Empathy just one of the themes of Alan Clarke’s Scum, about England’s notorious Borstal youth detention center. It’s a harrowing watch, here to remind you that these prison systems benefit from society’s ability to look the other way when the truth becomes too uncomfortable to witness.

A common question among first-year philosophy students, religious types, and stoners is: are we in control of our own destiny? Veronica explores this question through Lisa Frankenstein, She is Conann and The Iron Claw

While The Fly is implicitly and explicitly about abortion, Dead Ringers takes on the entire sphere of gynecological healthcare – how the patriarchy poisons even a sphere where pregnant people should feel safe and listened to.

Guest contributor Zoe Rogan explores the parallels between Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling and Luis Buñuel’s Belle du Jour – both films set within repressive worlds, heavy on themes of control, patriarchy and sex, and feature women who seek to break free.

The platforms and buzzwords available to Gen Z can be welded as weapons or tools, depending on whose hand they’re in. The kids in Bodies Bodies Bodies, Pleasure and Medusa, approach life and adulthood as something they can opt-out of.

In The Card Counter, the schism between processing trauma and self-forgiveness comes to a head. To Bill, this living prison he has set up for himself is akin to a religion. But salvation cannot be achieved without true consciousness – simply having suffered great punishment is not enough.

There’s no standard way to behave for a breakdown, so it can be a challenge to make something read clearly on screen when the majority of the drama takes place internally. Veronica discusses The Sound of Violence, The Voices and Muriel's Wedding, three films that explore how to have a mental breakdown.

The only way Robert Downey Sr knew how to communicate with his audience was to level with them. He’d undercut your expectations while openly ribbing your reactions, delighting in the intrigue of blatant overindulgence while acknowledging it with disgust and then forcing you to wallow in it alongside him.

Veronica writes an ode to Alexander Payne’s Election – a perfect microcosm of the US, our inherent mistrust of ambitious women, and the gross reality of being a human.

Anxiety is what bonds us women together, even more than that sisterhood junk or whichever biological grossness, because it exists inside every type of woman there is. If you’ve spent a minute of your life as a woman, you’ve experienced female anxiety. That’s just the way it goes.

Watching movies filmed in a place you love when you are physically present in said place but unable to enjoy it has become a strange panacea for Veronica. Between Petulia, Foul Play and The Manitou she almost feels like she’s really in the Bay Area… which she is, but, y’know, it’s weird right now,

Jenna watched every Mission Impossible movie while under quarantine and she was shocked to find that, instead of the nationalistic action-schlock she had anticipated, the entire franchise is actually an unwitting call to true anarchistic revolution.

London Fields and Cloud Atlas aren’t horrible films, they’re just poor adaptations. Veronica takes a look at how that could be in part II of Back Row Book Club’s look at unfilmable books.

Carlo & Jenna once again indulge in a big ol’ bowl of classic Japanese cinema with this in-depth look at the life and career of director Juzo Itami, along with his collaborator and wife Nobuko Miyamoto. Mmmmm, umami!

Veronica takes a look at whether it’s the books that are unfilmable or if the movie is just unwatchable. Spoiler: It has nothing to do with the details and everything to do with capturing the big picture.

What do Shia LaBeouf, Joanna Hogg and Pedro Almodovar all have in common? Their latest films prove they are all students of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic–a shamanic psychotherapy that helps to heal the soul through poetic expression.

While it might seem like a simple tale of revenge, Mandy is a post-Vietnam War story about ideological wars and the inescapable systems in which we find ourselves.

Horror films are like yoga for the primordial parts of our brains, and when something is so directly tied to our lower instincts, it can be hard to ‘pretty it up.’

Alex Ross Perry’s Her Smell perfectly depicts the push-and-pull ecosystem of the public’s relationship to a celebrity whose toxicity overshadows her talent.

Guest contributor Russell discusses the recent animated film trend of directly addressing toxic masculinity. Between how The LEGO Movie 2, LEGO Batman and Ralph Breaks The Internet tackles the topic, he wishes more movies like these had been around when he was a kid.