In early 2013, it was announced that choreographer and dancer Benjamin Millepied, known as the man behind the ballet of Black Swan, would take over as director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Reset finds Millepied on the eve of his first gala with the Opera, designing and refining his inaugural choreography for the esteemed institution. As a film, Reset possesses of the same artistic assuredness as its subject as he blocks out the preliminary steps for his choreography. It explores various concepts of space simultaneously: the digital space, the space of the opera house (each scene opens with a declaration of which studio it’s in) and the space of the stage, the distance from stage right to stage left. It’s a portrait of a watershed moment for one of the ballet's oldest institutions and one of its brightest new stars, both on the cusp of great transition.
"First Day" is a trans kid slice-of-life tv show that brings desperately needed diversity to coming-of-age stories in mainstream media. Here's a show that get's it right by having a trans actress in a story centered on trans girlhood.
A few episodes in, I realized the most prominent theme of In The Long Run wasn't culture, race or even finding independence--but the idea of belonging.
Kate Winslet and Saorise Ronan deliver stellar performances in a film that doesn't live up to its potential.
Disney has kept its word and allowed a new generation of Black and/or African storytellers to tell their own original stories. The question remains, will the public keep their word?
This reboot of The Wonder Years is told from the lens of a Black man.
Netflix's new thriller Apex, starring Charlize Theron, puts a twist on survival horror. Despite its setting in the beautiful- yet-dangerous Australian wilderness, Apex is not a movie about man vs. nature. Instead, it’s woman vs. man. While checking out the title card and its unpretentious Netflix release might lead viewers to believe Apex is just another celebrity project churned out of the streaming machine, Apex - whether by luck or by intention - is a consistently harrowing film about the reality of being a woman in a public space.
