The reason Susan Johnson’s Netflix adaptation of Jenny Han’s
To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before worked so well is because it had such a distinct hook: hopeless-romantic high-school student Lara Jean (Lana Condor) panics when five deliberately unsent love letters she wrote over the years wind up getting mailed to their recipients. In order to save face with her current crush (who happens to be her older sister’s boyfriend!), she strikes up a fake-dating deal with one of those old crushes, kind-hearted jock Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo), and after some rom-com-level misunderstandings, they end up dating for real.
The United States Vs. Billie Holiday (Photo: Takashi Seida),
Judas And The Black Messiah (Photo: Glen Wilson),
To All The Boys: Always And Forever (Photo:
Katie Yu/Netflix),
Graphic: Natalie Peeples
Another month, another slate of films hedging their bets between the slow reopening of movie theaters and the endless scroll of content available from home. This is a more prestigious February than most, what with studios angling to capitalize on the extended Oscar eligibility calendar; just about every week brings a potential contender, as well as belated wider releases of some of the previous year’s best-reviewed films (like
Director Joe Berlinger (
Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes) hones in on the Cecil Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles––which is known to many as LA s deadliest hotel. After decades of housing serial killers and being the location of many untimely deaths,
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel depicts the hotel s latest crime.
In 2013 college student Elisa Lam was staying at the Cecil when she vanished, igniting a media frenzy and mobilising a global community of internet sleuths eager to solve the case, with Lam’s disappearance offering a chilling and captivating lens into one of LA’s most nefarious settings.