- Netflix’s “One Piece” Sails Into the Grand Line with a Swashbuckling Season 2 (March 10, 2026)
The live-action anime adaptation is always a dicey proposition, no less so when it’s Netflix doing the adapting. Their version of “Cowboy Bebop” was a dour, muggy reshuffling of the series’ events with a mismatched cast and no sense of direction; “Avatar: The Last Airbender” fared even worse, unable to survive Netflix’s punishing runtimes, pacing issues, and the cardinal sin of, well, casting bad child actors as the leads. So it was doubly surprising that their adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s long-running manga and anime “One Piece” somehow broke the curse: It wasn’t perfect, by any means, but it managed to capture at least some of the free-wheeling mania of Oda’s bizarre character designs, while repackaging it in a curiously novel mishmash of tones that feels unique, at least by Netflix standards.
It helps, of course, that everyone loves a good pirate story, and Oda’s basic brief is an infectious one: A candy-colored fantasy land of swashbuckling buccaneers and mystical creatures, as well as purple, textured “devil fruits” that can lend those who eat them increasingly cartoonish powers. The high seas are bedeviled by fish men and physics-defying obstacles, but it’s worth it to the pirates who risk it all to acquire the One Piece, a mysterious treasure left behind by infamous pirate Gold Roger. One such adventurer is Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy), a rubber-limbed youngster with a goal as single-minded as his irrepressible optimism: He wants to become King of the Pirates.
Season 1, which smooshed about the first 100 episodes of the long-running anime (which is still going!) into about eight hours, fast-tracked Luffy gaining his ship, the Going Merry, and the first wave of his loyal crew: stoic swordsman Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu, son of Sonny Chiba), wily navigator Nami (Emily Rudd), blustering shipmate Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson), and stylish chef Sanji (Taz Skylar). With the essential parts assembled and the East Blue arc out of the way, Season 2 proceeds with a more episodic structure this time around, as the Straw Hat Pirates (so named for Luffy’s favored headwear) head down the Grand Line, a dangerous stretch of sea that presents their first real obstacles to finding the One Piece.
One Piece. Laboon in season 2 of One Piece. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
Of course, the titular treasure is secondary to “One Piece”‘s concerns this season, as, in classic adventure-of-the-week fashion, the show gives the crew plenty of stopovers to help the needy, save their own skin, or latch onto new noble causes. The Straw Hats get trapped in the belly of a giant whale, Jonah-style; a seemingly pirate-friendly island becomes a trap; a prehistoric island also proves home to two frenemy giants playing out a century-old duel to the death. And all the while, they’re hunted by a new group of over-the-top baddies called the Baroque Works, who operate in male-female pair teams with powers as ostentatious as their outfits.
For the most part, this episodic structure really helps paper over some of live-action “One Piece”‘s bigger flaws, which have to do with its big-but-not-big-enough budget and the innate bloat of an hour-long episode runtime. One of the show’s more novel appeals is showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda’s insistence on translating Oda’s eccentric character and production design as literally as possible to live action; this means real people will pop on screen with ridiculous pastel outfits, impossibly sculpted hairdos (or, in the case of some of the men, physiques), or weapons so unwieldy they make Cloud’s Buster Sword from “Final Fantasy VII” look pocket-sized.
It’s a campy treat to see folks like David Dastmalchian show up as a Baroque Works renegade with candle-wax superpowers, dressed like Alan Cumming on “The Traitors,” to be sure. But the visual pop of those fits and neon-colored wigs sometimes gets obscured by the perfectly digital flatness of the color grading, not to mention the occasionally ropey CGI (especially when Luffy’s Gum-Gum powers kick in). There’s an uncanny valley feel to the whole thing, but in reverse: People who look so lifelike when presented in such unblinking, cartoonish ways. That tonal weirdness carries over into the show’s tone, too, which flits between Saturday-morning cartoon and adult-drama/action-show willy-nilly. It’s hard to know what to feel when you watch a cute cartoon reindeer named Tony Tony Chopper (voiced by Mikaela Hoover) say “shit.”
