"The World to Come": A Stunning Period Romance
Mona Fastvold’s nineteenth century lesbian romance is emotionally charged, restrained, and poetic without feeling forced.

After murdering her illegitimate baby, Isabella pins the blame on her innocent cousin Consuelo. Despite the strenuous efforts of her attorney-lover DeSylva, Consuelo is found guilty and shipped to a penal colony along with several other female prisoners.
Mona Fastvold’s nineteenth century lesbian romance is emotionally charged, restrained, and poetic without feeling forced.
The film seems like an extreme interpretation of the conspiracy theorists that exist in real life. And then, there’s the twist.
Can a piece of bad representation truly be reclaimed? We Are Pat (2025) attempts to answer this question.
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.
Netflix's new thriller Apex, starring Charlize Theron, puts a twist on survival horror. Despite its setting in the beautiful- yet-dangerous Australian wilderness, Apex is not a movie about man vs. nature. Instead, it’s woman vs. man. While checking out the title card and its unpretentious Netflix release might lead viewers to believe Apex is just another celebrity project churned out of the streaming machine, Apex - whether by luck or by intention - is a consistently harrowing film about the reality of being a woman in a public space.
This emotional, frightening, and dreamlike story examines the ways actresses are exploited in the name of art.