Anecdotals (2023)

This is not a film, it’s a drop tower.  A drop tower that you don’t get off of for the vast majority of its 106-minute runtime. 

J Brooke, Incluvie Guest Columnist on 'Life and Beth' and 'Sort of': while living one’s truth is freedom, speaking it as a mandatory assignment can become captivity.

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.

The Invite is witty, dramatic, funny, and probably the best comedy released this year so far. 

“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.

Overall, Sand Castle was another lack luster war drama that will eventually fade into the many similar war dramas I have seen throughout my life.