Don’t Look Up (2021, Netflix) presumes the planet is worth saving. The film’s plot exists because of this idea; moveover, the fear, disbelief, rioting, media clamoring, and cultural profiteering that make up the anarchistic, ecstatic response to the news that the planet will be destroyed in six months involves a…

The thirty-minute marbles game in Episode Six of Squid Game (Netflix) killed me emotionally. (In millennial terms, I paused to tweet #wtf once I heard the rules). The episode has its own hashtag there and is destroying people. “Squid game ep 6 reaction mashup” is a whole thing on YouTube. …

* Spoilers for Cruella (2021) Cruella (2021) director Craig Gillepsie made a (sort-of) Disney film, the latest live-action remake from the media giant. Returning to the theater for the first time in over a year, my goosebumps flexed extra seeing Disney’s Cinderella castle drained to greys and punctuated by thunder…

Mexican-American actor Manny Montana invokes the pulse of his bone-tingling, sexcar-driving, laser-grinning, intelligent Detroit crime boss Rio in NBCUniversal’s crime comedy-drama Good Girls, airing its fourth season. Montana’s Rio smashes any potential of stereotyping a Latinx man, a gang member, a Latinx man gang member, or portraying a one-tone human. …

Reflective/reflexive note on the italicized statements: These are literary visualizations based on feelings I expressed or heard neighbors or friends say or that I read online and in social media. When will they die? Find someone who engages your paralyzing fears as much as your rational ones and they are…

It is easy to say Beth Boland (Christina Hendricks) is caught between two men — her husband, Dean Boland (Matthew Lillard), her partner of over twenty years who has cheated on and lied to her and is the father of her four children, and her crime boss and lust-and-or-love interest…