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What matters more: the law or a father's vengeance? A Black father picks up a rifle, waits for the two white men to leave the courthouse, and executes them. The reason? They raped his little girl. A scene fit for headlines, for a courtroom, for civil war. And that's exactly what A Time to Kill puts in front of us: a heinous crime answered by another crime - except this is the heart of Mississippi, where justice is never just justice. There, justice has a color.

Carl Lee, the father, goes on trial. And the one who takes his case is Jake Brigance, a young, idealistic white lawyer with more courage than sense of what he's about to face. The town becomes a powder keg: the Ku Klux Klan crawls out of the woodwork, the media turns everything into a spectacle, and suddenly, defending a Black man becomes synonymous with signing your own death warrant.

Up to this point, so far, so good. The problem is that while the film exposes racism, it leans on the tired old trope of the "white savior." Carl Lee, though he shines whenever he appears, vanishes in his own story. The one who suffers, who bleeds, whose house is burned down, who is seduced by the beautiful assistant (Sandra Bullock could have been used better), who almost loses everything - is Jake. He's the reluctant hero, the modern martyr - while the defendant becomes a supporting character in his own fate. All to show that defending a Black man was almost a death sentence in the racist South. But honestly, you can understand the choice. It's the story of a lawyer trying to save his client, so the point of view, inevitably, is his. It's a structural problem of the narrative framing - and since the lawyer is white, the film ends up stumbling into this cliché. Still, it works. It works as an epic, if uneven, narrative. It's thrilling to watch Jake take on the KKK, endure the scornful glares in the courtroom, and spar with the sharp prosecutor played by Kevin Spacey. But it's undeniable that the script keeps reminding us, over and over, why Jake is involved: someone always reinforces, "You're doing this because you have a daughter" - as if empathy were impossible without that personal mirror.

And that's where the discomfort lies. A Time to Kill sometimes underestimates the audience's (and the jury's) ability to grasp the obvious: Who, upon hearing that a little girl was brutally raped, wouldn't put themselves in the father's shoes? Even if the final verdict is, indeed, emotional, the script insists on "spoon-feeding" the issue, repeating the same explanation in dialogues and situations. Still, the legal tension is compelling. There are strategies to discredit psychiatrists, maneuvers to sway the jury, and in the end, what wins is emotion.

And then comes the final speech. Jake asks the jury to close their eyes and describes, in detail, what happened to the girl - every act of violence, every humiliation. The room falls silent. And then comes the gut punch: "Now... imagine she's white." This time, the spoon-feeding finds purpose. This is where the film bares its teeth. Because, deep down, it's not asking whether Carl Lee is guilty. It's asking whether we can see a Black girl's pain with the same weight as we would a white girl's.

A Time to Kill has flaws - from misplaced protagonism to excessive hand-holding. But it still delivers a narrative that, even with its patchwork, grabs you by the collar. It's courtroom drama, it's the KKK, it's racial tension, it's vengeance. It's a film that forces the viewer to confront an uncomfortable question: When justice fails, who dares to take it into their own hands? And worse - who has the privilege of being forgiven for it?

13th takes a historical wound - slavery in the United States - and reveals it never truly healed: it merely changed outfits, names, and rhetoric. Ava DuVernay draws a direct line from the plantations of the past to today's private prisons, exposing the carceral industry as just another chapter in the same story: profitable oppression.

It's unsettling to see how, from Nixon to Trump, across Republicans and Democrats alike, the mantras of the "war on drugs" and "tough on crime" have served as pretexts to inflate incarceration rates and feed a system that literally profits from imprisoned bodies. The irony is almost cynical: the world's most celebrated democracy quietly maintains an economic engine powered by stolen freedom - and, as always, Black bodies remain its fuel.

DuVernay doesn't shout; she lets the facts speak, the statistics weigh heavy, and the voices - from Angela Davis to contemporary activists - weave an argument impossible to ignore. One of the most emblematic moments exposes ALEC, an organization uniting lawmakers and corporations to draft laws reinforcing mass incarceration. When a businessman defends the system on camera, his visible discomfort borders on pathetic - a stark contrast to activists like Davis, whose razor-sharp analysis leaves no room for rebuttal.

Then comes the final gut-punch: "We like to imagine we'd have been courageous in the past. That we'd have revolted during slavery, Jim Crow, open segregation." Condemning yesterday is easy because it's already history. The hard truth? We're living through updated versions of the same brutality - less explicit, just as devastating.

American history loves to claim it's overcome its darkest chapters. But 13th reminds us: the past doesn't vanish - it just disguises itself as the present. Slavery became mass incarceration. Segregation became criminal policy. Oppression changed uniforms but never left. History isn't linear; it's a cycle. And maybe we're just living through another turn.

The apocalypse used to be more creative. Arcadian arrives with the air of dystopian déjà vu: a single father, a devastated world, lurking creatures. And yes, it bears more than a passing resemblance to a low-budget A Quiet Place - but without the cutting silence, the weighty drama, or the emotional family dynamics. Here, the night attracts monsters, but what really stands out is the lack of connection between the characters.

Paul (Nicolas Cage, visibly in "contractual dad mode") raises his twin sons at the end of the world. Fifteen years after civilization's collapse, the boys have grown - but their relationship hasn't. Joseph is the brains, Thomas the impulsive heart who can't resist sneaking off to the neighbors' farm. The problem? Together, they generate about as much spark as a dead battery. And in a film that needs family dynamics to work, that's a fatal flaw.

Meanwhile, the creatures - which are actually intriguing - lurk in the shadows with long, segmented fingers, ready to snatch anyone who breathes at the wrong time. The design is promising, but good luck trying to see it: Arcadian dives into darkness with enthusiasm, and there are entire scenes where the terror vanishes along with the light. At one point, Thomas falls into a pit, and what should be the film's peak tension moment becomes a black screen with whispers. No scare, no imagery. Just void. But the film has flashes of brilliance. One comes when Joseph acts as bait - literally napping in a chair - to trap one of the creatures. That's when those fingers stretch out, almost in slow motion, and the suspense lands. Another smart idea is using the environment as a trap, even if the climax boils down to a half-improvised plan to burn the house down. It works, sure. But in a world with photosensitive monsters, you'd expect a bit more ingenuity. A strobe light, a tactical trick - something to turn the creatures into prey, not just CGI sprinters.

Another issue? The film flirts with deep themes - humanity's moral collapse - but only brushes against them. A scene where Thomas tries to steal medicine to save his father and nearly gets executed by other survivors could've delivered tension and social commentary, but it's over so fast you barely catch the gunman's name.

In the end, Arcadian isn't a disaster. It's a decent film that, like its characters, seems to stumble blindly through the dark. Between well-conceived creatures, a halfway tense atmosphere, and the promise of a hostile world, there was room for more than the bare minimum. Still, it entertains, doesn't offend, and delivers enough for those of us forever hunting for good monster flicks.