CODA, written and directed by Siân Heder, is a beautiful, heartwarming coming-of-age film with a happy ending. Not all difficult stories about trying to have your own life in the face of someone who needs you (read: your parents) end with so much understanding, acceptance, and support.

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.

The horror of Bobby Seale’s gagging by Judge Julius Hoffman in Aaron Sorkin’s timely film The Trial of the Chicago 7 is an image of what Black Lives Matter is fighting against. It’s an image of how being silenced provokes rage.

Herman Mankiewicz was a tragic figure – in 1940’s Hollywood and in David Fincher’s film, Mank. Sure, Mank stood up for what was right and against what was wrong at MGM and in the political world of the times. He had his principles, expressed too often in self-destructive ways.

When attachments go wrong in early life, you have to toughen up. But is feeling nothing “The Way?” If you thought it was, what does it take to break free and allow love?

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.

The Queen’s Gambit is a tale of chess and childhood tragedy. This riveting series shows us clearly that when traumatized children try to survive adulthood, they may have questionable ways of coping. But there’s a big difference between the ways children “get by” and the ways that actually help them heal.

Are you having trouble making love work? Can’t seem to go with the flow in your relationships? Well, Chuck Lorre’s two-season Netflix series The Kominsky Method offers some lessons in love that just might help.

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.