I’m creating my movie best-of lists retroactively. See all of them.
Hard to believe my last retrospective list in this series was almost two years ago. But I recently rewatched what ended up as my top two movies on this list and realized I hadn’t done this movie year yet, so here we are.
I was 10-11 years old in 1998, so the movies I saw at the time were thusly limited: Mighty Joe Young at the theater, Spice World at a sleepover, The Prince of Egypt and The Parent Trap on steady VHS rotation. None of which, alas, made my list, but thanks anyways for the memories…
On to the list…
1. The Truman Show
I knew I loved this movie but a recent rewatch confirmed it’s an all-timer. It’s easy to forget just how dark the premise is, and how deeply the in-movie cast and crew had to commit to perpetuating this illusion for so long in spite of the many ethical concerns. But the concept, the cast, and the execution are all A+ work. And it’s only 1 hour and 40 minutes. So glad it’s that and not some 12-episode limited series.
2. Saving Private Ryan
A foundational cinematic text for my budding cinephile self who saw it at around 12 years old. Funny how the cascade of supporting players (Ted Danson, Dennis Farina, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillon) meant nothing to me at the time but now looks both impressive and odd.
3. You’ve Got Mail
This is Peak Romcom. Hanks and Ryan and Ephron and New York City and witty repartee and dramatic stakes and bookstores—it’s all there in a literary love note to love itself. See also: 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, the movie this is based on.
4. Armageddon
Unequivocally one of Bruce Willis’s best roles, not to mention the cavalcade of character actors filling out the ensemble. Story-wise it makes no sense, but as a comedic blockbuster adventure there are few better.
5. A Bug’s Life
Feels like the forgotten Pixar at this point, coming out at the beginning of their run and nestled between the first two Toy Story movies. But it has all the elements Pixar is known for, on top of being a Seven Samurai rehash with insects.
6. Pleasantville
I’ve never forgotten the scene of Bud helping his mom reapply her makeup to cover up her post-transformation color. In a movie that’s basically one giant metaphor, that tactility really packs a punch.
7. American History X
Speaking of never forgetting, there are some brutal moments in this one—both physically and rhetorically.
8. The Thin Red Line
It would be a while before I became familiar with Terrence Malick and the significance of this movie as his return to filmmaking. But looking back now, it makes for a great contrast with Saving Private Ryan.
9. A Simple Plan
As a late-‘90s, midwestern, snow-laden crime noir with peculiar characters, it’s like Fargo’s more serious older brother. And if both of those movies can teach us anything, it’s to never, ever take the money. Very pleasing to see Bill Paxton in a full-fledged leading role, displaying the chops he exhibited in so many supporting roles.
10. Ever After
One of the many romcoms I grew up with on steady rotation. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen it but I was always impressed with the humor and drama and romance of it all.
If you want to enjoy reading, don’t have a reading goal.
If you want to read more books by female authors or explore a new genre or something like that, go for it. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Once you say “I want to read X number of books this year,” whatever that number is, you’ve turned what should be an enjoyable, enriching experience into work.
Just read what you like and read often—that’s all.
Not YouTube watch history. When you turn off the watch history for your YouTube account (manage it here), your homepage becomes gloriously blank rather than cluttered with garbage served up by their algorithm.
Not WorkFlowy. One day I decided I was tired of splitting my personal and professional note-taking, task management, and documents between multiple apps and services, so I took everything out of WorkFlowy and moved it to either Google Docs or Apple Notes (for personal stuff and archived material) or OneDrive or Monday.com (for work). I’ve used WorkFlowy for over a decade and have really enjoyed its simplicity and structure, but I wanna try life without it for a bit.
Apple Reminders. I’ve used this off and on over the years, mostly for shared shopping lists between my wife and me. The recent update that suggests grocery store categories for items on your list and then automatically sorts them is a game changer.
Cinema Sugar asked on Threads: “What movie do you refuse to watch?” It provoked some interesting responses, the most common by far being Titanic and Barbie.
