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.
Originally published at Cinema Sugar.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Speaking of never forgetting, there are some brutal moments in this one—both physically and rhetorically.
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.
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.
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.
Honorable mentions:
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.
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.
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!”
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 greatly admire the writer Alan Jacobs (who has his own tag on this site), but I find some of his guidelines for making decisions about watching movies rather questionable.
I’m with him on two of them:
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:
Not to mention titles that were streaming exclusives like:
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 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.
CJ Chilvers on why he’s back to using CDs:
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.
Devil in a Blue Dress. A Denzel noir? I’m down.
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…
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Weird how David 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Other movies I enjoyed:
Non-2023 movies I watched and enjoyed:
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:
You can listen to the whole thing wherever you get your podcasts, or watch it on YouTube.
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?
If you’ve been to a movie at AMC in the last two years, you’ve seen their now-legendary in-house commercial starring Nicole Kidman where she walks into a theater extolling the magic of movies, moviegoing, and AMC:
It’s sincere, borderline saccharine, and immediately after its debut in September 2021 became a lightning rod for hot takes and memes and parodies—all of which I read and enjoyed.
But a funny thing happened when I went to see a movie for the first time in a while: I realized just how true and meaningful that ad is.
I recently stumbled upon an old writing assignment of mine from 9th grade called This Is My Life, where we had to write a short paper focusing on important aspects of our lives. The title page told the story best, with its grid of posters from Back to the Future, Memento, Unbreakable, Saving Private Ryan, and other favorite movies showing what mattered most to me at that time.
That assignment happened over 20 years ago, though I loved movies long before that, traipsing through the Disney canon as a kid before venturing into more adult fare as I got older (shoutout to my dad for bringing me to Mission: Impossible at 9 years old). In middle school I discovered Back to the Future, my first and abiding cinematic love. And from there my palate kept expanding into almost every genre, era, and region. While I didn’t become a cinematographer or director as I’d planned and indicated in that assignment, I did remain obsessed with movies and continued watching and loving and writing about them ever since.
That includes co-founding Cinema Sugar last year as a place to celebrate the movies we love, why they matter, and how they connect us all. Watching great movies is something I’d be doing no matter what, but Cinema Sugar provides the impetus for contemplating them—and appreciating them—more deeply as we build Top 10 lists and even consider our all-time favorites.
All of that was stewing in my subconscious when I recently got out for a rare trip to the movie theater as an early birthday present. With a full-time job and two young kids at home, I haven’t been able to go as much as I’d like or used to before kids. The entire summer movie season had passed me by: Asteroid City, Indiana Jones, Past Lives, Barbie… all movies I would have gone to under different circumstances.
But at last I was going to Oppenheimer, and deeply grateful to be. I savored the short drive to the nearby AMC on a warm summer morning. After using up the last of a gift card on the ticket, I literally ran up the grand staircase to the second floor. Not because I was late, but because my body just needed to express the kinetic energy I was feeling inside.
I was going to a movie! I thought. It’s something I’ve never taken for granted, even during my single days or child-free phase. Going to the movies is a gift, no matter when, and that felt especially true that day as I sat down just before Nicole Kidman’s entrance.
I knew it was coming. What I didn’t know is that this time around, this video I’d seen many times before would give me goosebumps and suddenly make me feel like I was watching it for the first time. Only now, I saw its sentiment not as cloying but profound: Movies are magical. Moviegoing is important. And all the snark about the ad betrays a tragic lack of gratitude for what it’s telling us.
It also gave me déjà vu, because I’d seen a similar epiphany play out before on screen at the same theater.
Less than a year ago I went to see Damien Chazelle’s film Babylon, wherein Manny (Diego Calva) is a laborer in 1920s Hollywood who happens to make connections with both the ambitious ingénue Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie) and aging film star Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt). He uses those connections to climb the studio ranks as an assistant, producer, and eventually director.
Over time he witnesses a lot: Nellie’s meteoric rise and fall, Jack’s slow obsolescence, an industry struggling to transition from silent movies to talkies—not to mention his own poor decisions gone terribly wrong.
(Spoilers ahead—skip to past the photo if you want to avoid them.)
