What to Watch: Windswept with Wolfhounds
A potpourri of streaming recs, including Powell and Pressburger's "I Know Where I'm Going!," a neat little Riz Ahmed thriller and a documentary compendium of Bob Dylan's Newport appearances. For starters.

Some housekeeping and announcements before I get to the movie recommendations:
While this isn't really the place to mention it, I'll be biking 50 miles on Sunday (10/5) to raise awareness of food insecurity in New England – and money to combat it – as part of the 2025 Ride for Food. I'm on a team organized by my local community farm, and so far we've raised almost $13,500, all of which will go directly to help some of the 400,000 New England families living with hunger and food insecurity. It's still not too late to help out, so please feel free to support my ride with a donation if you're so inclined. Thank you.
If you're in the Boston area next Thursday, October 9, at 6:30, the latest iteration of Ty's Movie Club at the West Newton Cinema will be a screening and discussion of the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger classic "I Know Where I'm Going!" (1945, ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐), perhaps the foundational romantic-comedy-with-tinges-of-fantasy. I've written and talked about this much-loved movie before, including a 2022 podcast with Boston globe "Love Letters" columnist Meredith Goldstein that was a delight to do and that can be listened to on the Watch List website or on Spotify. I also once wrote about the film:
"I Know Where I'm Going!" – that title, down to its exclamation point, gets ready to knock the heroine on her rear end – says that if you treat life as a series of places to reach, you may be just lucky enough to get stranded across the water from your goal. ... Powell and Pressburger, the British writing-directing team known as The Archers, always set dreaminess against their countrymen's stiff upper lips, and the dreams always won, sometimes shockingly so (see "Black Narcissus" for that). In this film, it's the illogic of the place and people that drives Wendy Hiller's Joan Webster crazy with frustration until she has to give in: the whirlpool off the coast, the look on the face of Catriona Potts when she enters windswept with wolfhounds, the brain-cramping response of Roger Livesay's Torquil when Joan comments on the poverty of the locals ("Not poor. They just haven't got any money.") ... A character refers in one scene to "intelligent female nonsense," and the movie itself comes close to a working definition of same. Show it to your most hardhearted child, to the realist, before it's too late.
The movie's streaming on The Criterion Channel and is a $3.99 rental on Amazon – but do come to the West Newton if you can. This is a good one to share with the kids and a crowd.
Briefly following up on my two-part post on fashioning one's own underground news network until such time as a better one comes along, the additional suggestions from readers have been thoughtful and welcome, and this weekend I'll add them to the second post as a web-only round-up of useful sites, with an eye to putting them in a more user-friendly arrangement further down the line. You are encouraged to keep recommending sources you find of note and of hope in these dire times.
So, yes, movies. A mixed bag of old and new this week, and I do urge you to get out to a theater to see Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle after Another," preferably with a companion or two of different generations, because talking about the movie – and talking about what political engagement and political action mean in 2025 – is what the damn thing's about, aside from superb entertainment. A free link to my WaPo review is here, here's the Watch List version for paid subscribers, and the Post has a good writers' round-up today (free link) that reflects how the movie is hitting hard for younger audiences itching to be inspired.
(More recommendations for paid subscribers below.)