It's been over a decade since Cameron Diaz starred in a major motion picture. Once a big screen staple from the late 90s through the mid-2010s, Diaz retired from acting to focus on her family and her new wine label venture, officially launched in 2020. Now she's back in Netflix's new action comedy, Back in Action.

I'm always a bit wary of the idea that the most virulent homophobes are actually self-loathing closet cases - it's always felt like a justification for hurled at bigots, as if homophobia is a weapon that's acceptable to use as long as it's someone you don't like. Of course, there's precedent for this - Kirby Dick's Outrage outed closeted anti-gay politicians nearly 20 years ago. The concept of hiding one's true self behind a sheen of hatred is nothing new, but it remains a tricky and often uncomfortable subject.

If we don't tell our own stories - who will? For a film like Satranic Panic, an indie Australian horror film directed by a 19-year-old trans woman, its very existence feels like an act of rebellion. It's certainly messy, its edges ragged and unrefined, but that DIY aesthetic is part of what makes it feel so authentic. What director Alice Maio Mackay (who has now made five feature films before the age of 20) is doing here is reclaiming trans stories from cis framework.

Although he's taken something of a detour into large-scale blockbuster filmmaking in recent years with films like Jungle Cruise and Black Adam, Jaume Collet-Serra is primarily known for his moderately budgeted Liam Neeson thrillers from the 2010s such as Non-Stop, The Commuter, and Unknown. In that regard, his latest film, Carry-On, is a return to form for the filmmaker, giving him a high-concept thriller with a crackerjack premise.

Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) gets kidnapped by a vengeful witch (Kiernan Shipka) hellbent on punishing the naughty in Jake Kasdan's Red One, a Christmas-themed action comedy that doesn't seem to be made for anyone. Dwayne Johnson stars as Santa's stalwart bodyguard, a tough-minded soldier who's grown weary of all the naughtiness in the world, who is tasked with tracking Santa down, along with a hacker (Chris Evans) and Level 4 naughty-lister who uses the internet to track people down for a living.

It isn’t easy being transgender. For those of us who live in America, it’s about to get even harder. With the recent election of Donald Trump and the rush by Democrats to blame trans people for their loss (despite running away from our issues at every turn), the future can seem somewhat bleak. It is of some comfort, then, that our stories are still being told. But as shown by two recent Netflix releases, we’re both making strides, and taking steps back.

I often found myself thinking about Agnes Varda's Daguerreotypes and Tsai Ming Liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn in the way Filho examines the power of cinema to preserve while also using it to document its own death; faded movie palaces now replaced by towering high rises, replaced by ramshackle churches, the temples of cinema swapping one religion for another.