On the surface, Janet Planet has all the trappings of a quirky indie comedy from the early 2000s. It's filled with awkward silences, deadpan humor, and characters who do a lot of standing and staring, creating an air of disaffection that creates both an unusual rhythm and a sense of ironic disconnection with the audience.

The landscape for transgender people has changed dramatically since the release of Transamerica in 2005. While some change has been positive - greater visibility and wider acceptance have also led to more virulent pushback, putting trans people in the crosshairs of a conservative culture war.

In theatre, the term "ghostlight" refers to a light left on in an empty theatre to provide illumination when the building isn't occupied. That ghostlight was, in essence, a safety mechanism meant to prevent people from walking off the edge of the stage and into the orchestra pit below. In Ghostlight, we are introduced to an emotionally distant construction worker named Dan (Keith Kupferer), a man of few words but big feelings - feelings that he usually keeps bottled up inside only to burst forth as explosive anger when pushed to the limit.

Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow is ostensibly a film about the bonds created by the communal act of watching favorite TV shows. These are the kinds of deeply personal cult hits that feel as though they're made just for you; like a secret shared amongst friends that not only defines you but gives you an identity as a member of an exclusive club in which minutiae and trivia become a kind of language only the initiated can understand.

One need not be particularly interested in sports to find Luca Guadagnino's new tennis drama, Challengers, compelling. Guadagnino frames his tennis matches as either gladiatorial blood sports or sex, and sometimes both at the same time. Tennis is a relationship, Zendaya's Tashi Donaldson explains; and indeed, the tennis matches here are often thinly veiled stand-ins for dialogue the characters are either unwilling or unable to have.

Love Lies Bleeding is perhaps the horniest, most aesthetically electrifying film I've seen in a multiplex in very long time. It's a sweaty, sweltering, heady mix of queer eroticism, crime thriller, magical realism, and dark comedy that feels genuinely rebellious in a way films rarely do anymore.