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35. Elton John: Never Too Late - Not so much a movie as the bonus material for some other, perhaps hypothetical movie. Perfect viewing for someone who is a huge fan of Elton John, but also knows literally nothing about him and also isn’t particularly interested in learning.

34. The Six Triple Eight - The absolute worst part of this insane yearly project where I watch every single movie nominated for an Oscar, is that every year, for the last 8 years straight, there is a film that is nominated only because it has a Diane Warren song over the end credits. How good ARE these movies? Not very. How not vary? I’m glad you asked.

Movies Nominated for an Oscar Strictly Because of a Diane Warren Song Ranked (2018-2024):

1. RBG (2018)

2. Marshall (2017)

3. Flamin’ Hot (2023)

4. The Life Ahead (2020) (I have absolutely no memory of this movie so I’m putting it here)

(GAP)

5. The Six Triple Eight (2024)

6. Breakthru (2019)

(BIG GAP)

7. Four Good Days (2021)

(GAP THE SIZE OF THE GRAND CANYON)

8. Tell It Like A Woman (2022)

33. Gladiator II - This looks like shit, everyone in it is wildly miscast, and it has absolutely no reason to exist. But other than that its pretty ok I guess.

32. Alien: Romulus - Nearly two straight hours of asking yourself, what? and, who? And most of all, why?? Like watching a video feed of people you don’t care about walk thru an expensive, overly complicated, yet overly familiar haunted house. Can we please just let this franchise die already?

31. The Seed of the Sacred Fig - Did I see this movie? I logged it on letterboxd so I must have. But what happens in it? I really have no idea. I do recall about two and half hours in being roused from a stupor by the dad becoming an over the top cartoon villain out of nowhere and chasing his family with a gun. And I feel like I remember thinking that was exciting, if nonsensical. But other than that, I got nothing.

30. Nosferatu - This is like Robert Eggers thought he was making a series of cool looking paintings instead of a movie. It all LOOKS incredible, but to what end? Am I supposed to be scared? Am I supposed to be in suspense over a story I already know every beat of? Am I supposed to be emotionally invested in the characters? It is supposed to be saying something? Or am I just supposed to marvel at the incredible craft on display while feeling absolutely nothing? If so, well done!

29. Porcelain War - The porcelain stuff and the war stuff do not work together at all. B+ for effort, D- for execution which leaves us with a C, which feels right, if not a touch generous

28. The Wild Robot - As a massive Pixar fanboy, I’m the exact opposite of whatever a fanboy is when it comes to Dreamworks Animation. Their movies are everything Pixar’s are not: generic, anonymously made, simplistic, aimed squarely at tweens, devoid of wit or true humor, and corporate feeling. This is definitely no exception.

27. Sugarcane - Very important topic, very generic film. Great companion piece with Nickel Boys though.

26. Soundtrack to a Coup Etat - When you have to spend 20 minutes after a documentary finishes googling to figure out what the documentary you just watched was about, then I feel like that should mean your documentary is a failure. AND YET. Soundtrack to a Coup Etat does something undeniably new and interesting with the documentary form, which feels increasingly rare and hard to do. And if watching it often felt like trying to make sense of an article in an academic journal about a subject you’ve never studied, I guess I’d rather than that asking for things that are bland and overly dumbed down. So while for me personally, this wasn’t really successful as a movie, I certainly applaud its ambition (a phrase that really sums up the 2024 movie year) and hope it can lead to more experimentation with the documentary form.

(For a movie that, for me, very successfully experiments with form, look no further than the nominated short doc Incident, which, for my money, is easily the best documentary of the year regardless of length)

25. Maria - One of the best looking wikipedia entries I’ve ever watched .

24. Memoir of a Snail - A precious little jewel box of a film, if a bit too slight for me personally. But god bless everyone, like Adam Elliot, using animation as a medium to tell personal adult stories, rather than simply as a way to entertain kids. More movies like this please. 

23. Black Box Diaries - Very important story, but way too long and unfocused as a movie. The whole time I kept envisioning the hypothetical better version of this doc and how powerful it could have been. Shiori Ito is incredible though, a truly inspiring person, and someone well worth knowing about.

22. The Girl With The Needle - By far the most brutal movie from a year in which there was literally a movie called The Brutalist. Very well made - the cinematography should have been nominated, and Magnus von Horn is a director to watch - but man oh man was this a rough watch. The rare “they’re not actually going to go there, are they??” movie that does indeed actually go there.

21. I’m Still Here - If I had to describe this movie I would describe it as “a movie”. There are characters. Things happen. You learn something. It’s all done very competently. But it left absolutely no emotional or intellectual impact whatsoever, despite its important and very relevant subject matter. There’s nothing wrong with it, but nothing great about it either. It’s the perfect embodiment of, “yeah, it was pretty good I guess”

20. No Other Land - It’s a true bummer, but I feel like I’ve already seen this exact movie several other times in this in recent years: 20 Days in Mariupol, For Sama, Last Men in Aleppo, countless nominated doc shorts, and more. It’s verite footage from a conflict zone, presented without real narrative or narration, showing you the reality of living while under attack. It’s always moving, but rarely revelatory. Can this sort of thing actually make a difference? It’s the true power of film that I can’t imagine it's possible to walk away from this doc and not be totally outraged by what Israel is doing, and has been doing, in Gaza. This should be shown in schools. But also - same as it ever was. Both as a film and as a reality.

19. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes - I had never seen any of these movies before, so bless this film for introducing me to a truly great modern IP-based franchise. It is possible! This is definitely the weakest of the four films, and it feels like without the force of Andy Serkis’ Caesar, the clear stakes of the first three entries, and Matt Reeves’ directorial vision, that we’ve likely hit the point of diminishing returns. But even though this felt a little aimless and inessential, the VFX and world building is still...out of this world, and it has just enough to say and explore thematically that I’m not NOT interested to see what they come up with next.

18. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl - The most I laughed during any movie released in 2024. I don’t know if thats more an indictment of the year in comedy or a credit to the wit and visual gags of this movie, but either way, facts are facts. And a good bulk of that laughter and delight was due to Feathers McGraw, who continues to be one of the best movie villains of all time. As many times as Aardman wants to go back to that well, I am absolutely here for it.

17. The Substance - I don’t really respond movies that prioritize style over character and story, I don’t like horror, and I especially don’t like weird body stuff, so it's safe to say that this movie is securely in the Not For Me Hall of Fame. I get why people like it, I have no problem with them, it's got true style, Coralie Fargeat is clearly very talented, Margaret Qualley is a star, and I think its awesome that something this wild can get nominated for Best Picture. Great job everyone. Now just please never make me watch this movie ever again.

16. The Apprentice - Though not, by any means, the most well made movie of 2024, certainly the one that I have thought about the most since seeing it. Perhaps for obvious reasons, but that makes it even more infuriating that so many people have purposely avoiding seeing this movie to “protect themselves” or "can't handle any more Donald Trump" or “because they already know everything it is has to say”. Yes! Absolutely! Which is why you should see it! Leaving aside it has maybe 2 of the top 6 to 8 best performances of the year in it, the power of film as a medium is often to create a new more visceral way of understanding what we otherwise grasp only intellectually. And it lets us experience things that discomfort us from a distance so we can deeper explore those discomforts and investigate them further. Did this movie tell me any FACTS about Donald Trump I didn’t already know? Not really, although I feel sure for many people it likely would. But do I feel like I UNDERSTAND him, his actions, the way he views the world, and how he thinks, not more sympathetically, but definitely more deeply than ever before? Absolutely! And isn't better understanding the forces that control our world part of the whole reason art exists? So yes, trigger warning: Donald Trump. But now is not the time to look away; now is the time to look closer. Let Sebastian Stan be your guide.

15. September 5 - This movie is incredibly successful at telling the story it wants to tell. Every element of the movie is perfectly crafted and calibrated, no notes. It’s just that the story it is telling is so hyper specific that you leave the film feeling like you really learned about an interesting incident, but didn’t really ever think or feel. And nothing wrong with that! Movies can be many things, and it’s to this movie’s great credit that it doesn’t try to be more than what it is. It’s just that for me personally, what it is is perhaps just a bit too "well-crafted historical reenactment" for me to rank it any higher.

14. Inside Out 2 - Read my Wild Robot review above and reverse it. Whip smart and laugh out loud funny. Something for everyone, yet never pandering or lowest common denominator. Incredible specificity, yet totally universal. A script that has real human finger prints all over it. And I can tell you from plenty of first hand experience that inside Out 2 has helped both kids and adults talk about and understand their emotions. If I had experienced Maya Hawke as Anxiety at age 10 it truly might have changed my life. After a few rough years I’m very glad I don't have to get my #TeamPixar tattoo removed after all.

13. Conclave - 2024’s very best John Grisham film adaptation. Fun and frivolous and way better made than it has any right to be. Like a soufflé of a film, with less calories. And such a throw back to the 90s that Billy Crystal in a pope hat should get to host any part of the Oscars where Conclave is mentioned, it only feels right.

12. A Real Pain - So many adaptations of plays never justify their existence as movies, so it's rare to see a movie that doesn’t really fully justify why it wasn’t just a play. It's also unclear why everyone just decided Kieran Culkin was winning Best Supporting Actor in October and that’s never been challenged since. He’s great in the movie, it's just strange in such a great year for supporting actor performances. But ultimately I’m down for any rich, well-drawn, complicated character study/hang out movie. When Cord Jefferson used his Oscars speech last year to implore Hollywood to make ten $10 million movies rather than one $100 million movie this is exactly the kind of modest yet moving exploration of the human condition he was lamenting the loss of, so its great to see this movie not only get made, but succeed. My queen, Emma Stone, never misses.

11. Emilia Perez - Before the Karla Sofia Gascon Affair made all pre-existing opinions about this movie null and void I had noticed something interesting. Everyone in my life who was an actor was positive to enthusiastic about this film. Everyone who was not an actor was negative to disdainful about it. It got me thinking about why. And I think it's that the sheer levels of earnest, try hard, let's put on a show energy that this movie gives off is catnip for theater kids. I mean, an original musical? A trans empowerment narrative? Zoe Saldana dance numbers? Nuclear amounts of cringe? It's like theater kid Mad Libs. All of which is to say, that like so many of us who have ever been described as “too much”, I feel like I can more easily forgive this movie its huge and obvious flaws. Which is of course now all this movie is known for. When I watched Emilia Perez before it was released onto Netflix the only two things I was thinking the whole time were -  this is so insane that it’s actually kind of working on me, and also, I truly hope no one with access to the internet ever watches this film, or else the entire world wide web might be destroyed forever. Little did I know the ultimate twitter mob was coming from inside the house. 

