The Collector (2024)

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. 

21 Bridges isn’t going to revolutionize action cinema. However, its action components are respectable. Every act is visibly clear, and as time moves forward, the film changes its conflictual rhythm.

"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.

This spin-off series follows the adventures of Kitty Covey, Lara Jean's younger sister from the "To All the Boys" film franchise.

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.