PFL 2024 # 7: Regular Season - Goltsov vs. Johnson (2024)

A gentle coming of age story, Water Lilies takes its time in exploring what it’s like to be a young girl trying to make sense of her sexuality in a heteronormative world.

Not only does the system prevent upward mobility, but it makes it incredibly easy to slide from comfortably middle class to unhoused.

Over the last several years, I have had the privilege of being one of the critics having the opportunity to watch and review several films from writer/director/producer Marcellus Cox, whose efforts are never anything less but grounded, relevant, and steeped in unflinching glimpses illustrating the gripping, inspired, and ever-vacillating realms that make up the human condition.

The director's latest is a dreamlike exploration of a consciousness torn between two homelands, and the implications of history and memory suspended in limbo.

After the untimely death of his brother by way of an ambush in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the protagonist, ‘81’(Alan Ritchson) unsuccessfully makes several attempts to become an Army Ranger. On his last mission to complete the Ranger selection process he and his squad encounter an otherworldly ‘soldier’.

As a horror buff, I was intrigued by people claiming 'The Sadness' was the most disturbing movie they've ever seen or to watch with caution. So, I finally put the internet to the test and watched it for myself... to varying results.