Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores resisted seeing HAMNET, so they both marvel at the emotional impact it achieves by the poignant ending, when almost everyone in theater audiences dissolves into tears. HAMNET is a period tragedy by Chloe Zhao (NOMADLAND) that’s been playing in arthouse theaters for two months. It’s still drawing crowds, and it’s nominated for a number of Academy Awards including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay (by Zhao and the author of the source novel by Maggie O’Farrell), and Best Actress (Jessie Buckley). It deals with the relationship of husband and wife William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes Hathaway (Buckley), which is tested by the death of their eleven-year-old son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). The film’s seemingly grandiose theme is the way art can transform experiences such as grief over the loss of a loved one into a sense of meaning in terms of human life in the universe. But don’t scoff. You’re probably more susceptible to this idea than you think you are. Just wait till you cry through the final sequence.

Co-hosts Eileen and Dolores agree that the title character in writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s THE BRIDE!, played by Jessie Buckley (who also portrays the wry, raddled spirit of author Mary Shelley) is terrific. She has a brilliantly disheveled look of undead glamor featuring wild bleached-blonde hair, wonderfully garish orange dress, black lips, and the inky splotch that spews up from the corner of her mouth, a chemical stain left over from the process of reanimation. Dolores is forgiving of the way THE BRIDE!, especially in its addled second half, fails to live up to central character and best scenes, whereas Eileen can’t condemn Gyllenhaal hard enough for the dopey, unfocused, pretentious way she blows her opportunity to make an electrifying film.

Co-hosts disagree on THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE, a new film about the title character (played by Amanda Seyfried) who founded the Shaker religion. Eileen liked it because she has a morbid religious streak that makes her obsessively interested in movies about old-time people who see visions and start mad spiritual communities. Dolores, on the other hand, hates movies set in the 18th century “when everything was so ILL” and found THE TESTAMENT OF ANN LEE a dull empty frustrating would-be-hipster work that makes the artfully simple utilitarian structures of Shaker architecture look like Restoration Hardware stores. A lively debate ensues!