Social distancing has been an excellent time to revisit some of my favorite films and mingle with some of my best friends — i.e., the characters. And one protagonist I’ve always longed to forge a friendship with is Morticia Addams.  When I think of a woman who contains multitudes, she’s one of the first who come to mind. The Addams family’s towering matriarch is in charge of her domain. She’s smart, confident, and sexually liberated. She’s devoted to her family, but knows the importance of caring for...

Never Rarely Sometimes Always  Written and directed by Eliza Hittman  Out March 13   “Did it hurt?” asks Skylar (Talia Ryder) after her cousin Autumn Callahan (Sidney Flanigan) finally gets an abortion. She says it didn’t. It’s one of the last moments of dialogue in Never Rarely Sometimes Always, the latest film by writer and director Eliza Hittman, and the exchange sums up a key part of the story: the abortion at its center is far from being the film's most dramatic or emotional plot point. When Autumn,...

How many iterations of Cinderella has there been? The answer is a lot. From the original Grimm fairy tale to the Disney cartoon to the dozens of modern versions including Another Cinderella Story (starring our queen Hilary Duff) and the latest Disney live-action remake, it is a story folks will surely be telling and retelling until the end of time. Nothing, however, nothing beats the 1997 Rodgers & Hammerstein’s film adaptation of Cinderella starring none other than Brandy, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, and Bernadette Peters....

SwallowWritten and directed by Carlo Mirabella-DavisOut March 6        Everything about Hunter’s (Haley Bennett) life seems immaculate, from her cashmere turtlenecks to her stunning home overlooking the Hudson River. But the truth is, despite all that upper-crust glamour and her marriage to a wealthy businessman (Austin Stowell), she feels trapped—stuck in a large, sterile house with access to very few people aside from her husband and condescending in-laws (David Rasche and Elizabeth Marvel). Her sense of isolation only grows when she discovers she’s pregnant....

PREMATURECo-written and directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green Out February 21 Premature is a multi-layered coming-of-age love story, admirably co-written by and starring Zora Howard in her screenwriting debut. Howard plays Ayanna, a 17-year-old Harlemite navigating the summer before she heads off to college out-of-state. Filled with uncertainty about the future and wanting to belong, Ayanna finds herself stressing about her mother’s many romantic entanglements and seeking sanctuary amongst her homegirls, all while stumbling into her own love affair with 20-something musician Isaiah (Joshua Boone). Black teen romance...

Jane Austen once described the protagonist of her 1815 novel, Emma, as “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” What she meant, of course, was that the spoiled, scheming Emma Woodhouse isn’t exactly a Jane Bennet, or even an Elizabeth. But for over 200 years now, there’s been something irresistible about her story: the miscommunications, the mess-ups, the comedy. In multiple interviews, de Wilde has said that her goal wasn’t to modernize Austen's story but to humanize it. And though there’s a lot to...

At long last Disney/Pixar has an openly gay character…or so the story goes again. Actress, director, producer Lena Waithe will voice the character of Officer Specter, a cyclops policewoman, in Disney/Pixar’s latest film Onward (in theaters March 6). Waithe is an out and proud lesbian who hasn’t shied away from making her sexual orientation known. After all, this is the same woman who completely owned the MET Gala back in 2018, rocking a ginormous floor length rainbow flag cape. Waithe made history in 2017 by becoming the...

Ellen Page’s documentary, There’s Something in the Water, which premiered at TIFF last fall, is coming to Netflix on March 27. It discusses the very dangerous consequences of environmental racism in Canada, specifically Nova Scotia. Inspired by the acclaimed book by Ingrid Waldron, social scientist and professor at Dalhousie University, There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities uses Nova Scotia as a case example of environmental racism in Canada. There were so many powerful moments that appeared in the trailer. One part...

The Photograph, starring Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield, is the first Black romantic film of the decade—premiering on Valentine’s Day, smack dab in the middle of Black History Month. Setting the tone for representation of Black love by Black creators under any other circumstance would be daunting, but The Photograph exceeds expectations by simply just being a regular, degular love story. The film seesaws between two generations of love: Christina (Chante Adams) grappling between her love for her southern hometown sweetheart, Isaac (Y’lan Noel) and her...

Leslie Knope has filled many a binder with good ideas, but perhaps her best idea is Galentine’s Day, a day for ladies celebrating ladies. Here at BUST, we love nothing more than celebrating rad women, and we especially love it when they show up on our screen. So grab your friends, some wine, and your snack of choice and unwind with some of our favorite flicks about female friendship, as chosen by our staffers. Waiting to Exhale Featuring a star-studded cast filled with legendary actresses such as...