Benny's Birthday (2024)

I love The Last Jedi. I don’t think there has been a Star Wars movie in quite some time that brought something new, something fresh to the table.

The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.

Mulan had to struggle to feel like herself and see herself properly. Some of us have to strive to have our reflection mimic what’s inside. We have to crawl. We have to fight.

Intergenerational friendships and community can be so powerful, and this was a great example.

A film that focuses on an algorithm for a dating app that will bring viewers in for a surprise.

One of THE most frustrating trends in the mainstream film industry over the last several decades has been the onset of comedy efforts that seem SO focused on being crude and/or gross-out in all ways possible. That, at least for me, makes them no longer funny.