Gabriel Flores Jr vs. Julian Rodarte (2024)

Netflix's Afterlife of the Party might fall into the rom-com genre, but it's much more about grief, strong female friendships, and platonic love than it is about romance.

“There’s always something you can do…to make people feel like they’re welcome”

The new biopic 'Elvis' highlights the beginning and end of the career of this rock and roll legend. The audience is taken on this journey knowing the tragic ending but not so much about what led him there. A large topic of discussion is the influences on Elvis that made him who he was as a singer, musician, and performer, which were blues, gospel, and country. Many of the songs that rose him to fame were songs by Black artists he heard growing up in primarily Black settings.

Alongside A Drowning Man, I Signed The Petition, 3 Logical Exits, and A World Not Ours, A Man Returned continues to paint a realistic portrait of the Refugee Crisis that eschews the Western gaze and stereotype. These are real portraits painted by a director with lived experience, cultural connection and an amazing eye for visuals.

Spirited inverts the tropes of the holiday musical genre to update an age-old tale for 2022. It's a paean to those who make grand spectacles possible.

This Transgender Day of Remembrance, let us take a look at six films about transgender children grappling with their identity in a heteronormative world that despises their kind and tries its best to invalidate their feelings.