NJPW x STARDOM: Historic X-Over (2022)

Darren Arronofsky focuses on diverse and heartbreaking stories about the human experience.

CODA' is about a child of deaf adults torn between staying with her parents and her dreams of pursuing music. This film is a step forward for deaf representation and disability in movies despite negative messages about the burden of actors deaf deafness.

In Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It (1986), we follow the love life of powerful female protagonist Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) and explore the relationship dynamics she has with her partners. She sees three men simultaneously: Greer Childs, (John Canada Terrell) Mars Blackmon (Spike Lee), and Jamie Overstreet (Tommy Redmond Hicks). Though an 80’s film, She’s Gotta Have It is surprisingly progressive with its themes of female sexuality, although at some points in the film it is handled clumsily. Overall Nola is an incredibly compelling character especially for modern women, as we as a society acknowledge female sensuality more and more without the negative stigma.

The Roses is a wickedly sharp marital warfare comedy that transforms domestic dysfunction into high art. Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch deliver powerhouse performances as a couple whose fairy-tale romance implodes when his architectural career collapses just as her culinary empire takes off. What makes Jay Roach's remake so devastatingly effective is its refusal to pick sides—both spouses are equally sympathetic and monstrous, wielding Tony McNamara's razor-sharp dialogue like weapons forged from shared intimacies. It's a film that dares you to laugh at relationship wreckage while forcing you to confront the uncomfortable truth that the line between passionate love and mutual destruction is terrifyingly thin.

What are we willing to walk through to see our dreams come to pass? Our minds might be so wholly alive with the passions we carry and the plans we make to see these things become all we wish them to be, yet life doesn’t always want to come alongside. Instead, obstacles arise, both physical and mental, which attempt to dissuade us or even prevent us from moving forward, stalling or stagnating the momentum to achieve what we desire. The age-old question remains….can we overcome? Or will we BE overcome?