Basquiat (1996)

'Playing with Fire' was clearly a film made for a kid or tween-ish audience. Keeping that in mind, I thought 'Playing with Fire' was alright, though it did portray some harmful stereotypes.

In 1971, when discussions about how to integrate their school system break down, the community of Durham, North Carolina agrees to bring in Bill Riddick(Babou Ceesay) to conduct a series of summits(charrettes) to help them move forward with desegregation.

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?

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is a fan-favorite, as are some of the more science fiction angled movies like 28 Days Later or World War Z. I recently watched the 1995 Wolfgang Peterson-directed movie, Outbreak for the first time, which is currently available on Netflix.

Stand and Deliver is an inspirational classic from 1988 starring Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante, and his class of rag tag students in East Los Angeles. It’s the story of how a new teacher shows a motley group of students in the inner city with backgrounds as gang members, dishwashers, and mechanics — the power of self-determination. He teaches the teenagers to believe in themselves through algebra and calculus.

With 'The Last Movie Stars,' filmmaker and fanboy Ethan Hawke cracks the facade of Hollywood's last golden couple, but reveals a couple who were committed to each other before all else.