Sanshiro of Ginza 

A wondrously imaginative, diverse, and spirited allegory of childhood and the arduousness of adulthood.

Battles will come and go and queer people do die for their identity and fights for rights, but that doesn’t mean the gays don’t deserve their happy endings in stories.

Like all modern societal phenomenons, it started with a meme. This one highlighted that when there’s a mom in a Pixar film, she is almost without fail given striking curves that highlight the bottom half of her body following a minuscule waist. From Elastigirl to the skeletal Mama Imelda, the animation giant’s artists seem to have a fixation on making exaggeratedly curvy maternal characters.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, though its feminism may be unintentional, cannot exist without its focus on women reclaiming power. The movie is feminist by definition, even if Amirpour didn’t write it with that in mind. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is mesmerizing, poetic, and stunning, both for its portrayal of feminist ideas and its powerful story that is both horrific and subtly romantic at once.

Two movies that do a fantastic job in conveying the ongoing struggle for racial justice are Selma (2014) and Just Mercy (2019).

Every movement becomes a question of identity. To become who we are meant to be. In order to reach that we often have to shed who we once were, and that shedding can sometimes be so brutal it’s ungraceful.