90-Second Read: Digested week: memories of Covid resurface with Hantavirus and Ebola news

As darkening news from central Africa throws the withdrawal of US international aid into terrible relief, so we revisit memories of those early months of 2020 when reports of a strange virus in China slowly crept from final item on the news list to blaring emergency. Six years later and they adopt a tone of fond, ancient mariner-like nostalgia, which on closer inspection involves no actual memories, not of an empty Broadway, nor the field hospital in Central Park, nor the sound of sirens echoing through the city. Still, Travolta is a legend, which buys him leverage for this kind of whimsy and seems obliquely connected to some of his other gestures over the years, like parking that Boeing 707 he bought outside his front door and sticking with Scientology.

For anyone with kids finishing primary school, there's a question as to what and how much about that time they'll remember. Propeller One-Way Night Coach, meanwhile, sounds like the title of a novel written by Sean Penn and when you dig deeper, turns out to be an autobiographical piece based on Travolta's memoir of his childhood. Critics have been strainingly nice (the Guardian's three-star review described it as "sweet"), while Variety implied the greatest thing about the movie was the preroll featuring a montage of Travolta's greatest film rolls, and the beret, advisedly or otherwise, stole the show.

Smiling with the tolerance of someone who has to interact with the public all the time, Reeves, it seemed to me, would like to have gone the full Shabana Mahmood and told the guy to "fuck right off".