Decades later, we catch up with him when, long out of the business, he returns to Hollywood and visits his old studio. But it’s not until he ends up in a movie theater showing Singin’ in the Rain when memories start to resurface, the movie’s title song triggering a torrent of flashbacks to his formative times with Nellie and the industry he’d loved—both of whom didn’t quite love him back.
We see those flashbacks intermixed with a time-jumping, fourth-wall-breaking montage of clips from a whole century of cinema. Manny would not live to see most of it, but what he and Nellie and Jack and countless others did make in their time served as the essential foundation for films to come.
“I’ve always wanted to go on a movie set,” he’d told Nellie way back when. “I just want to be part of something bigger… Something that lasts, that means something.” Helpless before the shining silver screen, he breaks down in tears at the realization that he got what he wanted, that what he lived through had transformed into something much bigger than himself—and he was the surviving witness to it.
Sometimes I wonder if all this time and attention I give to movies is worth it. They’re just stories after all, a series of images that flash before my eyes for a short time and then disappear. The world is full of real people who are struggling—what good are movies to them? Dedicating my focus to moving pictures can often feel frivolous at best and morally negligent at worst.
There’s a scene in Back to the Future Part II when Doc discovers Marty’s plan to use 2015’s sports almanac to bet on games back in 1985. “I didn’t invent the time machine for financial gain,” Doc says:
The intent here was to gain a clearer perception of humanity: where we’ve been, where we’re going, the pitfalls and the possibilities, the perils and the promise. Perhaps even an answer to that universal question: Why?”
That’s why movies matter.
Movies are us. They show us our history and our future. They celebrate our wins and illuminate our sins. They beckon us into a reality completely different from—or exactly like—our own, and by doing so tell us more about others and ourselves than we could have discovered alone. They are something bigger than us.
That epiphany is what made Manny weep with bittersweet awe in Babylon. It’s what has for so long drawn me to movies as constant companions on the perilous journey through life. And it’s what I chase every time I press play on a Blu-ray or sit in a dark theater, eagerly awaiting Kidman’s earnest invocation.
So why movies?
One of the great things about running an online magazine like Cinema Sugar is that I can just decide that I want to try to interview someone, and then watch as that dream miraculously becomes reality.
That happened recently in conjunction with Westerns Month. I remembered that I’d read two excellent books about westerns by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Glenn Frankel: The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend and High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic. So I contacted him through his website, he got back to me, and we arranged a Zoom call.
Our resulting interview dug into his books, westerns in general, John Wayne vs. Gary Cooper, writing, and more. It was a unique thrill to chat with someone whose work I admire as a cinephile and history nerd, and I’m deeply grateful for his time and his thoughtful answers.
I absolutely love doing these interviews and thinking up questions I hope the subject will enjoy answering. Check out the archive of interviews with actors, directors, authors, and more, including:
Reality. Riveting recreation of the arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner, played by Sydney Sweeney. This was my first encounter of Sweeney and was thoroughly impressed. Just released on (HBO) Max.
Queer Eye season 7. A quality hang as usual.
Ted Lasso season 3. Hard to top season 1 but have enjoyed watching this story play out. Hannah Waddingham as Rebecca
Prey. I’ve never seen Predator so this was my first foray into the franchise. Found it to be a riveting, admirably lo-fi thriller, combining the violence of a western with the constant peril of Gravity.
The Art and Science of Arrival by Tanya Lapointe. Gorgeous coffee-table book about Denis Villeneuve’s masterpiece.
The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham by Ron Shelton. Got to talk with Shelton about this book and his career.
Confess, Fletch. This was a damn fun time.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie. Really creative use of Fox’s memoirs, his TV and movie appearances, and reenactments to tell his life story. He’s also still funny as hell despite the effects of Parkinson’s.
Originally published at Cinema Sugar
Josh, you’re in a musical. That’s how musicals work. When you’re too emotional to talk, you sing. When you’re too emotional to sing, you dance.” — Melissa, Schmigadoon
I went through a phase as an adolescent when I didn’t get musicals. Not only that: I actively resented them. They’re cheesy and unrealistic! I reasoned. People don’t randomly burst into song and coordinated dances! There were a handful of musicals I did enjoy (Singin’ in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Newsies), but even they couldn’t escape the weight of my prejudice that they were ultimately frivolous, unserious entertainment.
