Shark Below Zero (2023)

Dracula evolved from a person to a monster and then from a monster to a person.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

Even without the messaging, Mercy does not hold up as a movie. It's sloppily done and the mystery doesn’t tie together at the end.

'The Lost Daughter' doesn't paint over the choices Leda and Nina make as mothers as right or wrong but examines the messy in-between.

"Warrior" is a Bruce Lee written and inspired story that follows a diverse cast of Chinese American characters and does a terrific job of setting the story in 1878 San Francisco - all without pulling their punches with the systemic racism, discrimination, and struggle for power that old and young immigrants that crossed the country at that time had to go through.