Christmas Land (2015)

Wes Anderson offers a light-hearted comedy in the Middle East centering around Catholic motifs. 

This Christmas movie gives viewers a friendship that unexpectedly forms from a plane trip.

What starts off as a success story for a single mother living below the poverty line, slowly begins to weave itself into a tangled web of greed, guilt, and destruction.

The biggest highlight of the film is easily the performance of Andrew Garfield. In his days since hanging up his Spiderman suit, Garfield has routinely churned out great performances, and Mainstream is no exception. He proves that he is willing to try anything and go anywhere in a character.

As a huge fan of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, I’ve wanted to watch Anora since before it even was released. But life got in the way, my watchlist grew, and honestly, the fact that it was marketed as a romantic comedy put me off. Even with all the critical praise and the five Academy Awards it won last year, I just kept postponing it indefinitely.

Set in a future dystopian United States in which water is running out, Julia Hart’s Fast Color (2018) is a refreshingly different take on the superhero film.