Mafia Mamma (2023)

A 2020 Japanese anime movie that focuses on a high school girl who is desperately in love with her secret crush.

A commentary on the exploitation of the elderly fueld by the inherent greed of capitalism.

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.

This HBO mini-series asks why a young white man turned to violence and finds no easy answers. But why do we only ask questions about certain kinds of killers?

Although Tuner is technically a heist movie, music and sound are woven into almost every aspect of Niki’s story. That’s what made Tuner such a pleasant surprise. I expected a film about music and discovered a heist movie, only to find that music was still at the heart of it.

It only seems to prove that when the company had their backs against the wall and needed an all pleasing, generic movie that had to make up for The Last Jedi, they chose to sacrifice almost everything that made their main protagonist interesting and that made her stand out as the strong female character that a generation of young movie goers was supposed to look up to. Instead, we were left with a Rey that was so much less than she could have been. And I guess that’s the real story of Rey and The Rise of Skywalker; they could have been so much more, but they were just more of the same.