So look, if you hate this film for any number of justifiable reasons, I totally get it. I honestly would probably start picking it apart on a rewatch. But also, unlike being a Mexican cartel leader, there’s no way to ever fully transition out of being a theater kid. And shit this wild is my/our drug.

10. Flow - By far the best silent animated Latvian cat drama I’ve ever seen. Proof that great art truly can be anything from anywhere.

9. The Brutalist - The first half of the movie is the best movie of the year and one of the best of the decade, and then the second half comes and, well…its not. If I was to lean into the architecture thing I could say that it crumbles under its own weight. It becomes somehow both too obtuse and too literal. The big incident in the second act made me almost literally groan out load. And Felicity Jones is woefully miscast. And in the end I don’t know what is actually effectively being communicated other than “look at me, Brady Corbet, and how good I am at making movies”. But also, wow is he good at making movies. At least this one. The craft on display is truly out of this world, and to do it on $10 million feels like a genuine magic trick. So if the coda to this film is whatever the opposite of sticking the landing is (tripping over your own feet?), well, at least the leaping into the air was truly majestic.

8. Wicked - Remember how I was just talking about theater kids…Do you know how well made your movie has to be for MUSICAL THEATER PEOPLE, the most critical, hard to please group of people on the planet to shower it with near universal praise? I honestly wouldn’t have thought it was possible before Wicked came out. Especially because the trailer looked like hot garbage. But damn if it didn’t work on me like a charm. The sets, the costumes, the performances, they way they stretched out the story without ever making it feel too long or bloated, the choreography - I mean what can I say, it won me, and more importantly MUSICAL THEATER PEOPLE, over completely. John M. Chu, I salute you for achieving the impossible.

7. A Different Man - Like that time Ryan Gosling wore a shirt with a picture of Macaulay Culkin wearing a shirt with a picture of Ryan Gosling, only if the bit had gone on WAY longer. It's an MC Escher drawing hanging next to wall text by Charlie Kauffman. Did David Lynch have to die so that Aaron Shomberg could thrive? I guess we’ll find out!

6. Better Man - If you you’re asking yourself, can one of the best musical sequences in modern movie history take place in a movie where a guy no one in America had ever heard of is played by a CGI monkey, then you CLEARLY haven’t seen the “Rock DJ” sequence in Better Man. Does the rest of the movie’s cliched, predictable, and also often inaccurate narrative developments benefit greatly from the fact that this is one of the only movies of its kind where we don’t know the whole story and all the songs going in? Almost definitely. Is the fact no one had any interest in, or expectations for, this movie whatsoever a big part of why an evangelical cult, of which I am a part, is already forming around it? Absolutely! But movies like this are exactly why this project of seeing every Oscar nominee is always worthwhile. Because otherwise I would have never seen this movie, and now talking about this movie is my whole personality. But truly, seeing the “Rock DJ” performance on the big screen for the first time, having no idea what was coming, was like finding out that God is real. I’ll never ever forget it. (Oops, I just totally ruined the no expectations thing for you. Sorry!)

5. A Complete Unknown - Somehow both possibly the best straight ahead musical biopic of all time (go ahead, try and come up with one definitively better) and yet also only the 4th best Life of Bob Dylan movie. But still, mastering an entire type of film, even if it's a conventional and inherently cheesy one, is still really something special. And the performances elevate it a level even beyond that. Timmy is an absolute star and capital A actor, Monica Barbaro is a (incredibly attractive) revelation, and Edward Norton is Edward Fucking Norton. Plus with music this good, presented this well, it's just really tough to beat as far as this kind of movie is concerned. So yes, it feels a bit old fashioned, but also it's a movie where you think “they rarely make 'em like this anymore”, and thats because they never really did. 

4. Dune: Part Two - I have a truly wild complaint about this movie: too much happens. Dune: Part I was not only my second favorite film of 2021 but one of my favorite films of the decade so far. And what I liked best about it was the fact that for the first time in a very long time a movie transported me to somewhere that felt totally new and totally visceral. The sense of being immersed in world and just sort of hanging out there for three hours felt completely unique, immersive, and was some real “this is the power of movies!” shit. It looked and felt like nothing I’d ever experienced before. But now for the sequel, had I not only experienced the world before, but rather than feeling fresh and new it started to feel a bit like a typical movie. A focus on plot over world building. Action over atmosphere. Predictability over surprise. And, as with so many epic stories, a difficulty ending things. Now don’t get me wrong, this is still a GREAT movie and better than 99.9% of VFX heavy sci-fi tentpole movies. #VilleneuveForLife. But my expectations were through the roof and, for me, this film got stuck somewhere in the clutter of the attic.

3. Nickel Boys - In one of my day jobs I teach kids about movies and how they’re made, and one thing I feel like I always struggle with is trying to convey how amazing it must have been to experience things we now take for granted for the first time. Things like tracking shots, crane shots, deep focus, breaking the 180 degree line, the basic tools of film storytelling, its visual vocabulary, all had to be thought of and used for the first time by someone, and they likely rewired the brains of viewers when they saw these things for first time. Now Nickel Boys is of course not the first film to told using first-person perspective, but man if I didn’t think about the experience of seeing something totally new the whole time I was watching it. Because the movie looked, and felt, and WAS, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It was something brand new, which when you see as many films as I do, is often enough by itself. But this wasn’t just a new form; it was form in service of function. Creating a totally new way to present the human experience generally, and black pain specifically. Literally a new way to view and and connect to it. Normally I talk about watching a film - this felt like living inside one. Nickel Boys is a total game changer, and to the future film teachers out there: if your kids want to know what it is was like to experience this movie for the first time: It rewired my brain. It was incredible.

2. Sing Sing - JUSTICE FOR CLARENCE MACLIN!! HOW AM I NOT GOING TO BE HEARING HIS OSCAR SPEECH THIS YEAR?!? IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE BEST AND MOST DESERVING EVER!!

JUSTICE FOR SING SING!!! IN 99 OUR OF 100 POSSIBLE UNIVERSES THIS IS THE 2024 BEST PICTURE WINNER. EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH THIS MOVIE SHOULD SUE THE A24 MARKETING AND AWARDS CAMPAIGN TEAMS. HOW DO YOU FUMBLE THE BAG THIS BADLY?? I’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND IT!

I DON’T CARE THAT THIS IS DEFINITIVELY A LOWER CASE MOVIE, I’LL NEVER STOP TALKING ABOUT IT IN ALL CAPS. IT DESERVES THAT AND SO MUCH MORE. SEE THIS FILM. IT IS SO SO SPECIAL. YOU WILL LOVE IT OR YOU ARE NOT HUMAN. SING SING!!!!!

1. Anora - Anora is proof that many of the big recurring complaints about movies this year - too much to say, too muddled in tone, too many different movies happening in the same film, etc. - aren’t inherently flaws, they just have to be expertly navigated by a master. Sean Baker is that master. And this movie is a masterful ride. It balances so many plates while swerving around so wildly, yet always feels like the smoothest most enjoyable journey. And it turns the rest of the 2024 movie year on its head. “Important” doesn’t have to be solemn, “serious” can be a ton of fun, and a movie can be whatever it wants to be whenever it wants to be it. Everything Everywhere All At A Specific And Perfectly Calibrated Time. The best comedy, the best fight scene, the most suspense, the most intimate character study, the best hang-out film, the heaviest emotional devastation - it’s all here. It’s a movie for everyone, yet as hyper-specific as it gets. It’s a miracle.

SHORTS RANKED

Incident (Documentary)

I’m Ready, Warden (Documentary)

Wander to Wonder (Animated)

I’m Not A Robot (Live Action)

Yuck! (Animated)

A Lien (Live Action)

Instruments of a Beating Heart (Documentary)

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (Live Action)

Anuja (Live Action)

Magic Candies (Animated)

Beautiful Men (Animated)

In The Shadow of the Cyprus (Animated)

The Only Girl in the Orchestra (Documentary)

The Last Ranger (Live Action)

37. Golda - A homeless man’s Rustin in the sense that it exists solely as a vehicle for an actor to give a performance, only in this case a bad one. Leaving the deeply problematic political angle of this film aside, WHICH IS HARD TO DO, someone really should have stopped Guy Nattiv to say, “hey, I’m not sure if the average movie-goer is as well-versed in the minutia of the Yom Kippur War as you think they are, maybe you should at some point attempt to explain what’s going on and why it matters”. But then, of course, there’s also the fact that this is a movie that just assumes the audience would of course be rooting for Israel to win a war being fought over land that they stole from Egypt. It’s so epically the worst possible movie at the worst possible time that it almost feels like a prank.

36. Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny - It’s honestly impressive to be able to make an Indiana Jones movie that’s this dull and this stupid. It’s like getting a pitch right down the heart of the plate and instead of an easy double, James Mangold and company swung and missed so badly their bat went flying and they fell down face first into a pile of mud. Thats something, right?

35. American Symphony - I came into this movie knowing almost nothing about Jon Batiste and left it somehow feeling like I knew even less. Some people just aren’t good documentary subjects, and on top of that this movie never makes any sort of real case for why it needs to exist in the first place.

34. El Conde - A+ premise, D- script. Looks absolutely amazing, but makes absolutely no sense. Seriously, try explaining the character motivations and plot points of this movie to someone and you will somehow become actively dumber. A real shame.

33. Elemental - Thank god I never got that #TeamPixar tattoo back in 2010.

32. Rustin - Maybe not an all-time Performance-In-Search-Of-A-Movie film, but it’s in the conversation. Colman Domingo is wonderful as always, but everything around him ranges from pedestrian to outright bad. And visually the movie looks truly awful. Bayard Rustin deserved so much better.