I get the Barbie backlash since it’s new and somewhat (weirdly) politically charged. Titanic, though, is nearly 30 years old and one of the most awarded and highest-grossing movies of all time. Perhaps that stature is enough to continue repelling people decades later? I get that not everyone is interested in a tragic romance and/or disaster adventure, but those who proudly avoid it as if it’s a badge of honor ought to make like Rose and lighten up, let their hair down, and do a jig down in third-class.
Partially out of spite for those insecure dumdums, I recently rewatched it for the first time in a decade. Some thoughts:
1. It’s a masterpiece. There’s just no way around it. There are cringey elements, sure, but they’re drowned out by the sheer magnitude of the spectacle and drama.
2. Noted this quote from the TV interview Paxton’s Brock Lovett gives:
Everyone knows the familiar stories of Titanic—the nobility, the band playing till the very end and all that. But what I’m interested in are the untold stories, the secrets locked deep inside the hull of Titanic.
This is a key point when thinking about the value of history and historical fiction. Imagined characters like Jack and Rose serve as representatives of all those real people whose stories remain untold, giving us a personal way into grand historical moments that typically erase the everyday folks who don’t end up in history books.
3. I didn’t see it in theaters, so my only experience with it for a long time was with the two-cassette VHS. The first cassette ending with Captain Smith’s line “I believe you may get your headlines, Mr. Ismay” and then a cut to black was an all-time intermission cliffhanger. There were other long movies with similar break lines like The Sound of Music (“It will be my first party, father!”) and Gone With The Wind (“Tomorrow is another day!”), but they just don’t compare in dramatic effect. And since DVDs quickly took over around this time, it might be the last movie with such a built-in cliffhanger.
4. This time around I really felt the weight Mr. Andrews was carrying as he reckoned with the unfolding tragedy and wandered through the mingling first-class passengers who were oblivious to their fate.
5. There’s a stark contrast between the two times the flares were shot off: in the first, they’re up close and seen by the passengers like a brilliant firework display, but in the second they’re in a far-wide shot that frames the mighty ship and its flares as but small flickers of light in the vast darkness of the ocean. Brilliant move to show just how alone and doomed they really were.
6. You know what this would make a great double feature with? Once. A chance encounter of two strangers, one of which inspires the other to escape their melancholic funk and live their life to the fullest. There’s even a lyrical nod to Titanic in “Falling Slowly”: take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time…
Scheduled to be released in theaters June 2020, the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical In the Heights was in the first wave of movies that were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It got pushed back a full year to June 2021, when as part of a slate of Warner Bros. movies it controversially debuted in theaters and HBO Max simultaneously.
While I did take advantage of the streaming option for several of these movies (sorry, Dune), I knew I wanted to see In the Heights on the big screen. Not only to support it financially but also because musicals ought to be a big-screen experience shared by a crowd of like-minded moviegoers.
But as with the denizens of Miranda’s Washington Heights, my cinematic sueñito soon had a rude awakening: The theater I went to was completely empty. Not just my screening room but the entire multiplex. I appeared to be the only person going to a movie on that particular Sunday afternoon, a time I assumed would normally be bustling with people of all ages.
Part of me was OK with having a screening room to myself as I wouldn’t have to worry about talkers or texters. But this feeling was also tinged with disappointment: it meant moviegoing itself, my beloved pastime, was still fighting the same virus we moviegoers were fighting outside in the real world.
Little did I know that the fictional story I was about to witness on screen about a neighborhood reckoning with a paralyzing power outage would serve as an unintentional parable for a different kind of crisis.
“Everybody’s got a dream”
Adapted from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning stage musical, In the Heights tells the stories of community members in the predominantly Latine neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City, with Usnavi (Anthony Ramos) and his bodega as the centerpiece of the dramas and delights that happen during one sweltering summer.
What the core cast of characters share, besides being childhood friends, is the desire for something more—something they hope will propel them out of their limiting circumstances. Usnavi yearns to return to his ancestral home in the Dominican Republic, which conflicts with his feelings for Vanessa, who also aspires to escape the barrio and pursue fashion design. Meanwhile Benny dreams of becoming a business tycoon and being with Nina, a star student but first-year Stanford dropout having an existential crisis.
