What movies ruled the box office 20 years ago in August 2006?

Tender father/son boinding between male cows in Barnyard (2006)

Come, step into this theoretical time machine. Let's go back to August 2006 real quickly. 20 years ago, Fergie's "London Bridge" was beginning to dominate the Billboard charts. The Rodney Atkins ditty "If You're Going Through Hell (Before the Devil Even Knows)" was in the middle of a four-week stint atop the Hot Country Songs Billboard chart. The New York Yankees won a pivotal baseball game against the Los Angeles Angels. And then there were the movies. Summer 2006 grossed $3.75 billion, a significant increase above summer 2005's $3.53 billion haul, but below the grosses of summers 2003 and 2004. August 2006, the month of Fergie, Rodney Atkins, and the Yankees, was closing out that season with a few final box office hits. When the dust cleared, August 2006 grossed $761.56 million, below the August grosses from 2001 to 2004, but ahead of August 2005 (when The Dukes of Hazzard was the biggest movie of the month).

With July's mega-hit Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest finally finishing its three-week number one run in July 2006, it was time for some other movies to top the box office. One of those titles, which topped the North American box office for half of August 2006's four weekends, was one of Christopher Nolan's favorite features: Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Talladega Nights was both the biggest grosser in August 2006 (contributing a mighty $130.67 million to the month's gross) and by far the highest grossing new release dropped in this month (it was the only August 2006 newcomer to gross $100+ million in North America). 

In hindsight, Talladega Nights was the pinnacle of Will Ferrell's box office clout as a leading man. For starters, it's the biggest non-Barbie/Elf/Austin Powers live-action movie he's ever appeared in. It was also the most prolific and successful of Ferrell's obsession with clashing wacky leading men with sports (a fascination that even continued with his 2026 Netflix golf show The Hawk). Both Ferrell's box office pull and creative interests were so intense at this point in time that he could get a NASCAR comedy to just under $150 million domestically. Talladega Nights was also by far the biggest live-action American movie appearance by Sacha Baron Cohen, who'd go on to headline a little film called Borat a few months later.

What other newcomers were making lots of money this month? World Trade Center grossed $57.88 million in the month and eventually grossed $70.27 million domestically. Right on its toes was another Paramount Pictures title, Barnyard. Not much to say about that Oliver Stone directorial effort beyond "LYLE! LYLE! TURN ON THE TV, THEY HIT THE PENTAGON!" This CG-animated comedy made $72.63 million domestically. That haul would've been disastrous for a new CG animated film just two years earlier, when these major studio CG movies (save for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within) were basically guaranteed to make $126+ million in North America. However, this field had gotten especially crowded in the year leading up to Barnyard's debut. Titles like Valiant, Doogal, The Ant Bully, and The Wild had all cratered. 

Audiences no longer found celebrity-voiced CG animals farting and trading pop culture references a must-see event. In that respect, Barnyard was a respectable, albeit far from phenomenal, box office performer. Seven days after Barnyard introduced trans male icon Otis the Cow to audiences, Disney's Touchstone Pictures launched the first Step Up movie. Both a new franchise and Channing Tatum's leading man career were suddenly born in the middle of all those sweat-inducing death movies. Speaking of Disney, Dead Man's Chest was so mammoth at the box office that it still made $48.008 million domestically during August 2006, well over a month after its July 2006 debut where it set a new domestic opening weekend record. 

The seventh biggest movie of the month, meanwhile, was one of the more infamous motion pictures to drop during this month. Snakes on a Plane was preceded by a deluge of internet hype about how a movie with this silly title and Samuel L. Jackson was actually headed to theaters. I distinctly remember internet jokes around the film being inescapable. Even the Over the Hedge newspaper comic devoted several daily comic strips to skewering Snakes on a Plane. Alas, all that pre-release chatter didn't translate to motherfucking big ticket sales for those motherfucking snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane. Snakes on a Plane only grossed $34.02 million, a disappointing sum given both all the hype and its $34 million budget.

It's always the films you least suspect that make lots of moolah at the box office. Case in point: Little Miss Sunshine. Though it didn't have a 2006 San Diego Comic-Con panel or tons of online press like Snakes on a Plane, this indie darling expanded into wide release during August 2006 after debuting in a handful of theaters on July 26. It eventually grossed $59.89 million in North America, an outstanding sum for a low-budget indie movie. Turns out a quality movie was more important than a gimmicky title or making the biggest movie nerd sites of 2006 happy.

Other notable new releases dropping in August 2006 included The Descent (which Lionsgate launched to a solid $26.02 million domestic cume), Justin Long's Accepted (which topped out at $23.51 million, a sum Accepted co-star Jonah Hill would surpass just over Superbad's opening weekend one year later), the Tim Allen flop Zoom (featuring multiple Smash Mouth songs, including a cursed cover of David Bowie's "Under Pressure"), and, in the indie scene, Half Nelson, the feature that would garner Ryan Gosling his first Oscar nominination.

Compared to other early 2000s Augusts, August 2006 had a hearty monster hit in the form of Talladega Nights that could easily stand next to other early 2000s August hits like xXx, American Pie 2, and The 40-Year-Old-Virgin. As late as 2019 with Good Boys, August is often a strong month to launch one last comedy and Talladega Nights proved that nicely. Past Augusts, though, launched multiple $100+ million domestic performers, like August 2002 housing the $227.96 million grosser Signs and xXx or the trio of $100+ million grossers dominating August 2003. With no other domestic newcomers grossing $75+ million, let alone $100+ million, August 2006 couldn't help but fall short of shattering any records.

Still, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby did become the seventh biggest movie of summer 2006 while the month contributed about 20% to summer 2006's $3.75 billion domestic gross. In hindsight, the most interesting thing about August 2006 is how it's the last August before Hollywood regularly began launching tentpole sequels in this month. Starting with August 2007's The Bourne Ultimatum, Hollywood began using August as a launchpad for titles like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and, eventually, 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy. No wonder only one* pre-2020 August would sink below $800 million domestically after 2006. Hollywood infused August with a tentpoles-only approach that bolstered the box office. In other words, Hollywood molded post-2006 August slates around Ricky Bobby's "if you're not first, your'e last" mentality. 

Now, before we depart the theoretical time machine, let's all enjoy a video of Kevin James eating hay to promote the release of Barnyard.

* = August 2017 was the one post-2006 August to make less than $800 million domestically. What a dreadful month that was, with the month closing out with what was, at the time, the lowest-grossing domestic box office weekend in 16 years.

Excessive familiarity dilutes impactfulness of kooky slasher film Buddy

Note: This film was watched as part of the 2026 Oak Cliff Film Festival line-up

Dating back to the 1999 short The Scooby-Doo Project, writer/director Casper Kelly has specialized in TV show pastiches. That talent memorably and surreally materialized in his outstanding 2014 short Too Many Cooks, which smushed together countless eras of television history into one kooky nightmare. Kelly contorting small-screen programming into unhinged mayhem continues with his first theatrical film directorial effort, Buddy. The film's title refers to Buddy the Unicorn (Keegan-Michael Key), a cuddly-looking orange unicorn who anchors a children's TV show. This obvious Barney pastiche (Buddy even opens with a riff on a Barney episode where the T-Rex gives a nervous kid "magical" dancing shoes) is incredibly precise in mimicking its influences, right down to the 1.33:1 aspect ratio and colors in the whimsical Fisher-Price-looking sets.

Buddy spends his days singing, dancing, and imparting morals to the four children who live with him. One of those youngsters is Freddy (Delaney Quinn), who begins to suspect something's askew once a disobedient child vanishes. Witnessing Buddy commit an act of violence makes her and the other kids realize that this Barney clone is more Ghostface than the Bear in the Big Blue House. She and her adolescent companions make a break for it. They leave Buddy's house to secure help in the far-off land of Diamond City. Meanwhile, in the real world, Grace (Cristin Milloti) feels like something's off in her life. Like something's missing. A sudden sighting of an orange unicorn on her TV (one that doesn't exist according to the internet) only fuels her suspicions.

