High Horse (2022)

Love Hard is a Christmas romcom about two people who fall in love while pretending to date. It’s a romantic and fun watch. If you can forget the catfishing.

In the film adaptation, director Jon M. Chu turns each musical number into a massive show stopper, with grand set pieces and a wealth of diverse dancers. Yet, in this attempt to show reverence for the people of the Washington Heights barrio, Chu, or maybe more specifically those in charge of casting, left out a crucial part of the community, Afro-Latinos.

It’s 5:30am. The baby’s crying, but you need to finish prepping for your big pitch at work that morning. What do you do? You do the near impossible: both. That's what "Workin' Moms" is all about.

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

As this critic continues to look back at some of this Summer's films I have taken in, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most overall unsettling trends in Hollywood over the last several years.....sequels, reboots, and remakes. Look, I am all for seeing more than one film for certain originals that made a splash, ie: "Jurassic Park", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Transformers", etc.

The intrepid archaeologist's latest adventure is an exciting, nostalgia-driven exploration of clashing ideologies amid ever-changing social dynamics and technological advancements.