One Piece. (L to R) Jazzara Jaslyn as Miss Valentine, Lera Abova as Miss All Sunday, Camrus Johnson as Mr. 5 in season 2 of One Piece. Cr. Casey Crafford/Netflix © 2026
That dissonance does feel infectious, though, especially when “One Piece” centers on its central ensemble, which mostly fires on all cylinders this season. While Godoy continues to bring his exuberant (though frustratingly one-note) giddiness to Luffy, the real highlights here are Mackenyu and Skylar. Zoro gets a brilliant showcase in the third episode of the season, where he gets to indulge in a “Kill Bill”-like roaring rampage of revenge as he slices and dices through literally a hundred assassins in an enormous tavern set. (The fight scenes continue to feel fresh and inviting, even as the wirework grows tiresome the further the season goes.) Sanji, meanwhile, is the charm at the heart of the crew, oozing effortless cool and bouncing nicely off the rest of the crew.
This season also introduces a couple of new crewmembers in the form of “Bridgerton” alum Charithra Chandran as a Baroque Works assassin with more complicated motives up her sleeve, and, well, the aforementioned Chopper, whose tragic backstory gets explored in the final two episodes of the season. (He clearly got the bulk of the effects work this season, which makes me question how sustainable the show will be for Netflix if he’s gonna be a fixture moving forward.) They work well enough in their respective stories, but I’m understandably skeptical of how well the show will maintain a balance of so many characters as the Merry gets more crowded—to say nothing of how the show’s structure puts some of these characters’ broader personal journeys on hold.
For now, though, “One Piece” remains an imperfect, if entertaining, treat; for those lacking the will or the time to dive into thirty-plus years of manga or anime (the show’s episode count is already in the four figures), it does well in a pinch. Purists may complain it flattens the rich characters they’ve spent half a lifetime enjoying, and that may well be true. But taken on its own terms, it feels not unlike the campy, swashbuckling Sam Raimi-produced adventure shows of the ’90s, like “Xena: Warrior Princess” or “Jack of All Trades.” It’s goofy, knowingly strange, and wears its heart on its sentimental sleeve, and that’s enough to put some wind in its sails.
Whole season screened for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.
- Short Films in Focus: “Endless Sea” with Sam Shainberg (March 10, 2026)
Sam Shainberg’s “Endless Sea” opens on a dreary metropolitan street where it looks like freezing rain has been pouring all morning. Carol (Brenda Cullerton) has a collection of recyclables she deposits for a little extra pocket change. She then enters a pharmacy to pick up her prescription for heart meds and gets dreadful news that they are now “tier 4” and that her co-pay has gone up to $365. We gradually learn that she earns a meager living as a flower delivery person and depends greatly on tips. Luckily, it’s Valentine’s Day and business is booming, but hardly anyone carries cash anymore.
So, we follow poor Carol as she navigates one delivery after another, occasionally making five bucks, but mostly getting wads of singles and some quarters, or, worse, not being allowed to go into the building to deliver the flowers in person, but having to leave them at the front desk. This whole sequence almost plays like a thriller as we hope against hope that Carol can somehow scrounge up enough money to pay for her life-or-death medication, while constantly being put on hold by Medicaid and getting nowhere with her doctor or any government office that might provide a silver lining.
“Endless Sea” is the kind of short film that economically opens a big window into a life built on bad decisions. We know very little about Carol as the film progresses, but we can tell what kind of worker she is, what kinds of struggles she faces on a daily basis, and, by the film’s end, what mistakes she may have made and the bridges she has burned throughout her life. Shainberg never spells out what happened to Carol, but no one deserves to have the rug pulled out from under them by random acts of price gouging that make it difficult to acquire life-saving medication.
Cullerton is a hell of a find and has very few acting credits, at least on screen. She reminds me of a character from a Safdie Brothers movie, and looks like she has been through a situation like this in real life. Shainberg directs the film as such, with everyone around her looking like they are stopping their workday to be in this one scene.
“Endless Sea” is an ingenious short that works as a character study, a workplace film, an indictment on our health system, a cautionary tale, and, like I said, a thriller. It’s a brisk 17 minutes that puts the viewer through many stressful and heartbreaking moments, reminding them that there are too many people out there in our country who are dangerously close to being in Carol’s shoes.
Q&A with director Sam Shainberg
How did this come about?
“Endless Sea” came from a feature project I wrote, which comprised six short vignettes. All six were about my hatred for arbitrary, unjust rules. Often, rules are imposed upon us by the state or some form of bureaucracy. During the writing process on that project, I was in the pharmacy on my street in Brooklyn, and I witnessed an elderly woman try to steal her heart medication.
