The Big One (1998)

A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.

Elsewhere is less than fourteen minutes long, but it delivers a more emotional impact than most feature-length films. 

Netflix's Afterlife of the Party might fall into the rom-com genre, but it's much more about grief, strong female friendships, and platonic love than it is about romance.

Perhaps the most amazing and groundbreaking quality about The Birdcage is how removed it is from both illness and insensitivity. Whereas films preceding it were often somber stories about the tribulations of being gay in a conservatively straight world, Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May expose the fallacies of conservatism as traditional values are thrown into a more open-minded space. They don’t care how far the community has fallen so much as how high they can rebuild themselves.

Overall, Matthias & Maxime doesn't reinvent this romantic concept. But it also doesn't need to. Dolan weaves a story of love, friendship, and life that is both realistic and bittersweet. The film is nuanced and sensual in a way we don't get to see often with LGBTQ characters. It's a film that we can celebrate.

The plot lags, the moral lessons are misguided, but are those fluffy little donut creatures adorable? Yes. Yes, they are.