Mashable

It's that time of year again: As 2023 comes to a close, critics hype up the year's very best films. In a year stuffed with sensational cinema, some fantastic movies are bound to get left off lists, with wonderful performances getting overlooked in the bigger awards conversations. Monica, directed by Andrea Pallaoro, is such a film. 

One of the best movies of the year, Monica is an intimate, intelligent story about family — and how to survive it in order to become comfortable with ourselves. 

In the lead role, Trace Lysette (Transparent) brings Monica to life in a vibrant, endlessly compelling performance. While many films about queer people are about them finding themselves (see But I’m A Cheerleader, Brokeback Mountain, God’s Own Country), Monica has already found herself. It's up to others to find her. When her estranged mother Eugenia (Patricia Clarkson) gets ill, a heart-wrenching opportunity arises. 

Monica left home as a teen and hasn't been back since. Now an out-and-proud trans woman, she wouldn't be recognized by anyone she grew up with — not even Eugenia. Leaving behind the heartbreak of a recent breakup and her work as a camgirl, Monica reenters her childhood home and allows her ailing mother to assume she's a professional caregiver. Incredibly, from this lie, a new path to honesty emerges. 

Monica tells a tender family story. Credit: IFC Films

Monica's relationship with Eugenia is the film's heart, and both Lysette and Clarkson are tremendous. At first, Eugenia hesitates about another caregiver — she’s happy with the one she already has. But despite her not knowing Monica is her daughter, their relationship grows close over the course of the film. It's incredibly difficult for Monica to process it all; years of pain and disappointment have built up, and returning to her family forces her to reckon with everything she's put aside for so long. 

In this tenderly observed film, Pallaoro favors a static camera, observing Monica in long takes. The camera keeps her close, watching as she goes through an average day, driving, getting dressed, talking on the phone — and in one particularly vulnerable shot — giving herself a hormone injection, a normal part of the trans experience rarely shown on screen. The stillness of the cinematography invites the audience to recognize the beauty in the life Monica has built on her own. 

Dialogue is sparse in Monica, but it doesn't need a lot of talk. What these characters are feeling comes across through their performances, and particularly what they want to be saying, even if they cannot find the words.

A moment of overwhelming emotion occurs towards the end of the film, when Monica helps her mother bathe. There are no words exchanged, but the tearful eyes of Eugenia, both sorrowful and joyful, are potent. Eugenia gazes deep into Monica's eyes, giving her a look that she's likely waited her entire life for. There's a lot of love between these two — whether Eugenia recognizes that Monica is her daughter or not — that so beautifully reflects their challenging relationship. It's taken so long to get to a point of understanding, but this single glance suggests that peace may finally exist between Eugenia and Monica. 

Trace Lysette astonishes in every frame of Monica. Credit: IFC Films

Great performances take us into a new world and provide us with a fresh perspective and new way of experiencing, and that’s exactly what Lysette accomplishes here. Hers is not a big, showy performance; there are no winding monologues, nor shouting matches that tend to demand the attention of awards bodies. She welcomes us gently into Monica’s world, using a subtle physicality to bring the entirety of Monica's life to the screen — a furrowed brow, a shrug, a lip tremble communicate her pain and happiness. Through these concentrated close-ups, the shift in her countenance shows a lifetime of walls she’s built up gradually come down, and witnessing this incredible intimacy is one of the most remarkable experiences in film this year.

When she does speak, much can be conveyed in a single word. When Eugenia asks her name, Lysette's delivery of "Monica" is densely layered, conveying a lifetime of pain and longing into a mere three syllables. In this moment, Monica introduces her authentic self to her mother, which should be a thrilling feeling. But since Eugenia doesn’t know Monica is her daughter, there’s a sense of disappointment to Lysette’s hushed tone, understanding that her mother may never get to see who she really is. 

Monica is a fascinating and illuminating portrait that captures the breadth of the trans experience. While we've seen an uptick in films about all sorts of queer people, the trans community is still drastically underserved. "I can count on one hand the times I've seen a film with a trans person as lead," Lysette said in an interview with The Guardian. But Monica offers something worthy of our attention. Because of Lysette’s generous performance, Monica is more than her identity — she's a complete person who wants nothing more than to find happiness in an unforgiving world.