These rising tensions finally come to a boil one night when the group is out at a packed salsa club. It’s a sweaty and electric scene that’s punctuated by moments of misunderstanding and frustration between Usnavi and Vanessa, who can’t get in the same rhythm with each other—on or off the dance floor.
And then: Boom! Power outage. The club goes dark, and amidst the chaos and screams the crowd stampedes out into the unlit streets.
With no indication of when the power will return, the neighborhood is left to endure the heat however they can. The public pool offers welcome relief, which the epic “96,000” showcases with exuberance. But eventually fatigue sets in and all there is to do is sluggishly waste away outside in the boiling sun.
That’s the scene the fiery salon owner Daniela arrives at when she charges into an apartment complex courtyard in search of a boisterous farewell for her salon relocation. Her attempt to rally their spirits turns into the lively “Carnaval del Barrio” sequence, which features some great song-and-dance but also lets people air out their feelings about the challenging circumstances.
Vanessa and Sonny, Usnavi’s undocumented immigrant cousin, vent about their powerlessness—both literally amidst the prolonged outage, and figuratively against gentrification and discrimination:
Y’all keep dancin’ and singin’ and celebratin’ And it’s gettin’ late and this place is disintegratin’
But Usnavi, preparing to leave Washington Heights for his homeland, argues for a hopeful acceptance of change and makes a plea for solidarity:
Alright, we are powerless, so light up a candle There’s nothing going on here that we can’t handle
This spurs the group into a raucous, unifying celebration of the barrio’s different ethnicities, with people rallying around the flags of their heritage—Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico—not as jingoistic saber-rattling but as jubilant ethnic pride. They may be suffering, but they’re suffering together.
“Oye, que paso? Blackout! Blackout!”
A sudden crisis with an unknown duration. Increased outdoor interaction with neighbors and friends. Personal and political discontentment spilling out into the public square. Sound familiar?
Despite the Broadway version debuting a decade before—and the movie filming a year before—the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, In the Heights serves as a richly drawn (and sung) synecdoche for that particularly fraught moment in modern American history. You remember: within two days of the WHO’s official pandemic declaration on March 11, 2020, Tom Hanks announced his diagnosis from quarantine in Australia, the NBA shut down, the president addressed the nation, hospitals braced for impact, and businesses everywhere slowed to silence. COVID didn’t strike quite as suddenly as a power outage (hello, toilet paper hoarders) but it sure felt like it in the moment.
The days and weeks that followed were a time when we’d lost everyday powers: to visit elderly family members, to go grocery shopping without fear of contamination, to attend school in front of other humans instead of a screen.
But it was also a time when, like a real-life “Carnaval del Barrio,” pent-up discontentment got channeled outward as thousands of people took to the streets with raised voices—not to escape a power outage but to protest George Floyd’s murder. And the tug-of-war between hope and despair played out on the national stage as the 2020 election ominously approached.
(Even Abuela Claudia fits into the analogy: her health issues combined with the suffocating heat proved too overwhelming, leading to her death early in the pandemic—a tragic analogue to the virus’s high mortality rate among the elderly.)
“We’re all in this together” is something we heard a lot in those dark early days when the masks went on and the infection trend lines went off the charts. Over time, as inequalities piled up and ideologies clashed, it become less inspirational and more cruelly ironic. But its core message stands, in real life and on the screen: communal camaraderie amidst a crippling crisis makes struggle a little easier to endure. As Abuela Claudia always said, “¡Paciencia y fe!”
“Tell the whole block I’m staying”
Back in Washington Heights, the power eventually returns and our friends are left to adjust to their own “new normal.”
Nina has regained her vocational drive and plans to return to college to fight for the undocumented. Vanessa has moved out of the neighborhood and found her creative ambitions reinvigorated. Usnavi is still set to leave for the Dominican Republic until, with a little help from his friends, an epiphany reframes his vision for what home means to him. (Something the large swathes of post-COVID remote and hybrid workers can appreciate.) Though they looked different than they did in the before times, their sueñitos had come true.
