Facialized 9 (2022)

When the retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale and a holiday spirit come together, viewers learn about class issues as well as perseverance despite setbacks.

As one of the women said in the film, friendship in your teens is “as important as any lover” and it’s clear they lived that philosophy throughout their early adult lives as well.

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.

America is the crux of the storyline: she is the only person in existence with the power to jump between universes. As central as America is to the Multiverse of Madness story, she somehow didn’t get that much to do.

In this remake of the 1993 film of the same name, The Wedding Banquet follows the life of two queer couples as they struggle with life-changing decisions.

The plot lags, the moral lessons are misguided, but are those fluffy little donut creatures adorable? Yes. Yes, they are.