The Rise: WNBA 2024; The Year That Changed Everything (2025)

Mark Anthony Green was unable to connect all of the pieces in his debut feature film, leaving Opus as a middling entry in an already oversaturated genre.

White audiences saw Peola’s mixed-race passing as a Black woman’s struggle to be white. Black audiences saw it as the rebellion of a Black woman trying to gain privileges only given to white people.

Presenting a bold and unapologetic narrative focused on strong Muslim female characters, the show beautifully incorporates punk rock as a feminist movement in their lives.

This is not a film, it’s a drop tower.  A drop tower that you don’t get off of for the vast majority of its 106-minute runtime. 

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.