The White Sheep (1924)

That gut-wrenching feeling you have while watching it is okay but needed, and you, the viewer, will be okay.

Netflix’s new comedy drama, Don’t Say Good Luck, is a heartwarming tearjerker as well as a love letter to the transformative power of being a theater kid. Directed by Julia Hart, Don’t Say Good Luck follows Sophie (Sunny Sandler), a theater kid who finally gets the lead role in her school’s production of Waitress - just as she finds out her mom Elizabeth (Melanie Lynskey) is dying of cancer. While the singing is by no means spectacular and Sandler’s acting is stiff, the film is grounded in the moving performance of Lynskey as a mother who wants nothing more than for her daughter to achieve her dreams, even if she can’t be there to see them.

In Deaf, the Spanish director Eva Libertad explores pregnancy and motherhood from the perspective of a deaf woman. Her movie examines how the world imposes the notion of disability on her main character while she actually does not feel disabled herself.

The Resort has an excellent climax surrounded by disappointments. Somehow, at a mere 75 minutes, this movie still manages to be 70 minutes too long.

It doesn’t offer an absolute answer for the dialectical ethical questions that emerged in search of justice but portrays the characters as living people beyond the identities of victims.

The human experience is described through the eyes of a marginalized outsider, neither judgmental nor invested, just an observant donkey.