Set in contemporary America's heartland, Rain tells a story of murder, sex, and redemption set against the backdrop of a dead-end town suffering through a severe drought. Patsy, the Sheriff's wife is having an affair with Paul, another woman's husband. The Sheriff's adopted teenage son is having an affair with Paul's wife, Ellen, a woman with home the Sheriff once had an affair himself. As the summer gets hotter and the rain fails to arrive, the fields, the buildings, and everyone's private lives are set to burst into flames.
Stand and Deliver is an inspirational classic from 1988 starring Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante, and his class of rag tag students in East Los Angeles. It’s the story of how a new teacher shows a motley group of students in the inner city with backgrounds as gang members, dishwashers, and mechanics — the power of self-determination. He teaches the teenagers to believe in themselves through algebra and calculus.
I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before.
'Kajillionaire' is a touching and eccentric story about family, crime, and the search for belonging.
Mai yells what every parent dreads hearing from their child: “tao ghét mày” (“I hate you”) and runs from the scene, where Hai discovers that Mai was telling the truth about the wallet.
In 'Little Boxes," an interracial family moves to an all-white town where they face the judgement of others who have never been exposed to people of color before.
I Love You Forever, marketed as a “subversive” romantic comedy is in fact a painful horror film about a young woman deep in the throes of an abusive relationship.