31. Flamin’ Hot - If I was going to make a movie “based on a true story” I might double check to make sure literally any part of the story was actually true. And if I was going to get someone to write the theme song for a movie with a primarily Latino cast, thats telling the story of a Mexican-American family, I might not pick Diane Warren, one of the world’s whitest people, to do so. But hey, what do I know? Great to see Latino actors and Mexican culture be the basis of a mainstream big studio film for all audiences. Thats, sadly, progress. Just wish progress was better than this mess.

30. 20 Days in Mariupol - This exact documentary gets nominated every single year, the only thing that changes is the location. This year’s edition is of course from Ukraine. Horrifying and powerful footage as always, but with no real skill in its construction it simply blends into every other edition of this exact film. It’s unfortunate that the Academy’s Documentary branch nominates at least one of these “here’s a bunch of thrown together war footage I shot” docs every year, but of course much more unfortunate for the world that there’s always a new place to film them in.

29. The Creator - Pretty wild to create a movie that looks this incredible, and build a world this detailed and fully realized, and then just straight up forget to write a script. Truly revolutionary lipstick on a below average pig.

28. Perfect Days - Koji Yakusho gives a beautiful, subtle, heartbreaking performance in a movie where literally no one else seems like a real person exhibiting real human behavior or making actual believable human choices. That being said, of all the German-directed Japanese language Oscar nominated films that began their life as spon-con for public toilets, this is probably one of the best.

27. Napoleon - A 200 million dollar film where it somehow feels like everyone except the costume designer was just going thru the motions. Love LOVE Joaquin Phoenix, he might be our best currently active actor, but it seems like the first time he found out he was making this movie was 5 minutes before that cameras started rolling. This really could be the movie that ends the era of streaming services giving blank checks to big name directors for good. And if so, just like Napoleon himself and his namesake movie, it ends not with a bang, but with a pretty boring whimper.

26. The Color Purple - 

Me when the musical numbers are happening: “Weird to make this material a musical, but there’s sort of something here, and I’m actually kind of into it!”

Me when the musical numbers are not happening: “This is hot garbage”

25. Eternal Memory - Would the couple at the center of this film have been a blast to sit next to at a dinner party or would they have been insufferable? Tough question to still be asking after a movie that is basically just 90 minutes of hanging out with them. Once the Alzheimer’s really kicks in the footage is undeniably heartbreaking and powerful, it just feels like it takes a long time to get there, and the whole thing feels kind of shapeless. I’m sure if I was Chilean and I had an existing knowledge of these two people it would have worked better, but ultimately it just never really got there for me, sad as the story may have been.

24. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - For a movie nominated for best visual effects I thought the visual effects were half incredible and half pretty generic Marvel CGI slop. Which fits perfectly with the rest of the movie. I thought half of the plot made sense and the other half I had no idea what was going on. Half of the characters were memorable and important, and the other half felt like random people in weird makeup on the screen with no real explanation. And I thought the movie was half clever fun, and half this-is-too-long what-are-we-doing-here pablum. 

23. NYAD - An A+ Rustin or a B- AIR. Of all the movies I saw this year, it’s definitely one of them.

22. The Boy and the Heron - Look, Miyazaki is a master, I get it and I agree. But when your movie is just a series of unrelated cool ideas that you had that you just strung together in something that sometimes resembles a plot and other times doesn’t even bother to, it’s just not gonna be my thing. If it’s yours, that’s cool, more power to you, but it’s decidedly not mine.

21. Four Daughters - This year’s Luca/The Sea Beast Memorial Award winner for “movie that I definitely saw but remember almost nothing about”. Congrats?

20. Io Capitano - A well-made if fairly standard and by the numbers tale of a harrowing journey in search of a better life. Good movie, and much better than I was expecting, but the fact this got nominated over my beloved The Taste of Things is baffling and an outrage of the highest order.

19. Godzilla Minus One -

Killers of the Flower Moon - $200 million budget, no Godzilla

Godzilla Minus One - $15 million budget, SO MUCH GODZILLA

The money they saved on good acting and writing, they certainly made up for with truly incredible Godzilla shit.

18. Nimona - Out of 37 movies on this list, this is number 18. Which means it’s literally one spot above the mid-point, and that feels exactly right. Great causal queer representation, glad Netflix saved it from Disney, and as a movie, exactly one place above the exact middle.

17. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Cool stunts, bro!

Did it all really make sense and need to be that long? No. But, in this case, who cares. It’s just a solidly constructed, well-made, fun action film. Sometimes they DO make ‘em like that anymore.

16. To Catch A Tiger - The way the world changes, truly changes, is when incredibly brave and courageous people potentially sacrifice everything to simply do what’s right, in the face of an entire society trying to stop them. Watching it is happen is equal parts powerfully moving and deeply enraging 

Same as it ever was.

15. Robot Dreams - If you took a drink every time the Twin Towers were prominently featured in this Spanish animated love story about a dog and his robot friend you’d have at least 5 drinks, which maybe isn’t a ton of drinks, but it’s still pretty wild.

This is a truly incredible 45 minute movie that’s unfortunately padded out to an hour and a half. But still, a lot of REALLY great stuff here that sadly no one outside of 2023 Oscar completists will EVER see.

14. American Fiction - Don’t know that I can ever remember being bait-and-switched by a movie’s marketing before in a GOOD WAY. This was billed as a scathing but somewhat obvious racial and publishing industry satire that felt like I got it just from watching the trailer. But what’s barely in the trailer at all, is that is actually much moreso a lovely, moving, nuanced human story of family and adult relationships. All the book stuff was fine, but all the other stuff was truly wonderful. Don’t know if it ever all fully came together for me, and honestly I think I would have just enjoyed a road trip movie with Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Browns’ characters even more. Regardless, excited to see what Cord Jefferson does next.

13. The Teachers Lounge - Pay teachers more money.

This was a real hidden gem of this year. In creating true moral complexity, who’s-right-who’s-wrong ambiguity, and post-movie discussion fodder this film is Anatomy of a Fall’s ever so slightly less attractive cousin, and yet it has flown COMPLETELY under the radar while Anatomy of a Fall has become of this year’s true runaway critical darlings. No shade to Anatomy of a Fall, but #justiceforTheTeachersLounge!

Also, pay teachers more money.

12. Anatomy of a Fall - Speaking of Anatomy of a Fall… Is there any court in the world that would actually work in exactly the way the one works here? With the case being resolved in the way it was? I don’t buy it. Seems like a pretty big flaw in film that’s built around a screenplay that is otherwise like a diamond polished to perfection. But that aside, it feels almost revolutionary to watch a movie with this level of true ambiguity. So many movies want you to leave the theater talking and arguing and discussing, and yet this is the very rare one that actually pulls it off. Also, how are European filmmakers able to do such a better job at finding child actors than American ones are? This needs to be talked about more so we can get to the bottom of it. But, in the end, the most important thing about this film is that it was my gateway to learning about the existence of the greatest award known to man: the Palm Dog. And never has that award been more richly deserved than it was for the dog in this film. For other dogs, watching this movie it must have been like seeing Marlon Brando in Streetcar for the first time. Dog acting will never be the same. I’m convinced that Daniel Day Lewis had to retire from acting so that Messi the dog could take his place. This town ain't big enough for the both of them.

11. Society of the Snow - A movie that makes you immediately want to go out and watch a documentary about the true events, and yet is also better than any documentary could ever hope to be. The end credits should really include a QR code that takes you to the subject’s wikipedia page, because your brain can’t comprehend how this was real, even though you know going in that it is. From the second the plane hits the ground it’s a film that’s nearly impossible to look away from. If the filmmaking is perhaps a touch too conventional for the movie to place higher than this on my list, that's nothing against the film really, I think that’s probably the right choice to tell this particular story. But in the end: wow, humans beings, how truly amazing the best of us can be sometimes.

10. The Holdovers - Is it possible to talk about this movie without using the phrase “70s Hal Ashby movie”? How about “a warm wool sweater of a film”? “A tweed jacket over a beige turtleneck”? “A hot chocolate spiked with bourbon on a winter night spent looking at Christmas lights”? 

Yeah, ok, “70s Hal Ashby movie” still works best.

9. May December - What excites me most at the movies is seeing something totally new that I’ve never seen before, and in all my years of moviegoing I can’t think of another film that even attempted to pull off the exact tone that this movie completely nails. I’m not even totally sure how I would describe it. It has actually kind of surprised me how popular this movie has been, because it feels so totally unique and strange and singular. But maybe we can have nice things after all. And speaking of nice things, the three central performances in this movie are probably, for my money, three of the best five performances of the entire year. So of course none of them were Oscar nominated. 

This is why we can’t have nice things.

8. Killers of the Flower Moon - I wanted to see this movie so badly because I’d read the book, and now all I wish is that I could see it for the first time without having read the book. That it took a book I loved and turned it into something totally different, isn’t a failing of the movie, it’s probably to its credit, it was just vaguely disappointing expectations-wise. But to take what’s essentially a who-done-it and turn it into a searing indictment of America’s original and ongoing sin made this material into something much more vital and powerful. 

My Oscar rant for this year: Lily Gladstone is in less than an hour of a three and a half hour movie, her contending for Best Actress rather than Best Supporting Actress is utterly absurd although I get and respect why she did it. But still, I’m holding out hope she doesn’t win. And yes the movie is too long, but what movie these days isn’t? It’s so great to see Robert DeNiro really get to cook again, and there are some really great Native actors who make the absolute most of what should be many more opportunities. But most of all, Martin Scorsese: still an absolute master at directing. When you make a movie where Jesse Plemons gives like, at most, the 6th best performance in the cast, you know you’re great at what you do.

7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Art in the sense that you could take any single still frame of the movie and hang on your wall like a painting, which I know was the intent, and boy did they pull it off. Also art in the sense that it kicks ass. It may be the last morsel of meat left on the decaying bones of the the carcass of superhero movies, but it really shows what might have been. What true imagination, wit, humor, and intelligence can be when they’re allowed to work free of restrictions and at their absolute apex. The why-don’t-they-make-the-whole-plane-out-of-the-black-box of IP filmmaking.

6. Oppenheimer - Still not totally convinced that the final third of the movie works or is necessary, but regardless, overall, what an achievement! To have me watching thru my fingers with stress over whether or not the bomb will work would be like creating an almost unbearable level of suspense over whether the Titanic will hit an iceberg or not. It’s just truly masterful filmmaking. 2023’s clear answer to the question “why movies?”

