Timbuktu (1959)

This coming-of-age movie is about a group of girl trying to find their missing friend after a wild night none of them can remember.

'Motherless Brooklyn' is a 1950s whodunit made by its star, Edward Norton. Like most detective films in this setting, the cast is mostly white males (with a few notable exceptions).

Tom Clancy's Without Remorse has everything a movie director from the 80’s could wish.

Rare in the days of franchise sequels and indie horror films that dominate the screen in 2026, Netflix’s latest original release, Remarkably Bright Creatures, is a feel-good family movie that leaves nothing to be desired except tissues. Starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman as two cleaners at a small-town aquarium, Remarkably Bright Creatures reminds viewers that humans are social animals whose strength comes not from our intelligence or our opposable thumbs, but from each other.

Outer Banks (2020-) knows its audience: young adults in a country that can’t stop romanticizing good ole’ treasure hunts. Add a little of Riverdale’s (2017-) sex appeal, and no one can look away. Forty years after The Goonies (1985) America’s consciousness hasn’t strayed from the same tropes: treasure hunts, a vulnerable white male lead, and the whitewashing of a racially segregated setting.