Todd of the Times (1919)

This modern update of the beloved classic swaps Cyrano's signature pronounced nose for achondroplasia, for a different vision that still retains the original's essence.

This is not a slavery story, it is a freedom story. The viewers only see Harriet as a slave for the first few minutes of the film. To me, it felt like watching the origin story of a superhero…which is both good and bad.

The newest in a long line of Cinderella adaptations, Amazon’s Cinderella (2021) prizes girlbossification above the very story it tries to adapt.

Battles will come and go and queer people do die for their identity and fights for rights, but that doesn’t mean the gays don’t deserve their happy endings in stories.

Stand and Deliver is an inspirational classic from 1988 starring Edward James Olmos as Jaime Escalante, and his class of rag tag students in East Los Angeles. It’s the story of how a new teacher shows a motley group of students in the inner city with backgrounds as gang members, dishwashers, and mechanics — the power of self-determination. He teaches the teenagers to believe in themselves through algebra and calculus.