history preservation, you'll be glad they succeeded. Mother to Earth turns out to be a surprising reminder that nowadays even the oddest of topics has the potential to find an audience, grow with the encouragement of that small but dedicated support system, and ultimately deliver something fascinating.

Enlarge / Woman receives an experimental COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA, on September 04, 2020, as part of a clinical trial. (credit: Getty | Boston Globe)

The data is in, and COVID-19 vaccines are working. They've been injected in tons of people around the world beyond the initial trials and found to be safe and effective. Each of the three vaccines available use unique technologies to stimulate an immune response in your body, but none of them involves injecting a live virus into your arm. In short, they cannot get you sick with COVID-19.

Vaccines, along with social distancing, masks, and smart policy decisions regarding reopening businesses, will be our ticket out of this hellish mass experience. But getting a vaccine is tricky, and how to do it varies widely by where you live.

States, territories, and our one state-like district (DC) all have wide latitude to set their own COVID-19 policies and procedures. Advice and paths to a COVID-19 vaccine are going to differ based on which part of the US you live in, but we've put together a guide that should give you an accurate overview of how to get the jab.