5. Barbie - To have a movie with something real to say, something that matters, where the message isn’t tacked onto to the IP, but the IP is used as vehicle for the message; and to have that movie be the #1 movie of the year by far, and totally dominate the culture - that feels like a comet. Like something you get maybe once in a generation. What comedy does better than anything else, what it does most effectively when operating in its highest form, is it can penetrate the hearts and minds of people who would otherwise totally reject anything remotely resembling vegetables. And I truly can’t think of a movie working on this scale, that so effectively says what it wants to by not just sacrificing an ounce of its comedy, but instead by USING its comedy. Get rid of the Mattel storyline and this is maybe the best comic screenplay of all time? Seems extreme, but the scale this is operating on, with the needle that is has to thread, and how many of its jokes feel so insanely specific and niche yet work so universally - it’s definitely in the conversation at the very least. If only every Will Farrell scene didn’t fail so epically this would be #1 easily. But still, Greta Gerwig, Our Queen: she’s now 3 for 3 with 3 upper deck HRs. I would lie down in traffic for her.

4. Maestro - It’s wild to me how unpopular this movie seems to have become. I attended the official Academy screening for Maestro and in my three years of attending Academy screenings it’s the first time a film ever got a standing ovation, and a raucous one at that. I would have put down money on it winning Best Actor and maybe even Best Actress on the spot. I was convinced it was going to be one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. And then, well, it wasn’t. And I’ve thought a lot since about why that is. And I think I’ve settled on a theory: the title did it in. People came in expecting a biopic of Leonard Berstein and a movie about what made him great. And not only is this movie not that, it’s not trying to be. This isn’t really about a maestro at all. It’s about a couple. About the sacrifices that we make for art, for each other, for fame. It’s about supporting people we know are flawed, or will cause us pain, because we want to be a part of something greater than ourselves. The famous scene of Bradley Cooper conducting, which absolutely wrecked me, isn’t really about conducting - the key to the entire movie is when the camera pulls back to reveal Carey Mulligan watching him conduct. And in that moment all the pain, the struggle, the things unsaid and the sacrifices, for her, are all worth it for this perfect moment of art. They did this thing together, this thing that will live on well after they are dead, and for them, for those two people, maybe that’s what it’s all about. And so in a room full of hugely successful film professionals who probably recognized so much of their life and relationships on that screen, the movie played like gangbusters. And to the huge masses of people who maybe have healthier relationships to art than Leonard Bernstein, Bradley Cooper, and the members of the Motion Picture Academy, who were probably watching this at home on Netflix while half paying attention it all just seems a little much, or a little inaccessible, or not at all what they wanted when they turned it on. But it’s what I wanted. Because my brain is broken in the very same way. #Maestro4Ever

3. Poor Things - My expectations for this movie were that it was going to be my favorite movie ever made, and here it is at only #3 of 2023. So went went wrong (other than having comically unrealistic expectations)? Well, Jarrod Carmichael gives a performance that’s a real contender for the Mount Rushmore of Bad Performances In Otherwise Great Movies. And Mark Ruffalo is WOEFULLY miscast. And the entire boat section is too long and too unfocused. 

And YET, even with those big minuses working against it, this movie still finishes in the top 3 in a truly great year for movies because WOW are the highs high. Emma Stone, my queen of queens, the GOAT of my heart, is just otherworldly here. It’s some real Daniel Day-Lewis how-did-they-do-it, I-don’t-understand-how-we’re-even-the-same-species-let-alone-the-same-profession level shit. Tony McNamara is now unquestionably my favorite writer working today. If every generation gets the Aaron Sorkin they deserve, then we’re currently living in the greatest generation. And perhaps most of all: Yorgos! He should write his name in all caps because that’s how it should always be said. YORGOS. Any less enthusiasm for his genius than that and you’re just not doing it right. When they talk about visionaries and singular talents YORGOS is what they mean.

So if you put my favorite current director, favorite current writer, and favorite current actress together and you don’t get 100% perfection, well, that’s ok; you still get something pretty damn great.

2. The Zone of Interest - In art as in life, often the thing that determines what story you’re telling is simply how far you zoom out the frame.

It’s been said ad nauseam, but the fact that there are two totally separate and completely opposite movies happening at the same time, the one you see and the one you hear, is so genius, so unprecedented, and so uniquely powerful that I feel like I don’t have even the words to properly discuss it other than to simply point it out. Just when you think that after 100+ years of movie-making there’s nothing wholly new and totally original that can possibly be done with the art form, something like this comes along and absolutely blows you away. It’s Art with a capital A, and it’s a movie I will be referencing and thinking about the rest of my life. A true masterpiece and a perfect film.

1. Past Lives - I walked out of this movie and thru heaving sobs of emotion, said to myself “well that was one of the best films of this decade” and I only feel more strongly about it now. In terms of sheer gripping your seat, watching through your fingers, unbearable levels of tension Past Lives will see your “will the atomic bomb actually work and forever change humanity”and raise you a “two people wordlessly staring at each other”. This movie is as thrilling as any action movie, as suspenseful as any horror movie, as moving as any drama, and as romantic as any rom-com. Plus every other emotion too. It’s the best off every type of movie and it’s just three people talking to each other in different combinations. And the moment of loaded silence, THE MOMENT, you know the one - I don’t know that I’ve ever been more transfixed by a movie screen. If you had told me it lasted 15 seconds I’d have believed you, and if you told me it lasted 5 minutes I’d have believed you. I literally think I stopped breathing at one point during it. I certainly know I lost track of all sense of space and time.

The older I get I find myself more and more asking why I spend so much time watching movies. With the limited time we have on earth is watching 100 or so movies every year worth it? Is it the best way to be spending my time? Ultimately what is it all for? 

And then, once every few years, if you’re lucky, you see something like Past Lives, and as you’re walking out of the theater, the only thing in life you could ever want, the sole purpose of human existence, is simply to have more time to watch more movies.

SHORTS

1. The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar (Live Action)

2. 95 Senses (Animated)

3. The Last Repair Shop (Doc)

4. Nai Nai & Wai Po (Doc)

5. Invincible (Live Action)

6. Our Uniform (Animated)

7. Red White and Blue (Live Action)

8. The Barber of Little Rock (Doc)

9. Letter to a Pig (Animated)

10. Pachyderm (Animated)

11. The Island in Between (Doc)

12. The After (Live Action)

13. Knight of Fortune (Live Action)

(Big Gap)

14. The ABCs of Book Banning (Doc)

40. Tell It Like a Woman - It’s true, this “movie” actual exists. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and they haven’t stopped bleeding since. That this collection of sub-student-film level shorts is an absolute embarrassment for everyone involved is besides the point. What I really want you to know about this “movie” is that the Diane Warren song that is the entire reason for this project to exist plays in one of the shorts, then it plays again over the closing credits, then it plays a SECOND time over the closing credits, but then it ends and the credits are still going. And no new songs starts! So you’re just sitting there in the most uncomfortable interminable silence ever because I guess they couldn’t afford a second song (?) and at Academy screenings it’s considered incredibly rude to leave before the credits are done. But thank god you didn’t because then after the credits there is a MUSIC VIDEO FOR THE SONG! And that music video is longer and looks like it cost more than basically all of the shorts you just watched. And part of the music video is Diane Warren directing the music video you're currently watching?? And as a legitimate smile formed on my face while all of this was unfolding, it’s only then that I truly understood Stockholm Syndrome.

39. Blonde - Feels truly wild that this wasn’t the worst movie I saw this year. It’s hard to say if I hated this more than Andrew Dominick hates Marilyn Monroe, but regardless, I can’t imagine ever having a more unpleasant time at the movies than I did watching this three-hour-long Ana de Armas hostage video. Please don’t watch Blonde.

38. Bardo - More like BardNO. If you’re going to make a movie about you feel like you suck as an artist and are unworthy as a person, what you don't want is the end result to make the audience definitely agree with you. But other than the truly gorgeous cinematography, making Inarritu’s self-loathing an ACTUAL loathing is the only other thing this film successfully achieves. Well, that and single-handedly killing the idea of Netflix giving unlimited money to directors to make their passion projects unimpeded. Never thought I would say this, but after watching Bardo - please studios, give directors more notes.

37. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - “Yeah, but your scientists were so occupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should” - Dr. Ian Malcom, a character who would later appear in Jurassic Park: Dominion.

While watching this movie I kept trying to figure out what on earth the character of RiRi had to do with anything, only to get home and learn that her sole purpose in the movie was to set up a future TV series. At this point buying a ticket for an MCU movie is exactly like Ralphie in A Christmas Story sending off for Annie’s Secret Circle Decoder Ring, only you already know in advance the answer will always just ultimately be “don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine”.

36. EO - I’m sure when they were making this movie they thought “well, if nothing else, at least we’re definitely making the best artsy existential European donkey movie this year.” Nope! 

No human in this movie behaves like an actual human being, every major choice is contrived simply to keep the plot moving forward, and the donkey is the best actor in the cast. Nice try though.

35. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - When adults don't take animation seriously as an art form and write it off as essentially kids entertainment, this is the exact movie they’re thinking of - brightly colored, turbo-charged drivel, with broad characters, broader jokes, and nothing interesting to say. Not to yuck anyone’s yum, as I’m sure if I was 8 years old I would want all things Puss and Boots mainlined directly into my veins, but as a non-8-year-old, this was very much Not For Me. 

(Also, as a 40 year old man, if you’d like to almost certainly get put on some kind of list then I would really recommend going by yourself, in a heavy coat and sweatpants, to a 9:30pm Friday night screening of a Puss in Boots film.)

34. Navalny - Important story, one truly great scene, and a film that I know a lot of people seem to like, but as a piece of movie making, for me, well...are the kids still saying “mid”? If so, I’m gonna say the thing that I’m sure ALL the kids are saying - a sentence that you can hear as you walk down the halls of any school in America - "Navalny is mid”.

33. The Sea Beast - Less than a month after having seen it, here’s the grand total of what I remember about this movie: there was a sea beast.

