Burning Heart 

Billy Eichner provides a hearty dose of good old fashioned romance with a lot of laughs

We have a long way to go with LGBT representation in film, especially when it comes to LGBT characters of color and trans characters.

This current year, as well as the past several, has seen a slowly building increase in something the horror genre has required for quite a while in this critic's opinion...originality. I've stated before that I am very hard to please when it comes to this vein of the film industry's offerings, always leaning more towards that which sends chills through my very being in lieu of buckets of blood and gore.

Strangers in a crowd, exchanging glances, looking away, continually managing to run into each other then part ways, end up at the same diner, find they've rented the exact same vehicles, and are then made to travel together to learn once more whether they can both find genuine adoration and companionship again. This really does, in so many words, sum up the foundational gist of of this new feature film from writer Seth Reiss ("The Menu") and director Kogonada ("The Acolyte", "After Yang"). Yet, it's all only the set-up for the REAL wonder of everything that happens before, during, and in the aftermath of a magical, meaningful journey.

Meander, released in 2021, is a French gory horror film featuring a woman trapped in small spaces as she fights for her life, paralleling real pandemic life.

A sweet slice-of-life anime that visualizes all the ways we creatively hide our vulnerabilities from the world.