The Naked Gun (2025). Cheers to a movie that knows exactly what it is and how to be that for just the right amount of time. Still giggling about random bits from this days later.
Weapons. I’m typically a matinee guy but I stayed up past my bedtime to go see this in a theater, and I’m glad I did. We were in whatever you call this thing together.
A Little Prayer. The kind of movie that inspires you to listen more intently to the birds singing outside your window in the morning, or linger longer at a park bench. ‘Twas a pleasure chatting with the writer/director Angus MacLachlan about this movie, Jane Levy’s knockout performance, and more.
Lost in the Stream: How Algorithms Redefined the Way Movies Are Made and Watched by Jeff Rauseo. Wrote a review of this over at Cinema Sugar.
The Assessment. It’s been a minute since a movie gave me as many belly laughs of recognition as chills up my spine like this one did.
Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell’s acquired a bit of a divisive reputation, but he remains a great writer with unique and insightful perspectives. Not to mention a great podcast guest.
Eephus. Gonna be a great autumnal rewatch.
Sinners. This has several A+, capital-C Cinema sequences that had me thinking “Here we go, hell yeah.” It also had a lot of stitching around them that perhaps a rewatch will feel more seamless but on the first go seemed to stick out a little. Overall though, an absolute pleasure to see an original film by an amazing auteur and inspired creative team.
What do you do when you encounter the impossible? Something that doesn’t compute with your understanding of reality and drastically challenges your worldview?
You can ignore or deny it, confident the existing story you tell yourself can render any mystery or inconsistency meaningless to your everyday life. You can resent it and lash out in anger, yearning for the time before this thing crashed into your conscience and caused irrevocable change. You can also lean into it, treating it not as a threat but as a thread that needs just the slightest tug to unravel.
On my journey away from the religion of my youth, I did all three pretty much at the same time. And not only that, but I saw those very same dynamics play out among the three core characters in Max Barbakow’s 2020 film Palm Springs—a terrific time-loop comedy (5 years old today) with a lot on its mind.
Read the rest of my latest essay at Cinema Sugar, which touches on the movie’s magical combination of humor and humanity, how the time loop is like a religion, and how all of us find meaning to make sense of the nonsensical.
Black Bag. Felt great to see an honest-to-god movie in the theater with a delightfully twisty plot and inspired casting that made me feel as warm and fuzzy as the film’s lighting. Wouldn’t be surprised to find this on my best-of-2025 list.
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson. Turns out there was a lot of drama leading up to the Civil War…
Lincoln. Rewatched this after finishing The Demon of Unrest as a kind of Civil War bookend. Daniel Day-Lewis’s win for Best Actor might be the most deserving Oscar ever awarded.
The Pitt. Been watching this Max series that’s an unofficial ER reboot and my hat is off to anyone who chooses to become and remain an emergency nurse.
A Complete Unknown. I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool Dylan fan like many white dudes around my age and above, so perhaps that’s why I didn’t fall for this as hard as others, Chalamet’s excellent performance aside.
Parasite. Yes this is dramatic and tragic and twisted and all that, but it’s also so damn funny. “Leave it—free fumigation.” 💀💀💀
Mary Poppins Returns. No one can touch Julie Andrews’ singing voice, but Emily Blunt really nails the other Poppins vibes.
Though I usually do a Top 10 with some honorable mentions, once this year’s list of honorable mentions creeped past 10 movies I figured why not just do a full top 20? The more movies the merrier.
Here are the 2024 dramas, documentaries, dystopias, debuts, and other delights I dug.
A funny and sometimes wistful sci-fi remix of When Harry Met Sally that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari are a winning pair and fun hang as the will-they-won’t-they leads.
19. Peacock
Echoing the deliciously deadpan humor of Force Majeure, this debut feature from German filmmaker Bernhard Wenger follows a man so talented at blending into the fictions of his work that when his personal life begins to suffer, his ensuing existential crisis has him questioning his entire reality. It’s a darkly absurd and deliberately paced dramedy that serves as a wake-up call to people pleasers everywhere.
18. Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory
A really nice discovery thanks to the chance to interview the director Justin Johnson. Spotlighting Johnson’s parents and the secretive prosthetic nipple business they started after his mom’s breast cancer diagnosis, this documentary also reckons with his conservative Christian upbringing in Wisconsin and subsequent religious deconstruction in a wholesome and humane way. Really nice portrait of family, faith, and life’s contradictions.
17. The Greatest Night in Pop
I’d heard “We Are the World” like everyone else, and knew vaguely that it was sung by famous musicians. But until watching this documentary I had no idea about its background or the logistics of making it happen, let alone the insane star wattage it harnessed in one room. Fascinating to watch the dynamics play out among these very different artists and personalities during an all-nighter for the ages.
16. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
We told our six year old we were going to watch the new Wallace & Gromit movie. “I don’t want to,” he said, “they are far too silly.” We still watched it, and guess who was laughing and totally locked in the whole time? Me, that’s who. And also our six year old. Anyway, any Aardman joint should automatically win Best Picture given how insanely difficult it is to make any stop-motion animated feature film, let alone a great one.
15. Conclave
How Edward Berger turned ecclesiastical proceedings into a pulpy, beautifully shot mystery thriller better than it has rights to be shows just how powerful cinema is as an art form. And watching Ralph Fiennes play a character who’s basically the opposite of his role as Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel shows just how compelling powerful actors can be.
14. Rebel Ridge
Jeremy Saulnier knows how to make a damn thriller. In this latest pot-boiler, a former Marine has his bag of cash unjustly seized by local police, instigating his one-man revenge plot where with every slight escalation and provocation the stakes get higher and your heart beats faster. Civil asset forfeiture reform now!
13. Dìdi
I like the Google summary of this: “an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love his mom.” As someone who was only a few years older than Dìdi was in the movie, I found much of this both very relatable (hello AIM and MySpace Top 8 and Motion City Soundtrack needle-drops) and also painful to realize how much I saw my own 13-year-old self in Dìdi’s adolescent angst.
12. September 5
A worthy ancestor of Spotlight in how it dramatizes a real-life moment of media ethics and production colliding with a dark chapter in history, in this case the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. For me the tactility of the period technology—analog phones, walkie-talkies, film cameras, buttons and knobs, typewriters, hand-lettered TV chyrons—made this even better and more thrilling than it would have been if set during our current digital era.
11. Challengers
I rather flippantly called this “your typical sports movie featuring a throuple of sweaty, smirking scumbags swirling into a sadomasochistic, psychosexual spiral.” Which I think is accurate but also doesn’t make clear how fun and funny this movie is in spite of (or rather because of) that. If tennis is a relationship, as Zendaya’s Tashi claims in the movie, then this tennis/relationship movie is worth the commitment.
10. My Old Ass
How many boxes did this check for me? Let me count: ☑ Earnest, bittersweet coming-of-age dramedy ☑ Light magical realism ☑ Frequency and Arrival homage ☑ Includes Little Women motif ☑ Birkenstocks-wearing character named Chad Can’t wait to see what star Maisy Stella and writer-director Megan Park do next.
9. Here
To paraphrase Doc Brown, the critics crapping on this Robert Zemeckis adaptation of Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel (one of the best books of the 2010s) just weren’t thinking fourth-dimensionally. We live in time, people! You can’t fathom how much has happened throughout human history and prehistory on the very patch of earth you’re standing on now because it’s awesomely unknowable! The movie lovingly portrays the book’s intra-panel time-jumping, its timeless themes of life and death and love and loss, and its deft intertwining of the everyday and eternal—all while rocking an Alan Silvestri score that goes right for the jugular. And I’m here for that.
8. Dune: Part Two
I couldn’t see Dune in theaters so I was happy to be able to see this one on a big screen. It’s a sequel that very much stands on its own as a stunningly rendered experience while simultaneously bearing structural burdens that middle sequels often have. Still, anytime I can see big, weird, tactile, religion-infused spectacle like this is a good time for me.