The pharmacist, who is a friend and a Yemeni CrossFit champion, beat her to the door by a mile, and I thought there was going to be a confrontation, but in fact, what transpired was an incredibly sweet moment. Sam, the pharmacist, stopped her and said he understood how hard this was, that he was sorry, and that they would try to work something out. He then took her back to his office to find a solution. That whole experience stuck with me and became the seed for “Endless Sea.”
Where did you find Brenda Cullerton? I was surprised she didn’t have more IMDb credits.
Ah, yes, Brenda… she is total magic in life and on screen, and she is nothing like the role in real life. In real life, she is as chic as they come, the queen of Greenwich Village. I met Brenda when I showed the script to my then-girlfriend, who said I should meet her friend’s mom, a comic and powerhouse of a woman, and that turned out to be Brenda. Then Brenda and I hit it off and began reworking the role to incorporate her voice. It was her first acting role, and she approached it like a total pro… it was amazing to see it happen. We had tears on set during some of those takes. Particularly at the buzzer when her daughter rejects her and in the Social Security office.
The rest of the cast around her look like they were on the job while you filmed them. How did you go about achieving this kind of authenticity?
The cast was about 49% friends of mine, and the other 49% were Eleonore Hendricks, the casting director, and I, who went out and found them. Mostly just amazing non-actors. The final 2% were people whom we just delivered flowers to or captured in small documentary moments. I want to just highlight Eleanore’s contribution – she just sprinkles so much magic on every project that she does. She was by my side for most of the shoot or in constant contact, and her filmmaking/emotional IQ is just through the roof. Even with my friends and family that were in the film, she helped select them and guide them… She is amazing. Someone I never want to work without.
I would say that for a lot of this team–really all of them–I would love to never make a movie without Daniel Zuniga, Rachel Walden, Carlos Wong, and Luca Balser, if possible. These people are amazing, as is the whole crew of “Endless Sea.” I wish I could list them all here. Boris, the sound man… Everyone.
What has the audience response been like to this film? Do people often tell you their horror stories with the healthcare system?
In general, the response has been amazing. I think the film really makes you feel what that moment in someone’s life is like. At least that is what we have heard from audiences. And, yes, we have gotten a lot of heartfelt responses from people who have been in these situations, which seems to be close to everyone in the US on some level. That has been really meaningful as they often tell us how clear and honest a depiction of that emotional space the film is.
Carol is a fascinating character I want to learn more about. Do you have a longer film in mind about her backstory?
Yeah, so there is a feature version of the film in the works called “HEART.” It’s set in a slightly heightened reality or very, very near future version of New York, and it works hard to imagine and depict the worst political and ecological outcomes for the working class in New York. We just cast the amazing Deirdre O’Connell in the lead and Brenda in a supporting role. We are currently looking for financing and additional cast to bolster the package. So if anyone out there can help, please come find me. I think it will be a really important and exciting film.
What else is next for you?
Well… “HEART” is high on the docket for sure. I am also currently in Indonesia shooting test footage for a Neo-realist thriller set in the far east of the country. That film, “Pasola,” is about a guy who has rejected traditional spirituality in favor of capitalism, a life strategy that fails him when gangsters come to collect on a loan, and he is chased home. Once on his ancestral island, he is forced to go on the run into the jungle with his son, where he reluctantly teaches him traditional skills and explains traditional spirituality. Through this ordeal and their experiences, he slowly reconnects with his roots and his family’s ancient way of life.
- Why Ryan Coogler Should Win Best Director for “Sinners” (March 10, 2026)
The problematic history of the Oscars recognizing—or failing to recognize—Black people in the acting categories is a well-trod subject. We all heard about #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 and 2016, a two-year span in which all 40 acting nominees were white. We know the first Black winners in the major categories—Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Louis Gossett Jr., Halle Berry—partially because their wins have often been relegated to ubiquitous trivia questions. We know these things because these categories are populated by celebrities, so they enjoy the visibility and scrutiny that the other 20 Oscar categories often do not.
But there are still four Oscar categories that have never been won by a Black person: Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Visual Effects. (Note: This ignores the new Best Casting category, which hasn’t yet been won by anyone, and the Best International Film category, which is awarded to a film’s country rather than the people who made it.) Talking about race in this context is tricky, and correlation and causation can blur. Racism is often an explanation for the lack of Black winners, but it’s not necessarily a catchall one; every Oscar race exists in its own unique context, with its own unique competition. But a story emerges if you care to look for it.
