Polarizing Polar: An Exploitation Film For the Modern Viewer
In the shadow of towering film production companies lived dozens of grindhouses, genres, and low-budget films deemed too “unclean” for the modern film audience.

Set in Kyoto in the last days of the Edo Period, the bloody conflict continues between local feudal domains, which aim to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate, and the Shogun's police and city patrol. Tajuro Kiyokawa, once the master of the sword but now a depraved samurai who left his domain putting aside his past ambition, barely makes ends meet. Toyo, a woman who runs a tavern next door, feels affection for Tajuro who guards her place against nasty customers, but he never realizes Toyo's feelings.
In the shadow of towering film production companies lived dozens of grindhouses, genres, and low-budget films deemed too “unclean” for the modern film audience.
The most divisive character in Multiverse of Madness is undoubtedly Wanda Maximoff. Is she good or evil? Is she "unlikeable?" I'm tired of the debate. I love Wanda because she's for us—she's for the women.
When you first hear that there is a series on Netflix where the lead character’s wife dies from cancer and he becomes dangerously suicidal, you wouldn’t immediately assume that it’s a comedy.
Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing is a gritty, darkly funny thrill ride through 1998 New York, with Austin Butler delivering a raw, magnetic turn as Hank Thompson—a washed-up ex-ballplayer turned bartender whose life implodes after cat-sitting for his punk neighbor drags him into a violent underworld of gangsters, crooked cops, and chaos. Brutal yet unexpectedly hilarious, the film blends noir grit with midnight-movie absurdity, proving Aronofsky can reinvent himself while Butler cements his status as a true movie star.
Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.
Tarantino's alternative history of the 1960's uncritically repeats the era's sexist and racist stereotypes.