
Official Selection Palm Springs International ShortsFest, Slamdance: Anarchy Shorts, Raindance Film Festival A magical-realist detective story sprawling across the frozen Brooklyn expanse. An underemployed, young drunk crawls out of bed to find his missing friend while a mysterious disease called “the blank” ravages the city and a giant conqueror worm crawls along the sky.
A complex, realistic, and loving mother-daughter relationship is at the heart of this story about Black pageants and the fight for a better future.
As a huge fan of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket, I’ve wanted to watch Anora since before it even was released. But life got in the way, my watchlist grew, and honestly, the fact that it was marketed as a romantic comedy put me off. Even with all the critical praise and the five Academy Awards it won last year, I just kept postponing it indefinitely.
The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor.
Films can alleviate alienation by presenting realities where the viewers feelings are shared by onscreen characters. 'The Little Mermaid" film can be interpreted as a transgender story.
Shudder makes an incredibly atmospheric docuseries about the darker side of Hollywood mysteries.