Penal Servitude 

'The Wiz' has the propensity for paying homage to black culture with R&B music, graffiti and jazzy elements that make it incredibly entertaining. 

Who knew a drunken game of truth or dare could launch one of the most chaotic rom-coms of the year? The Threesome takes Connor’s fantasy night with Olivia (Zoey Deutch, in peak queen-of-indie form) and Jenny (Ruby Cruz) and flips it into a deliciously messy nightmare when both women end up pregnant. What follows isn’t cheap comedy—it’s a whip-smart, heartfelt exploration of love, consequence, and the beautiful disasters we call adulthood.

While Mortals Sleep is enthralling quick-fix horror that offers thrills and excitement with such a short runtime and left me truly impressed with all levels of filmmaking.

Set in a future dystopian United States in which water is running out, Julia Hart’s Fast Color (2018) is a refreshingly different take on the superhero film.

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.