Lease on Love (2023)

The film is bogged down with one-off rain monster threats that always come to a quick and undramatic end

Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame is a unique film coming from the same studio that brought us The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. While it does have its silly moments to maintain Disney’s family-friendliness, it also carries themes that stick to audiences years after its release.

The singer recounts the memories of writing and creating her record-breaking debut album and shares her feelings as a young woman navigating a specific time in her life.

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.

The one-way journey went to the desert that refused to offer an answer or a transcendence.

While the film didn’t hit me as emotionally as I wanted it to, I still enjoyed it. I simply wish there was a little more, particularly with the world building.