That is, until one fateful summer when two diametrically different movies accidentally teamed up to convince me otherwise.
It was the summer of 2007. I was back home after my freshman year of college, working for the second year in a row as a counselor at a summer camp. It was a fun gig for that time in my life: decent cash, free meals and lodging, lots of time outside and hanging out with fellow college-aged counselors.
I became fast friends with one of the counselors (let’s call her Kendra) as we enjoyed hanging out together and discovered mutual interests—playing music being a big one. We played together a lot that summer, with her singing and me muddling along on the guitar or piano, both of which I’d started teaching myself to play a year or two before.
She had a boyfriend back home, and even if she didn’t I was too emotionally guarded and scared of the concept of dating to have considered making a move. But I felt a warmth and ease between us, and a platonic bond that could have been mistaken for siblinghood if it weren’t for the faint flicker of a flame beneath it.
Earlier in the summer I’d heard great buzz about this tiny Irish movie that was sort of a musical, featuring the kind of singer-songwriter music I was really into at the time, and that was antithetical to the shiny show tunes of traditional musicals. It was playing at a small movie theater across town, so I figured it’d be worth a watch despite knowing nothing about the director or stars. I suggested to Kendra that we go see it one Saturday afternoon during our off time and she was game.
We’d been cloistered in the camp bubble for a while, so this escape into the outside world, however brief, felt refreshing and special. And since going to the movies itself is a refreshing and special occasion, I think we both were primed for a magical experience as we arrived at the small strip-mall theater and entered the darkness of the screening room together.
Once, directed by John Carney, is fairly easy to describe. An Irish busker (Glen Hansard) meets a young woman (Markéta Irglová) on the streets of Dublin and they grow close as they play music together, discuss their lives and bruised loves, and inspire each other as they enter new phases of life.
But such a tidy description belies the miles-deep emotional undercurrent that runs beneath this story and propels the main characters—who remain unnamed and are credited as Guy and Girl—first towards each other and ultimately onto their individual fates.
Should he get back with his ex-girlfriend in London? Is her floundering marriage worth repairing? That undercurrent flows to the surface not through any melodramatic speeches or contrived conflicts, but through the music they share.
Probably because the film’s core of Carney, Hansard, and Irglová are real musicians, they manage to capture both the tedium and the thrill of creating meaningful music—and, by extension, art in general—better than almost anything I’ve seen.
They do so by paying close attention to moments in the songwriting process that are small and specific but still significant: Haphazardly assembling snatches of melody while taking notes on your laptop. First hearing someone add harmony to your song when you’ve only ever played it solo. Finding replacement Discman batteries so you can finish writing lyrics you need. Nailing a song on the first take in the studio.
These little euphorias add up, in real life and in the movie. And with what Guy and Girl accumulated during their time together, they were able to bestow each other things they couldn’t have imagined before meeting: she helps him record his songs and boosts his confidence for the next step, while he surprises her with a generous gift to reignite her passion for playing.
It was goodbye in the best way, with grace and gratitude for what they meant to each other.
Kendra and I emerged from the theater nearly vibrating from what we’d just experienced. I had no idea a musical could be like that. Sparse. Soulful. Closely observed and deeply felt, with a ragamuffin realism and total lack of the affectation and razzmatazz of traditional Broadway-based film adaptations. It was much more like a Dardennes movie than a musical, despite fulfilling the technical definition of the genre.
Sure, it was bordering on twee and perhaps too appealing to self-serious emo lads like myself at the time. But that feeling of a movie being made just for me was too powerful to deny.
As soon as we got back to camp I hopped on the piano in the empty main lodge so we could try out the songs, which still reverberated through us. We managed our own halting cover version of “Falling Slowly,” its anthemic melody climbing up and down the walls of the lodge with my tentative piano chords in pursuit.
It didn’t occur to me at the time, but while we sang that beautiful music together, what remained unsung was how we were a kind of echo of what we’d just seen on screen. A girl and a guy (a tall, bearded, redheaded one no less) spending limited yet meaningful time together, singing tunes and sharing stories and creating memories? It was too good to be true, and yet it was.