Monica is now streaming on AMC+ and available for rental or purchase on Prime Video.

In Nazi Germany in 1938, scientists achieved the remarkable: they split an atom.

When physicists at Princeton heard the news, they became a "stirred-up ant heap." Beyond the buzz of the discovery, other repercussions became quickly apparent: Not only did this event, called nuclear fission, create two smaller atoms, but breaking these powerful atomic bonds released a relatively enormous amount of energy. Scaled up, this could mean an atomic bomb.

Government gears started churning. Just months later, in April 1939, the German nuclear weapons program, Uranverein, began, which employed brilliant minds like Werner Heisenberg, a genius theoretical physicist. By August, Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt, urging the nation's leader to "speed up" atomic research; he concluded the message by noting the Nazis had taken control of uranium mines in then-Czechoslovakia, and had ceased selling the valuable fissile material. 

The secretive United States' effort to design and build an atomic bomb – led by the charismatic and already renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer at the Los Alamos laboratory – didn't kick into high gear until early 1943. By 1945, the U.S., propelled by its industrial and scientific might, had successfully built, tested, and deployed atomic bombs. Yet by that same time, the Nazis were still years behind; they had no bomb, and still struggled to generate the atomic chain reaction needed for such a dreadful weapon. 

It turns out the Nazis were never ahead. But the U.S. was continually afraid they could be.

"There was this great fear." - Mark Walker

"There was this great fear," Mark Walker, a historian of modern German history and its nuclear ambitions, told Mashable. "It might be true that the Germans were ahead. And that's enough to drive them forward."

SEE ALSO: 'Oppenheimer': Yes, there really was a nuclear reactor under a football field.

The U.S. eventually drove hard. Oppenheimer oversaw a nexus of many of the nation's finest physicists. The Army built Los Alamos atop a remote plateau in the New Mexico desert, far away from any snooping eyes, and easy to secure. From 1943 to 1945, the bustling atomic lab made history. At the same time, it didn't exist.

The U.S. Army detonated the first atomic bomb 200 miles south of Los Alamos on July 16, 1945. It was called the "Trinity Test." Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty Images The warring Nazis couldn't rival U.S. abilities

The Nazi's hyper-warring hamstrung their atomic bomb progress.

Although German scientists first discovered nuclear fusion, Nazis used conventional weapons to crush neighboring countries between 1939 and 1941. Called Blitzkrieg, or "lightning war," the Nazis strategically attacked with surprise and speed to blast through overwhelmed armies, using a potent combination of infantry, tanks, vehicles, and bombing planes. "The Germans were doing very well. Germany didn't need powerful new weapons," Walker, a professor at Union College, explained. "It would knock one country off after another."

Then, things changed.

By late 1941, the Soviet Union, after sustaining a horrifying 4 million deaths from the Nazis, countered. A years-long battle would ensue. And the Nazis were now fighting the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States. This would be no lightning war. In 1942, the German army asked its atomic scientists for a timetable on when an atomic bomb might be ready, but learned that creating the material for a bomb would take an enormous industrial mobilization of now-limited resources. The hard truth: no bomb could help the Nazi war now. Research to create fissile material for a bomb continued, but at a small laboratory scale. Instead, the German military focused brainpower and materials on producing jet planes and rockets to try and gain a technological battle advantage.

"It was crystal clear that it was impossible for Germany to make atomic weapons during the war," Walker said. "They were already stretched to the limit."

An underground Nazi jet plane factory, found by U.S. soldiers. Credit: Bettmann / Contributor / Getty Images In 1945, the U.S. and British took apart the German experimental nuclear reactor. Credit: U.S. Army

In turn, the Nazi atomic weapons effort couldn't keep pace with Oppenheimer, who soon crisscrossed the U.S. by train, convincing the best physicists to join his burgeoning, deep-pocketed lab. And, crucially, Oppenheimer's lab wasn't working alone. In Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a whopping 50,000 people worked to create the material, enriched uranium, needed for Los Alamos' bomb, while thousands more created another fissile material, plutonium, in Hanford, Washington. Including the hundreds of thousands of construction workers who built these labs and boomtowns, "the Oak Ridge and Hanford sites alone hired more than a half-million employees," the U.S. Department of Energy said.

