8 

A short film that begins with the language of romance but slowly reveals something far more unsettling beneath the surface.

A recent look at gender and racial diversity in film shows some signs of progress. However, white men still make up the vast majority of actors and directors in top-grossing films.

I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before. 

Wacky antics ensue when a 100-year-old Jewish man wakes up from a pickled hibernation in the modern world.

“Ad Astra” is a film that possesses similar beats to sci-fi classics, falling into the realm of cinematic hypnotism, and pulling us in with its mysteriously intoxicating identity.

Cursed is based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, and is a retelling of the Arthurian legend with a twist. Instead of King Arthur gaining Excalibur, a teenage sorceress named Nimue (Katherine Langford) does. Her people — the Fey — are being hunted down, and so Nimue will do whatever it takes to save them.