For a moment anyway. As in the movie, time ran out on us when camp ended and we both returned to our normal lives. But what I took with me from this Once experience was how people could come into each other’s lives and share an interlude together knowing that time would end, yet still forge ahead into the moments they had remaining and do something wonderful with them.
That’s what music can do, and what art can do, and what grace can do if we let it.
This summer reverie was still fresh in my mind when I returned to campus ahead of the fall semester and, just a few weeks after seeing Once, encountered another paradigm-shifting film—only this one with a little more razzle dazzle.
I arrived before classes started so I could attend resident assistant training, a two-week orientation for this student-leadership position. I’d applied to become an RA because I thought I’d be good at it and because being an introvert in a typically extroverted role would actually be an asset for serving the less-outgoing undergraduate residents. (The free room-and-board didn’t hurt either.)
One evening a group of RAs went to see the new Hairspray movie. Because I was trying to push myself to get out more and socialize in this new role, I decided to tag along. And as I was still wedded to my myopic view of musicals, despite my recent Once experience, I brought my low expectations with me too.
Based on the Broadway adaptation of John Waters’ 1988 film, Hairspray follows the relentlessly cheerful and dance-loving teenager Tracy Turnblad in early 1960s Baltimore as she joins her favorite local teen dance TV show and, with her plus-size figure and support for racial integration, helps to transform the segregated, traditionalist ways of the show and her community for the better.
On paper this sounds potentially cloying and pat but on screen it’s anything but, honoring John Waters’ delightfully weird sensibility and humor with touches like John Travolta in drag as Tracy’s agoraphobic seamstress mother and Tracy riding a garbage truck to school through the dilapidated streets of Baltimore during the jubilant opening tune “Good Morning Baltimore.”
But it’s the soundtrack that’s the true star. Marc Shaiman’s zesty mixture of period-specific soul, R&B, gospel, and pop tunes elevates the movie into pure, unabashed spectacle. Highlights include the R&B-infused “Run and Tell That,” the bubblegum pop of “Welcome to the 60s,” and the 10-minute finale sequence of “You Can’t Stop the Beat,” which never fails to give me chills.
To say Hairspray changed my perspective is an understatement. It was like a high-wattage electric shock that flicked on a lightbulb for me, and the grainy black-and-white screen through which I’d been watching musicals before suddenly sparked into Technicolor.
I could see things now in other musicals that I couldn’t have appreciated before, like the awe-inspiring athleticism of performers who execute complex and cardio-intensive choreography with a smile. Like the finely tuned plots that elevate story structure into an art in itself. And how a musical is, in a way, the manifestation of all the fine arts into one—dance, design, music, drama, and cinema all magically synthesized before our eyes.
My chief objections to musicals—that they’re cheesy, unrealistic fluff—fell away like a discarded dress during a costume change. I finally saw how downright silly it was to accuse them of being cheesy when a dyed-in-the-wool musical like Hairspray was leaning so hard into campiness that it tripped over its own dance moves.
All my mental finger-pointing did was alienate myself from what the movie wanted to do, which was to grab my clenched fist with a big smile and pull me into a raucous, liberating dance.
(When Corny Collins, the host of the teen dance show in Hairspray played by James Marsden, was faced with the prospect of racial integration on his show, he saw his choice clearly: “You can fight it or you can rock out to it.”)
This isn’t to say Hairspray is beyond critique, or even close to my favorite musical. The acting is often cartoonishly bad, and the story implies a simplistic path of overcoming racial discrimination while centering Tracy, a white woman, as the instigating force of integration rather than her Black peers and local community.
Anytime a work of art speaks on important socio-political issues, even through a historical framework as Hairspray does, it risks looking outmoded or obtuse to future generations of viewers. And that’s OK—we can credit the film’s optimism and inclusive attitude while also acknowledging its limitations as a self-contained cultural artifact.
But I wasn’t thinking about all that when I emerged from the theater with the other RAs. I was thinking about how I’d ever get those songs out of my head, and how every one of Hairspray’s horn blasts and pirouettes and bursts of color were blows against cynicism and subtlety.
Which was, frankly, exactly what I needed.
Hairspray and Once could not be more different as movies or as musicals.