32. The Whale - If you want to know why there are many different art forms used to tell stories a great example is that this script works beautifully as a play, and terribly as a movie. Theater and film are different mediums, and what works on stage often seems overwrought and overwritten on film. And as we learn more and more with each passing year, most movies don’t make good plays either. So just let plays be plays and movies be movies. And let whatever exactly Sadie Sink and Samatha Morton are doing in The Whale never be either ever again.

31. Mrs Harris Goes to Paris - A beautiful looking trifle that tastes lovely and sweet but has absolutely no nutritional value because it’s mostly just air. A movie that feels like it should have premiered on British Airways’ in-flight entertainment network, if that can somehow be read as a semi-compliment.

30. Empire of Light - There’s a truly moving and interesting movie in here about the power of film and communal experience. The problem is that there are three other movies in here as well. Still, if you got Colman and you got Deakins, you got something. Just not any more than that though.

28. A House Made of Splinters - This year’s Oscar Doc Mad Libs entry. There’s always at least one nominee where the log line is: verite footage of a woman/group of women operating (an uplifting and important social service) in (country that’s currently in the news for being at war). in this case it’s (orphanage) and (Ukraine). Important story, truly heroic work, and further proof that if you point a camera at kids for long enough you’re always gonna wind up with some profound truths. But I watch a version of this exact movie every single year.

27. Argentina 1985 - Would seem difficult to take something as emotionally compelling as the true-life story of people being disappeared by a South American military dictatorship and make a movie about it that feels as conventional as an extra long Law and Oder episode, but here we are. That’s not to say it isn’t well made, important, and watchable - people love Law and Order! - just that it’s so by the numbers it feels more like a math equation than a film. If you’ve ever seen a movie before, you know where this one is going.

26. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - Everything listed before this movie I would not really recommend, and everything after it, at least on some level, I would. And this is the exact mid-point. A perfectly decent movie that I feel absolutely nothing about. See it, or don’t - I can’t imagine a world where I would possibly care one way or the other. it’s simply the blindfolded lady who holds up the scale.

25. The Quiet Girl - It’s hard to totally put my finger on why this movie feels like one that in a few years I’ll almost certainly forget ever having seen, when at the same time there are very stylistically and tonally similar movies much higher on my list, but if I had to try and sum it up, I’d say it’s this: the girl is too quiet.

24. To Leslie - Honestly, is Andrea Riseborough getting nominated for this movie that much different than Laura Dern getting nominated for Rambling Rose or Jessica Lange WINNING for Blue Sky? I have no idea, I’ve never seen those movies. But an actress getting nominated for a micro-budget film no one saw from a tiny distributor isn’t some sort of new scandal, it used to be an annual tradition. Hell, To Leslie is exactly the sort of pleasant feel-good elevated-middle-brow indie that the Oscars were practically built on in the 90s. Although Mark Maron is the least believable Texan in movie history, and the budget definitely shows, and the style is non-existent, as half of Hollywood has at this point tweeted - it’s a small movie with a big heart. And I didn’t even get paid to say that!

23. Living - Why did we need essentially a shot-for-shot remake of Ikiru only set in England instead of Japan? Seriously, who is this for? It feels almost radically, defiantly, inessential. But the performances, especially Bill Nighy, are pretty great. And hey, Ikiru is a classic for a reason. So, whatever. Ultimately it was worth seeing, but this is last time I will ever write about Living again for the rest of my life.

22. Causeway - “Brian Tyree Henry, Oscar Nominee” has nice ring to it. And Jennifer Lawrence - also good at acting. Out of the little run I’m on here of nice but slight character study dramas, this feels like the best of the bunch. That may not be saying a ton, but it’s something, which also feels like a solid summary of this film.

21. All The Beauty And The Bloodshed - Scalding hot take: Nan Golden seems like a bit of a tough hang. Take that’s not hot at all: the Sackler family are evil pieces of shit. And sure, getting you emotionally riled up about their awfulness is sort of a layup, but by combining it with Nan Golden’s incredible life story, tough hang though she may be, this movie 360 windmill dunks it.

20. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio - Not a del Toro person, never going to be a del Toro person, just not my vibe, and truly baffled as to why he spent his time making the millionth adaptation of a story no one was asking to see remade, but damn if the result isn’t impressive. It may not be my thing, and it’s honestly  unclear who it’s audience exactly is supposed to be, but the level of care and craft on display is undeniably worthy of praise. Indifferent towards the player, but respect the hell out of the game.

19. Fire of Love - It’s almost impossible to watch this movie and not think the whole time about how you’re watching two Wes Anderson characters. Which is fitting because the style of this movie is more notable than the substance. But what stye it is. And although I said it’s somewhat lacking in substance, it does get at one very important and universal truth: don’t go chasing volcanoes.

18. Turning Red - As a massive Pixar fanboy it’s been a while since they’ve had a script that rose to the standards of their glory days, but I think this finally does the trick. The movie is visually a little too frantic and busy for my taste, but I’m also not its target audience, so that’s fine. It has something real and original to say to a demographic that I have aged out of and that’s more than valid. Teen and tween audiences need real art too, and not just pandering dreck. So while maybe this movie wasn’t one of my personal favorites of the year, it feels good to be able to roll up my sleeves and show my #TeamPixar tattoo with pride once again.

17. RRR - There’s a warning before this film that no actual animals were harmed because all the animals are CGI, which is hilarious because there’s no way anyone could possibly think anything in this movie was real, including the human beings. It’s definitely the first massive budget blockbuster action spectacular that also feels like they used non-union actors. Which is fitting because it’s as much video game as it is a movie. I absolutely admire the hell out of the craft, the ambition, originality, and fight choreography on display, but bottom line is that a movie where a guy punches a tiger in the face with a fist that’s on fire is just fundamentally never going to be My Thing. The musical numbers, especially Naatu Naatu, are truly electric though, and if you’re a 16-year-old boy bump this ranking up infinity places.

16. The Batman - This is why we can’t have nice things. You make a superhero movie that feels like it was done by an actual human rather than a committee, with great interesting acting choices, a real visual style, and a distinct dark aesthetic that feels like it enhances the specific story being told rather than the demands of some larger universe, and it makes money, but it leaves no cultural footprint. This coming and going without seeming to leave a mark shows that it’s not the Batman movie we deserved, but it was for sure the one I needed, and it deserved better.

15. Elvis - It’s important to preface this by saying that as a theater kid I’m a Baz Lurhman fan. R&J? Seminal movie of my adolescence and a huge reason I still love Shakespeare today. Moulin Rouge? Own it on a worn-out special edition DVD. The Great Gatsby? Underrated! Australia? Sure! So your milage may understandably vary, and I get that. I totally see all the flaws. But damn if Baz making a movie ABOUT music doesn’t just bypass all my critical facilities and go straight to my pleasure center. Is this movie what cocaine is like? Anyway, it’s not GOOD, but also, for me, it’s great. And if Austin Butler winds up winning the Oscar I’m gonna feel pretty proud of walking out of the theater after seeing Elvis back in the summer and calling my shot

14. All Quiet on the Western Front - I do firmly believe the famous Truffaut quote that there’s no such thing as an anti-war movie. But this is the exception to that rule. Like West Side Story last year, it pulls off the miraculous task of remaking a movie that didn’t need remaking while yet also justifying its own existence. And while it now feels like we’ve officially reached the end point of war movie verisimilitude, what an exclamation point to cap off the journey. It’s truly insane WWI ever happened, and if only we could go back in time and show them this film, it never would have. It’s that powerful.

13. Avatar: The Way of Water - There’s nothing I’m more out on in movies than when one CGI thing is fighting another CGI thing. Yet when the whole movie is CGI things fighting CGI things? Apparently I’m all the way in.

Look the story is dumb, and the dialogue is stilted, and the mythology this world is trying to build feels pretty cringe, but by god is this movie gorgeous to look at and an absolute technical marvel. And the final third of this movie is some of the best action filmmaking I’ve seen in a very long time. James Cameron, incredible stager of action sequences, who knew? Strap on some 3D glasses, see this on an IMAX screen on a Friday night in a crowded theater, and try not to be entertained, I dare you.

12. All That Breathes - I do this insane project of watching every single Oscar nominee every year because without fail it exposes me to one or two or three movies I fall in love with that I wouldn’t have ever seen otherwise. Well that, and also because there’s something wrong with my brain. But most often these wonderful finds are documentaries, for example: Attica, Time, Minding the Gap, and my beloved Honeyland. Much like Honeyland, my find this year, All That Breathes, is about something simple - in this case its two brothers running a Mumbai bird hospital instead of Honeyland’s Macedonian beekeeper - but like with that film, as it slowly reveals itself, it turns out to really be about Everything All At Once. Family, geopolitics, the climate crisis, religion, interconnectedness - truly all that breathes. Great film, and can’t wait to see what subtly beautiful Senegalese goat herder documentary I fall in love with in 2023.

11. Top Gun: Maverick - The platonic ideal of a summer blockbuster. This is not my kind of movie at all, and yet I even I was won over. Resistance is impossible. Picking nits is pointless. Because sure it’s as by the numbers as they come yet, wow is that counting fun. It almost single handedly justifies the concept of just turning your brain off and having a good escapist time at the movies. But most importantly for me, it just makes me feel good about never wavering in one of my deepest held beliefs: Jennifer Connelly is the most attractive human being who has ever lived. 

10. Women Talking - Here’s to truth in advertising. No one who can read titles can say they didn’t know EXACTLY what they walking into with this film. But what great talking it is. And what great women! Although ::poking his head the slightest bit humanly possible out from behind the world’s largest bush:: the one truly transcendent performance in the film for me was Ben Wishaw. But everyone was great really. And fitting that the only great play adaptation of the year wasn’t a play adaptation at all. It was just a true ensemble working together to tell an important story in urgent and poetic language in a purposely claustrophobic setting. It’s a real shame then that this film seems to be evaporating from the collective consciousness before it ever even made its way in, because it’s actually the one thing we should all be doing more of: watching women talking.

9. TAR - As a card carrying elitist film snob it pains me as much to rank TAR this low as it does for you to see it here. And there was a point, maybe about two hours into the movie, where it seemed like it was ending, and I thought to myself “what a masterpiece!”. But the problem is it didn’t end there. It kept going. And the last part of this film, the part that some people online think is supposed to be a dream or whatever, just absolutely does not work for me. And wow oh wow does it feel like the absolute last scene isn’t just beamed in from a totally different movie but from a totally different planet. It’s the exact opposite of sticking the landing. That being said, Todd Field is an actual genius, the dialogue is in a league of its own, and it’s fitting Cate Blanchett is probably not going to win the Oscar because an Oscar feel almost beneath her performance. But still…that last 20 minutes. So please don’t tar me, but #9 it is.

