Nikole Bekwith’s ‘Together Together’ premiered at Sundance earlier this year, and I wanted to see this film so badly but couldn’t get a ticket, and I heard so many good things about it that I was determined to see this as soon as I can. And my instincts were right – this is a wonderful film, the first one that touched me deeply in a long while, and for now, my. favorite film of the year.

Bekwith takes the rom com genre and its tropes and spins it, flips it, reverses it. You think the movie is going somewhere familiar (and I was totally fine with that) but it upends itself and gives you something even more meaningful.

Patti Harrison plays Anna, who agrees to be the surrogate to single guy Matt (Ed Helms) Anna is fiercely independent and determined to make this a business arrangement. But we all know that nothing in life is such, and both characters learn to accept and feel.

‘Quo Vadis, Aida?’ is one of the most harrowing films of late, a sort of ‘Sophie’s Choice; kind of movie. It is set during the 1995 Serbian/Bosnian war, which, to be honest, I did not really follow then. But looking back, you think, how could something like this happen? This film captures a lot of what happened during that time, as seen through the eyes of Aida (Jasna Djuricic) who was an interpreter for the United Nations at the time.

We see the story start when the Serbians took over the town of Srebenica, sending its thousands of residents to the safe haven of United Nations base. Things escalate from there, culminating in the killing of thousands of men and boys. We see the drama go from bad to worse, as Aida attempts to rescue her family. Djuricic is terrific – strong and vulnerable, a fighter when she is not heartbroken. I wish she had gotten more recognition for her. This is the kind of film that everyone should see, so people can see the horrors of what war could do. This film is the face of humanity. If I had a vote, this would be, in my opinion, this year’s Best Foreign Film.

Shawn Mendes once said he couldn’t wait for his heartbreak so he could write songs about it. In his new album ‘Wonder,’ he isn’t truly there yet, but I feel like he is halfway. On this album, we see a boy in love, and he is desperately trying to tell us he is. Are we convinced.

On the first track, ‘Intro,’ he says that he has a million different faces, and we don’t see all of it, and you wonder about its real subtext. This uncertainty – maybe insecurity – shows up everywhere int he lyrics, and he keeps hammering this point. Dude, you are a handsome white-bread pop star, why all the angst? This album should be a celebration of love, why don’t I feel the joy?

Valentine’s Day is here again, and I normally just ignore this holiday but i was walking last night and felt that slight pang – seeing flower vendors on the street selling roses. But it passes – there’s always rom coms. And Netflix has released the final installment on their ‘To All The Boys Series,’ this one sub titled ‘Always and Forever.’

Directed by Michael Fimognari, we see our high school lover Lara Jean and Peter spend their Senior year in High School, and you know what that means – college applications, proms, and (though perhaps a little late) sex. The film offers no surprises in any of these fronts, but Lana Condor and Noah Centineo have mastered their chemistry that it hardly matters – you take everything easily, and it comes out sugary sweet like the cupcakes that Lara Jean bakes.

I was skeptical about Lev Grossman’s ‘The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.’ I mean, didn’t we just all watch ‘Palm Springs’ last year, and here we have the same conceit – the ‘infinite loop’ kind of day, but with teenage characters. But it promised me romantic comedy, and I am always game for that, so I acquiesced.

It’s not bad. I got bored with the Groundhog Day idea in the beginning, but the film is trying to say something: I think that we should enjoy tiny little ‘perfect moments’ because in the end that is what matters in life. In the Covid world we live in nowadays, it is resonating. There is some cute acting from the leads, so I didn’t get bored, and mostly believed what they are selling. But mostly, I felt like I have seen all of this before… as late as yesterday.