Upside (2010)

A wondrously imaginative, diverse, and spirited allegory of childhood and the arduousness of adulthood.

The new biopic 'Elvis' highlights the beginning and end of the career of this rock and roll legend. The audience is taken on this journey knowing the tragic ending but not so much about what led him there. A large topic of discussion is the influences on Elvis that made him who he was as a singer, musician, and performer, which were blues, gospel, and country. Many of the songs that rose him to fame were songs by Black artists he heard growing up in primarily Black settings.

The 2019 film, Vai, takes us through eight stories across the islands of Oceania. The settings are unbelievably beautiful, the cast is beautiful, the languages are beautiful, and the stories are beautiful…but heartbreaking.

A pop star at Radio City Music Hall gets the opportunity to change herself to save her music career.

This story solidified my choices to consume a more plant-based diet and nearly made me cancel my subscriptions to big corporations like Amazon. The narrative was perfectly crafted and on par with Bong Joon-Ho’s other major works; Parasite and Snowpiercer.

One Night in Miami... did not frame the racism and bigotry as something that could be solved by quality time spent between individuals. Instead, it featured four different legends of Black History together in one room disagreeing for about 2/3 of the film.