Cucumber/Knife (2024)

The classic ghosts-in-revenge story expanded into an extensive dig into the historical social system while being funny and horny.

Ben Affleck leads The Way Back, a seemingly cathartic film for him after the actor’s recent bouts with alcoholism and rehab. He plays Jack, a man fighting his own battles who happens upon coaching a boys’ basketball team, the same team he once played for back in high school.

A brave Indian woman rises from an oppressive background to become an inspired leader for women and men alike around the globe.

Inuit girls use their Inuit tradition to hunt down alien monsters, enough said.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

A trouble-making teenager spends the summer working at a Southern California beach learning about responsibility.