Monsters Within (2025)

The film is a powerful narrative encompassing a theme that many people can identify with.

When a group of White women are invited to dinner by an Indian woman and a Black woman to talk about race in America, sparks fly.

Love, Simon (2018) based on the book “Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda” (by Becky Albertalli) is a teen LGBTQ+ rom-com with themes of longing to find others with similar struggles, and ultimately is a story of acceptance of identity from those around you, and most importantly, from yourself.

Stand and Deliver is an inspirational classic from 1988 starring Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante, and his class of rag tag students in East Los Angeles. It’s the story of how a new teacher shows a motley group of students in the inner city with backgrounds as gang members, dishwashers, and mechanics — the power of self-determination. He teaches the teenagers to believe in themselves through algebra and calculus.

Word of mouth has been incredible, but the film's faults cannot be ignored. 

I hope that more people will see Joyland, understand the situation, and eventually change themselves and society so we can have a more accommodating world where everyday tragedies like the one depicted in the film do not occur.