Eeek! (2025)

The three themes of lessons learned from HBO Max's Station Eleven are the same as the pandemic: love, regret, and art.

A consumed-by-rage woman travels from universe to universe to avenge the death of her daughter by brutally killing her murderer over and over again. And that's all that she does.

The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.

Season 1 of Love, Victor ended on a major cliffhanger: Victor came out to his parents. He said the words “I’m gay” for the first time. Now what?  Season 2 answers the question: “What happens after coming out?”

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.

This powerful story shines with poetic animation, an exploration of deeper truths, and the protagonist's complex search for identity.