For a century of film criticism and film journalism, we have been repeatedly told that the core of the cinematic art lies in three principal roles: directing, editing, and cinematography. These things represent the beating heart of cinema, we are told. It’s a statement of centrality, and once something can be seen as having a center, gatekeepers know where to devote their attention. Only two Black editors and three Black cinematographers have ever been nominated for Oscars (Autumn Durald Arkapaw, a current Best Cinematography nominee for “Sinners,” is the third). Why are there so few Black cinematographers and editors? That’s a story of gatekeeping.
For Black directors, the gatekeeping has shown obvious cracks, and more great Black filmmakers emerge every year. In the past decade, Black directors have helmed franchises, original blockbusters, and Best Picture winners, and Ryan Coogler is now the seventh Black filmmaker to get nominated for Best Director. That’s still a tiny number, but it’s more than have broken through in editing and cinematography combined. In fact, Best Director has arguably been the Oscar category with the most diverse crop of winners this century. In the last 20 years, three Best Director Oscars have been won by women, four by filmmakers from East Asia, and five by filmmakers from Latin America. But there still hasn’t been a single Black winner. No Black women have ever even been nominated.
So let’s talk about Ryan Coogler.
By now, you likely know that “Sinners” broke the all-time record for most Oscar nominations, receiving 16. It didn’t just break the record, it broke it by two. People will dismissively tell you this only happened because there’s a new Oscar category this year (Best Casting), but that’s an argument of selective history and convenient omission; there were two sound categories (Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Effects Editing) until they were merged together in 2020, so the three movies that were previously tied for the record of 14 Oscar nominations had just as many categories to compete in as “Sinners” did this year. Those three films—“All About Eve,” “Titanic,” and “La La Land”—all won the Oscar for Best Director, by the way.
When 1950’s “All About Eve” set the new record of 14 Oscar nominations, the record it broke was 1939’s “Gone with the Wind,” which received 13 nominations. It, too, won Best Director. Every film that has tied or broken the record for the most Oscar nominations since the start of World War II has won Best Director.
If “Sinners” wins Best Picture, which is entirely possible, it would be the third film by a Black director to do so, following “12 Years a Slave” and “Moonlight.” Neither of those films won Best Director, losing to “Gravity” and “La La Land,” respectively. In both cases, a clear narrative emerged as the explanation. The film that was more socially relevant and felt more important won Best Picture, while the genre film that was considered more of a technical accomplishment won Best Director.
That made enough sense in those specific cases. But in the case of this year’s showdown between “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another,” we’ve been hearing that the opposite could happen. If there’s a Best Picture/Director split this year, we’re told that Best Picture would more likely favor “Sinners” (because it’s the more populist film), while Best Director is more likely to go to Paul Thomas Anderson, for making the more impressive piece of art (or something).
Yes, we have only two previous examples of a film by a Black director winning Best Picture, and it’s slippery to draw clear conclusions from only two such cases. But if “Sinners” becomes the third film by a Black director to win Best Picture, and all three films also lose Best Director, that starts to tell an undeniable story. Two of those are cases where the more “important” film loses Best Director to the technically spectacular genre film, and the third is the technically spectacular genre film losing Best Director to the “important” film; in all three cases, the Black person loses.
That starts to look unmistakably like Black directors just aren’t allowed to win, regardless of the film they make or the competition they’re up against. And again, every other film that’s ever gotten 14 or more Oscar nominations has also won Best Director. If Ryan Coogler loses Best Director, he will be the first person to ever do so for a film that received 14 or more Oscar nominations.
Interestingly, none of these three Best Director races was perceived by awards pundits as especially competitive. Though there’s no way to know for sure (because Oscar voting totals are never revealed), the assembled assumptions of the punditry in 2014 were that Steve McQueen was never a serious threat to beat Alfonso Cuarón for Best Director, just as Barry Jenkins was never a serious threat to beat Damien Chazelle for Best Director in 2017, and just as Ryan Coogler is not being considered a serious threat to beat Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Director this year.