Buddy is a longer and grander expansion of Casper Kelly's fascinations (he penned this script with Jamie King). Unfortunately, Buddy also follows numerous projects depicting handmade children's entertainment going dark. In 2019, The Banana Splits Movie had the costumed animal Banana Splits characters going on a murderous rampage. Don't Hug Me I'm Scared delivered a barrage of engrossing shorts juxtaposing children's show puppets with dark storytelling. Even the Five Nights at Freddy's movies, which lend slasher movie energy to Chuck E. Cheese animatronic pastiches rather than kids' television fixtures, tread similar terrain. A new entry in this crowded domain requires more specificity than, unfortunately, Buddy offers.

The greatest issue here is simply that Buddy struggles to feel either shocking or scary. While Kelly's Too Many Cooks had countless visuals that inspired "what am I watching?" emotions in the viewer, Buddy remains relatively straightforward and expected. Surrealism is frustratingly kept to a minimum, while the "darkest" are rarely unpredictable. Decades of "dark Barney" jokes just mean that the idea of a Barney-esque character lopping heads off or exhibiting ghastly injuries doesn't have immense innate value. Only Buddy's grisly solution for how he can fit down a well reaches proper gasp-inducing heights. Otherwise, Buddy struggled to leave me terrified or in suspense. It mostly comes off as the same "what if the Teletubbies killed people?" punchlines I already found old hat in middle school.

Massive props, though, Kelly, cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, production designer Anna Kathleen, and costume designer Shawn-Nova Foley (among many other artists) for making the recreations of a 90s kids program so eerily spot-on. Everything from the textures on Buddy's house to the camera movements to even the ham-fisted musical motifs in the score could easily fit on a Barney VHS tape circa 1997. Even if you've never seen the pop culture properties inspiring these elements, these handmade visual accomplishments would still resonate as exquisitely realized. Happily, inspired practical effects work continues littering the screen even once the story shifts away from Buddy's domain. As a demonstration of tactile craftsmanship, Buddy delivers.

Committed performances from the assorted child actors and Milloti are also laudable, ditto a mid-movie homage to one of the most iconic images from The Night of the Hunter. Unfortunately, Buddy often stumbles when it needs to exude madcap confidence. This is especially true in a plodding finale constantly stopping and then ramping up the film's intensity. This approach comes off as sweaty, not suspenseful. Meanwhile, the less said about the generic stabs at "random" humor, like a grown man making out with a Howdy Doody pastiche, the better. In these moments, Buddy tragically comes off as a shallow masquerade of better, more unhinged children's entertainment pastiches.

For those just looking to see an orange unicorn rip off the face of an anthropomorphized train or stab people, Buddy will fleetingly suffice. For those unfamiliar with works like Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, this title will surely resonate as more distinctively impactful. Alas, Buddy left me largely detached and thinking about how much I preferred that one "cut for time" Saturday Night Live sketch where Michael Keaton played unhinged cash-strapped Pee-Wee Herman. As a showcase for practical effects and accuracy to what it's skewering, Buddy works fine. As a horror film or something new in the crowded space of dark takes on kids' television, Buddy's far from the best pal around.

Lisa Laman's Highlights from Oak Cliff Film Festival 2026

An image from Cramps! A Period Piece

The 15th annual Oak Cliff Film Festival in Dallas, Texas has drawn to a close. This staple of the Dallas, Texas film scene (which heavily involves locations like the Texas Theater and Bishop Arts Theatre Center for screenings) is always a joy to attend, and I'll always be grateful that it was the very first film festival I attended back in 2019. However, what kind of motion pictures did this film festival provide this year? I decided to deliver a trio of bite-sized reviews of three notable motion pictures I caught during my Oak Cliff Film Festival 2026 experience. 

None of these are exactly the same movie, but they do all reflect the kind of audacious and unique features that the Oak Cliff Film Festival prides itself on screening. Read on for a trio of breakdowns of recent indie movies and here's to whatever the Oak Cliff Film Festival provides in 2027!

She Keeps Me Young

It's always amusing when random movies from a specific year end up feeling like they're cut from the same creative cloth. In the case of 2026 movies, we now have a trio of motion pictures with dry verbal comedy playing upon familiar mainstream cinematic molds. First came The Napa Boys, then Maddie's Secret, and now She Keeps Me Young. Though no performer is in all three movies, an assortment of actors do appear in two of these three productions (Nik Dodani is in Napa Boys and Young, for instance). She Keeps Me Young's pop culture frame of reference is harder to pin down than Napa Boys skewering legacy sequels and Maddie's Secret being an extension of Lifetime movies. If you squint, though, this feature does feel a wayward child of various 2010s indie comedies.

Writer/director Doron Max Hagay's She Keeps Me Young (which he co-wrote with Blair Beeken and Katy Fullan) follows Michelle (Beeken), whose drifting through life after her husband went missing. This 40-something woman unexpectedly strikes up a friendship with high schooler Bridget (Shay Rudolph), who goes to her dance class. Much to the chagrin of Michelle's long-time bestie Kelly (Katy Fullan), this unlikely duo becomes inseparable. 

She Keeps Me Young features plenty of amusing performances, with Beeken exuding such tangible and engaging humanity in her lead role. Katy Fullan is a blast inhabiting the adversarial and jealous best buddy archetype, while John Early and Patti Harrison are (per usual) hilarious in their supporting turns. Much of Young is competently made and the best gags (like a visual punchline about a lesbian softball team) are effective rib-ticklers. There are a few too many dry spells in She Keeps Me Young, though, and the overall movie unfortunately suffers from being less than the sum of its parts. Its aesthetic and humor constantly reminding one of superior 2026 comedies like Napa Boys and Maddie's Secret doesn't help either. There's amusement and effective acting here, but those virtues struggle adding up to something especially memorable.

Cramps! A Period Piece

An amalgamation of John Waters’ movies, Pee-Wee Herman sets, the wit of SpongeBob SquarePants seasons 1-3, genuine pathos, and Steve Rambo-esque line deliveries all told with lots of gory practical effects, vibrant colors everywhere (those vibrant backdrops!), and rich 35mm film. Such a bizarre-sounding concoction was screened on the second Oak Cliff Film Festival night in the form of Cramps! A Period Piece.

With this title, writer/director Brooke H. Cellars demonstrates a clear love and deep knowledge of cinema history. Even beyond the aforementioned motion picture influences, there are details like protagonist Agnes Applewhite (Lauren Kitchen) talking to a mannequin in her room. This reflection of Agnes' loneliness echoes similar conversations with an attic-bound mannequin from Samuel Fuller's The Naked Kiss. However, Cramps! A Period Piece is far more akin to Todd Haynes' Poison than Ghostbusters: Afterlife and The Flash in its harkening back to old media. Cellars and company are using the bedrock of pre-existing art to create something vibrantly new and not just a big-screen rerun.

Cramps! chronicles the saga of suppressed young woman Agnes Applewhite, who yearns to escape her controlling mother (Brooklyn Woods). Securing a job at a local salon with newfound pals Laverne (Martini Bear), bubbly Satanist Teddy (Wicken Taylor), and Holiday (Michelle Malentina) starts to get her confidence going. Alas, her menstrual cramps (which her mother forbids her from talking about and doctors are dismissive of) begin taking over her life and possibly unleashing a literal monster on everyone around her.

