Love's Labour's Lost 

Birds of Prey has some of the best stunt work and choreography of 2020, and was the most fun I’d had in an action film since John Wick 3.

Striving for validation. Let’s be frank….we ALL want to be successful. Whatever we put our efforts into, ideally it is to make it culminate in the best possible results across the board, especially when it comes to what career path we are pursuing. We WANT to excel, to shine, to advance, to be acknowledged. AND…let’s hope that we also wish to better everyone around us to boot. However, what occurs when those whom we initially put our trust in suddenly become a burden instead of a boon? Do we falter under the weight of rejection? Or STAND UP for WHO WE ARE?

This list was made with the intention of celebrating the craft. I love seeing more women of colour on this list than before and more newcomers on the scene as well!

Mirrorball is full of passion and love for the medium of cinema and is indeed a fitting love letter to La La Land.

The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor. 

It’s almost the end of the first month of 2021, and just over a week since the U.S. saw a new president take office. In light of the occasion, some of us highlighted our favorite political films below!