A Kwanzaa Family Vacation (2024)

This year, in light of the pandemic and the inability to gather with our loved ones, a few of our staff members reviewed their favorite holiday films with the hope of recreating some of the sentimentality that reminds us of home.

"WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO SACRIFICE?!!!!" "EVERYTHING!!!!!" This is but one of a multitude of highly emphatic questions, and subsequent answers, being asked in the newest feature film from one of the current masters of horror, Jordan Peele ("Get Out", "Us" and "Nope"). I must give Peele credit in that he continues to push the boundaries of specific genres and their associated tropes in order to provide what ends up amounting to subtly then jarringly intense, yet still character and story-driven, cinema that speaks more to indie stylings than mainstream.

For anyone who is not a cis white woman, a justice-fueled murderous rampage is not framed as liberation. Instead, they contribute to harsh stereotypes that vilify minority women with dangerous consequences.

It’s 2021 and what few LGBTQ+ films that are produced by major film studios continue to star cisgender heterosexual actors, rather than actual LGBTQ+ people.

A Christmas movie that is not about a middle-class, straight relationship but centers on a lesbian couple.