Cramps! A Period Piece looks so lovely with its lusciously colorful sets and radiant costumes. It's all a vibrant feast for the eyes filtered through some sharply precise camerawork (there's even recurring split-diopter shots, which are always welcome). Cellars echoes "Weird Al" Yankovic and Boots Riley in realizing the most outlandish material hits better when it materializes through potent artistic craftsmanship. It's also impressive how Cramps! consistently delivers loopy performances and biting barbs without sacrificing audiences taking Agnes seriously as a person. Her journey and vulnerabilities are handled with real emotional heft. Oscillating between absurdist comedy and raw, strained mother/daughter dynamics doesn't render the film a jagged mess. 

This tonal flexibility instead reflects how these relationships can have you laughing one minute and crying the next. Lauren Kitchen excelling playing Agnes no matter what mold Cramps! A Period Piece throws at her also makes the nuanced tone joyful to absorb. Equal parts heartfelt and unhinged, Cramps! A Period Piece is a remarkable feature-length directorial debut. 

Los Lobos: Native Sons

I've been the first to criticize how the America documentary has become a showcase for celebrities. The streamers especially inundate audiences with docs that are basically cozy press releases reinforcing the public-friendly histories of famous faces rather than the proletariat-focused impulses of great documentaries like Hoop Dreams, Time, or the works of Barbara Kaplan. That history makes it all the more surprising how much I deeply enjoyed the new music documentary Los Lobos: Native Sons. Maybe it's just because I wasn't as familiar with this band as the centerpieces of other recent celebrity documentaries. Maybe it was those toe-tapping Los Lobos tunes doing the heavy lifting. Whatever clicked here, Native Sons is a celebrity documentary done right.

Los Lobos is a band that originated in East Los Angeles and includes long-standing members like David Hidalgo, Louie Pérez, Cesar Rosas, and Conrad Lozano. Their sound is deeply rooted in Mexican-American traditions and aesthetics (right down to them often doing covers of famous Spanish-language medleys), but what's great about Los Lobos is that they can't be pinned into one genre. Sometimes they're channeling serious rock energy. On other albums, they suddenly spin into experimental territory. Creative dexterity dominates their musical exploits as much as crafty craftsmanship.

Directors Douglas Blush and Piero F. Giunti capably reflect this variety and, most importantly, the underdog spirit of Los Lobos. That's a quality that makes Native Sons significantly more compelling than many modern band or celebrity documentaries. Last year's Becoming Led Zeppelin, for instance, eventually spiraled into feeling static with the interchangeable anecdotes about the titular band's exploits. Los Lobos, meanwhile, clawed and scraped their way to notoriety. For much of the runtime, the group is just an East Los Angeles fixture doing music for weddings and other events. There's an underdog ambiance making it transfixing to watch the group chronologically recount their respective careers.

Also underlining the feature's endearing nature is an emphasis on how art produces profound ripple effects going well beyond its creators. Sometimes this materializes through standard talking head interview segments with famous faces (ranging from Cheech Marin to Tom Waits) recounting how various Los Lobos tunes impacted them. Most memorably, though, are anecdotes like how the original tune Los Lobos made for the movie Desperado has become a mariachi culture staple. Meanwhile, the group's work on the movie La Bamba (which involved one of the band members providing the singing voice of Ritchie Valens) formed a vital friendship with Valens' sister.

Los Lobos: Native Sons especially excels as a movie reflecting art creating a chain-link connection from the past to the present. Los Lobos tunes were built on classic Mexican ditties while the band's biggest hit (a cover of "La Bamba") kept the spirit of Ritchie Valens alive. Other Native Sons segments, meanwhile, show Los Lobos tracks influencing modern artists of all stripes. Given how often Mexican-American lives are erased and dehumanized in American culture, this fusion of the past, present, and future in this documentary is extra moving. Throw in how engaging the Los Lobos members are as interview subjects and a cavalcade of memorable songs (how is every tune on that Kiko album so excellent?!?), and it's no surprise Los Lobos: Native Sons stands heads and shoulders above typical 2020s celebrity/musician documentaries.

One Night Only is a dreadfully boring cinematic hook-up with major performance issues

Fascism is only a nuisance. Don't worry about it. The pretty people say so.

These sentences inform One Night Only, which occupies an alternate America where premarital sex is outlawed except for 12 hours every year. This concept could only work as fleet-footed entertainment if filtered through Powell & Pressburger or Jacques Demy’s heightened visual aesthetics. Otherwise, it’s innately the set-up for a Paul Verhoeven/Lizzie Borden/Stephen Winter movie about America rotting from the inside.

However, One Night Only comes from director Will Gluck. Save for 2010’s charming Easy A, good decisions don't litter his filmography. In 2014, he decided what Annie needed was lots of autotune. In 2018, he apparently read Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit books, threw them across the room upon realizing they were devoid of James Corden snark, and opted to make two movies to correct that. Five years later in 2023, Gluck mistakenly believed Sydney Sweeney could do broad comedy.

Following this creative trajectory, he and screenwriter Travis Braun play the robbing of bodily autonomy as just a cutesy launchpad for a generic rom-com. If you’re going to go down that route, you better deliver something entertaining or fun. No such luck here.

One Night Only follows two New Yorkers hunkering down for their 12 hours of premarital sexual freedom. Inevitably, all their plans go awry. Pizza shop manager Owen's (Callum Turner) girlfriend suddenly wants to sleep with someone else tonight. Allie (Monica Barbaro) is feeling lonesome after her best buddy abandoned her at the start of this night. After that disappointment, she keeps encountering difficulties getting laid. Throughout the night, Owen and Allie keep running into each other. Maybe these conventionally attractive people with plenty of disposable income could click.

Braun’s One Night Only story structure sends Allie and Owen through a bunch of “wacky” vignettes (like an outdoor sex rendezvous gone wrong or struggling with condom purchases). It’s a bunch of standalone segments or TV episodes strung together, as if Gluck and Braun modeled One Night Only after early 2000s direct-to-video Disney fare like Tarzan & Jane or Atlantis: Milo’s Return. This epitomizes the disjointed and shoddy storytelling sensibilities permeating the whole movie.

Another microcosm of this problem? The lazy script’s half-hearted execution of Chekhov’s Guns. Braun groggily introduces new character details (like Allie’s fear of singing in public) and then pays them off five minutes later. There’s no elongated journey towards character growth. There’s no joy in watching people gradually come into their own over the course of a night. No wonder these people are so dramatically inert. Meanwhile, One Night Only spends so much time on world-building, exposition, and didactic dialogue about character defects that there’s no time for fun.

Granted, how could fun emerge in a movie whose idea of “wit” is having every character talk like Vince Vaughn impersonating Ryan Reynolds? Sarcastic quips and “well, that happened”-adjacent clunkers litter the One Night Only script as often as F-bombs materialize in Anora. Such shoddy writing leaves a bevy of talented actors stranded with nary any punchlines or personality to exude. I’d ask why someone hysterical like Ziwe received no jokes to deliver. However, nobody in One Night Only has funny lines. It’s a romantic comedy too sterile to be swoon-worthy and too bereft of humor to inspire laughs.

That former problem is such a weird issue in a movie about the one night a year people can bone. This premise requires filmmakers comfortable with all corners of sexuality, like Gregg Araki, Angela Robinson, or Lily and Lana Wachowski. Instead, Gluck and Braun bring weird prudishness to One Night Only. Right from the start, Allie makes weird comments (that the audience is supposed to agree with) about how “short” her best gal pal’s outfit is. Any fleeting depictions of or references to kink are either connected to antagonists or mocking punchlines.

Embracing sex for fun or exploring your personality is for supporting characters and deviants. Audiences only ever see one person who isn’t super skinny and beefy making out with somebody, while all make out/sexual sessions reinforce traditional gender roles (save for one outdoor comedic sequence, there’s no men being subservient to women here, no siree). This is all so vanilla that one must wonder if One Night Only is a sex comedy for Christian weirdos yearning for a “sin tax” mandate for OnlyFans creators. This element isn’t just cringe-inducing. It also epitomizes why One Night Only is so boring. This film’s too buttoned up and conventional to embrace elements that would give it personality and verve.

