Chrysalis 

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.

While the camera is objectifying her body to invoke a sexual response in male viewers, Lara Croft still defies the expectations of women in action films.

The short documentary and second place winner of the Incluvie Short Film Festival, Gender Outlaw: A Bodysurfing Story, challenges any simplistic understanding of trans people.

This story solidified my choices to consume a more plant-based diet and nearly made me cancel my subscriptions to big corporations like Amazon. The narrative was perfectly crafted and on par with Bong Joon-Ho’s other major works; Parasite and Snowpiercer.

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.

The film didn’t have to be as long as it is. It just dragged on and on with scenes that had no substance. Every so often we get an action scene, and even those isn’t that fun.