Purity (1916)

A young girl named Hailey Mays sings a country song that is named after the film's title.

A film that focuses on an algorithm for a dating app that will bring viewers in for a surprise.

There’s been a longstanding criticism of sci-fi films about its lack of Black characters. For the past few years, Anthony Mackie has been successfully representing Black masculinity in the otherwise homogenous genre and I am here for it.

It’s easy to dismiss Joel and Ethan Coen for writing from the world they build from outside the box of overarching Hollywood stereotypes, but their inability to compromise their collective vision is precisely what makes the simplistic nature of their world-building and characters so brilliant. It’s also what led Fargo to collect seven Oscar nominations and two wins for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress for Frances McDormand’s brilliant portrayal of the sincere, motherly detective whose wholesome demeanor seizes the day over the selfishness, corruption and evil of the men who don’t comprehend that there’s more to life than a little money.

Dead Poets Society relies on patriarchal tropes such as overbearing fathers, contrived brotherhood, and faux-individuality in order to portray its straight white male characters as oppressed.

We can criticize depictions from old media, but they weren’t simply “good for their time”. They were fighting and struggling in a world we can’t imagine.