Similarly frustrating adherence to not alienating privileged viewers manifests in One Night Only details reflecting resentment towards “the mandate” (the in-universe term for this “no pre-marital sex” law). All graffiti in this universe says variations on “fuck The Mandate”. Small signs saying “repeal” occupy windows. Allie’s apartment features a poster with a pro-Mandate politician drawn to look like Satan. However, none of the characters themselves are politically active or aggressively hostile towards The Mandate.

They’re happy to go along with the status quo and not ruffle feathers. Allie, Owen, and the other One Night Only characters aren’t just written as “apolitical” to ensure the movie doesn’t alienate cushy right-wing audiences. Perish the thought these fictional individuals say something relevant to a modern political age where the government plans to restrict abortion access nationwide. It also renders this story's denizens immensely boring. They could all easily exist in any other rom-com. A starting premise this bonkers shouldn’t inspire characters so monotonous.

I could ramble on and on about how One Night Only frustrates. The deluge of pop song needle drops, for instance, feel like Gluck repeatedly attempting to recreate the popularity of Anyone but You’s “Unwritten” end credits number. Something tells me dropping Maroon 5’s “Payphone” in 2026 won’t have people dancing in the aisles. Too many jokes boil down to celebrity references to Pete Davidson, Glen Powell, or Coleen Hoover. Insipid camerawork further dilutes any chances of this movie exuding something resembling a personality. Oh, and people in-universe have tracking chips inserted into their wrists (which ensures the police can monitor their sexual activity), which is only introduced so Allie can ramble about her backstory. What the Hell is this nightmare movie?

Rom-coms live and die based on their two lead performers. In that respect, One Night Only at least is half successful since Monica Barbaro is charming. Her solid singing voice and recognizably human personality are welcome balms in such an off-putting production. On the other hand, Callum Turner is a wash as Owen. The only distinctive acting choice Brit performer Turner delivers is inexplicably making his American accent a Chris Evans impression. Whether it’s wooden line deliveries or shrug-worthy physicality, Turner’s a snooze. Nine years after anchoring The Only Living Boy in New York, his dismal leading man abilities haven’t improved.

One Night Only clearly wants to mimic Howard Hawks screwball comedies like Ball of Fire or Bringing Up Baby, where mismatched duos stumble into one wacky adventure after another. This production, though, doesn’t have the humor, creativity or sizzling chemistry fueling those titles. Instead, this 2026 motion emphasizes lots of Durex product placement, cowardly storytelling instincts, a strangely pearl-clutching attitude towards sex, and a runtime that refuses to end. If that all sounds great, go watch pretty people reassure viewers how “maybe the fascists got this one right” (an actual line from the movie). The rest of us shall savor actually good modern rom-coms like Rye Lane.

One Night Only hits theaters everywhere on August 7.

Every live-action Spider-Man movie outfit ranked from worst to best

Alas, the acclaimed Frank Reynolds Spider-Man costume has yet to appear in any Spider-Man movie

Spider-Man's got one of the best superhero costumes around. Naturally, the various motion pictures that have brought Spidey to life, including this past weekend's box office juggernaut Spider-Man: Brand New Day.  But what makes a great live-action Spider-Man suit? What separates the best from the rest when it comes to these garbs? Well folks, that's what I'm here to explore. Below, I've ranked the 13 different live-action Spider-Man outfits littering nearly 50 years of this character's cinematic exploits. Not all of them are superb, goodness knows, but each does reflect distinctive creative trajectories and the larger cultural trends of the movies and eras (respectively) they inhabited. Plus, the best of these make it clear why Spider-Man's superhero outfit is hard to beat. 

Behold, the ranking of every live-action Spider-Man costume from worst to best, starting with the nadir of this bunch...

13. The Amazing Spider-Man Outfit

Reflecting the initial ambitions to make this the Batman Begins of Spider-Man movies, Andrew Garfield wore a grimmer Spidey costume for The Amazing Spider-Man. The red and blue colors were deeper while a darker golden hue filled up his eyes. Another fun fact about this outfit: it looks terrible. The balance between the red and blue (the latter hue dominates the attire) is repellently off. The chest Spider emblem looks too big. The textures all over the suit seem like they’d be unpleasant to touch. Then there’s the eyes, which now look like grim voids rather than bright pupils. Even the ways the eyes are more oval shaped and slanting downward makes it look like Spidey’s permanently glaring at people. Just a really bad costume all around, a shocking outcome given how well the second Amazing Spider-Man did with these garbs.

12. Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man Suit

Weirdest thing about the Nicholas Hammond Spider-Man suit (which he wore in the 70s CBS show The Amazing Spider-Man, which had certain episodes smushed together into theatrical films for the international markets) is that its so baggy. It looks so excessively roomy, especially around the face. I keep thinking he's going to trip in that thing when he starts running. Those eyes also don't look right, they're took darkly colored. The webbing and textures on this one don't look bad, but generally, this is about as shoddy of a superhero costume as you'd expect from a late 70s CBS show.

11. Spider-Man: Far From Home Climactic Suit

Peter Parker can look like and do nearly anything. He can be a person of color. He can be queer. He could be working as a DJ. The one thing I’m a stickler for, though, is that, unless he’s coated in the Symbiote, Peter Parker shouldn’t wear black. The classic Spidey suit is vibrant. Parker’s cinema-based superhero garbs should lean into that. Frustratingly, Spider-Man: Far From Home’s finale gives Parker a new super-suit replacing the blue parts of his red costume with dark black hues. The red and black don’t look good together and looking so much like the traditional Spider-Man outfit just makes one yearn for more blues. Don’t skimp on the colors!

10. The Night Monkey Outfit

Weirdly, out of Far From Home’s two black Spider-suits, the “Night Monkey” one Peter Parker dons is my favorite. That’s probably because it’s at least trying to do its own thing (since it’s a “stealth” outfit) rather than being a less vibrant standard Spider-Man costume. The traditional Spider-Man eyes functioning like high-tech removable specs and the use of fingerless gloves are especially welcome distinctive touches. Still, I like my Spidey costumes vibrant, so this one, while competently realized, doesn’t really scratch any fun itches for me. 

9. No Way Home's Black/Golden Magic Suit

Another black-colored Spider-Man outfit!! Why are the MCU movies (particularly the two sequels helmed by Jon Watts) so obsessed with draining all the color away from my boy? This Spider-Man: No Way Home outfit is a black suit with golden webbing and an ability to control the magic superpowers of Doctor Strange. The contrast between black and gold is at least cooler looking than black and red from Far from Home’s outfit. Those magical doo-dads on Parker's left wrist are nifty-looking. Still, again, I like vibrancy and no amount of golden lines can disguise that this is yet another darkly-colored Spider-Man costume utilized in a nighttime fight scene.

8. Berlin Airport Spider-Man costume

The outfit Spidey wears to the Berlin airport skirmish in Captain America: Civil War is largely the same one seen in Spider-Man: Homecoming, so I won’t linger too long on it. However, Civil War’s Spidey costume was added via CG in post-production (Holland wore a different Spider-Man costume on-set). It looks fine in execution, but it doesn’t have the immediacy or tactility of his Homecoming garbs. On one wistful note, remember how good Tom Holland was right from the start in Civil War? Man, the moment he walked on-screen or the first shot of Spidey crawling around on walls while chasing Falcon and Winter Soldier, I knew we were in good hands with this kid.

