Twentynine Palms (2004)

Two movies that do a fantastic job in conveying the ongoing struggle for racial justice are Selma (2014) and Just Mercy (2019).

Americans love the British monarchy. This may seem confusing because only a few short hundred years ago they were our worst enemies, and every year we celebrate our independence from them. The Crown humanizes the monarchy, which might explain its popularity.

The French-born director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s strategic choice to entrust the interpretation of a conventional, feminine character to a non-binary actor pays off: Corrin’s Lady Chatterley is awkward, edgy, and uninhibited at the same time. 

In Stowaway, director Joe Penna narrates the story of a starship crew (Anna Kendrick as Zoe Levenson; Toni Collette as Marina Barnett; and Daniel Dae Kim as David Kim) struggling with serious technical problems on a two-year mission to Mars. During the trip, they discover aboard the presence of Michael (Shamier Anderson), a stowaway who jeopardizes everyone’s life on board.

I think these messages and the way they are presented in this small-town in Texas are increasingly more important as the internet/ social media becomes more and more critical and judgemental every day. Love yourself today and every day because as Ru Paul always says: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else?”

Despite the film’s efforts to reframe its heroine with modern complexity, a certain emotional distance lingers.