In all three cases, when a film by a Black director was considered a strong contender to win Best Picture, that Black director himself was not considered a strong contender for their own award. Again, we’re dealing with a small sample size, and it can be perilous to draw broad conclusions. But the commonality here speaks to a trend of viewing Black filmmakers as somehow a little bit less responsible for the greatness of their films than their white counterparts. When a white person directs a movie to a record nomination total, we all shout from the rooftops about the genius auteur who simply must be awarded. When a Black person directs a movie to a record nomination haul, it’s implicitly seen as more of a collective effort.
There will be an obvious temptation among some reading this (or not reading it, as the case may be) to reduce the argument to “Ryan Coogler should win Best Director because he’s Black.” But that’s not what I’m saying at all. In fact, I’m arguing the opposite. If Ryan Coogler doesn’t win Best Director, it will look suspiciously like the only reason is that he isn’t white.
Can you imagine a white guy writing and directing an original movie that finishes in the top ten of the domestic box office for the year and shatters the all-time record for most Oscar nominations, and then not winning Best Director? It’s almost inconceivable. We saw it happen when “La La Land” tied the record for nominations nine years ago. No one even entertained the idea that Damien Chazelle wouldn’t win Best Director. And that was for a movie that made half as much money and received two fewer nominations than “Sinners.”
16 nominations. Sometimes record numbers like that can feel too unwieldy, too meaningless in their sheer enormity. So it’s worth looking at that gargantuan number, 16, more closely. There are 24 Oscar categories, and “Sinners” was nominated in 16 of those 24. Of the eight categories, “Sinners” was not nominated in, six of them honor specific types of films that “Sinners” is not: Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best International Film, Best Animated Short, Best Documentary Short, and Best Live Action Short. “Sinners” was, obviously, not eligible for any of those six categories. There are also two screenplay categories, Original and Adapted. “Sinners” received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay and was therefore not eligible for Best Adapted Screenplay. Obviously.
Of the 17 categories that “Sinners” was even eligible to be honored in, the only one it didn’t receive a nomination for was Best Actress. And since the film arguably doesn’t have a female character in a lead role, you could argue—and I am—that “Sinners” is therefore the first movie to ever receive Oscar nominations in every single category it could have. That isn’t just an extraordinary achievement; it’s an achievement that, by definition, almost demands the Best Director award. If a film’s director is the person who oversees, coordinates, and harmonizes all of the various elements of filmmaking into a singular artistic vision, and then literally every single one of those elements receives an Oscar nomination, well, shouldn’t that be game over for the Best Director race? How could someone do a better job of directing than directing their collaborators to Oscar nominations in every single category possible?
I’ve seen several people argue that Paul Thomas Anderson should win Best Director because he made the year’s best film. (Full disclosure, I agree with the premise of that argument; “One Battle After Another” is my favorite film of 2025, and “Sinners” is my second favorite.) But that’s not an argument for why Paul Thomas Anderson should win Best Director, it’s an argument for why Best Director shouldn’t even exist as an Oscar category. And it’s fine to believe that.
Since the breakdown of the studio system and the end of the traditional producer model of Hollywood filmmaking, Best Picture and Best Director have become increasingly difficult to parse from one another. But if you do believe that Best Picture and Best Director can be evaluated separately—and that sometimes they ought to be awarded to separate movies—then you have to make a case for who should win Best Director based on something other than who made your favorite movie. I made the numerical and historical case for Coogler above. Now let’s look at the qualitative case.
“One Battle After Another” is my favorite film of 2025 because it has the most powerfully resonant story and dialogue of the year, the best characters of the year (most fully realized by the best acting of the year), and the best editing and score of the year. I am consequently rooting for “One Battle After Another” to win Oscars for those things. But “Sinners” is my second favorite film of the year, almost purely because of its directorial vision.
Though I have not read either film’s script, I would imagine reading the screenplay for “One Battle After Another” would pretty reasonably conjure the resulting film. It’s an astonishing work of screenwriting. With “Sinners,” on the other hand, I would not imagine that reading the screenplay would accurately conjure the resulting movie.
About an hour into “Sinners,” there is a two-and-a-half-minute tracking shot that weaves around the film’s main location and major characters, and incorporates the past, present, and future of Black music into a swirling whole. Does that description adequately explain the moment? Does that sentence do justice to what Ryan Coogler captured on screen in those 150 seconds? No. How could it? Can you imagine any words Ryan Coogler used to describe that sequence in the “Sinners” screenplay adequately conjuring what he ended up creating on screen?