8. Triangle of Sadness - I think all the time about Connor Oberst performing his anti-Bush song “When the President Talks to God” years ago on The Tonight Show. This dense, well-written song with no chorus and no hooks that got what can best be described as polite applause. And I remember thinking, good song, but what is the point of it? It will reach absolutely no one who doesn’t already hate Bush. You know what will? Green Day writing a song literally called “American Idiot” about how the president is, well, an American idiot, but it has a sing-along chorus that kicks ass. And I think about that when people criticize Triangle of Sadness for being too obvious, because you know what - it absolutely kicks ass. 

On paper, sure, people quoting Lenin and Reagan back at each other while rich people throw up on each other on a luxury cruise is embarrassingly on the nose, but in practice, watching it play out on screen in a movie theater full of people, I was laughing so hard I could barely feel my face, let alone my nose. And all the chatter about how this movie makes obvious points about how rich people are bad feels like it comes from people who wrote the movie off half-way thru, because it totally misses the third act, which is the complicated, thorny, and dark heart of the film. (Justice for Dolly de Leon!)

Look, maybe this wasn’t your cup of tea, but anecdotally, talking to people from all areas of my life, especially people younger than me, this is BY FAR the movie from this year that people bring up to me the most. And they always say how its themes were thought-provoking and important and worth watching. And to me that’s proof of my belief that what may on paper come off as obvious, is in fact the year’s catchiest chorus.

7. Babylon - Is it the best movie of the year? No. Would I personally give it my hypothetical Oscar vote? Definitely not. Should it win best picture? Don’t be absurd. But would I give up all my worldly possessions to a join a new religion where we move out to the woods and chant the name Babylon up to the heavens 12 hours a day? Absolutely! 

Babylon is like if one of Stephon’s clubs was a movie - this film has everything: an alligator attack, a guy eating a live mouse, a Jean Smart monologue about existentialism, Margot Robbie projectile vomiting on someone’s face, footage from the 1982 film Tron. It’s as though someone told Damien Chazelle this was going to be the final movie ever made and he somehow, miraculously, aced the assignment. It’s definitely one of the most movie movies ever to movie. It feels weird to not be typing about this movie strictly in all caps. And if you think this movie is majorly flawed, well, sure, probably, but you’re missing the point. MOVIES!!!!

My head knows I cant rank this any higher than #7, but in my heart? Well, what’s a ranking higher than #1? #-100? In my heart this was the -100th best movie of the year.

6. Close - A stunningly beautiful and heartbreaking movie from what feels like a major new voice in Lukas Dhont. A movie that pulls off the magic trick of somehow making you feel deeply sympathetic towards those trapped in the prison of masculinity, rather than angry about the toxicity of it. And speaking of magical - in the year of great child actor performances the two in this movie are the best of them all. Just an absolute gem of a movie. Go see Close.

5. Aftersun - If TAR botched its ending, then Aftersun is the gymnastics judges crossing out their 10s and writing in 11s of sticking your landing. Because, spoiler alert, but the final scene of this movie is maybe the best use of a pre-existing popular song in film history. That sounds like hyperbole, but I was literally shaking with emotion during “Under Pressure”. It’s my new go-to need-a-good-cry YouTube clip. And a quiet film about a childhood experience where nothing much happens and it’s all subtext until finally one incredible scene of intense emotion is so totally my shit that it feels like I excreted it from my own colon. Was it maybe a little TOO quiet in parts? Perhaps. And the framing device didn’t TOTALLY work. But still, Charlotte Wells being able to compete with this film in the best the First Feature category at awards shows feels unfair. It’s so confident and expertly crafted that I feel like she’s a future My Favorite Director just waiting to happen.

4. Everything Everywhere All At Once - Sure you can make the argument it’s a hat on an infinite number of hats, but HOLY SHIT LOOK AT ALL THOSE FUCKING HATS!!!! The inventiveness, originality, and utter chaos on display in a movie that’s about to win Best Picture is truly mind-blowing. It’s like a Jackson Pollock of ideas. When they say they don’t make em like that anymore, this is the exact opposite of what they’re talking about.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin - Barry Keoghan might be my favorite actor working today, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are the new dysfunctional Hepburn and Tracy, and Kerry Condon should win all the Oscars. But for me this movie is all about the script. That fecking script. Laugh out loud funny, endlessly quotable, and utterly heartbreaking. I mean, Martin McDonagh - good at writing things, who knew? Plays shouldn’t be movies, but maybe more movies should be by writers of plays.

2. Marcel the Shell With Shoes On - I want to have a genetic mutation causing me to have more thumbs just so I can give this more than two thumbs up. This movie is a miracle. How did a super twee one-joke YouTube short become the most moving and heartfelt mediation on family and connection and existentialism I’ve seen in a long time? It still doesn’t seem possible and yet I’ve seen it with my own tear-stained eyes. I can’t compare it to any movie I’ve ever seen before and I can’t imagine anything quite like it will ever come along again. And most miraculous of all, if it moves even a slight inch in any other direction it becomes cloying, or sappy, or obvious, or any multitude of other sins, yet it’s in such total control of its tone it’s like watching Lydia Tar conduct a tone orchestra. And finally, if the scene where Marcel finally finds his family didn’t totally turn you into a sobbing mess than you yourself might be a shell, or at least have one for a heart. I cried, I laughed uproariously, and I fell in love with an animated shell with shoes on - what more could you possibly want out of a film?

1. The Fabelmans - Is this the movie that I feel most passionate about from 2022? No. Read what I had to say about most of the past 10 entries for proof. I’m honestly surprised to see this here, and I’m the one making the list. But here’s the thing: my favorite film of 2017 was Lady Bird. Of 2018 was Eighth Grade. Of 2019 was Little Women. I’m nothing if not consistent in my total love of and weakness for a coming of age story. We all have our things. And one this well shot, and scored, and written, and acted, and DIRECTED - I dunno what to tell you. This was the movie that best combined quality of filmmaking with emotional connection for me personally. It had the most scenes I loved, the most performances I enjoyed, the most shots I marveled at. It seems like it wasn’t for everyone, and as the years pass I have a feeling this ranking might change, but for right now, thinking back on the year in film, I have a hot take to end things on: Steven Spielberg knows how to fucking make a great movie.

SHORTS

My Year of Dicks (animated)

Ice Merchants (animated)

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse (animated)

Haulout (doc)

An Ostrich Told Me The World Is Fake And I Think I Believe It (animated)

The Elephant Whisperers (doc)

How Do You Measure A Year? (doc)

The Red Suitcase (live action)

The Flying Sailor (animated)

Le Pupille (live action)

An Irish Goodbye (live action)

The Martha Mitchell Effect (doc)

Ivalu (live action)

Stranger at the Gate (doc)

1. The Worst Person in the World - This is a perfect movie. I honestly can’t remember the last movie I felt that way about. It’s only 2022 but there’s no chance that in 2029 this movie isn’t on my (and many people’s) top 10 of the decade list. I will go to my grave believing that if this movie had come out one month earlier it would have won Best Picture. It’s a movie that’s humanly impossible to dislike. What an achievement.

2. Dune - Not to get all Power of Movies on you, but this movie is Why Movies. This is why we go to movie theaters, and it’s what movies do that TV can’t. Something on this scale, this transporting, this immersive - it’s honestly awe inspiring. When you watch something like Dune and then you watch literally any other big budget spectacle it just makes you angry that movies CAN be this good, and yet choose not to be. Something can have such a human personal touch, and yet studios would actively prefer to make their films feel anonymous. I’ll never get over it. People may argue that Dune is all style and no substance, but the style IS the substance. This is world building-as-art. And people may argue that it doesn’t have an ending, and that’s true, but who cares? When the journey is this transfixing I could care less if it ever ends. Look, I could go on and on about Dune, but just know if you can get someone as blockbuster adverse as me to go this gaga for your mega-budget space worm movie then you’ve really achieved something. Villeneuve is God.

3. The Power of the Dog - When someone talks about a director being in command of material, this movie should be the first example that comes to mind. Every frame of this movie is a carefully constructed piece to a magnificent puzzle. And speaking of the power of movie theaters, this is maybe the all time example of the difference between seeing a movie on the big screen vs. at home. It feels like a miracle something that’s this slow of a slow burn can still get made, but thank god it was. A minor masterpiece.

4. The Tragedy of Macbeth - Kathryn Hunter!!! KATHRYN HUNTER!!! Of course the best performance of the year by a long shot wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. But at least Denzel was. If you think Musical Theater People are a hypercritical tough crowd then you clearly haven’t met Shakespeare People, so to somehow get around their gates is no small feat. But two absolutely astounding performances, a Coen Brother, German expressionism, Shakespeare, most of the Malcom stuff being cut, Bruno Delbonnel, arguably the best production design of the year, Stephen Root - what’s not to love? I’m so glad lazy high school students have this to watch now if they don’t want to read the play. What an intro to Shakespeare. What a movie.

5. Licorice Pizza - I have a real weakness for coming of age stories (see: #7 on this list). I love PTA. I live in the Valley. I’m an actor. This is a home run for me. People say nothing happens in the movie like that’s a bad thing. I could hang out in this world doing nothing forever.

6. Drive My Car - They had me at “3 hour Japanese movie about grief”. Then they had me even more at “theater director puts on multilingual production of Uncle Vanya”. It’s wild this movie has found as wide an audience as it has, but it’s certainly well deserved. Not every choice the characters make in the movie makes sense literally, but they all do emotionally. Beautiful film, and, honestly…could have been longer.

7. Belfast - If you’re looking for someone who wasn’t going to be utterly charmed and won over by a well-acted, well-made personal coming of age story scored exclusively by the music of Van Morrison then you’ve come to the wrong place

8. Cyrano - Of all the shocking Oscar snubs this year the fact that none of the songs from this film got nominated simply means to me that not enough people saw it. A totally bungled Oscar campaign and a real shame, as this deserves more love as the only truly original musical in the year of the movie musical. For a story that has been around for so long, it’s impressive the degree to which this blows all other film adaptions of Cyrano out of the water. And, as a Joe Wright film, it looks absolutely immaculate. You should check this one out.

