ACA 193: Kerimov vs. Selimkhanov (2025)

While the camera is objectifying her body to invoke a sexual response in male viewers, Lara Croft still defies the expectations of women in action films.

Unfortunately, People We Meet on Vacation didn’t hold up quite as well as I’d hoped.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

Juneteenth is a day to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States on June 19th, 1865. We did it! Everyone is free! Everyone is equal! End of story, right?

Ultra-violent storytelling has never been my thing, but the issues with Scarface go beyond that. The film perpetuates harmful stereotypes about Latinx immigrants and uses gore and misogyny for shock value that never serves any purpose. The whole venture is frustratingly empty, and left me desiring something more.

These openly gay Hollywood figures risked so much by being honest about their sexuality: judgment, loss of employment, hate – even violence and death.