Music by John Williams (2024)

With mismatched eyes, a willingness to experiment with hair color and style, and a rail thin frame, Bowie always drew attention. But he shunned gendered attractiveness, creating his own space somewhere in between. This hallucinatory and often nonlinear 2022 documentary is a perfect salute to David Bowie’s life and career. Rather than interviewing those that knew Bowie, the standard convention for biographical portraits, director Brett Morgen mostly lets the artist’s images, performances, videos, and words speak to capture the essence of the artist. Bowie was more than just a pop star. He painted, sculpted, acted in films, and was a thoughtful and articulate person who gave sincere answers to even the most shallow interview questions.

Ian and Barley embark on a quest to find a magical gem to restore their father back to life.

When it comes down to it, The English explores what happens when power is unchecked and how those who seem powerless, have more strength than most through their convictions for justice.

With raw and unapologetic performances by Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, stories about the hardships of Black musicians are weaved in with The Blues.

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.

Unfortunately, People We Meet on Vacation didn’t hold up quite as well as I’d hoped.