"We had all the resources. We had the money. We had the land," Chris Griffith, the founder of atomicarchive.com, an educational website dedicated to the science and history of the atomic age, told Mashable. "America turned so much of its resources into a giant factory."

"Germany didn't have the industrial capability to gamble," he added.

"We had all the resources. We had the money. We had the land." - Chris Griffith

What's more, the Nazi bomb effort certainly wasn't helped when one of their leading nuclear physicists (and eventual Nobel Prize winner), Walter Bothe, made a miscalculation. Bothe concluded that a crucial mineral used to moderate or control a nuclear chain reaction, graphite, would not work, which some say slowed the Germans' progress. (U.S. Manhattan Project physicists, however, achieved a chain reaction using graphite in a Chicago basement in December 1942, setting the stage for the bomb's development.)

Yet the historian Walker underscored it's a myth that Bothe's error significantly derailed the Nazi bomb project. After all, other German scientists suspected graphite could be used; the true problem was the war-taxed Nazi regime couldn't churn out the crucial, high-quality material out in sufficient quantities amid a devastating war.

Oppenheimer built a spectacular atomic team

In the high New Mexican desert, it was no guarantee Los Alamos would so quickly, and successfully, test an actual bomb. Yet Oppenheimer, for all his theoretical fame (his visionary research on the existence of black holes, for example), thrived as a manager and recruiter of talent.

Top scientists, like Richard Feynman (who worked on the bomb's design and would later win a Nobel Prize) and MIT physicist Kenneth Bainbridge (who directed the first demonstration of the atomic bomb, the "Trinity Test," some 200 miles away from Los Alamos) wanted to be part of his project. University researchers traveled across the country, following Oppenheimer to the hastily-assembled boomtown, largely composed of dirt roads and cabins in the middle of nowhere, to devise an unprecedented weapon amid global war.

"You can't underestimate the magnetism of his personality," marveled Griffith. "He had a fantastic collection of scientists around him."

Robert Oppenheimer's Los Alamos security badge photograph. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Oppenheimer realized these researchers needed a place to brainstorm, to tease out complicated schemes, to scrutinize some of the tiniest objects in the cosmos. "This thing will never get on the rails unless there is a place where people can talk to each other and work together on the problems of the bomb," Oppenhiemer recalled telling General Leslie Groves, the Army officer in charge of the greater nationwide Manhattan Project of which Los Alamos was a defining part, before the isolated lab was built. "... it could be some California desert, but someplace, there has got to be a place where people are free to discuss what they know and what they do not know and to find out what they can."

"You can't underestimate the magnetism of his personality." - Chris Griffith

Hundreds of scientists and engineers ultimately traveled to the secretive desert lab. As Hans Bethe, the nuclear physicist who Oppenheimer picked to head the lab's Theoretical Division, said: "He brought out the best in us.”

The Nazi's purge, Oppenheimer's gain

The Nazis vowed to persecute Jews. 

Within weeks of assuming power and creating a totalitarian police state in 1933, the regime promptly began eliminating Jews from government positions, which included many scholars and academics. For example, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science, a premier German research institute, the Nazis dismissed over 100 Jewish scientists. 

But the Nazi's loss was Oppenheimer's gain.

Many Jewish physicists fled the authoritarian regime in the early 1930s — including some who saw the writing on the wall and left before Hitler's takeover. (Einstein, though not part of the Manhattan Project, left Germany in 1932, after which he was vilified by the Nazi state.)  "[Hitler] limited himself by creating the purge before the Manhattan Project got started," the Atomic Archives' Griffith said.

Daily life and spartan housing at the secretive Los Alamos site. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Nazis lost substantial brainpower, but still had capable German scientists available to fill roles of the departed physicists on their limited atomic research, Walker explained. Yet the influx of bright minds into Los Alamos only enhanced Oppenheimer's ability to deliver an unprecedented bomb that was successful on its inaugural test.

"It's not that the purge of Jewish scientists hindered the German effort, but this emigration massively supported the American effort," Walker said.

