Same Movie, Different Continent

On staying connected when you're far away

For an entire year, my mom and brother had a secret.

Not a malicious one. More of an accidental omission, the kind that happens when two people fall into a lovely routine and simply forget to mention it to the third person in the family. Which was me. The one living in Portugal. The one who could have used a little extra connection to home.

My brother, Del, has an AS in Film & Television Production. My mom, a New York Times bestselling novelist with 64 books in print, has seen virtually every film made in her lifetime, horror being the lone exception. She has limits. (And please don’t ask her name or what she’s written. I like to keep my private life private.)

These two have been trading opinions on cinema since Del could hold a conversation. Somewhere along the way, they formalized it. Every week, they’d assign each other a movie the other hadn’t seen, watch it independently, and then dissect it by phone. He’s in North Carolina. She was in Colorado at the time (recently moved to Florida). I’m across an ocean, apparently not invited.

They did this for a year before I found out.

The way I discovered it was this: for Christmas, Del made a soft-bound book of all his written movie reviews — great takes on old classics she’d assigned him. Ben Hur. Spartacus. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Plus some romances that were never in his wheelhouse. Moonstruck. Love, Actually. He gave her a copy for Christmas, and — in what I now consider one of the best gifts I’ve ever received — he made one for me too.

My brother had told me that I should call him when I received the gift so he could explain it. I opened it not entirely sure what I was holding. But I read the forward, and by the time I understood, I was already a little in love with the whole idea. And more than a little indignant that I hadn’t been included from the start.

So I invited myself in. January 2026, I joined the rotation.

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Here’s how it works now that there are three of us:

Each person assigns one movie per month. It must be something the others haven’t seen, or haven’t seen in decades. You watch on your own time. Then we get on a call and talk about it. That’s it. No rubric, no formal structure. Just three people who love each other, sitting with the same piece of art, bringing wildly different lenses to it.

My mom brings character, plot, and dialogue — the novelist’s eye.

Del brings director’s cuts, camera angles, and cinematographic intention — the degree doing its work. [Check out his Substack to read some of his reviews. They’re wonderful!]

I bring... life experience and opinions I didn’t know I had until Mom assigned us Little Big Man (1970) and I had to have them.

We’ve only been doing this together for two months, and already it’s produced some of my favorite conversations of the year. The Fresh (2022) discussion in particular. Del assigned it. My mom watched it and was, to put it gently, horrified. Disgusted. Completely undone by the content. So much so that she texted both my brother and I separately to warn us.

If you haven’t seen it yet, skip past these texts: SPOILER ALERT!

My mom's text to my brother on the left. Her text to me on the right.

She called it gratuitous and gross. She missed, entirely, what the movie was actually about. So I broke it down for her:

• The way women are treated as literal meat.

• Black women who always see the danger first, try to warn us, and when we don’t listen, still end up being the ones who save everyone.

• White women who trade their dignity for proximity to power, even when it costs them a literal arm or a leg.

• Billionaires who place no value on human life.

My mom — a raging liberal, bless her — listened. I could hear her wheels turning through the phone as she moved from resistance to recognition. Del was nodding somewhere in North Carolina.

There is something deeply satisfying about dragging your boomer mother, lovingly and with great patience, into the present tense.

Historically, I talked to my mom probably twice a month. But those calls are usually about her elaborate table settings, her tennis game, or her diabetes. I love her. But I don’t always feel like I know her, or that she knows me. This movie club is changing that. Watching her wrestle with Fresh and arrive somewhere new by the end of the conversation? That’s not a topic that ever would have come up while talking about her tennis serve. I’m here for the consciousness-raising.

My brother — who I used to talk to maybe four times a year, because we’re six years apart and our lives look nothing alike and there was never quite a bridge between us — is now a more regular part of my life. He has a brilliant mind and a frame of reference lightyears from my own. But our sense of humor is on point, and every month I can’t wait to laugh with him.

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What if you don’t watch movies?

This column is theoretically about living abroad and staying connected to the people you love, but I’d be writing a pretty thin piece if the only takeaway was “start a movie club.” So I thought I’d share some other ways to build a connection ritual. No film degree or published novels required.

Aux Cord Wars

Each person builds a playlist around a theme or a mood and shares it. Think road trips, “songs that wrecked me at 22,” Sunday mornings, whatever you want. Then you talk about what you chose and why. Music is strangely revealing. What someone puts on a playlist tells you things about them that conversation sometimes can’t reach.

Question of the Week

One person sends a single question to the group each week. Not how are you? Something with actual weight: What’s something you believed at 40 that you no longer believe? What’s the best decision you made that looked like a mistake at the time? If you were Christ, what would your “body and blood” be, if not wine and a cracker? Everyone answers however they want. A text, a voice memo, a call. It’s low-commitment and surprisingly intimate. (If you need starter questions, I have a list. Ask me in the comments.)

Game Night

For the competitive families, the ones who cannot be in the same room without someone winning something: online game nights work. Codenames or even a shared Words with Friends bracket. My family would absolutely destroy each other at any of these, and I mean that as a compliment. Scheduled, recurring, something to look forward to. The trash talk alone is worth it.

The Listening Party

Assign one episode or a short series. Everyone listens on their own schedule, during a commute or a walk. Then discuss. You rotate who picks. It’s flexible enough to survive real life, and a good podcast episode can generate just as much conversation as any film. Maybe more, because you’re allowed to pause it and look things up.

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Reel talk

The through-line in all of these isn’t really the movies or the playlists or the questions. It’s the assignment. The thing that makes you do it.

Because the distance that makes connection hard isn’t always an ocean. Physical distance, busy lives, and the slow drift of adulthood can hollow out even the closest relationships or friendships without anyone meaning for it to happen. Left to our own devices, we default to the comfortable: the check-in call, the group text, the same surface-level conversation we’ve been having for years. The assignment gives us something to come back to, something to argue about, something to look forward to.

My brother’s book of movie reviews accidentally gave me one of the best things I have right now: a reason to sit down with two people in my family I don’t want to lose touch with, talk about something that matters to none of us professionally, and remember that we actually like each other.

Two states. Two continents. And once a month, we cross those divides to watch the same movies and completely disagree about them. It’s exactly the long distance hug I’ve been needing.

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How do you stay connected to the people you love across distance, or even just across a busy life? I’d love to hear what’s working for you. Drop it in the comments.