Once is a wisp of a film, a bootstrapped production with a cinéma vérité look, unknown cast, and achingly sincere songs that obliquely supplement the simple story.
Hairspray, on the other hand, is a big, brassy, cheeky joy explosion, with a maximalist attitude about its every aspect—acting, production design, social commentary, and the music above all.
Seeing these movies individually made big dents in my stony resolve against the allure of musicals, but seeing them within about a month of each other shattered it altogether. If I’d just seen Once I could have downplayed it as a unique aberration that departed widely from the conventions of the genre. Not so with Hairspray, which feels like the most musically musical to ever musical.
Having to span and make sense of that distance between them forced me to span the gaps in my own self-understanding and, above all, learn how to surrender. To say yes in spite of myself and show my prejudices who’s boss. And to trust and appreciate the essential elements of an art form instead of treating them as dealbreakers.
The musical has been around a lot longer than me. It has a lot to say—and sing. All you need to do is listen, because you can’t stop the beat.
Really enjoyed reading Ron Shelton’s The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham, which I followed up with a rewatch of Bull Durham. He has such a wry, matter-of-fact style and perspective on his careers, most notably minor-league baseball player and movie writer-director.
Some quotes…
On being an athlete with intellectual curiosities:
Around this time it was becoming clear that I was living in two different worlds—the intellectual (or at least academic) world and the sports world—but it made no sense to me that they were distinct. They were dependent, connected, they fed off each other. At least I thought so.
On sports movies:
I’d played enough sports by then that I felt sports films got it all wrong. Their attempts to be inspirational felt cloying and false. When you actually play the game, there is little that is inspirational going on. It’s a competition; it’s physical; it’s a chance to test yourself.
A fascinating anecdote about how a test screening of Bull Durham went great in the room but not in the test scores:
The more highly educated the crowd, the more severely critical will be its analysis. Even—maybe especially—when the movie-watching experience is good. It’s a mistake to hand a pen and paper to professionals with multiple degrees and ask them to critique their experience. There seems to be a built-in expectation that the brain should overrule the heart, that the left side of the brain must dictate what the right side of the brain just processed—even when it contradicts that experience. The note cards were legible, neatly written, and expressed their critique in absurd detail compared to those of more working-class crowds, which tend to be of the thumbs-up, thumbs-down variety. In the heartland of emerging Silicon Valley—high-tech, the venture-capital center of the nation, with Stanford and all its tentacles of research—the audience had to deny its experience. What I thought of was: All I want is your reaction, not your fucking self-conscious notes.
On his feelings about baseball:
My interest in baseball isn’t analytical, romantic, or even patriotic. I like the game—it’s nuanced and difficult and physical—but it has an appealing vulgarity, an earthiness, and I’ve never quite understood the excessive lyrical prose that grows out of it. I’ve never understood the sentimentality it seems to inspire.
On the legacy of Bull Durham:
Perhaps Bull Durham has resonated all these years because it is about loving something more than it loves you back. It’s about reckoning. It’s about loss. It’s about men at work, trying to survive in the remote outposts of their chosen profession. It’s also about the women they fall for, and who fall for them. It cannot be dismissed that it’s also about the joy of playing a game for a living. It’s about team and connections and risk and reward. It’s about hitting the mascot with a fastball just because you want to, it’s about running and jumping and sliding around in the mud, it’s about interminable bus rides with a bunch of guys who are as lost as you are, and feeling lucky you’re on that bus. It’s romantic, and it’s supposed to be funny, and despite what most fans of the movie say, it is also about baseball.
You know the part of movie theater previews when they show what’s basically an in-house ad for the host theater chain, along with housekeeping items like silence your phone, no talking, etc.?
I’ve learned these are called policy trailers and that many of them are available online. I was curious if I’d be able to find the one for Marcus Theaters, which dominated my adolescent theatergoing in Madison, WI, circa 2000-2006.
Lo and behold:
This is burned into my being. The movie clips did get updated over time with newer movies, but in my recollection the format stood for a long time. Just like the various movie studio intros, these trailers conditioned me to know I was about to (hopefully) see something great.
It’s one of the many theaters that COVID-19 killed, so I’ll cherish this video (like the abandoned movie posters) as another relic of a lost era.