Surely Coogler, who wrote “Sinners” himself, described the sequence better than I did, but the answer is still no. It’s the year’s ultimate “Behold! Cinema!” sequence. It must be seen—it must be experienced—to be believed. It’s a sequence of pure directorial vision that exists beyond the screenwriting process. It’s as perfectly visually conceived a sequence as any I have seen this decade. It’s a sequence that Best Director Oscars, as something altogether different from Best Picture Oscars, should exist to recognize.
But Ryan Coogler’s direction of “Sinners” did not end once the film was finished and the final cut was locked. Ryan Coogler also directed how it was exhibited and how audiences received it, and he directed the film’s arrival into the discourse. There’s an old saying in Hollywood that there are two steps to making a movie: making it and selling it. The selling of a movie tends to be something that directors—not always known for their charisma or star power—are less involved in. They’ll do Q&As at a few screenings, but leave the heavy promotional onus to marketing teams and stars doing the talk show rounds.
Not so for Ryan Coogler. With the now-legendary video in which he explains the different exhibition formats for watching “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler helped shepherd his film to audiences in a way I’ve never seen before. He directed the viewer experience, getting a generation of young filmgoers thinking about “perfs.” It can’t be overstated how extraordinary it is that a filmmaker got millions of people to watch a 10-minute explanatory video about aspect ratios and film stocks with excitement, and that those people were consequently inspired to leave their homes and pay to see the film in question in movie theaters.
Even the discourse around the film’s box office success was dictated on Ryan Coogler’s terms. The debate over the film’s profitability that took place in the industry trades was predicated on the unique ownership deal Coogler negotiated for “Sinners.” It was also tinged with racist undertones, as the film’s opening weekend haul was held to a different and frequently unreasonable standard. Both the tenor of the industry discourse around the film and the success of Coogler’s contract to control future ownership may have long-lasting implications for the way business in Hollywood is conducted and dissected.
Of course, as said above, every Oscar race exists in its own unique context, and a significant mitigating factor in Ryan Coogler’s candidacy is that Paul Thomas Anderson has somehow never won an Oscar, despite 14 career nominations (six for writing, four for directing, and four for producing). Anderson is, by any measure, one of the greatest filmmakers of the past 30 years, and he’s made half-a-dozen masterpieces (of which “One Battle After Another” is the latest). It’s absurd that he’s never won an Oscar, and this is a historical wrong that everyone seems justifiably invested in righting.
But here’s the thing: Once you elevate the discussion of an Oscar race beyond the specific films in contention, and you enter the territory of righting historical wrongs, you can’t only apply that reasoning to the white guy. Is it a historical embarrassment that Paul Thomas Anderson has never won an Oscar? Absolutely! Is it also a historical embarrassment that a Black person has never won Best Director? Emphatically yes! The temptation of so many people to rest their case on the former while completely ignoring the latter is the very definition of a double standard. And with the Oscars, as with so many other institutions, double standards always seem to work for white men while working against everyone else.
If we’re judging this year’s Best Director race based purely on the nominated films, I’ve made the case for why Ryan Coogler is the most deserving winner. And if we’re judging this year’s Best Director race by which egregious historical wrong simply must be righted, I’ve made the case for why Ryan Coogler is still the most deserving winner. And I have some great news for you: If Ryan Coogler wins Best Director and Paul Thomas Anderson wins Best Adapted Screenplay, we could have our cake and eat it too. Both historical wrongs would be redressed, and everyone wins.
There’s a question that often gets thrown around every year during awards season: “If not now, then when?” It’s typically asked in the service of honoring great careers that have heretofore been absent the all-important capstone of an Oscar.
But there’s no more deserving an occasion to ask that question than about the possibility of a Black filmmaker finally winning Best Director this year. An original, critically adored box office hit that out-grossed three different Marvel movies and then broke the all-time record for Oscar nominations—by two—is the perfect storm for someone to win Best Director. No one’s résumé will ever look better than that.
It’s the ultimate “If not now, then when?” case study. If a Black filmmaker still can’t win Best Director under these circumstances, and if “Sinners” becomes the third movie by a Black filmmaker to win Best Picture but not Best Director, then we can’t pretend the director’s Blackness isn’t the main reason why.