7. Good One
In stark contrast to the bombast of Dune: Part Two, India Donaldson’s debut feature about a teenaged girl on a hiking trip with her dad and his friend thrives in the smallest gestures and pauses and looks—in what’s said and left unsaid. It’s Reichardt-core to the core: quietly portentous, nature-drenched, and oh so gently damning of parental obtusity.
6. Saturday Night
It’s hard not to be impressed by how Jason Reitman pulled off depicting in real time the 90 minutes before the first episode of SNL in 1975, complete with spot-on portrayals of the original cast and other figures. In that way it’s like the groovy ‘70s love child of Steve Jobs and Birdman. (It’s also a fascinating double feature with September 5, the other 2024 film set backstage of a seismic mid-‘70s television event.) More fables about the beautifully chaotic process of making art, please and thank you!
5. Civil War
One criterion for making my best-of lists is being something I just couldn’t shake. That’s definitely true for Alex Garland’s latest, which depicts a United States embroiled in a violent civil war and a crew of journalists trying to interview the embattled president. I find the criticism about the ideological vagueness of the different political factions to be beside the point—what matters is how different individuals choose to engage with the turmoil, from a young photojournalist compelled to capture frontline combat to a store employee blithely dismissing the conflict altogether. Let’s hope this doesn’t become more prescient than it already is.
4. Nickel Boys
Sure-handed, tough-minded, clear-eyed, and full-hearted, RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel takes cinema’s power as an empathy machine to the extreme with its first-person POV perspective, strapping us along for a turbulent yet touching ride along with two friends weathering life at a Florida boarding school. I found this to be in accidental conversation with the next movie on this list, both being searing 2024 films that dramatize the triumphs and travails of mid-20th century Black life.
3. Soundtrack to a Coup d’État
As a lover of history and jazz, this documentary spotlighting famous ‘50s jazz musicians and their role in the Cold War geopolitics surrounding Congo’s push for independence bebopped me right on the nose. It plays out much like a jazz track, with different people trading solos and the frequent context-setting intertitles like punchy drum riffs and an ensemble of colorful characters making the whole thing sing. As sharp and smooth as a Miles Davis solo, and a revelation for the documentary form.
2. Anora
From Tangerine (a favorite of 2015) to The Florida Project (my #1 of 2017) to Red Rocket (a favorite of 2022) and now this Palme d’Or-winning tale of a Brooklyn sex worker’s misadventures with a Russian oligarch’s son, Sean Baker has become American cinema’s most reliable anthropologist of the restless strivers and scrappy survivors at society’s margins. How this turns from high-flying Cinderella story to shambolic chase movie to gut-wrenching character study feels like a crossover of Scorsese with the Dardenne brothers, but also a continuation of Baker’s characteristically compassionate yet clear-eyed treatment of even his most challenging characters.
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
If Fury Road was the New Testament of George Miller’s Mad Max saga, bringing redemption to both the story’s characters and the action genre itself, then Furiosa is its Old Testament: brutal, beguiling, mercurial, and thrillingly epic. Call it a Pentateuch for a new (post-apocalyptic) age. Also really interesting to rewatch this right before another Fury Road rewatch as it provided the backstory to Furiosa’s journey and the events of Fury Road that I didn’t have the first (several) times watching it. In that way Fury Road felt more like the sequel/conclusion to Furiosa than vice versa, and made me appreciate both even more. This whole saga is a really rich text on gender, power, politics, and what we do to survive.
Still haven’t seen: Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, All We Imagine As Light, Wicked
Non-2024 movies I watched and enjoyed: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Populaire, Little Children, Green Room, The Thing
I’m very proud to share this list of Cinema Sugar’s Top 50 Movies of the 21st Century, something the team has worked on for months in anticipation of celebrating our favorite films from the last quarter century.
Please take a look (and share with other movie lovers!) for my short thoughts on Palm Springs, Lord of the Rings, Arrival, WALL-E, and a bunch of other movies dear to my heart.
