the historical impasse that Jojo Rabbit faces is scope. Taika Waititi adapts a small story about one family—one Hilter Youth, one young Jewish girl hidden inside the walls of a sympathetic mother—that fits idealistically into the long, ugly history of Nazi Germany's terror, violence, and hatred. this history persists today, in ways i cannot comprehend or reconcile—that there are Nazis today, that there are fascists today, that there is still such brutal prejudice, which is not only permitted but enabled…

dear you,

as of tonight, there are 500 of you.

back in middle school, i used to write letters to an online friend named ellie. her real name was laura, but she went by ellie. sometimes i called her larry, as a joke, and she called me tyler, as a joke.

she had so many names that when we started writing letters to each other, like bonafide pen pals, i'd address them "dear you" -- because sometimes, even when i…

this is a writer's workshop wet dream. this is a well-studied, well-executed narrative paradigm of what good writing does.

the exposition is kept to a minimum. the reality of this world is established quickly, but Krasinski does so efficiently and affectively. the physical and life-threatening stakes are marked from the get-go, as are the emotional stakes, which ultimately end up being even more terrifying and tension-inducing than the former.

there's any number of "plant and pay-offs," which are all satisfying,…