To name just a few:

Hans Bethe

A professor at Germany's University of Tübingen, the Nazis dismissed him in 1933. At Los Alamos, Bethe played a seminal role in making calculations about the fissile material needed for an atomic bomb's chain reaction.

Edward Teller

A professor of physics at the University of Göttingen, Teller fled the Nazi regime in 1933 (with aid from the International Rescue Committee). One of the first scientists at Los Alamos, Teller made a number of valuable contributions to the atomic bomb's development, though he grew distracted with research into an even stronger weapon: the "Super," or hydrogen bomb. 

Leo Szilard

A scientist at the University of Berlin who filed 29 patents, Szilard fled Germany in the spring of 1933. Szilard was quite aware of the possibilities of nuclear fission: "These might lead to large-scale production of energy and radioactive elements, unfortunately also perhaps to atomic bombs," he wrote. The physicist played a leading role in producing the world's first atomic chain reaction at the also-secretive research reactor in Chicago, though he didn't join Oppenheimer at Los Alamos.

Oppenheimer, on left, helps during the final assembly of the first detonated atomic bomb, called "the gadget." Credit: U.S. Department of Energy

There is also popularized speculation that the Nazis weren't just outcompeted by wartime resources and the purge of brilliant atomic minds. Some authors and historians have suggested that Heisenberg, the top scientist working on the Nazi atomic weapons program, deliberately stalled the research progress – and ultimately deprived Hitler of the bomb. Could the great Heisenberg – a 1932 Nobel Prize winner and master theoretical physicist – have quietly sabotaged the Nazi atomic effort? And when meeting with his physicist mentor Niels Bohr in 1941, might Heisenberg have also urged Allied scientists to stop work on such a terrible weapon?

We'll likely never know. There's no hard evidence. But the story makes for a great legend, Walker said.

Some two and a half years after scientists began gathering at Los Alamos, the U.S. Army detonated the first atomic bomb on remote desert plains on July 16, 1945. "An individual 150 miles north said the explosion 'lighted up the sky like the sun,'" the Air Force noted. 

"We knew the world would not be the same," Oppenheimer recounted.

The following month, the U.S. dropped two bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Such a deadly outcome, deemed necessary at the time, would haunt Oppenheimer. "The ending of the war by this means, certainly cruel, was not undertaken lightly," Oppenheimer said, years later. "But I am not, as of today, confident that a better course was then open."

Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Credit: Photo12 / Universal Images Group / Getty Images Tweet may have been deleted

Christopher Nolan's prominent new film, Oppenheimer, with Cillian Murphy playing the eponymous scientist, shines a light on the man who led the fateful project — and vastly outcompeted his Nazi rivals. It also provokes thinking about an uncomfortable reality, a consequence of building the bomb: the weapons have proliferated. There are 12,512 known nuclear warheads on Earth today.

"You're talking about the potential end of the world." - John Mecklin

"The weapons are so daunting, so off-putting that people don't like to think about them," John Mecklin, the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, told Mashable. "You're talking about the potential end of the world."

This story originally published in August 2023 and has been updated.

The last 12 months have been a whirlwind of both technological advancements and unwelcome changes, from the continued hype around artificial intelligence to the ups and downs of social media giants. 

Similarly, within the push for greater digital accessibility and improvements in assistive technology, 2023 has ushered in immense successes and unfortunate failures among the industry's leading forces and pioneers — a clash of creativity and profit alongside a wider cultural conversation on the need for increased support and visibility for the disability community. 

Still, the year's fair share of wins are making meaningful changes in people's lives, from increased customizability of the online experience to accessibility shifts in the world of live entertainment, and they're also proving that sometimes a simple addition is all that's needed to make a digital environment significantly more accessible.

Mashable's rounded up a few of tech's accessibility standouts this year.

SEE ALSO: The rule-breaking audio descriptions of Netflix's 'All the Light We Cannot See' point to a greater accessibility triumph GIPHY adds alt text.

In 2023, popular GIF platform GIPHY partnered with digital accessibility provider Scribely to provide alt text captions for its most popular content, making the video-and-meme-based language of the internet more accessible to users who are blind.

