Blonde Babes from Heaven 1 (2015)

If the message here is that without a support system, grieving people turn into monsters, it’s not really well-delivered and may be flawed as a message itself.

This HBO mini-series asks why a young white man turned to violence and finds no easy answers. But why do we only ask questions about certain kinds of killers?

Magnolia focuses on how one’s childhood and trauma relate to their confidence and self.

With The Father, writer-director Florian Zeller- who wrote and developed the play upon which the film is based- pulls no punches as he confidently makes every effort to put the audience in the mind of someone whose grip on reality has all but vanished. It’s a dazzling testament to Zeller’s abilities as a director as he makes his first transition from stage to film appear as if he’s been working behind a camera his entire career. The dialogue he fashions with co-writer Christopher Hampton, along with the work of production designers Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone, collectively makes the downward spiral of dementia startlingly tangible, doing so in a way that can be comprehended by everyone except the person it directly affects.

What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?

The trouble with Yara (2021) is that in its attempt to tell the whole story, it struggles to tell a consistently engaging story.