Jesus and John Wayne

In 1950s Brooklyn, a closeted union organizer, a teenage sex worker, and a pregnant factory girl move through interlocking stories of poverty, violence, and desperation during a labor strike. Adapted from Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel.

Why it’s here: Punk in refusing any redemptive arc — this is 1950s Brooklyn stripped of nostalgia, populated by people crushed by poverty, homophobia, and violence with no way out. Pedagogical, with a real content warning, in showing what "the good old days" actually cost the people the myth left out.

In 2012, members of the beloved Steubenville, Ohio high school football team raped a sixteen-year-old girl at a pre-season party. Schwartzman rebuilds the night and its aftermath from the teens' own texts, tweets, and videos, from police interview footage, and from the work of crime blogger Alexandria Goddard and Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell. Then she follows a town as it closes ranks around its football heroes.

Why it’s here: The crime is only half of what this film is about. The rest is the audience: the kids, parents, and coaches who watched, filmed, laughed, or looked away. It's punk in Goddard, a Steubenville native who keeps posting the evidence while her own town sues her for it. It's pedagogical because it shows how complicity gets built out of small, ordinary choices, and what it costs to refuse them. Heavy watch. Preview it before you share it with a teen.