Sweet Boys in Love (2019)

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. 

This 2016 winner of an Ophir Award for Best Film focuses on the forbidden romance of a young, Bedouin woman and the ramifications it has for her family, her identity, and her culture.

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone has a complicated relationship with race. It has a diverse cast, but not without its problems. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s two book series, the show features characters from the Shadow and Bone trilogy, which is very straight and white, and the Six of Crows duology, which is much more diverse. When bringing together a cast and writing about these characters, the team behind the show expanded upon some of the representation missing from the first trilogy, then seemed to take away representation from the duology. Shadow and Bone seems to play a bit of a push and pull game when it comes to portraying diversity onscreen.

Laggies is a fantastic movie, filled with down-to-earth characters, transcendent themes, and witty comedy

"Come Play" was entertaining and had some great ideas about how to scare children away from playing with facial recognition settings.

The latest in the lineup of Disney+ Marvel shows, Hawkeye is shaping up to be a fun Christmas-themed Avenger show that’s also really down to earth.