The Gospel (2005)

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.

What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.

I Love You Forever, marketed as a “subversive” romantic comedy is in fact a painful horror film about a young woman deep in the throes of an abusive relationship.

David Fincher is back in his playpen, with a dark and chilling thriller.

An animated reboot based on the book of the same name, with differences from the live-action movie of the same name.

Barry Jenkins' masterpiece holds up as the story of a lifetime centered on the intersection of Blackness and gay identity.