Tweet may have been deleted

Announced in late December 2022, the alt text additions were intentionally human-written, circumnavigating problems many other sites have faced with auto-generated alt text, and improving the ability of screen readers to accurately describe visual media and read webpages or social feeds for users. Starting with 15 writers working on the first 1,000 GIFs, the team at Scribely began rolling out about 3,500 descriptions per week to chip away at "the ever-expanding GIF ocean," Scribely representatives shared in a summary of a presentation for the AccessU 2023 accessibility conference.

"GIFs are an important part of our daily lives, thanks to their unique ability to convey ideas, emotions, and humor in ways that static images often can't. These looping videos move us to moments of joy and happiness. But without alt text, the moment is lost and excludes millions," said Caroline Desrosiers, founder and CEO of Scribely. "That's why this project with GIPHY is so monumental and necessary."

SEE ALSO: A guide to writing accessible image captions Netflix launches custom subtitles and paves the way in audio description. 

In a win for universal captioning advocates, Netflix stepped up its subtitle and captioning game by introducing customizable options for its accessibility text feature. Announced in March, the streaming service now lets users change font size and style, as well as the color and appearance of on-screen captions. As reported by the Verge, the captions include three new text style options with contrasting backgrounds to make the text stand out: Light (black text and white background), Drop Shadow (white text and black background), and Contrast (yellow text and black background).

Customizable text, not just text zooming, is considered a main component of web accessibility, allowing all users to adapt websites to their needs.

SEE ALSO: An exploration of cinematic accessibility: Open captions set the standard

Netflix also continued paving the way in accessibility options for those who are blind or have low vision, winning major awards in audio description at this year's American Council for the Blind's awards gala. The streaming service also released its new limited series All the Light We Cannot See, which featured "rule-breaking" descriptive narration and highlighted cast and crew with disabilities.

Gaming gets in on expanded gameplay for users with disabilities.

Early in the year, at the annual CES tech convention, Sony unveiled it was designing a new adaptive game controller, known as Project Leonardo, for PlayStation 5. The controller allows a user to customize its use and design features, as well as attach third-party accessibility accessories, to help players with limited motor control. 

In April, the company also announced it was making its PlayStation experience easier to navigate for users with disabilities by including obvious accessibility tags to all of its offered games. The tags include notes on relevant visual, audio, control, and gameplay features for each game. 

In May, Xbox announced new features for the Xbox App on PC, such as the ability to reduce visual elements on screen, and introduced a new tagging and search feature to support users looking for accessible games.

Other popular video games, including Street Fighter 6 and the recently-adapted The Last of Us Part 1, released expanded accessibility settings for all users, part of a wider industry shift incorporating universal design in a game's earliest stages of development.  

Companies like Ubisoft have pledged greater transparency about their games' accessibility as well, like the series of accessibility spotlights released alongside the fall launch of Assassin's Creed Mirage.

Live entertainment and sports get accessibility upgrades.

The year also has seen a widespread push for accessibility improvements in live programming, including award shows and sports events. 

The 2023 Academy Awards introduced a host of accessibility changes this year, including red carpet American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters for deaf attendees, live captions and audio description for video feeds, and an ASL livestream available on the show's YouTube channel. The awards show also introduced a new accessibility guide for members of the press covering the event. 

The 2023 Grammy Awards added to its introduction of red carpet interpreters with live audio description, assistive listening devices and sensory bags for attendees, and a newly accessible stage. 

And the world of sports also expanded its accessibility reach, with live ASL interpreters for the annual NFL Super Bowl halftime show and the introduction of live, AI-generated captions for ESPN broadcasts and other Disney-owned live programming. 

GPT-4 makes its accessibility bid.

As the hot-button topic of the year, AI made its way deeper into the world of accessibility with the release of GPT-4, the most advanced artificial intelligence chatbot offered by parent company OpenAI. GPT-4 made its tech available to third-party companies as well, ushering in new collaborations across industries, including those expanding digital accessibility. 

Its biggest effort was with Be My Eyes, a visual assistant app for users who are blind or have low vision. The app released a new GPT-4-based Virtual Volunteer, an AI-powered chat assistant that can help with visual identification of objects and text, in-app searching, alt text for images, route navigation, and more. 