I’m very grateful I was in a happy and healthy home for quarantine with my wife and child in June 2020. I also wish I could have been at the movie theater instead, watching In the Heights become the smash hit of the summer. That didn’t happen, but I can still dream…
I recently went on a bike ride to the library with my 5 year old. It was the first time he was on his own (training-wheeled) bike instead of riding along in the trailer and it was really fun. He was so jazzed up about it, which caused him to start monologuing his thoughts throughout the entire ride.
Some of those thoughts morphed into what he considers the Rules for Biking, which are as follows:
1. “Always look forward, except when there’s wildlife or really beautiful parks, and you can just look for a second.”
2. “If you get a scrape on your leg, it looks cool. Not too much cool, just still a little bit of cool.”
3. “Everyone who loves biking should stick together.”
Bonus quote: “Ahhhh, don’t you just love having the wind in your face?”
Today our youngest turned one year old. He and I are often outside together like in this picture because it’s what makes him feel better when he’s upset. Walking around while holding him will get tougher as he grows and begins to walk, so I’m trying my best to cherish these moments before he goes off to make shadows of his own.
If someone I love wants me to go to a movie with them, I do.
I never hesitate to watch a favorite movie again when that’s where my whim takes me. In fact, I watch movies from my Blu-Ray/DVD collection more often than I stream anything.
It’s the other two that are head-scratchers for me:
I don’t watch movies produced and/or distributed by the big studios. (I had been leaning in this direction for a while, but I didn’t make it a guideline until three or four years ago.) I just don’t, for the same reason that I don’t read novels by people who live in Brooklyn: it’s not a good bet. The chance of encountering something excellent, or even interestingly flawed, is too remote. Not impossible — I really enjoyed Dune, for instance, and Oppenheimer, both of which I watched with my son — but remote.
I don’t subscribe to Netflix, or HBO, or Amazon Prime. The only service I subscribe to is the Criterion Channel, because it allows me to watch (a) classic movies, (b) independent movies, and (c) foreign movies. All of which are much better bets than anything the current big studios make.
The only streaming service we pay for is Prime since it’s bundled with our Amazon account. I’d love a Criterion Channel subscription, though between my Criterion Blu-rays, the public library, and my free Kanopy subscription through said library I already have classic, independent, and foreign films fairly at the ready.
And, having watched a goodly amount of all those, I gotta say I don’t think they are all “much better bets” than current studio fare. For every Citizen Kane or Blood Simple or Pather Panchali, there’s a dozen more titles in the back catalog that are just as mediocre as what today’s studios can put out. Just because they’re old or obscure or won’t show up in the Netflix Top 10 doesn’t make them inherently better than modern movies.
As for the big studios bit, here’s a list of titles produced and/or distributed by one of the Big Five studios since 2020 that Alan’s guidelines preclude him from seeing:
Nope
The Fabelmans
Jackass Forever
Top Gun: Maverick
Babylon
In the Heights
Encanto
The Beatles: Get Back
Barbarian
The Banshees of Inisherin
Theater Camp
Poor Things
All of Us Strangers
Not to mention titles that were streaming exclusives like:
The Wonder
The Vast of Night
Roma
The Irishman
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Palm Springs
Prey
The point is not what you think of each of these movies individually. (I happen to like, really like, or love all of them.) It’s that a formula that prevents you from seeing any of them seems to me too blunt-force and ascetic for its own good.
If it’s a matter of “too many movies, too little time” and wanting a reliable mechanism to separate the wheat from the chaff, then that’s something I can fully relate to. Life’s too short to watch bad movies, so (as with books) you should stop watching what you don’t like so you can spend your limited time on earth with what you do.
