A Murder in Oakland: Beauty is Deadly (2025)

Ian and Barley embark on a quest to find a magical gem to restore their father back to life.

Darren Arronofsky focuses on diverse and heartbreaking stories about the human experience.

'The Mad Woman and the Feminist': This Spanish entry for the MiamisFF directed by Sandra Gallego handles a difficult conversation in a smart, memorable way.

Outer Banks (2020-) knows its audience: young adults in a country that can’t stop romanticizing good ole’ treasure hunts. Add a little of Riverdale’s (2017-) sex appeal, and no one can look away. Forty years after The Goonies (1985) America’s consciousness hasn’t strayed from the same tropes: treasure hunts, a vulnerable white male lead, and the whitewashing of a racially segregated setting.

The plot lags, the moral lessons are misguided, but are those fluffy little donut creatures adorable? Yes. Yes, they are.

Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.