GPT-4 was also used by other accessibility tech companies for devices including Envision smart glasses, a tool that lets wearers read and translate any text. The latest version of the device integrated a GPT-4 powered virtual assistant called "Ask Envision," which allows users to ask questions and interact with the text in front of them, as well.

Credit: Be My Eyes Apple expands its accessibility dominance even further.

Adding to its already robust accessibility tool offerings, Apple announced a swath of new accessibility features for Global Accessibility Awareness Day in May. 

The new tools include improved updates to Voice Control, customization options for Siri and moving elements on-screen, and a new detection feature that lets users point to objects on camera and have their labels read out loud. Apple's biggest addition is an innovative Assistive Access mode, which, when turned on, simplifies a user's phone and accompanying apps to help those with cognitive disabilities better use their devices.

The tech giant introduced two new voice features: Live Speech, a way for users to type-to-talk directly on their home screens and during FaceTime and phone calls, as well as Personal Voice, a locally-stored, digitized version of the user's voice intended to help those at risk of losing speech or with speech disabilities.

The features launched alongside the company's new iOS17. The company also unveiled a new Adaptive Audio mode for Apple AirPods at Apple's WWDC in June. The update allows AirPods to automatically adjust a user's audio settings based on external cues, indicating the potential for additional audio updates on the horizon — Apple added the option for deaf or hard-of-hearing users to pair and customize Made for iPhone hearing devices directly with Mac earlier this year.

Access Mode simplifies a user's phone display to cut down on cognitive load and make it easier for some to use. Credit: Apple Credit: Apple The 988 hotline announces ASL services.

The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, a lifesaving service for those experiencing mental health crises, announced it would finally offer ASL services for those who are deaf and hard of hearing, following the launch of the 3-digit emergency number in 2022.

The hotline now connects those in need to trained counselors who are also fluent in ASL. Callers just need to select "For Deaf & Hard of Hearing" on 988lifeline.org or direct dial "988" on their videophone to get help.

Google updates its navigation tools for the better.

In October, Google announced yet another expansion of its accessible navigation settings for Google Maps users and business pages, including new wheelchair-accessible walking routes when searching for directions, updated Live View experiences for users who are blind, and a new identity attribute label created to find disabled-owned businesses more easily.

The expansion, which adds to the company's Accessible Places feature, was also made available to Android-based car mapping systems, and was accompanied with new assistant features for Google Pixel devices.

Tweet may have been deleted Barbie hype meets accessibility with ASL streaming launch.

Following the summer blockbuster success of Greta Gerwig's Barbie, which was lauded for its message of positive inclusivity and empowerment, Warner Bros. announced the movie would be released to streaming with a fully American Sign Language-transcribed edition.

Keeping to the "Barbie is for everyone" messaging, the streaming version was created in partnership with Deaf community leaders and features a performance by deaf creator, performer, and writer Leila Hanaumi. It was yet another indication that the entertainment industry — and popular culture at large — is considering universal access as a necessity, not an afterthought.

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UPDATE: Dec. 27, 2023, 4:29 p.m. EST This article was originally published in June and updated in December.

Netflix's Pokémon Concierge has a bunch of Pokémon Easter eggs in its design, according to director Iku Ogawa in a new behind-the-scenes clip.

Written by Harumi Doki with concept art and character design by Tadahiro Uesugi, the series is the first Pokémon story told through long-form, stop-motion, puppet animation. It's all based on a bright and sunny island resort for Pokémon and their trainers, where personalised service per Pokémon is the biggest selling point. And watching the production team at work in Netflix's clip above is just as magic as the actual series.

In the clip, you can see how the team brought new concierge Haru (voiced by In This Corner of the World's Non, dubbed in English by The Boy and the Heron's Karen Fukuhara) to life through movement and facial expressions, alongside her Pokémon pal Psyduck. But one of the best bits of the clip is how the team designed the actual resort with little Pokémon design details for viewers to find.

"We used Pokémon as design elements for several items that can be seen throughout the resort," says Ogawa. "Please keep an eye out for them."

How to watch: Pokémon Concierge is now streaming on Netflix.