Static (2025)

As a frequent “the book was better” extoller, this movie was well worth the watch. 

A haunting look at grief, survival, and a mother’s quiet collapse in a world that never gave her room to fall.

The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.

The film reminds us to remember the people who had the courage and dignity that had made the world better, even when the memory was absent.

The Bluff unravels its mystery slowly, opening on the capture of a ship captain named Bodden (Ismael Cruz Córdova) and the swift execution of his entire crew. Then, viewers are treated to a tranquil British settlement in the Cayman Islands in the 1850s, where a mother bakes a coconut birthday cake for her son in a house suspiciously rigged with makeshift tripwires and burglar alarms. As it turns out, that mother is Priyanka Chopra’s quick witted and resourceful ex-pirate Mrs. Ercell Bodden, and her husband’s captors are on the way to the island to hunt her down for abandoning them and stealing their loot. The pirates of the Libertas land on the beaches of Cayman Brac, and the scenes that follow show a Viking-esque slaughter of half the island.

"First Day" is a trans kid slice-of-life tv show that brings desperately needed diversity to coming-of-age stories in mainstream media. Here's a show that get's it right by having a trans actress in a story centered on trans girlhood.