The Best Thought-provoking Movies to Watch on Peacock

Abel Ferrara’s protagonists have always searched for higher meaning in a flawed, messed-up world of pain and violence. If 1992’s Bad Lieutenant took Harvey Keitel to church for one of American indie cinema’s most spectacular endings, Padre Pio doesn’t offer such solace. Ferrara (who’s been living and working in Rome for years now) teamed up […]

It’s smart that If You Were the Last takes what’s usually an overused romcom/fan-fiction scenario (two attractive people stuck in one place), acknowledges it, and uses it to fuel an entire a story. Unfortunately, the film also doesn’t quite know where to go with it, insisting on having its cake and eating it too: that […]

This difficult movie is about a seventeen-year-old from the U.S. underclass who has to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. Autumn is creative, reserved, and quiet, but those are not qualities that her environment in rural Pennsylvania seems to value. On the opposite, she is surrounded by threats, including disturbing step-father and boss characters.  Dangers escalate […]

In a stunning and vivid (re-) introduction to the Black intellectual, author, and social critic, James Baldwin, this movie digs very deep into the American subconscious and racial history. It tells the story of America by telling the story of “the negro” in America, based on a book Baldwin started to write, which would have […]

Named after a slur for people of Asian descent, this 2017 film put Justin Chon on the map as a director. More than that, he also starred as the main lead in this raw and uncompromising period drama about Asian-Americans and the LA riots in 1992. Shot completely in black and white, it tells the […]

This coming-of-age story starts in the present time, where Elle Marja, now a grandmother, reluctantly goes to her sister’s funeral held by her old indigenous Sámi community in Northern Sweden. Understanding her reluctance requires going back to when Elle Marja was 14 and was preparing to go to boarding school with her little sister. These […]

When thinking about buying something, it’s easy to only think about price and quality, but with many investigations around the world about inhumane labor practices, it’s no wonder that more people would like to look at the companies they’re buying from, or at least buy secondhand when possible. One such investigation is depicted in Letter […]

Like all great documentaries, Angry Inuk is about way more than its tagline. At first glance, it’s about how anti-sealing activism has been harming Inuit communities since the 1980s, to the point of instituting the highest rates of hunger and suicide anywhere in the “developed” world. But beyond, it’s about the complicity of the government […]

While cable television didn’t have the same prestige as movies for decades, nevertheless the format garnered some influence, even then, with generations of viewers and filmmakers growing up in the medium. Dark Shadows is one such influential television show, and its journey from middling soap opera to groundbreaking drama is depicted in Master of Dark […]

In rural Korea a policeman starts to investigate peculiar and violent events that most of the people in his village attribute to the arrival of a new Japanese resident. As the occurrences keep multiplying, and different perspectives in the film are shown, you start to lose touch with reality in the face of what can […]

This is a slow but well-made movie about a Jehovah’s Witness family, directed by a former member of the organization. The family is made of Alex, her mother, and her older sister. Alex follows her mother and her religious teachings with the utmost loyalty, especially as she refuses a blood transfusion that is crucial to […]

When it comes to being a drama with a cohesive and understandable message, Swing Kids falters, and doesn’t make it clear whether or not the film advocates for either pro-capitalist or pro-communist ideas– understandably so, considering how to this day, the peninsula remains split in part due to foreign intervention. The film is a bit […]