We also picked our favorites in different subcategories. Here are mine…
Favorite film scores:
Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore
The Social Network, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
The Village, James Newton Howard
Interstellar, Hans Zimmer
Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla
Favorite theatergoing experiences:
Seeing Toy Story 3 with college friends right after graduation
Dressing up with high school friends to see Ocean’s Twelve
Seeing Her with my then-girlfriend (now wife) and discussing it afterward
Going blindly into—and getting blindsided by—The LEGO Movie
Getting sucked into the whirlwind of The Florida Project
Midnight Mass. Loved this Netflix limited series for the same reason I love Darren Aronofsky’s Noah: it takes literally all the Bible’s very goth elements (“drink my blood”, the terror of angels, etc.) and transposes it into a deeply human modern story.
Didi. This coming-of-age story set in 2008 featuring a teenager only a few years younger than I was at the time, so you know the use of AIM and Motion City Soundtrack songs were a bullseye for me.
Nosferatu. Been knocking off a lot of classic horror blindspots and this 1922 F.W. Murnau silent version definitely qualifies. One favorite intertitle: “The Death Ship has a new captain.” 🤘
Challengers. Just your typical sports movie featuring a throuple of sweaty, smirking scumbags swirling into a sadomasochistic, psychosexual spiral.
Fear Not!: A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies by Josh Larsen. Strongly respect Josh’s perspective as a critic and Filmspotting host, so amidst my recent foray into horror movies I thought this short book was a helpful primer on the redemptive aspects of the genre.
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. Appreciated some historical bits in this but also skimmed over a bunch. Will it inspire me to get back into paper journaling? TBD.
Night of the Living Dead. Some wild swings between “this looks like a terrible student film” and “holy schnikes”. I knew nothing of it besides being considered the godfather of zombie movies, so all the social commentary and 1968 of it all really hit.
The Thing. My first John Carpenter movie and it was, uh, rather horrifying.
Roger Radcliffe is ultimately a supporting player in this story of dogs trying to avoid being skinned for their fur (you know, a Disney movie for kids). But as the hero of his own story, he’s an excellent example of an artist at work.
Here’s what we can learn from this eccentric English musician about a productive and fulfilling creative life.
Treat it like a job.
Roger may be a struggling artist, but he still understands the importance of routine and consistency. You can tell he puts in the hours and treats his craft like the job it is—much to his dog Pongo’s chagrin.
Take a walk.
Even a pro like Roger knows when it’s quittin’ time. Once 5 pm arrives (thanks to some sneaky time-turning by Pongo), he’s out the door with his canine companion for some fresh air and a chance to unwind.
Find the melody.
While playing around with the melody that would eventually become his hit song “Cruella de Vil”, Roger uses nonsense songs as placeholders, which his wife Anita playfully teases him for. But he insists: “Melody first, my dear, and then the lyrics.” Of course lyrics can come first in the creative process, but until you have a melody for them you don’t have a song. Whatever the creative art, figure out what you absolutely need before adding layers of complexity.
Use your life as inspiration.
Roger’s journey from struggling musician to successful hitmaker can be traced to one key moment: glomming Cruella de Vil’s name onto a half-formed melody. This bit of improvised whimsy occurred only because he was present and observant of the world around him. Same case with his second single “Dalmatian Plantation”, which, despite the problematic name, emerged out of his natural reaction to dozens of sooty dogs destroying his house.
The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson. Another brilliant narrative nonfiction saga from Steven Johnson that weaves multiple historical threads together to tell the riveting story of how dynamite, fingerprinting, anarchism, information science and other seemingly disparate forces all conspired to create what would become the modern surveillance state.
BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman. Highly recommend this new book for my fellow parents of boys especially, but also anyone interested and invested in a more wholehearted masculinity.
The Bear season 3. Carmy needs to chill out and call Claire.
