What could have been a messy attempt to tell a complex story, Directors Andy & Lana Wachsoki and Tom Tykwer have properly maintained the central themes and motifs across disparate characters and timelines with love and compassion. Adapted from the eponymous novel from David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas is a post-modern ode to the most seminal science fiction narratives and while navigating through the past, present, and future of the excess and abuse of totalitarianism, regardless of whether it is politically or economically motivated.

Predestination may force certain individuals to chase their supposed privileges or reject them entirely. In The Place Beyond the Pines, we see the catalysts and the outcomes of these polarities test the role of revenge on an intimate family feud. This melodramatic thriller is told in three parts, from the perspectives of two men and their genetic legacies. The film’s high-brow concept is only barely cohesive, struggling under the weight of its attempt to be a sprawling dramatic epic, but retains a sense of suspense while pursuing this character study.

Punk music evolved around political distrust in the UK and the US, as well as a blatant reaction to art and progressive rock, and was typically performed by white men with a resolve to destroy instruments and ear drums. When four black men formed Bad Brains in D.C. in the late 1970s, they absorbed that destructive style and fused it with positive messages, complex rhythms that put their contemporaries to shame, and a stage presence that was as dynamic as their music. The band would prove themselves to be more than a novelty, but forge a path making them a heavy influence on the funk metal that proliferated in the late 1980s and into the 1990s.

Films such as Knocked Up, Made in America, or The Change-Up have explored the role of unexpected fatherhood, but Starbuck considers the consequences of becoming a father many times over and the right to privacy. With a wildly appropriate title, Starbuck, denotes the incredible amount of offspring as if there was one on each corner, like a multi-national coffee shop brand.