'Hacks' Is Not a Hack…It's Comedic Perfection
Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) are a delight to watch evolve, sometimes devolve, then evolve again.

Seventeen-year-old apprentice Jonas, struggling with his ailing, proud father, pours himself into restoring a decaying ship on a Mecklenburg lake. Neglecting all else, he loses his girlfriend and support at work. After the boat burns, a reconciliatory vocational ceremony reunites him with his recovered father.
Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) are a delight to watch evolve, sometimes devolve, then evolve again.
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.
'Rag Tag' encompasses the diversity within the African Diaspora by showing London Nigerian men learning to regulate their emotions while navigating love and societal pressures.
One young woman with an unusual background tries to find and establish herself in the real world, which isn't exactly as festive as she hoped it would be.
The differences in these films could not be more blatant, and yet Gus Van Sant has found a way to portray the same messages and use the same techniques in each.