Some of the best experiences you had last year were with your friends.

You are your dog’s only pack. And the pack is happy.

Until last year, mathematician and cryptoanalyst Alan Turing was a nearly forgotten footnote in British — and LGBT — history.

Everyone needs to eat, drink and breathe. No one needs art. Even so many are inexorably drawn to creative works.

Playwright Michael Aman is the first to admit he is “attracted” to inherent contradictions in his work.

Whether old adages or worn clichés, “the more things change the more they stay the same,” and “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” almost always ring true.

“Lists” play a key role in “High Fidelity,” the short lived Broadway musical set in the 1990s about a 20-something young man who owns the last record store in the city — yes, we’re talking vinyl — in a new production from Slow Burn Theatre at West Boca High School.

In just the last decade, we’ve witnessed a momentous shift in public attitudes towards homosexuality and marriage equality. But, opinions were much more steadfast in the decades before, as demonstrated by “The Pride,” Alexi Kaye Campell’s 2008 Olivier Award-winning drama receiving its regional premiere at Island City Stage.

The Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts (PPTOPA) is a community theater that has never shied away from challenging material, evident in their impressive production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” some years ago. But with their current show, they’ve reached beyond the complex rhythms of Sondheim to tread new ground with the operatic spectacle of “Les Miserables,” a production that is a glorious triumph.

David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Glengarry Glen Ross,” is now playing at the Maltz Jupiter Theatre with a strong cast and tight performance under the direction of Carbonell winner, J. Barry Lewis. The play runs through Feb. 22.

It all starts with baby steps.

The Maltz-Jupiter Theatre launched its 2015/16 show, “Another Op’nin’ Another Show,” on Oct 25 with a full house and brisk ticket sales for the remainder of the run of the world’s longest running play in history, “The Mousetrap” by Dame Agatha Christie.

Former gay porn star Johnny Hazzard co-stars in gay family drama

Vanessa Daou, the native New Yorker's seventh album on her independent Daou Records, "Light Sweet Crude (Act 1: Hybrid)" is meant as a first chapter for upcoming releases — and it is an eclectic breath of fresh air, which is how I would describe her wispy, understated, yet confident voice, that at times enters a poetic spoken word sensuality and feels like a dream you don't want to soon forget.

 Based on the 1986 Stephen King novel of the same name, “It” became a 1990 made-for-TV movie that aired on ABC. As those kinds of productions from that time period go, it wasn’t bad, developing a kind of cult following. However, it was far from perfect.

Presented in 3D (and IMAX, if you please), “Wonder Woman” (WB/DC), the long-awaited debut of the comic book world’s most celebrated female superhero has arrived just in time for Pride Month. That’s significant because the titular character, aka Princess Diana of Themyscira aka Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), is an Amazonian. Formed from clay and brought to life by Zeus, she was raised amongst women by her mother Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and aunt General Antiope (Robin Wright), without the presence or influence of men. In other words, our lesbian separatist sisters are going to love this movie!

 Unappealing title aside, writer/director Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats” (Neon) is one of the most captivating and sensitive portraits of sexual confusion you are likely to see anytime soon. And that’s saying a lot in the age of “Moonlight”.

"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" (WB), the latest film adaptation in J.K. Rowling’s popular and profitable film franchise that spawned eight Harry Potter movies, emphasizes comedy and terror in equal measure. Set in New York just a few years after the end of World War I and just before the stock market crash, it’s a prescient Potter prequel that couldn’t be timelier.

Almost everything about “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” (Marvel Studios), the sequel to the insanely popular 2014 Guardians of the Galaxy, is a joke. In other words, there are practically as many laughs as there are 3D special effects. The second film in the series attempts to answer questions raised in the earlier movie while also advancing the story of the Guardians – muscly Peter (Chris Pratt), green Gamora (Zoe Saldana), randy raccoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), spry sprout Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel) and tattooed and bald Drax (Dave Bautista).

 For his second, full-length feature film, Nocturnal Animals (Focus/Cinedigm), gay fashion designer turned screenwriter/filmmaker Tom Ford has once again chosen to adapt a novel (Tony and Susanby Austin Wright) for the big screen. His first film, the Oscar-nominated 2009 adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man, was, in a word, breathtaking. Ford’s eye for detail made the film stunning to view.

As modern, non-traditional sci-fi flicks go, Arrival (Paramount), directed by Denis Villeneuve (Sicario and Enemy) and starring Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and Forrest Whitaker, touches down somewhere between Under the Skin and The Martian. Playing with the perception of time and memory, Arrival introduces the concept of quid pro quo as a means of negotiating with alien visitors in what is destined to become a zero sum game.

Controversy surrounding film is unwarranted

Are you a creative person who understands to value of charity?

“The Last Match,” opening Friday [Jan 24] at the Coral Gables Cinema, is a sexy and affecting drama directed and co-written by Antonio Hems, about Reinier (Reinier Díaz) and Yosvani (Milton García) falling in love amid poverty in Cuba. These two young men, who are also romantically involved with different women, hide their intense relationship, meeting secretly for sex on rooftops and in restrooms.

The Wolf of Wall Street is a dazzling example of excess at its worst. These money hungry characters are despicable, insane and repellent, yet writer Terence Winter (The Sopranos) and director Martin Scorsese depict these sordid lives in an entertaining and lively manner. We can’t help but smile at every absurd turn. Acclaimed filmmaker, Martin Scorsese, is in top form, hurling the audience through a drug-and-sex-fueled debauchery with an  unrelenting kinetic energy. By the time the credits roll, I felt drugged, dizzy, yet somehow wanted to walk back into the theater and buy another ticket.

The doggedness of a population determined to hold onto their land, no matter what, is illustrated beautifully---and hilariously---in Centralia, the current production from Mad Cat Theatre.

A movie about a wisecracking grandma and her teen granddaughter, racing around in a beat-up car to find $600 by nightfall. You might think it sounds like any number of mediocre road comedies out there, full of trite generational gags and sporting a sappy, all-is-forgiven ending.

Towards the end of “God Loves Uganda,” Roger Russ Williams' disturbing but important new documentary feature, Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato speaks of how American Christian missionaries came to his country to stir up anti-gay feelings without stopping to think about the consequences of these actions.

Blue Front opens its doors to LGBT patrons