The latest in our series of writers sharing their comfort watches celebrates Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s ground-breaking action comedy

Sitcoms Martin and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were still on the air when Bad Boys hit theatres 30 years ago. Their leading men, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, respectively, brought a lot of that goofy small-screen banter – this time loaded with testosterone and F-bombs – to a buddy cop movie.

Bad Boys opens with an announcement of their arrival. Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett and Smith’s Mike Lowrey are cruising around Miami in a Porsche 911, doing a sitcom bit as they bicker over French fries and cupholders, before a pair of car thieves catch them by surprise and hold them up at gunpoint. When Smith’s Mike warns that they’re cops, one of the car jackers dismisses him – “Well, I’m a stand-up comedian, and I suck” – as if speaking for an audience unconvinced that these two comic personalities could plausibly exist in their new roles.

The sequel to the award-winning Auē explores themes of resistance, trauma and long-buried secrets

Becky Manawatu described her debut, 2022’s Auē, as “a breath in”. Its follow-up, Kataraina, she has called “a breath out”. It continues that first novel’s themes of intergenerational trauma and violence within a largely Māori community based around the town of Kaikourā, on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Auē won multiple awards in New Zealand and became an international bestseller; while Kataraina fleshes out its backstory, it can also be read as a thrillingly immersive standalone.

The main focus of this new novel is a minor character from Auē, Aunty Kat, the maternal aunt of brothers Ari and Taukiri whose story was covered in the previous book. Almost erased by domestic abuse in Auē, here she is accorded her full name, Kataraina Te Au, and a narrative that swings back and forth from her birth in 1981 to the present: early January 2020. Kataraina, the only surviving sibling of three, with a brother dead through gang warfare and a sister believed drowned, has been in a coma in hospital following a beating from her partner, Stuart Johnson. Stuart was then shot dead by Beth, the young daughter of Kat’s childhood friend, neighbour, and – most recently – lover, Tom Aiken. This episode formed the dramatic climax of Auē.

This striking documentary is an oral history of the impact, particularly on Indigenous Americans, of 20th-century military projects in California and Utah

The culmination of a seven-year research project, Lukas Marxt and Vanja Smiljanić’s striking, exhaustive film examines the lasting impact of 20th-century military projects on the US landscape. The film begins at the former Wendover air force base in Utah, where fighter-bomber practice runs were held before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Moving through the corridors of a museum erected to commemorate the mission, the roving camera takes in various artefacts, including replicas of the two atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man. Circulating through various monitors and speakers, matter-of-fact narration of these events lingers in the air, lending an omnipresent eeriness. Here lies empty nostalgia, unnervingly entombed.

The ecological devastation that surrounds the Salton Sea, a testing site for the Manhattan Project, tells a different story. What looks like sand is, in fact, the crushed remains of former vegetation and aquatic life. As water levels rapidly recede, toxic waste piles up, with hazardous health effects for local residents. Most poignantly, the film reminds us that this region is, first and foremost, Native American land; close by is the Torres Martinez desert, where the Indigenous Cahuilla tribe was once nearly wiped out by a smallpox epidemic engineered by white settlers. Now, their descendants have formed a close alliance with undocumented migrant workers from south of the border, also victims of state violence.