National pastimes: as the festival enters its waning days, standout films like Roberto Minervini's The Damned, Carson Lund's Eephus, and Tyler Taormina's Christmas Eve in Miller's Point investigate how we make meaning out of the past
Big plans: the latest from Ridley Scott, trailblazing auteur–turned–late-career journeyman, is an epic biopic of the war-mongering emperor that turns out to be a bit weirder than it initially seems
On the grind: Mark Asch, Beatrice Loayza, and Devika Girish get together for an epistolary exchange about the thoughts and, yes, feelings elicited by Magic Mike’s Last Dance