7. Iron Spider

I don’t mind the Iron Spider outfit necessarily on its own merits, especially as a visual signifier of Peter Parker working alongside The Avengers. Great threats require a more formidable outfit. Why’d he have to keep wearing it after Infinity War and Endgame though? When he’s swinging around New York and dealing with purse snatchers or The Scorpion, the high-tech Iron Suit feels comically excessive. Not only that, but the more time it’s on screen, the more obvious its visual faults, like its subdued colors or its obviously digital nature, become. It was also a bad idea to utilize this costume during No Way Home nighttime finale. In these confines, the Iron Spider costume just looked too much like the night sky. The Iron Spider costume is decent on first glance, but its problems grew increasingly apparent the more the MCU milked it.

6. Symbiote Suit from Spider-Man 3

There’s not much to say about this one, since it’s just Tobey Maguire’s standard Spider-Man outfit but colored black. However, the virtues of that classic costume (which we’ll get to shortly) endure here. The black coloring looks good for this specific comic book storyline Sam Raimi and company were telling. I like how the white Spider-Man eyes pop against the black suit coloring (unfortunately it emphasizes the frustrating lack of color contrast in Tom Holland’s darker Spidey suits).

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming’s Spider-Suit

For his first solo MCU adventure in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tom Holland's Spider-Man got a proper supersuit (courtesy of Tony Stark in-universe) harkening back to his earliest comic book appearances. The excessive lines on his hips and legs, though (which weren't in those Amazing Fantasy issues Spidey debuted in), make this suit a bit too busy for its own good. On the other hand, the colors pop, the textures look strong, and the black lines around his goggles especially look excellent.

4. The homemade MCU Spider-Suit

If there’s a costume on this list that could be considered reasonably underrated, it’s the homemade Spider-Suit Peter Parker rocks in Civil War and Homecoming. It’s a cute outfit littered with amusing and endearing details related to Parker using ramshackle items to simulate what will eventually become the famous Spider-Man outfit. Those goggles are especially quite charming-looking. This suit feels truly homemade, a feat underscoring the characters underdog and humble origins. This one deserves a little more love, especially since it gives cash-strapped Spider-Man cosplayers an easy outfit to put together.

3. Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man outfit

My earliest memories of Spider-Man as a character was seeing this Spider-Man teaser poster at my local Cinemark. This close-up of the Spider-suit Tobey Maguire would wear across these three movies was seared forever into my brain and instilled in me just how cool Spidey could look in art. Even beyond that nostalgia, though, this costume rocks. The bright red and blue colors look perfect, especially as extensions of the vibrancy of Sam Raimi's stylized vision of New York City. I love how the webbing looks (it has these sharp edges that make it look like an actual spider web), while the blue on the hips and legs isn't afraid to just be blue with none of the distracting lines in Parker’s Homecoming outfit. Its awesomeness should be inherently obvious, but let it be said again: Tobey Maguire’s Spider-suit is a masterwork.

2. That Amazing Spider-Man 2 costume

Sometimes, bad movies with a capital B can feature one absolutely inspired creative element. The Brothers Grimsby is a dismal comedy, but it does have that one amusing joke involving Sacha Baron Cohen’s character actsing like his bald son is named Luke after his Leukemia. Nobody likes Cocktail but how could anyone dislike the Beach Boys ditty "Kokomo?" Motherless Brooklyn is a total snooze of a period piece movie, except for Gugu Mbatha-Raw's soaring performance that totally could’ve inhabited an excellent 40s movie.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 continued this tradition. Make no mistake, this is an abysmal movie in every respect, from the creepy Spider-stalking to an excessively crowded screenplay to even Hans Zimmer’s overwhelmingly busy score. In the middle of so much incompetency, though, this feature did deliver the best pre-2026 Spider-Man movie outfit ever. This installment had Andrew Garfield strutting around and saving the day in a costume whose colors were just luscious to look at, especially that its bright red hue. In contrast the golden goggles on the first Amazing Spider-Man outfit, this sequel gave Spidey bright white pupils that popped off the screen. Director Marc Webb shooting this installment in 35mm film made the terrific textures and colors on this costume really soar. Amazing Spider-Man 2 got so much wrong (why would you hire Emma Stone as a character whose only purpose is to die?) but when it came to its Spider-Man costume, it gets an A+.

1. Spider-Man Brand New Day’s Spidey-suit

I swear to God, this isn’t recency bias talking. The Spider-Man: Brand New Day Spidey-suit is a terrific feat combining all the best. Finally, Tom Holland walks around in a Spider-Man costume confident enough to not lather lines and extraneous busy-ness on the blue portions of his costume. The dark black coloring plaguing his Far From Home attire is also absent. Instead, the red and blue colors are fantastically vibrant, the web lines look like actual Spider-webs just like the Tobey Maguire outfit, while the black lenses (always the best part of the MCU Spidey costumes) look better and more expressive than ever.

Plus, this outfit really allows for breathable and flexible movement. Even just its textures and surfaces are as pleasing to the eye. Everything about Brand New Day’s Spider-Man suit is just right. Tom Holland didn’t need an Iron Spider or magic-enhanced suit to look perfect as Spider-Man. Something classical yet so well made did the trick divinely.

A minute-by-minute log of my bizarre Sapphic Sunday night

An actual image of me at the Sapphic Spotlight Party

On Sunday, July 26, 2026, I went to a Spotlight Sapphic Party at the Dallas lesbian bar Sue Ellen's. Up until two weeks-ish ago, I'd never heard of a "Spotlight Party", which consists off people wearing one of three different colored wristbands (each tied to the colors on a spotlight) indicating what kind of dynamic they're looking for in other people (red=just here for the music, green=flirting, yellow= looking for friends). 

Given that I have about as much luck finding queer lady/lesbian/sapphic love on those wretched dating apps as Max Rebo does delivering a subpar tune, I decided to go out and experience this event for myself. After all, I'm much better at dating events in person than on those apps, including at a lesbian speed dating event that occurred at Sue Ellen's back in February. However, this Spotlight Party turned out to be...a catastrophe. If this evening was a natural weather event, people would call it a tornado that decimated a town.

One upside of these kinds of evenings? They make for interesting writing! I decided to write down my highs and unfortunately, more plentiful lows in this Spotlight Sapphic Party, but not in a traditional essay format. I want to take you, dear reader, through this event on a minute-by-minute basis. I arrived at 6:52 PM and, given how every second seemed to stretch on eternally, it only seemed fitting to lean into the time aspect for this write-up. I present to you a minute-by-minute record of my Spotlight Sapphic Party experiences.

6:52 PM: My Lyft has dropped me off! It's time to go. I'm all gussied up in a cute flowery dress and colorful makeup. Time to see what's possible in here.

6:53 PM: Not too many people here, but that's natural. It isn't even 7 PM, after all. I look around for a folding table or some kind of base area where the Spotlight Sapphic Party host is giving away wristbands. My peepers don't spot such a destination. 

6:57 PM: Looking across this domicile's first floor, I finally find the wristbands! They're right by the DJ booth! I just grab a green one (the event's organizer is gabbing it up with the DJ), put it on my wrist, and return to the bar area.

7:01 PM: Everyone in this bar is cloistered into either platonic or romantic duos at the bar. Nobody single is just sitting around with a green wristband. Hmmmm. Okay, time to go upstairs, go to one of those comfy chairs, and read my book (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind) until more people show up.

7:05 PM: Sometimes it pays off to bring a book everywhere I go. Still, as I flip through the pages and fight off tiredness (the couch is cozy!), I have to chuckle. Before I go out to these events, I always have daydreams of entering a bustling bar full of seedy debauchery and writhing bodies, like a scene out of Babylon. Into these dens of physical intimacy and people putting themselves out there, perhaps I'll encounter someone I can make a long-term connection with. I always get my expectations up...and then I enter a very down-to-Earth realm where people are sipping drinks at the bar quietly.  Then it's time for page turning rather than flirting or hand holding.

