After being away at college, 19-year-old Travis (Chaz Moore) returns home for the summer. Life in small-town Florida seems as mundane as ever. Once darkness falls, he meets up with an old friend Jeremy (Mark Malta), who hasn't achieved much since graduation. Together they travel to a party far outside of town. Travis finds himself stuck in a house full of questionable people including the unhinged homeowner Seth (Greg Nappo), and an old classmate with a crush, Lauren (Amanda Davison). The unusual events of the night feel unending for Travis as things seem to spiral out of control, but the stark light of morning is soon approaching.
As a huge fan of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, I’ve wanted to watch Anora since before it even was released. But life got in the way, my watchlist grew, and honestly, the fact that it was marketed as a romantic comedy put me off. Even with all the critical praise and the five Academy Awards it won last year, I just kept postponing it indefinitely.
The genres of science fiction and fantasy are not exclusively masculine territory. Over the last few decades, female directors have brought to the screen some of the most visually stunning, intellectually daring, and deeply moving works of speculative fiction. From big Hollywood productions like Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel to independent low-budget films, women filmmakers are making a name for themselves around the world.
A recent look at gender and racial diversity in film shows some signs of progress. However, white men still make up the vast majority of actors and directors in top-grossing films.
Although bogged down by a slow pace and moralistic intent, ‘Deadly Garage Sale’ (2022) makes the most of its silly and nonsensical premise.
Ultimately the problem with The Bubble is that it plays everything for laughs to get around the audience’s defenses. But it comes off like a privileged white male thinking that ridiculing everyone else equally is the road to equality. And it’s not. And it's definitely not funny to pretend that it is.
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.
