Tom Ballard: The Referendum Special (2024)

In an all-black community in Louisiana, a young girl learns her father has committed infidelity and turns to hoodoo to seek justice.

There’s been a longstanding criticism of sci-fi films about its lack of Black characters. For the past few years, Anthony Mackie has been successfully representing Black masculinity in the otherwise homogenous genre and I am here for it.

Portraying how easy it is to be an ally heavily benefits the majority audience. The more we encourage it, normalize it, and give people the tools to become one, the sooner we can co-exist peacefully.

As one of the women said in the film, friendship in your teens is “as important as any lover” and it’s clear they lived that philosophy throughout their early adult lives as well.

Rare in the days of franchise sequels and indie horror films that dominate the screen in 2026, Netflix’s latest original release, Remarkably Bright Creatures, is a feel-good family movie that leaves nothing to be desired except tissues. Starring Sally Field and Lewis Pullman as two cleaners at a small-town aquarium, Remarkably Bright Creatures reminds viewers that humans are social animals whose strength comes not from our intelligence or our opposable thumbs, but from each other.

I think these messages and the way they are presented in this small-town in Texas are increasingly more important as the internet/ social media becomes more and more critical and judgemental every day. Love yourself today and every day because as Ru Paul always says: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else?”