7:14 PM: While I'm reading and have my gigantic headphones on, two men approach me while carrying trays of banana bread. They inquire if I want to buy their sweets. I say no. They proceed to ask me further questions about Sue Ellen's. I offer terse, one-word answers until they proceed off to the next potential consumer. I wanted to meet hot gay women, not male-identifying banana bread salespeople.

7:26 PM: Time to return downstairs. When I do, I see an unexpected person: my best friend's ex! I was hoping to run into some familiar faces here (specifically the pals I always encounter at Sue Ellen's). Not this kind of familiar face! I make sure to stay out of the ex's line of sight like I'm Josh O'Connor evading evil government officials in Disclosure Day.

7:28 PM: Okay, the ex is on one side of the bar's downstairs area. Half of the upstairs area is dominated by some event for older gay men that, as far as I'm aware, isn't open to everyone. A good chunk of the bar is closed off. 

Normally, when I come to Sue Ellen's for Friday/Saturday night upstairs karaoke, I get here early so I can adjust to the noise and crowds gradually getting more extreme. I don't mind having an hour or so of reading in those confines. Here, though, for an event that's supposed to be about socializing from the get-go, it feels odd being confined rather than exhilarated. 

7:31 PM: The downstairs Sue Ellen's dance floor always houses "life-sized" beer pong (which basically means tossing volleyballs into buckets). Tonight is no exception. I secure a table on the dance floor right next to a white lady, who looks like she's only a few years older than me, intensely playing beer pong with another Sue Ellen's denizen.

7:32 PM: Noticing me, this woman immediately begins involving me in her game. I'm her moral support, and she keeps turning to me for uplifting verbiage. She also persistently compliments my makeup and touching my shoulders and arm. Say! Something's happening! This feels like it could be going in the right direction!

7:34 PM: This woman asks me to join her in a prayer before her next play. We clasp hands and I playfully remark, "Gracious Rihanna, guide this ball straight and true."

7:35 PM: This lady then chortles, "Dear Lil' Wayne!" before rambling about how he's coming to Fort Worth in September...and then refers to him by the N-word. This white lady just dropped the N-word and then returned to her game like it was nothing.

7:36 PM: I promptly lie, say I have to meet friends at the front of the bar, and then scurry away. Oh Lord, now I've gotta watch out for her, my best friend's ex, and remember half of the upstairs area is off-limits. I feel like the turtle at the bottom of the pile in Yertle the Turtle, carrying so many different things. I guess I could go back to the publicly available section of the upstairs and read...but I spent all this money Lyft-ing to Sue Ellen's to socialize with sapphics. That's what I'm gonna do, damn it.

7:39 PM: I order a Sprite from the bar. Now I'm getting wild.

7:40 PM: There's a little popcorn machine on the Sue Ellen's first floor where you can scoop yourself a small bowl of popcorn. I also grab some of that. Time for snackin'.

7:42 PM: The DJ's tunes so far are pretty good, but it'd be nice to have some dance floor energy in the songs. Normally the dance floor isn't jumping until 10:30-ish, so the DJ is probably saving all the bouncy tunes for later...but that timetable is for Friday and Saturday. It's Sunday, I can't imagine everyone's staying out until 2 AM today. Why not start things early? These are  the thoughts I'm having instead of "is that attractive dyke flirting with me?"

7:43 PM: My phone keeps beckoning me to check it. First for escape from all the social woes, then to order a Lyft home. I can tough it out, though, I can tough it out, I can tough it out....

7:44 PM: I open the Lyft app.

7:45 PM: NO! I can still do this, c'mon Lisa! Let's get those bearings together!

7:47 PM: A tremendous wave of sleep is also pulling me towards leaving. There are so many damn siren songs to resist.

7:48 PM: As a group of cis-men enter Sue Ellen's, I'm suddenly reminded of how alone I am here. I'm also reminded of that time I came here alone, wound up talking to this random group of people, and a cis-gay guy in the group kept fondling my leg and violating my personal space. What if that happens again?

7:49 PM: I open the Lyft app. I order a ride home.

7:51 PM: Just as I'm told my ride is ten minutes out, a familiar face walks through the door. I've seen them at Sapphic Storytellers events! We hug and chat a minute. I'm not gonna lie, their leather-bound gothic look, complete with cool tattoos and earrings...it's working for me. I might try to be a little more flirty if I didn't have an impending Lyft breathing down my neck. Later the next day, this person will DM me and reveal they only stayed for a few more minutes at this Sapphic Spotlight event after realizing they were too tired to socialize. In other words, not ideal flirting circumstances for either of us.

7:57 PM: After bidding my unexpected pal adieu, I leave the bar. My Lyft ride is here...but I don't see it. Where did they park?

8:01 PM: It takes a few minutes of stressed scrambling in the last few bursts of that day's hot Texas heat, but I finally find the odd place the Lyft driver stopped to pick me up in. I get in, offer the driver my pin number, and we're off.

8:25 PM: I'm back in my apartment. My mind, so often geared towards self-criticism and hatred, is working overtime, telling myself I'm a loser for not sticking around. As I tear off the green wristband from my arm, though, I know I did what I could in an overstimulating and frustrating environment.

 9:31 PM: I treat myself to going to bed early. Tomorrow will be a new day. And probably a better one.

Strong acting and low-key sensibilities help Spider-Man: Brand New Day swing high

In 2006, directors Lowell Frank and future Marvel Cinematic Universe staple Destin Daniel Cretton helmed the documentary Drakmar: A Vassal's Journey. The feature chronicled a teenage boy immersing himself in fantasy role-play to escape the horrors of his existence. Such duality would come to define Cretton’s filmmaking fascinations. In Short Term 12, he explored the nuanced interior lives of at-risk teens often defined just by their mental health struggles. The Glass Castle chronicled a woman grappling with both the toxicity and positivity she associated with her father.

Maybe that means Cretton was always destined to make a Spider-Man movie. After all, from the moment he first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15 in August 1962, Spidey’s always been about dueling interior urges. Can Peter Parker juggle a normal life and Spider-Man duties? Can he handle this great power and its equally immense responsibilities? Cretton’s experience with similar material and intimate drama serves Spider-Man: Brand New Day remarkably well.

Spidey’s on his own. In the wake of everyone forgetting who Peter Parker is at the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, this web-crawler is living a cramped, lonely existence. He’s taking down every costumed baddie imaginable in New York City. However, in his everyday civilian life, Parker’s living alone in a dusty apartment attic. His best buddy Ned (Jacob Balaton) and former lover MJ (Zendaya) are off at MIT and have no memory of this web-crawler’s secret identity. "I'm doin' it the best I can, living on nobody but me," as the Just the Ten of Us theme song once harmonized.

Dealing with D-list foes like Boomerang and Tarantula alone is one thing. However, soon a new telepathic foe begins wrecking havoc in the Big Apple. Damage Control, and its leader, Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman), are totally perplexed. Spidey wants to help, but this rival’s presence intersects with some strange new occurrences in Peter Parker’s body making it difficult for him to do basic Spider-Man tasks. This is where Spider-Man: Brand New Day reveals itself a tale of duality and what defines “monstrousness” in a person.  

There’s a low-key scene late in Spider-Man: Brand New Day that evoked a strong “awwwww” from me. No, Brand New Day didn’t pause for some adorable pugs (though I wouldn’t have minded such obvious Lisa fan-service). Instead, it was a wistful character beat firmly rooted in Tom Holland’s prior Spider-Man adventures. Both this sequence’s effectiveness and its relative intimacy speak to Cretton and screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers never forgetting the characters throughout Brand New Day.

