Brendan Smyth: Betrayal of Trust 

Dora is the superhero we didn't know we needed.

Spiral could easily spawn new sequels and will most likely churn a decent profit. Is it a good Saw film? Absolutely. Could it have been revolutionary though? Also yes.

Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.

I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before. 

To say Hollywood has had a troubled past is the understatement of the century. In Ryan Murphy’s (American Horror Story) new Netflix series, Hollywood, that past is confronted and even rewritten.

Rather than focusing on the bleak, cynical aspects of life post-pandemic, the focus is optimistic and hopeful.