9. Summer of Soul - Probably the most purely ENJOYABLE movie of the year. Incredible footage for something that never aired. What a find. A less rich man’s Get Back is actually VERY high praise.

10. Attica - An absolutely vital historical document. It’s truly crazy that even someone like me who is student of history knew nearly nothing about Attica, except for the fact that sadly it isn’t crazy at all. This honestly should be required viewing in history classes, it’s that important. Watch this movie and then as the closing credits are rolling try to tell me defund the police is too extreme of an idea, I dare you.

11. West Side Story - This year’s “I’m probably wrong about this one” nominee. Amazing filmmaking. Outstanding cast (justice for Mike Faist!). Great adaptation that against all odds makes a great case for its own existence. But for whatever reason it left me a little cold somehow. But I’m almost positive that if I rewatched it I would feel differently. For now though, it’s #11.

12. Don’t Look Up - I’ve long said that if you want to make a song with a message you’ve gotta make it catchy and obvious if you actually care about it doing any good. This is that song in movie form. I know it’s not cool to like this movie, but I think that’s partially baked into it. Being lame to coastal elites actually makes me like this movie more. And, I mean, Idiocracy is super obvious about its message and yet I think about that movie almost daily. I guess what I’m saying is I think message comedy is very hard, but it’s something I personally really respond to and respect, and although I think Adam McKay is fairly insufferable as a filmmaker, I actually enjoyed this and thought it was effective, if very flawed, and wasn’t just preaching to the converted.

13. King Richard - Enjoyable movie, incredible story, Will Smith deserves his Oscar.

14. The Lost Daughter - When doing any sort of list or ranking there’s a very important distinction that most people miss between favorite and best. Just because you personally loved something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s well made. And just because you didn’t like something doesn’t make it bad. For example, I didn’t really connect with The Lost Daughter at all. I found it cold and obtuse. But I also recognize that it’s a good movie. Just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean it’s not a well made film. It just means I can’t put any higher on my personal list than this.

15. Tick Tick Boom - As someone who has loved this musical since 2001, and considers seeing it on stage for the first time maybe the seminal theater-going experience of my life, do I love that this movie has become the movie of year for The Basics? I do not. Do I still dearly love this material and think Andrew Garfield absolutely crushes it, even if it doesn’t TOTALLY work as a movie? I do. Once a theater kid, always a theater kid.

16. The Mitchells vs The Machines - This year’s Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse, not in that it’s nearly as good as that movie, but in the sense it feels like it’s doing something truly new and modern and fresh with the medium of animation. The fact that this isn’t the frontrunner for Best Animated Feature is sad proof that people inexplicably still don’t take animation seriously.

17. Nightmare Alley - If you want to see Bradley Cooper acquire a taste for live chickens this is the movie for you. If you want to see me finally acquire a taste for the films of Guillermo del Toro, this ain’t it. Great cast though.

18. Hand of God - This being the midpoint of this list feels exactly right. Paolo Sorrentino is certainly a talented filmmaker, but still not sure if he’s for me or not. If you want to show your midwestern relatives an almost parody of what they think a “foreign film” is like, this would be great pick.

19. Flee - Great, important story; interesting filmmaking; a strangely blah finished product. Your milage may vary.

20. House of Gucci - Lady Gaga should have won Best Actress. Jared Leto should have won Most Jared Leto. I’ll always prefer a movie where people are taking big chances over a movie you forget the second it’s over, but the problem here is that no one was remotely taking the SAME chances, and the story felt like all set up, very rushed payoff.

21. Parallel Mothers - Almodovar is very hit or miss for me and this was a miss in my book. It felt like two totally separate movies that never came together for me. Like two lines that are moving in the same direction yet never intersect. I know there’s a word for that, I just cant remember it.

22 Ascension - Really interesting approach to presenting a story, and really great footage, but for my money it needed more focus and more clarity on the story it was trying to tell. If Don’t Look Up is hitting you over the head with a hammer with its message, then Ascension is lightly brushing you with a feather. I’m all for lack of plot, but at a certain point this all just turned to mush.

23. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom - Should this have beaten out A Hero for a nomination slot? No, that’s absurd. But the movie is a slight and yet charming trip to Bhutan, a country I knew basically nothing about coming in, and the nomination was a great story for the nation itself. Also I definitely did the Leo pointing at the screen meme when the yak was finally in the classroom which was fun. So no harm, no foul.

24. Luca - I’m a massive Pixar fanboy, but I honestly don't remember anything about this movie other than that there are two cycling fish-boys. Are they bicycling or motorcycling? Or maybe it was a vespa? Who knows. I remember the whole thing being pleasant and nice and then immediately leaving my brain.

25. Raya and the Last Dragon - Encanto was a massive hit and this movie feels like it came and went without leaving a trace, yet while not a great movie by any means, it definitely deserved better. Not much there for adults, but if you have access to children you should have them check this out.

26. No Time To Die - I see what you did there, title of this movie. Fine Bond film I guess, but seemed a bit like everyone involved just wanted to be done with it. Also needed way more Ana de Armas, but then what doesn’t?

27. Being the Ricardos - Why?

28. Cruella - Great costumes. A fine time. And I’d watch Emma Stone in literally anything. But this is just The Devil Wears Prada suffering from a brain injury. And WAY too long and completely inessential. Still though: Emma Stone!

29. The Eyes of Tammy Faye - Weird to say, but this actually feels too low for this movie. I mean it’s completely unremarkable filmmaking and cliched standard-issue biopic stuff, but Tammy Faye is actually a pretty fascinating real-life figure and Jessica Chastain deserves the Oscar she’s probably going to win. She’s legit great in this. But putting it any higher on the list feels wrong too. So #29 it is.

30. Encanto - Great songs, total mess of a movie. Sorry kids ages 4-14, you’re wrong, this is not good. But it is VERY Disney if you’re into that sort of thing. #TeamPixar

31. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Can someone explain Awkwafina to me please? The bus fight was cool, but when CGI things start fighting other CGI things I couldn’t possibly be more out. For Marvel though, perfectly fine.

32. Spider-Man No Way Home - ::very Bo Burnham voice:: “Look I made you some content!” Content meeting content so it can be spun off into more content!

If this is what culture is now then there truly IS no way home. But really though, will two friends from the same random high school both get into the world’s most selective university TOGETHER, or will their third friend have to give up being a super hero who has the ability to literally save the world partially so that they wont be briefly sad over something that doesn’t matter??? I MUST KNOW!!! GIVE ME THE CONTENT, DADDY!!!!! LET ME STARE STRAIGHT INTO THE GAPING MAW OF LATE STAGE CAPITALISM!!! MORE PLEASE!!!!!

33. CODA - Ok enough with the appetizers, here’s the main course. You might think I’m trolling putting CODA this low, but I’ve thought A LOT about this, and I truly mean this from the bottom of my heart: CODA is not a good movie. Is it good at making you feel good? I didn’t think so, but I know a lot of people disagree, so sure, fine, whatever. But is it a good MOVIE? Not if you've ever seen a movie before.

Even leaving aside that it has absolutely no visual style or personal touch at all, leaving aside the fact that if you paused the movie 10 minutes into it you could predict basically everything else that would happen the entire rest of the movie, and ignoring the fact that the script is a virtual for word for word translation of a French film that made no impression whatsoever, what to me is most baffling about the reception to this movie is its lack of connection to anything resembling reality as I know it. Even Dune felt more realistic to me because at least Dune is up front about taking place in a fictional world. CODA takes place theoretically in our world, yet it doesn't seem to have any idea of how anything actually works - college admissions, teachers, high school choir, auditions, fishing, human behavior - none of it had any connection to the reality of those things as I know them. 

And sure representation is important, but this isn't the Incremental Progress Awards, it’s the Oscars. If deaf representation was actually so important to you then where were you last year for Sound of Metal - an original, complex, brilliantly made look at the deaf experience that felt totally real and totally vital. If you only care about representation when it personally makes you feel good then you can stop patting yourself on you back now well-meaning white people. “Deaf people like sex and are just like us!” isn't the progressive statement you think it is.

Look, its not CODA’s fault that it’s the Best Picture front runner, so most of my ire towards this perfectly pleasant TV-quality film maybe isn't deserved. But we get the art we ask for. There’s no money to be made in challenging, or progressive, or penetrating, or new. The money is in safe, and feel good, and familiar, and middlebrow. And there’s totally a place for that. I completely understand needing something that just makes you feel good. Something that warms your heart. Something you don’t have to think about. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong is when that's ALL there is. And when we elevate CODA and say that it’s the very best that the art form of movie making had to offer in the year 2021 then it further erodes the ability of things that AREN’T that to get made. And the fact that that elevation is being done by the very people who should most know better is what troubles me so existentially. We should demand more from our movies than CODA offers or we’ll never get more from them, and that should matter very deeply both as artists and as humans. And what's most sad of all to me is I think most people don’t really care.

There’s no country for old men.

34. Writing With Fire - Incredible women, great story, but as movie - this year’s “I’m baffled by the documentary branch’s decision making” entry

35. Free Guy - The Mountain Dew Baja Blast of Truman Shows. If you wanted to argue that Ryan Reynolds pulling out a light saber at the climax of this movie is the absolute nadir of cinema you wouldn’t get any pushback from me.

36. Coming 2 America - This is the 2.5-spaced, margins-pushed-in, completed the morning it was due term paper of movies, only in this case the assignment was “get paid”.

37. Four Good Days - No.

https://youtu.be/M7Is43K6lrg

(Ten years I had a cancer scare that triggered a mental health crisis for me. I wrote something about it but never felt like posting in anywhere. As I was getting my 2nd vaccine dose today I remembered what I had written all those years ago and it felt very relevant again, so I’m at long last putting it out there. Maybe you’ll find 2010 Andy relevant too.)

I beat death this week. I looked it in its face, right in the eyes, and told it to go fuck itself. And by “told it to go fuck itself” I mean “sat in my room crippled by fear, crying like a small child”. But in the end I won. Because that’s what winners do. But mostly because, as it turns out, death never cared about me in the first place.