Granted, that does mean the plot they’ve conjured up here doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Opting for a familiar narrative outline to hang specific character beats on has its disadvantages. Certain “plot twists” are easy to see coming. Meanwhile, frustrating expository dialogue stumbles certain images that would work infinitely better as purely visual storytelling. Thankfully, the script also offers plenty of amiable charms, including its more confined scope. There’s no need for gigantic beams of light shooting up into the sky or whatever was going on in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Just chill. Let these talented actors flourish.

And flourish they do. Though he’s ten years older than when we first saw him in Captain America: Civil War, Tom Holland still wields an endearing underdog quality truly making him feel outmatched by any foe he comes across. That's not the only skill he brings to this role. Spider-Man has the ability to crawl up walls. However, Holland’s also got a super-power of his own: creating crackling chemistry with any MCU staple he’s paired up with. Following his fun rapport with Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch in past Spider-Man entries, this actor’s a riot bouncing off Jon Benrthal’s Frank Castle/The Punisher. Constant stints in this red-and-blue super-suit haven’t diminished Holland’s acting chops first established in titles like The Impossible years ago.

Holland leads a commendably solid cast that also includes Zendaya reaffirming why she's one of the better leading ladies of her generation. Even in a CG and superhero-dominated blockbuster, Zendaya's gripping and especially excels in her most aching sequences against Holland. Meanwhile, Bernthal’s an amusing crotchety contrast to Holland’s lead character and Sadie Sink also excels portraying a mysterious new character. No spoilers here, but Sink’s handling of her role’s rawest material is quite potent. See all that humanity, Darren Aronofsky? That’s why your Sadie Sink character in The Whale never worked.

All these laudable performances materialize under filmmaker Destin Daniel Cretton's direction. Happily, he and cinematographer Brett Pawlak bring liveliness to the visuals, including a welcome emphasis on camera movement. Cretton’s camera following Parker plunging off rooftops in unbroken images (rather than just cutting around this action in a string of shots) lends energetic exhilaration to this web-crawler’s swinging escapades. A similar willingness to let shots breathe also aids set pieces like a striking early depiction of that telepathic adversary's abilities.

As a cherry on top, Cretton’s sturdy hand with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ various fight scenes resurfaces here. Any of the hand-to-hand Spider-Man skirmishes look terrific, especially a climactic duel between this hero and some The Hand ninjas.

In terms of colorful backgrounds, Brand New Day is more of a mixed bag. There’s more specificity to several sets, including the ramshackle boat Frank Castle calls home. An assortment of quasi-noir-ish nighttime shots where a forlorn Spidey is illuminated by crackling neon signs are also memorable. Unfortunately, some of the grey color grading plaguing other MCU outings like Thunderbolts* is also a problem here. Third-act exterior shots of Roosevelt Island, for instance, rob the location of any vibrancy. The interior of Damage Control’s main building, meanwhile, lacks visual idiosyncrasies.

Such drab shortcomings stand out since Spider-Man: Brand New Day otherwise happily embraces comic book silliness. If you can have a movie where Spider-Man fights a bunch of ninjas, why not? Ditto for a showdown between this web-crawler and The Hulk. There’s also a well-realized set piece involving Brand New Day’s antagonist telepathically “hopping” from one random New Yorker to another, similarly thriving on comic book tomfoolery. These bombastic tendencies even seem to have inspired the vibrant super-suit Spider-Man waltzes around in.

Man, I love this outfit. The uber-bright colors. The textures on the web lines across his chest. The black circles around the eyes, everything looks fantastic. Costume designer Sanja Milkovic Hays and her crew should take a bow. Finally, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 no longer houses the best live-action Spider-Man costume.

Combining these outlandish elements with the effective small-scale character drama makes for a mighty enjoyable moviegoing experience. Not a sublime one on par with Spider-Man 2, the two Spider-Verse masterpieces, or this year’s best big-budget voyages (like The Odyssey or Project Hail Mary). What needs grand theatricality (like Michael Giacchino’s sweeping and sometimes downtrodden score) gets it in abundance. Meanwhile, Short Term 12 veteran Destin Daniel Cretton doesn’t forget the people (including mighty effective glimpses into everyday New York) necessary to make the theatricality worth caring about. Like I said, Spidey's "doin' it the best I can, livin’ on nobody but me." Leaning on that reality underpins Spider-Man: Brand New Day’s greatest strengths.

Trans Performers Will Not Capsize Your Movie. They Will Only Enhance It.

Koko Da Doll in an interview segment from Kokomo City

Koko Da Doll is phenomenally absorbing in Kokomo City. She is one of the central interview subjects in this 2023 documentary helmed by D. Smith, which focuses on a quartet of Black trans women who happen to be sex workers. Koko Da Doll radiates conviction any time the camera lingers on her. Smith's intimate filmmaking is perfect for highlighting every inch of this woman's multi-faceted personality. One especially poignant piece of testimony from Koko Da Doll comes when she confronts the past, present, and future of her relationship to transness. 

"Seeing other trans girls on reality shows and other stuff brought attention...I was just like 'they don't want to hear or see no trans girl,' and then seeing trans girls on these reality shows gave me light...if I can use the music to reach the people...I really want to send a message, I want them to hear me. And for the girls that can't speak, I want to be the girl that speaks for them."

Three months after Kokomo City's Sundance 2023 premiere, Koko Da Doll was killed. This woman in her mid-30s, with so much life ahead to live, was cruelly ripped from this mortal world. 50% of trans lives lost in 2023 that were recorded by the Human Rights Council were Black trans women. This is not anamoly confined to the year Koko Da Doll was murdered. 

In 2019, an NAACP report tragically noted that "the murder of transgender people is significantly underreported because data collection is often incomplete or unreliable" as well as the reality that "transgender women of color face enormously high rates of homelessness, unemployment, negative health outcomes, rates of depression and suicidal ideation, discrimination in their families, unjust treatment when seeking help from law enforcement, and homicide due to their transgender identity." Melinda Butterfield's June 2026 piece "Eryka, Juniper, Persia, Murry & Jane Doe: Murder, social murder, and trans genocide", meanwhile, provided a heartbreakingly comprehensive glimpse into the prevalence of trans dehumanization in 2026.

Koko Da Doll is gone. She is not forgotten. She lives on in how she personally impacted people. Her music is still entering people's eardrums. And then there's the Kokomo City footage she appears in. Her dreams, her glorious personality, they're still there on the silver screen.

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This past weekend, The Odyssey opened to massive box office numbers that included scoring one of the biggest non-Deadpool domestic openings ever for an R-rated movie. This came after a bunch of people who make what sure look like Nazi salutes in public threw online tantrums that Black women and a trans man were in the movie. Naturally, this discourse didn't impact the box office or critical reception one bit. Elliot Page, a trans male performer that right-wingers drive themselves nuts thinking about, showing up in The Odyssey only increased the movie's star power rather than diluting the box office. Meanwhile, Barbie remains one of the biggest movies of the decade so far. 

Featured in its cast as a doctor and DJ Barbie? Hari Nef. A talented actor, writer, and model, who just so happens to be a trans lady. She could show up as just another one of the gals in Barbieland, deliver killer comic lines, and even get called beautiful by Ryan Gosling's Ken without either the world imploding or Barbie's box office cratering. Trans existence and box office success are not incompatible. So I implore the larger film industry: put more of my trans brothers, sisters, and folks of all gender identities in as many motion pictures as possible. Especially trans individuals of color.

As Raquel Willis so brilliantly explored in her memoir The Risk It Takes to Bloom: On Life and Liberation, representation by itself isn't a solution to woes informed by corrupt institutions, capitalism, and white supremacy. I'm under no delusions that offering a random trans actor two lines in The Mandalorian and Grogu would suddenly erase all these horrific statistics about trans violence. Increased representation of trans performers needs to go hand-in-hand with larger initiatives confronting imperialism, capitalism, and the global normalization of dehumanization (the nonchalant slaughter of Palestinian lives and the casual elimination of trans people are two sides of the same coin).

