Emerald Fennell’s brilliantly disturbing and evocative film Promising Young Woman shows us one troubling aftermath of trauma. And it’s all because no one helped. Cassie lost her very best friend (and only true soulmate) to suicide.

Ruben has been on the run for a long time. No one becomes a heroin addict unless there’s something too painful inside for him to stop, even for a moment, to hear (or feel). So Ruben runs — with drugs, frantic hard-metal drumming, and in his desperate love for his singer-girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke).

The brilliance — and terror — of Florian Zeller’s The Father is that we’re living inside the mind of an aging man losing his identity to dementia. Watching from the outside is painful enough — I know, I was that daughter too. But to be the one losing your grip on who you are is truly heartbreaking.

Feeling trapped in the quarantine of COVID-19? That’s why you should watch Shawshank Redemption more today than ever. Yes, I mean today, January 20, 2021, the day of the Inauguration, and all the days ahead.

Jordan Peele’s brilliantly conceived film Get Out does its job of shattering the myth that we’re living in a post-racial America. My great uncle, Leo Hurwitz’s film Strange Victory, did the same in 1948 after we won the war against Hitler but came home to racism here. It’s now 72 years later, and there’s still too much to be scared of.