Cain Rose Up (2010)

Netflix’s new comedy drama, Don’t Say Good Luck, is a heartwarming tearjerker as well as a love letter to the transformative power of being a theater kid. Directed by Julia Hart, Don’t Say Good Luck follows Sophie (Sunny Sandler), a theater kid who finally gets the lead role in her school’s production of Waitress - just as she finds out her mom Elizabeth (Melanie Lynskey) is dying of cancer. While the singing is by no means spectacular and Sandler’s acting is stiff, the film is grounded in the moving performance of Lynskey as a mother who wants nothing more than for her daughter to achieve her dreams, even if she can’t be there to see them.

This incarnation of Animal Farm is filled with the generic plot points, immature humor, cardboard characters and visual flaws that you have come to know from today’s lesser children’s films.

The film seems like an extreme interpretation of the conspiracy theorists that exist in real life. And then, there’s the twist.

Telling a story about the French and Indian Wars from the perspective of the British prioritizes the perspective of the colonizers. 

Severance is about breaking down facades and confronting old models that were once frameworks of our lives. The somewhat subtle message to me is it’s never too late to fall in love, no matter your insecurities. 

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.