THE WATERS (his) (2024)

When a powerful church leader is found dead, Benoit Blanc enters a tight-knit community where everyone has secrets, but not everyone is fully developed.

A lot of us are emotionally impacted by the current pandemic. So, while we’re all stuck here in our homes, it’s great to put on a movie to ease the stress. With that, I made up a small list of some of my favorite feel-good movies.

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion is a fan-favorite, as are some of the more science fiction angled movies like 28 Days Later or World War Z. I recently watched the 1995 Wolfgang Peterson-directed movie, Outbreak for the first time, which is currently available on Netflix.

At Coopers Chase, murder isn’t just tragedy—it’s Thursday’s entertainment. Chris Columbus’ The Thursday Murder Club transforms Richard Osman’s bestselling series into a cozy, clever whodunit where Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie prove that life’s sharpest twists don’t stop with age. With llamas on the lawn, cakes at the ready, and secrets around every corner, this star-powered mystery balances charm, humor, and heartache, reminding us that friendship, resilience, and reinvention might just be the ultimate clues.

An aspect of She-Ra that I find refreshing is even though a large portion of the cast is on the LGBTQ+ Spectrum, being gay is never mentioned. While this might initially sound like a negative thing, in the show’s land of Etheria being on the gay spectrum is shown to be so common and normalized that straight isn’t the default. As much as there is to appreciate about narratives revolving around the obstacles that may come from being non-heteronormative, it’s nice to get immersed in a world where no one bats an eye at all to any sort of differing identity.

As this critic continues to look back at some of this Summer's films I have taken in, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one of the most overall unsettling trends in Hollywood over the last several years.....sequels, reboots, and remakes. Look, I am all for seeing more than one film for certain originals that made a splash, ie: "Jurassic Park", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Transformers", etc.