Pain & Glory 

On the Road captures the bleak, hyper-masculine world of long-haul trucking in Northern Mexico, where anything can and will happen. A hard-boiled, neon-noir romantic thriller, it shows the gritty reality of roadside diners, truck stops, and truck cemeteries alongside the expansive, breathless beauty of the Mexican desert highways.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a film that is jarring within the first five minutes. Being at the edge of my seat from the very beginning made me feel both excited and frightened for what was to come, and it did not disappoint. Led strongly by Jennifer Lawrence as Grace, a woman trapped in the “American dream”, this film shows that society tells us what should make us happy. Many critics describe Die My Love as being about post-partem depression, but it is so much more. After moving to a secluded home with her husband Jackson, Grace finds herself in the throes of motherhood. Feeling isolated in her physical environment and her romantic relationship, Grace suffers psychologically. Lawrence brings a sense of rawness and humor to the screen that is often uncomfortable. Robert Pattinson adds to the discomfort as her loving, yet lost husband Jackson, who cares about his wife but does not know how to help her. Lynne Ramsay has presented a film that forces us to look at the realness of life, and what happens when the promise of what should make you whole fails.

A commentary on the exploitation of the elderly fueld by the inherent greed of capitalism.

Like all modern societal phenomenons, it started with a meme. This one highlighted that when there’s a mom in a Pixar film, she is almost without fail given striking curves that highlight the bottom half of her body following a minuscule waist. From Elastigirl to the skeletal Mama Imelda, the animation giant’s artists seem to have a fixation on making exaggeratedly curvy maternal characters.

Stranger Things season 4 ups the ante to the max! The show’s scope has been expanding for the past three seasons, and boy do they give us a spectacle to behold. As much as I love spectacle, this season occasionally buckles under the weight of its own ambition.