Munting Koronel 

Shortly after season two of Fleabag dropped on Amazon Prime in 2019, Barack Obama put it on his list as one of his favorite television series of the year.

Stylish, slow, and somewhat standoffish, Human Resource examines corporate life from the perspective of a female HR employee as she interviews job candidates while also deciding whether to keep her newly discovered pregnancy.

From its visually stunning opening credits, which show women dancing through a forest to musical rhythms that sound almost primal, to its quiet, heartbreaking final frame, Mona Fastvold’s historical rendering of the Shaker religious movement is an experience that will stay with me for a long time.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

It doesn’t offer an absolute answer for the dialectical ethical questions that emerged in search of justice but portrays the characters as living people beyond the identities of victims.

Happy Halloween! If you were debating capping off Spooky Season with a viewing of Hocus Pocus 2, it is just very clear that this is more for the younger audience as opposed to people who grew up with the original.