How do I decide what’s worth watching? I don’t have codified formula to fall back on, but here are several factors I might consider:
The writer/director
The cast
The premise or story
Historical or cultural significance
How well it’s regarded by people I love and/or whose taste I trust
How well it’s regarded by select critics whose taste I trust
How well it’s regarded by the cinephile community writ large
How likely it is I’ll enjoy it even if the above factors are lacking
The beauty is these apply to all kinds of movies: new and old, independent and studio-backed, English-language and international. And there’s not a certain amount of them I have to hit to say yes to a movie. It could be only one or even none and I could still decide to give it a go.
But even meeting all of them does not guarantee a hit. Every time I hit Play or enter a theater is a roll of the dice, and that’s the fun of it. What I watch could end up being gold or garbage or something in between. What keeps me coming back is the joy and anticipation of discovery, the possibility of being surprised or delighted no matter where the movie comes from.
That dedication to whim is something I gleaned from none other than Alan himself in the guidelines he set out in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. Those guidelines apply just as much to movies as books or any other art form, and they’re reliable enough to lead you towards fruitful ends—with or without a big movie studio in the mix.
One of the many clichés you hear as a parent of littles from older parents is something to the effect of: “Cherish every moment—they grow up so fast.”
It’s something I’m also tempted to say to newer parents because kids do indeed grow up fast, and when you look at photos from when they were younger it’s easy to get wistful for those times.
But it’s also true that not every moment can or should be cherished, not when it’s full of screaming or sleep deprivation or pacifiers that need to be cleaned yet again. Sometimes you pine for that seemingly mythical future when the kids are older and life is easier and you can do things without a diaper bag or tantrum.
There are a few names you could call this phenomenon of living in the moment while longing for another:
Cognitive dissonance
“Two things are true” per the Good Inside philosophy of Dr. Becky Kennedy
What I’d call “improv parenting” – i.e. taking a “yes, and” approach
Whatever you want to call it, the idea of two conflicting states existing at the same time strongly resonates for me. It’s OK to acknowledge and accept whatever phase you’re currently in—newborn, toddler, teen, single or multiple kids, etc.—while also wishing you were in another. “Yes, I’m here right now. And I will be over there sooner than I realize.”
This perspective doesn’t erase or invalidate the (many) frustrations embedded in child-rearing. It merely helps you see and appreciate the good stuff in each phase, even when you’re deep in the trenches. It’s a reminder that life is fleeting, that each phase has its good and bad, fun and hard, and none of it lasts.
It started a few years ago when our firstborn got into our copy of The Little Book of Backyard Bird Songs that plays a dozen different bird calls. Then one day while on a walk through our local park, I heard a call that I recognized from the book, so I knew right away: red-winged blackbird!
More recently I started using the free Merlin Bird ID app, which identifies birds based on their calls and has made me much more attuned to hearing new ones as we walk. According to that, our neighborhood is full of cardinals, robins, house sparrows, mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, white-breasted nuthatches, woodpeckers, and lots of other avian delights.
I’ve been on social media long enough to have accumulated a few pet peeves about how people interact online.
Here’s one: the phrase “do better.”
Much like its cousin “wake up”, “do better” signals a smug self-satisfaction that will justifiably be met with defensiveness by the accused and therefore a very low chance they will actually seek to “do better” (whatever that even means).
So if you actually want someone you disagree with to change their thinking or behavior, you’ll have to do better than “do better.”
Austin Kleon on a recent episode of the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast:
I truly believe that with a book, on a sentence to sentence level, I trust the turning of pages. There needs to be a momentum. If you’re turning pages, the book is good, and that includes the trash reading. I do my fair share of it. But I really trust the turning of the pages.
This is a beautiful phrase and important if counterintuitive concept. He was talking specifically about how quitting more books actually helps you read more because you’re much more likely to finish a book you actually like.
Certain kinds of reading are naturally more arduous than others, as this lover of presidential biographies can attest. But that’s the thing—I actually enjoy reading those weighty tomes, so even the arduous elements are still worth the effort and usually don’t stop me from keeping those pages turning.
So many people have this misbegotten belief that even reading for pleasure has to be hard work to be worthwhile. It’s often a vestige of schooling, where you’re assigned books and forced to read and write about them regardless of how much you like them. There’s a different kind of value in that exercise, but when we’re talking about reading for fun outside of educational or professional obligations there’s just no excuse for it.
