I am not looking forward to the seemingly inevitable onslaught of industry-produced, AI-created sludge that’s coming our way. At the same time, I also don’t think this will ultimately mean the death of good movies. While it’s possible that the big-budget, largely-to-somewhat hand-crafted movies of today and yesteryear may eventually be replaced by generic, entirely computer-aggregated “entertainment,” I believe flesh-and-blood filmmakers with stories to tell will always find a way to tell them.

Case in point, Man Finds Tape and Lake George (both on Kanopy), two perfect examples of the kind of compelling, small-scale endeavours that give me hope for the future of cinema.

Man Finds Tape (Peter S. Hall, Paul Gandersman, 2025) is a found-footage mystery/thriller/supernatural horror flick. It’s about a guy who goes viral after supposedly finding a miniDV tape (then, afterwards, several more such tapes) that shows something strange and creepy happening to him when he was a kid—something, of which, he has no memory. His investigation leads him down a conspiratorial rabbit hole that seems to involve several others in his small town. I love this kind of movie; i.e., one whose low budget is used as an asset, rather than a hindrance, and whose cool, original premise is the star.

Lake George (Jeffrey Reiner, 2024) is a tightly scripted, well-directed, twisty little character piece that stars Shea Whigham as a low-key, down-on-his-luck sad sack who’s forced to “take care of” a woman (played by Carrie Coon) who’s become a problem. Both Whigham and Coon are as terrific as they always are. I don’t care how supposedly “intelligent” a computer becomes, it’ll never be able to generate expressive, emotive, lived-in performances like these.