However, just because bolstering trans representation in film shouldn't be the be-all end-all of crusading for equality doesn't negate the importance of this initiative. For starters, more acting opportunities for trans performers would mean giving trans people money. Trans folks deserve to afford housing, food, medicine, and any other necessities vital to existence. More chances to perform in motion pictures can help make those essentials more accessible. This is especially true if trans performers get cast in theatrical films, which can provide long-term residual checks. 

Anytime Hollywood provides openly homophobic performer Shia LaBeouf or similar toxic cis-people another chance to headline a film, they're depriving trans artists of a chance to earn income they need. Trace Lysette has been openly vocal on social media and in interviews about the lack of acting opportunities sent her way. While major entertainment outlets, commentators, actors, and producers scramble to resuscitate the careers of cis-actors like Jonathan Majors or Louie C.K., we ignore the exciting possibilities of new trans performers like Misha Osherovich, Isabel Sandoval, and Jack Haven (among countless others).

Furthermore, Koko Da Doll's own words underscore another importance of putting more trans people into mainstream films. "Seeing trans girls on these reality shows gave me light," Da Doll recalls about the first time seeing trans folks on the screen. She also hopes her art can provide words "for the girls that can't speak." Speaking personally, I know seeing Tangerine at age 19 forever changed my life and made me reconsider life's possibilities. Yet I still had to travel 35-ish minutes by train to witness that film on the big screen. Smaller arthouse titles like Joyland, starring Alina Khan, don't have the resources to play in thousands of theaters. In addition to these wonderful arthouse titles, trans artists should also exist in all forms of cinema.

Imagine if films featuring performers had played at my local Cinemark my entire life. Imagine if most folks could just stroll down to their local theater and see new mainstream titles akin to Barbie and The Odyssey that feature trans performers. Trans people of all ages often struggle to see themselves in the communities they're trapped in. Art can provide reassurance and normalization. When you feel isolated or don't have the words to describe who you are, artistic representation can be a much-needed balm. Films can remind trans viewers "you're not alone" through showing Mya Taylor anchoring a fantasy feature full of dragons, Elva Guerra as the lead of a rom-com, or Brian Michael Smith being part of a silly comedy's ensemble cast. Trans audiences deserve to experience those reminders even within a big-box multiplex.

Fueling this yearning for trans people to be everywhere, though, also comes down to a tragedy plaguing our community: visibility. As pervasive transphobic legislation across America has shown, trans lives are perceived as disposable in the mainstream, especially when they're not white. Marsha P. Johnson's killer was never found. Rich CEO's will use every ounce of their energy to defend transphobes. Our healthcare system often ignores trans lives. In the final pages of her 2020 thesis essay "Historical Erasure is Violence: The Lives and Experiences of Black Transgender Women and Gender Nonconforming Women of Color in the 19th and 20th Century," author Rebekkah Mulholland writes that:

"Collectively, black transgender women have been considered the dregs of society...Black transgender women and gender nonconforming women of color have always existed. To many, their collective voices, lives, experiences, and bodies have not existed. Black transgender women and gender nonconforming women of color have a past. Erasing their history is a form of violence. Telling their stories is a type of liberation."

These lives haven't just been minimized. They've been tossed into oblivion, even by other queer communities. Again, increased representation in mainstream cinema cannot be the end point. However, it can be a way of "telling their stories" when it comes to trans and gender nonconforming women and marginalized genders. The ubiquity of trans people in movies playing in thousands of theaters can combat the erasure Western society defaults to when handling trans lives. Returning to Mulholland's words...

"Not only must these institutions listen to black transgender women and gender nonconforming women of color, these individuals must be included in the decision-making process so that they play a critical role in their liberation. They must be present at every level of government as they help to shape what liberation, freedom, and equality looks like. For this group, liberation means not having to justify one’s existence."

This same pervasiveness of trans voices should've always been ingrained into the history of cinema. However, even well into the 2020s, trans artists have struggled to gain footing both behind and in front of the camera. Non-binary filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun, for instance, recalled how they couldn't get financing anywhere for their follow-up to I Saw the TV Glow, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Shelling out $180 million for a Highlander reboot is apparently "logical" financing for major studios, but ponying up comparatively meager funds for trans artists is a bridge too far.

The challenges Schoenbrun and others face speak to the widespread erasure of trans people in all corners of society. For its future, it's vital that cinema highlight trans worlds, especially since Barbie and The Odyssey have proven without a shadow of a doubt that trans cast members don't sink box office numbers. Even in the most ruthless capitalistic terms, trans artists clearly don't adversely impact movies. Dumb-asses online can whine about Elliot Page or Laverne Cox showing up in a film all they want. Their presence is clearly not a deal-breaker for audiences. 

The floodgates need to and should've already been open. Trans actors should be in everything from A Minecraft Movie Squared to the next Denis Villeneuve movie. Trans lives (especially non-white ones) need to be inescapable. "I believe in my power, I believe in your power," Raquel Willis once chanted as part of a glorious speech. Put that power everywhere in the cinematic landscape.

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One of many outstanding titles featured in the recent Criterion Channel collection "Tramps, Troublemakers, and Trailblazers: Trans Filmmakers" is Rupert Remembers. This 2000 short from director Xanthra Phillippa Mackay focuses on Canadian trans man Rupert as he wanders locales that used to be gay hotspots. He regales audiences with stories from years past about the local queer community, friends he'd made, experiences eternally seared into his brain. Watching it 26 years later is a fascinating and moving experience. Even when it was made, Rupert Remembers reaffirmed how the trans community had a rich past. Trans individuals weren't a "modern" phenomenon. 

Decades later, that intent is potently enhanced. Rupert Remembers is now an ode to multiple eras of trans history. Permanently capturing Rupert and his stories on film allows modern trans (and cis) people immediate access to the reality that trans souls have always existed.

Cinema is a powerful tool. Sometimes adversely so. Titles like Rupert Remembers and Kokomo City, though, provide glorious manifestations of this medium's best possibilities. These titles, even in their quietest interview segments, offer a fiery middle finger to the societally normalized erasure of trans people. We will not be erased. We will not be cowed into concealing ourselves. We will occupy the middle of the frames. Through these movies, our history and lives can be preserved. Gossip columnist Elinor St. John (Jean Smart) tells 20s movie star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) in Babylon that cinema offers a chance at something resembling immortality. "A child born in 50 years will stumble across your image flickering on a screen and feel he knows you, like a friend, though you breathed your last before he breathed his first," she wistfully says.

That cinema magic should permeate every corner of the movie kingdom, including the big-budget wide release tableau Barbie and The Odyssey inhabit. Let the success of these movies be "the spark that will light the fire that shatters trans erasure in mainstream cinema," to paraphrase Poe Dameron from the best Star Wars movie. Obviously, it also needs to be paired with active political action to protect trans lives, strides to prevent trans murders, and politicians willing to stand up for trans lives (rather than being complicit centrist cowards). We can create a better world. One where movies like Kokomo City and its tender interviews with Koko Da Doll aren't tragic anomalies in the wider cinematic landscape. Create movies that provide the trans-oriented "light" and "attention" that made Koko Da Doll so giddy.

Want to watch even more great movies from and/or starring trans artists like Kokomo City? Letterboxd user Grays_Tedious has a fantastic list chronicling an array of such features. Personally, I'd recommend The People's Joker, Dressed in Blue, Titane, Paris is Burning, Joyland, and Neptune Frost, in additon to Kokomo City and other films mentioned in this piece, for some must-see trans cinema viewing.