- S. Epatha Merkerson, Danielle Brooks, More To Be Honored at 2026 Annual Black Women Film Network Summit (March 9, 2026)
The Black Women Film Network (BWFN) recently announced its lineup of honorees and programming for its annual Summit, set to take place on Saturday, March 21st, at Atlanta’s Loudermilk Conference Center.
Founded in 1997, the BWFN has provided Black women in entertainment with a space for mentorship, opportunity, advocacy, and industry access. This year’s theme, “Unbreakable Lens: The Power of Community,” is said to focus on the “collective strength, collaboration, and shared vision that continue to drive Black women forward both in front of and behind the camera.”
Among their 2026 honorees, the BWFN plans to honor veteran theatre, television, and film actor S. Epatha Merkerson (“Law & Order”), as well as Oscar-nominated actress Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”). Merkerson will receive the On Her Shoulders Preservation Award for her lifetime of work on the big and small screens, which currently includes a starring role on NBC’s “Chicago Med.” Brooks will receive the AcceleratHER Award, recognizing her dynamic range and transformative impact across television, film, and Broadway; in addition to “The Color Purple,” she can also be recognized for her breakout role in Netflix’s “Orange is the New Black” and HBO’s “Peacemaker.”
Other honorees this year include showrunner, writer, and producer Felicia Pride (“A Different World”), AspireTV EVP Angela Cannon, Burke Entertainment founder Vanzil Burke, and producer and CBS Studios/NAACP Venture president Sheila Duckworth.
In addition, the event will feature a number of panels on issues ranging from using AI tools for film and digital content, addressing cultural change and mental health in media, and the art and business of documentary filmmaking.
BWFN board chair Chiquita Lockely told Variety, “Our summit is about strategy as much as celebration…We are creating a space where established powerhouses and emerging voices converge to exchange knowledge, build access and shape the future of storytelling. Honoring Black women who have sustained excellence across decades while equipping the next generation with practical tools is central to our mission.”
You can register for tickets at the BWFN official website.
- Martin Scorsese: All the Films is a Must-Own for Movie Lovers (March 9, 2026)
One of my favorite coffee-table books in a very long time is now available in stores: Martin Scorsese: All the Films by Olivier Bousquet, Arnaud Devillard, and Nicolas Schaller. Admittedly, I’m biased because of my unceasing adoration of Martin Scorsese’s filmography, especially the recent post-Oscar films, which I think are deeply underrated and among the best of the new century. As Criterion is releasing “Killers of the Flower Moon” later this month and this book is now in stores, it feels like the right time to revisit Scorsese’s entire run, from the early shorts (you really need to see “Italianamerican” if you haven’t done so) through to his latest masterpiece. Scorsese is currently in production on another film. They’ll need to update this excellent volume.
All the Films covers 26 features, 17 documentaries, 7 shorts, and 4 television episodes, and it does so one at a time, treating each with equal detail. It’s one of the most notable things about the book in that the production and legacy of films like “Taxi Driver” and “GoodFellas” have been exhaustively reported over the years, but there’s certainly been significantly less written about ventures like Scorsese’s HBO show “Vinyl” or one of his many music docs, “George Harrison: Living in the Material World.”
The structure of the book opens each project with what could be called an information page, including cast, runtime, and release date, as well as more detailed info like production dates, budget, and box office. It gives the volume an almost encyclopedic quality, which can be used as a research tool if people still do that kind of thing in the age of the internet. While it may sound silly, that kind of detailed work really grounds the book in a foundation that blends both the informational and the critical. Those who look for deep critical analysis may want to look elsewhere, but anyone looking for information about the production of this incredible filmography won’t find a better one.
While the backbone of the book is the chronological reporting on Martin Scorsese’s films, the writers occasionally cut in essays, interviews, and other features out of chronological order. While that might sound haphazard, it serves to remind the reader how much of Scorsese’s work comments on itself, moving back and forth in time. So going from the “The Wolf of Wall Street” section to a feature about drug use in Scorsese’s films, particularly “GoodFellas,” feels organic and enlightening.
Of course, the book also includes wonderful production stills and behind-the-scenes photos, along with copious trivia sidebars about every single production.
As the streaming era continues to thrive, more and more people seem to be commenting on the end of physical media. I imagine coffee table books like this one have been impacted by the prevalence of information online, but what elevates Martin Scorsese: All the Films is that it’s more than just a Wikipedia-in-book-form project. It’s filled with insight, passion, and creativity. Just like its subject.
Get a copy here.