Civil War. Alex Garland’s latest and rather (unfortunately) timely dystopian drama shows what would happen if Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation became president instead of Leslie Knope.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I’d have to do some research on this, but I suspect the five-act structure of this saga could align rather nicely with the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible. Furiosa? More like Mad Moses.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Might be the most ’70s New York City movie ever?
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.
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…
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.
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.
Dune: Part Two. I couldn’t see Dune on the big screen so I was glad to catch this one. Anytime I can see a big, weird, tactile, religion-infused spectacle like this is a good time for me.
Masters of the Air. Produced by the same people behind Band of Brothers and The Pacific, this miniseries on Apple TV+ focuses on the airmen of the 100th Bomb Group during World War II and is well worth your time.
Molli and Max in the Future. Delightful revamp of When Harry Met Sally with a sardonic, sci-fi twist.
The Cranes Are Flying. Rather astounding 1957 Soviet movie about the ramifications of war.
A Brief History of Motion: From the Wheel, to the Car, to What Comes Next by Tom Standage. From the author of The Victorian Internet, this hit the spot for millennia-spanning history, trivia, and troublesome truisms about transportation.
As with last year’s list, I decided to skip the usual pressure to make a top 10 by the end of the year without having seen a bunch of the eligible movies. Instead I took my time, waiting to watch titles as they hit streaming or Blu-ray so I’d have a better shot at a list that more accurately reflected my favorites from 2023.
There are still several I haven’t gotten to yet unfortunately (RIP my moviegoing after child #2). But with the Oscars upon us, I figured now would be the best time to close out another year in movies.
On to my top 10…
10. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
Odds are your enjoyment of this will be directly proportional to your enjoyment of the video shorts of Please Don’t Destroy, who wrote and starred in this rather ridiculous romp. I’m a huge fan, therefore I had a great time with this. Does it suffer from the SNL Movie Syndrome of feeling stretched out beyond its sketch-based form? A little bit. Is it also consistently hilarious? You bet.
9. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
If you make a documentary related to Back to the Future, I’m gonna watch it. This one also happens to be really well done, making creative use of reenactments alongside Fox’s talking heads, memoirs, and TV/movie appearances to tell his life story. And he’s still funny as hell despite the effects of Parkinson’s. (I had a blast interviewing the movie’s editor and geeking out about all things BTTF.)
8. Poor Things
There’s just nothing like a Yorgos Lanthimos movie. And there’s no one acting quite like Emma Stone these days. Their creative alchemy yielded this deeply weird, dark, funny, and feminist picaresque that had me alternating between “ha” and “huh?” quite frequently.
7. Theater Camp
I never cease to marvel at the magic of musical theater, whatever the context. To go from absolutely nothing to a collection of songs, complex choreography, manufactured sets and costumes, all combined into an entertaining story? Sign me up every time. Cheers to this ensemble cast of young performers who managed to do that in this mockumentary while selling both the over-the-top satire of showbiz life and the earnest appreciation of doing what they love.
6. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan, call your agent: I’ve got a long list of supposedly “uncinematic” history books filled with people talking in rooms that Oppenheimer proves should in fact be turned into IMAX-worthy epics.
5. The Killer
WeirdhowDavid Fincher can drop a sleek “The Bourne Identity meets Adaptation” gem like this starring A-lister Michael Fassbender and have it feel completely forgotten by year’s end. (That’s the Netflix Effect for you, I guess…) This story of an assassin cleaning up a botched job really opens up when you realize it’s actually a comedy, with said assassin the butt of the joke just as often as he is a savvy operator. More Fassbender/Fincher collabs, please.
4. Reality
Much like Oppenheimer, this is an excellent 2023 movie featuring a government contractor being interrogated for their motivations and questionable conduct related to sensitive national security intelligence. Unlike Oppenheimer, it’s only 82 minutes—yet remains a riveting, slow-burn docudrama with an impressive performance by Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner.
3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
A great coming of age story, family dramedy, exploration of religion, female-centric story, and year-in-the-life movie all in one. Kudos to writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig for sticking the landing in adapting a legendary story while also launching a career in Abby Ryder Fortson and surrounding her with A+ supporting talent.
