Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, popular entertainment has struggled with how to reflect the resulting upheaval in American politics and culture. Many Hollywood projects have taken a heavy-handed approach: Think of how often you’ve been told that a certain movie or TV show is “exactly what we need right now.” During Trump’s first term, these direct, if unsubtle, approaches felt like honest reactions to the moment. Now nearly 10 years later—and one year into Trump’s second term—audiences are savvier and more suspicious about such transparent messaging. Perhaps sensing this wariness, the creators of some of the more politically compelling movies and TV shows of the past year have instead explored how being alive feels during a tumultuous period. They capture the atmosphere, the mood, the ambient existence of everyday people who are living through a transformative time in history, whether or not they recognize that they are doing so. Consider James Blaine “J.B.” Mooney, the museum-robbing protagonist of Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, which is set in suburban Massachusetts in 1970. Played as both a …