I half-joked in my Oppenheimer blurb that I have a long list of history books that also deserve to be turned into IMAX-worthy epics.
Well, I’m happy to report my favorite author Steven Johnson is also on board with this movement—specifically for the story of penicillin and other incredible scientific achievements:
If Nolan can create an IMAX blockbuster out of quantum mechanics and Atomic Energy Commission hearings, surely someone could make a compelling film out of this material. There’s even a crazy subplot—that I also wrote about in Extra Life—where Hitler’s life is saved by American penicillin after the 1944 Wolf’s Lair assassination attempt. And yet, for some reason, those films just don’t seem to get made.
We get endless entertainment offerings about the Apollo missions, but nothing about the global triumph of eradicating smallpox. We get big-budget features following brilliant scientists as they figure out ever-more-effective means of conducting mass slaughter, and not films about brilliant scientists collaborating to keep soldiers and civilians from dying horrifying deaths from sepsis and other infections. Apparently, we like rockets and bombs more than pills and needles—or at least that’s what we’re told we like.
Johnson’s books are great examples of nonfiction page-turners that could easily be movie material, from the pirates of Enemy of All Mankind to the epidemiological murder mystery at the center of The Ghost Map. Not to mention any number of the threads within Extra Life or How We Got to Now that show the unlikely and riveting origins of miraculous innovations we now take for granted.
I brought physical media back into my life not to replace streaming, but to keep streaming in its place.
I heard an audiophile once say that he treated streaming music services (even lossless streaming) like radio. It’s great for discovering new music and artists, and to play at parties, but it’s not for serious listening. I think that’s a perfect analogy.
Movies are my physical media collecting medium of choice, but the analogy stands. Streamers are not infinite archives—they’re good for conveniently spotlighting new and selected titles for only a certain amount of time.
If you truly love a title, get a physical copy and don’t surrender to the vicissitudes of media conglomerates whose only concern is their bottom line.
Rivaling Winston Churchill’s missive on brevity, this 1944 memo by Maury Maverick is the first known use of the word gobbledygook and dishes out some hard truths about good writing:
Be short and use Plain English.
Memoranda should be as short as clearness will allow. The Naval officer who wired “Sighted Sub — Sank Same” told the whole story.
Put the real subject matter — the point — and even the conclusion, in the opening paragraph and the whole story on one page. Period! If a lengthy explanation, statistical matter, or such is necessary, use attachments.
Stay off gobbledygook language. It only fouls people up. For the Lord’s sake, be short and say what you’re talking about. Let’s stop “pointing-up” programs, “finalizing” contracts that “stem from” district, regional or Washington “levels”. There are no “levels” — local government is as high as Washington Government. No more patterns, effectuating, dynamics. Anyone using the words “activation” or “implementation” will be shot.
It’s hard to even imagine now, but aimlessly browsing bookstores was something I did semi-regularly back in my single and then pre-kid days. One kind of book I’d always keep an eye out for was (for lack of a better name) word compendiums, an author’s curated collection of rare, idiosyncratic, or just plain cool words.
Here’s my own collection of these collections, which also includes a few gifted to me:
How could you not love books with ostentatious, tongue-in-cheek titles like The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate that feature antiquated or unusual words like nepheligenous and bavardage that only logophiles like myself appreciate?
I love them because they catalog the kind of two-dollar words I already collect myself. You can find most of those words in any self-respecting unabridged dictionary, but surrounded by thousands of other less-cool words. These compendiums distill the dictionary into its finest, most potent form, and for that they have my deep respect—not to mention a place on my limited bookshelves.
Something I learned a long time ago is that it is a great help to the artist to believe that there are no coincidences. One way to boost your curiosity is to just assume that everything in life is a clue left from the universe for further investigation. Follow the clues the universe drops for you, and you will almost always learn something interesting. Take everything as a sign and you’ll be less stumped about what to do next.