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Reports about the death of multiverse storytelling have been greatly exaggerated. As a middle sequel continuing the story of its predecessor and setting up the third installment, it has structural limitations that prevent it from hitting the same level as Into the Spider-Verse. But, much like its titular hero Miles Morales, damned if it doesn’t overcome the odds to spin an extraordinary web nevertheless.
1. Four Daughters
This documentary follows a Tunisian family whose two eldest daughters succumbed to fundamentalism and joined ISIS, with the spin that the director (Kaouther Ben Hania) has hired actors to play the disappeared daughters and recreate scenes from the family’s history along with the remaining sisters and mother. This unique approach leads to some stunning emotional moments, not to mention a complicated and cathartic journey for the real family as they try to make sense of the ineffable with humanity, gravity, and even comedy. (Another riveting documentary—and favorite of 2021—I had top of mind while watching this was Netflix’s Procession, which also featured real survivors of a different sort reckoning with their trauma through artifice.)
Still haven’t seen:American Fiction, The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, The Taste of Things, Perfect Days
In January, my Cinema Sugar compadre Kevin and I went on the Baby’s First Watchlist podcast to talk all things WALL-E as a tie-in with Animation Month. It was my first time as a podcast guest and was a lot of fun.
They pulled out a few clips to share on social media that included thoughts from yours truly:
Well, not exactly, but Christopher Nolan’s recent appearance on the Scriptnotes podcast was excellent and inspired me to check out Greta Gerwig’s 2020 appearance for Little Women too. Both have really thoughtful things to say about the craft of writing and how it relates to moviemaking.
Here’s Gerwig on the ache of absence in Little Women:
I realized that once they’re all in their separate lives—like once Amy is in Europe, once Meg is married, once Beth is living at home but sick, and Jo is in New York trying to sell stories—they are never all together again. The thing that we think of as Little Women has already passed. And I think that ache and that absence of the togetherness and that absence of the sisterhood as being the way that we contextualize these cozy scenes brought out something in me that felt was inherent in the text.
And:
And then beyond that this relationship of Louisa to the text and me to the text, I think that what artists do is you write it down because you can’t save anyone’s life. I think that’s part of what the impulse is. I can’t save your life, but I can write it down. And I can’t get that moment back, but I can write it down.
This idea is reflected in the exchange near the end of the movie:
JO: Who will be interested in a story of domestic struggles and joys? It doesn’t have any real importance.
AMY: Maybe we don’t see those things as important because people don’t write about them.
JO: No, writing doesn’t confer importance, it reflects it.
AMY: Perhaps writing will make them more important.
The Arcadian Wild. Heard about this folk/bluegrass trio recently and got immediately obsessed with “Big Sky, MT”.
Scream. Somehow I’d never seen this, though I was familiar enough with it based on its cultural ubiquity. Kinda wish the conclusion was a little tighter so it could be a perfect 90 minutes, but campy fun overall.
White Savior. This 3-part docuseries on Max is a rich text for those of us who grew up in a conservative Christian milieu and went on international missions/service trips.
The Witch. I like this Robert Eggers lite-horror joint for the same reason I liked Darren Aronofsky’s Noah: it takes its Old Testament inspiration and sensibility seriously, fully committing to a weird and very metal religiosity that too often gets sanded down for popular palatability.
Oppenheimer. “Men talking in rooms” is a common theme in a lot of the history books I’ve read, but I didn’t expect it to also work as a big-screen epic from Christopher Nolan. I’ll take it!
The Wager by David Grann. This new book from the Killers of the Flower Moon author makes me very glad I’m not an 18th-century sailor.
Emergency NYC. Stumbled upon this fascinating Netflix docuseries that follows surgeons, ER staff, flight nurses, and other emergency responders as they treat patients and balance their work with their personal lives.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. A great coming of age story, family dramedy, exploration of religion, female-centric story, and year-in-the-life movie all in one.
You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. Surprisingly funny and a nice pairing with Are You There, God?
