Leaving 

Films about casinos have long been a favorite of Hollywood. This is unsurprising, as they're often tied to magnetic characters whose lives revolve around luxury, spectacle, and even danger.

I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before. 

Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.

I was able to watch the gleefully mesmerizing Disney remake that was Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio. I was enthralled by Zemeckis’ iteration. 

The Olivia Wilde renaissance is upon us.

This Japanese Anime movie is about Kanna, a young girl who sets on a quest across Japan to discover her true identity.