Painted Faces (1929)

In My Octopus Teacher, documentary filmmaker Craig Foster models healthy masculinity by showing us a trusting, gentle, and emotionally fulfilling bond with an octopus.

Netflix's Afterlife of the Party might fall into the rom-com genre, but it's much more about grief, strong female friendships, and platonic love than it is about romance.

Who knew a drunken game of truth or dare could launch one of the most chaotic rom-coms of the year? The Threesome takes Connor’s fantasy night with Olivia (Zoey Deutch, in peak queen-of-indie form) and Jenny (Ruby Cruz) and flips it into a deliciously messy nightmare when both women end up pregnant. What follows isn’t cheap comedy—it’s a whip-smart, heartfelt exploration of love, consequence, and the beautiful disasters we call adulthood.

While Peter’s heroics might have been a bit unrealistic at times due to his lack of experience, I will always support the civilian taking down the establishment. 

An aspect of She-Ra that I find refreshing is even though a large portion of the cast is on the LGBTQ+ Spectrum, being gay is never mentioned. While this might initially sound like a negative thing, in the show’s land of Etheria being on the gay spectrum is shown to be so common and normalized that straight isn’t the default. As much as there is to appreciate about narratives revolving around the obstacles that may come from being non-heteronormative, it’s nice to get immersed in a world where no one bats an eye at all to any sort of differing identity.

Miles Morales learns to be his own hero as he takes on the well loved mantle of Spider-Man in a multiverse of Spider-People.