The Bitter Stems 

Suppressed intergenerational family trauma and healing, warm welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe team, and Awkwafina's humor really make this film the real MVP.

Not only does the system prevent upward mobility, but it makes it incredibly easy to slide from comfortably middle class to unhoused.

Michael Shanks’ Together is a queasy, hilarious, and surprisingly heartfelt body-horror trip that fuses love and terror in the most literal sense. Starring real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, this midnight gem twists Plato’s soulmate myth into a gory, darkly funny tale of codependency, cults, and chainsaws — equal parts romance and nightmare.

Zombie apocalypses have been metaphors for late-stage predatory capitalism, but never a system disrupter that brings about freedom.

With mismatched eyes, a willingness to experiment with hair color and style, and a rail thin frame, Bowie always drew attention. But he shunned gendered attractiveness, creating his own space somewhere in between. This hallucinatory and often nonlinear 2022 documentary is a perfect salute to David Bowie’s life and career. Rather than interviewing those that knew Bowie, the standard convention for biographical portraits, director Brett Morgen mostly lets the artist’s images, performances, videos, and words speak to capture the essence of the artist. Bowie was more than just a pop star. He painted, sculpted, acted in films, and was a thoughtful and articulate person who gave sincere answers to even the most shallow interview questions.

How powerful can a story be when it is stripped to the bare essentials of just a room, a handful of people and raw human voice?