Allow me to explain: Since November I’ve had a dull persistent ache in my side. Since it’s now July and the ache hasn’t gone away I thought it was time to perhaps see a doctor. Long story short I had/have an enlarged spleen and a low white blood cell count bordering on critical. If you google that particular combination of symptoms the possible causes that come back are, well, not good. (Lesson #1: Don’t ever google your medical symptoms). When you combine the things you find on google with a doctor at the Los Angeles Cancer Network ordering a bunch of tests in a serious tone of voice and having a long conversation with you about lymphoma your reaction would probably not be good. Or maybe it would be. But that’s the thing, you don’t really know until you’re faced with the situation. I would’ve thought that I would have handled the situation better than I did. Which is somewhat interesting considering that those close to me would likely describe me charitably as “very neurotic”. But the tough Texan in me always assumed that when faced with adversity I would rise mentally to the challenge. But in this case unfortunately my suspicions that I would have mentally lasted about 10 minutes in an actual crisis were irrevocably confirmed for me. “Needs to work on: mental tenacity, positive thinking” is a note now in ink on my evaluation. But maybe it’s on all of ours. Who truly knows what each other’s lives are. What another person is made of deep inside. All we really know about life is that it’s such a personal and individual experience that it’s ultimately unknowable, and it certainly can’t be fully shared.

You often hear about people divorcing after 30 years claiming they realize, in the end, that they never even knew who each other were. And you hear that and it seems absurd, but also, upon further reflection, a fair summation of the human experience. During the last week or so as I battled (read: ran in terror from) my deepest demons and fears, I was often out in public interacting with people, going through the motions of being a normal human being. And for those not in on the secret I’m sure they bought it. Externally, everything for the most part seemed fine I’m sure. Inside, it was like being underwater – sounds and colors and experiences were all murky and muted. I had a sense of disconnection from the earth. And the longer I stayed there the more I worried I might drown. Anyone who has ever experienced great tragedy or loss I’m sure knows the feeling. And anyone who knows that feeling knows that sad reality of just how isolating life truly is. Life is public, but yet the true experience of it is tragically and inexorably private, and I realized this week just how much time humanity spends hiding in plain sight. The demon is often just on the other side of the door.

And for me, in my life, there’s no bigger demon in my life than the fear of death. Its specter hangs over everything. Not necessarily actively, but always lurking in the background. Because in many ways it’s the only truly justifiable fear. Because it is one of the only things that we’re all guaranteed to experience. Birth and death – the two most primal and essential aspects of life there are. And there’s only one of the two we have yet to personally experience. And only one that we truly will, no matter how indestructible we all may often feel. We hear about tragedies, about deaths, about loss every day, and always think on some level that those things happen to other people. That they wont happen to us. But logistically speaking there’s absolutely no reason why they won’t. We have just about the same odds as anyone else of dying in a car crash. Of contracting cancer. Of being stabbed by person on the street. These things happen to people. Every day they do. Right now today is just a day, but at a moment’s notice, without warning it could suddenly become THE day. That’s the thing about being human – all options at all times are always in play. And what could be scarier than that?

Which is why we don’t spend time really truly deeply thinking about it. I’ve always thumbed my nose at the whole concept of “entertainment”. “Whats the point”, I used to think, “of distracting us from the very serious business of living?” (I’m fun at parties) I loved my entertainment as much if not more than the next person, but I always liked it the closer it came to “art” and the further away it veered from “diversion”. But I get it now. Life is too overwhelming to spend too much time in. We need frequent breaks from it. And sure if my thoughts before were obvious, now they’re just cliché, but this week there was almost no thought more important, no need more pressing. Distraction wasn’t a way out of life, it was the whole point of it. I found that I truly realized how pointless it was to care about who won or lost the game. I watched a movie with Oscar buzz and realized that I couldn’t care less about the very concept of awards shows (heresay I know). But I also realized that there was nothing I wanted more than TO care. To paraphrase the famous Onion headline, I yearned to care about meaningless bullshit again. Maybe distracting ourselves from our lives has become our lives, but like some Mobius strip there’s no way to determine where one ends and the other begins. Maybe the chicken and the egg both came together. Maybe the little things and the big things are one and the same. All I know is when faced with my mortality I didn’t regret not creating great works of art. I didn’t want to fight for life so that I could write the great American novel. I wanted more than anything to sit with my friends eating ice cream. My deepest wish was just to be normal. Just to care about who won the game. Just to experience random meaningless moments without being burdened with such a deep insight into the tragedy of life and the nature of existence. I saw a dog happily lapping up water from a puddle and I thought “that dog may sleep 20 hours a day and sniff its own shit, but at least it doesn’t spend weeks of its life contemplating its mortality.” “Fuck you dog” I thought “you have no idea how good you have it.” None of us do. But maybe now I do little bit more?

Oh, and as I mentioned up top, it turns out that I’m fine by the way. It was much ado about nothing. But also about everything. No one knows why I had the symptoms I had, but then do we ever? In the end though, ultimately, death was never even remotely looking in my direction. Apparently it doesn’t give a shit about me.

1. “Shallow” at The Oscars How can something be so anticipated, so hyped, so seemingly bigger than the freaking Oscars themselves, and yet still somehow exceed all expectations? We now know the answer: by completely subverting them. That’s why it makes perfect sense that the greatest moment of Lady Gaga’s career would be the simplest one. Her and Bradley Cooper simply standing up from their seats still gives me chills every time I watch it (and I’ve watched it A LOT). And the close up on their faces needs to be shown in sex ed classes.

If I could travel back in time, sure going back to kill baby Hitler would be great, but mostly I’d just want to go back to the exact second the curtain starts to raise on this performance, before I knew where it was headed next.

2. Olivia Colman winning Best Actress at The Oscars If you think it’s weird that there are two separate things from the same awards show on my list of the top things from the entire year, then, well, you’ve come to the wrong place.

This is the absolute platonic ideal of someone winning an Oscar. Our genuine shock at hearing their name, THEIR genuine shock at hearing their name, the genuine emotion from everyone involved, a speech that is heartfelt, human, funny, and charming in a way that only a true star could ever dream of being, all in equal measure. And it’s all part of a YouTube clip you can watch endlessly and find new things every time. (Glenn Close’s reaction when she loses is like an entire drama in and of itself.) Sure awards shows may be dumb, but then also, this is why they’re not.

3. Sharon Van Etten - “Seventeen” in advance of this year’s Oscars I just want to be on record that my favorite movie from 2019 about aging, feeling that life is passing you by, grappling with mortality, the passage of time, and the generation coming up behind you is Closing My Eyes And Listening To “Seventeen” By Sharon Van Etten. It has it all: the creeping melancholy and regret, the sense of doom that you try to dance away, the feeling that the past was maybe just a dream, the urge to yell into an increasingly uncaring void.

Part of the curse of aging is everyone becoming their own Casandra. Now you know, but no one will listen. And part of the joy of aging is realizing it doesn’t really matter if they do.

4. The writing on Succession

“Proof that, as long as the writing is there, TV doesn’t need to be anything more than people having conversations in rooms.” - theringer.com

I have a rule with these year end lists that I can’t feature something I’ve listed in a previous year. But it’s actually illegal to write about the best of 2019 without mentioning Succession. So I’m going to get around my self-imposed rule by this year specifically highlighting the writing on the show.

The amazing thing about Succession is how watchable it is not despite, but almost BECAUSE of the fact that not much actually happens. People talk a lot about things they are GOING to do, or MIGHT do, but there’s not a ton of actual DOING. And that’s actually great, because what we’re really here for is the talking. Every character talks with the biting wit of an Armando Iannucci character, the deep intelligence of an Aaron Sorkin character, and the realism of an actual human being. I find myself constantly rewinding just to make sure I took in the brilliance of each dialogue exchange. And literally every line Kieran Culkin is given to say would be the best line of the entire season on 90% of the shows on TV.

Everyone talks about how great the acting on Succession is, and rightly so, but actors are nothing without good words to say. And on Succession, to paraphrase a president of the United States that I’m sure ACN would love, they have the best words.

5. The chemistry of Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein in Booksmart My favorite movie of 2017 was Lady Bird. My favorite movie of 2018 was Eighth Grade. So suffice it to say I was well prepared for how much I loved Booksmart. But what I was not prepared for at all was the incredible chemistry of two actors I had previously never even heard of before: Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. It feels impossible that the two of them aren’t real-life best friends. Life-long friendship is such a specific bond it feels impossible to fake, and yet somehow Kaitlyn and Beanie pulled the magic trick off. Experiencing the giddy contact high of their chemistry felt like being in the presence of a miracle. And anyone who says the romantic comedy is dead clearly didn’t see Booksmart, because maybe the best romantic comedy of the decade was the story of two people realizing the deepest, purest, most unique love of all can sometimes be the love you have for your best friend.

6. Fleabag Season 2 What on earth is there left to say about Fleabag that hasn’t already been said? And yet somehow even with all the discourse about this show it has still maintained its status as the rare cultural phenomenon with a 100% approval rating. To be as massive and as beloved as Fleabag and yet inspire zero backlash, not even a stray contrarian take from an online troll, feels impossible, and yet also, in the case of Fleabag, totally right. If (the now VERY problematic) Louie was the beginning of giving people money to make their idiosyncratic, personal, not-quite a drama not-quite a comedy TV shows, then Fleabag is the end. The apex of the art form. There’s nowhere to go from here but down. 2019 was the year television finally peaked. It was the year we all witnessed perfection. And it was the year that we fittingly all had a priest to guide us there.

7. Chelsea Peretti’s monologue at the WGA Awards Ironic that the year that proved that awards shows don’t need hosts is also the same year that gave maybe the best example ever of what a great awards show host can do. Chelsea goes so far inside baseball it gives new meaning to the phrase “corker”, and it’s all the better for it.

8. Vampire Weekend - Father of the Bride If you don’t think Father of the Bride is the best album of 2019 then congrats on not being a late-30s straight white man. But as a late-30s straight white man myself I’ve got two big things going for me:

1.) A life that has benefited from a history of privilege and near-total control over society stretching from the beginnings of civilization up until today 2.) An understanding that Father of the Bride is the best album of 2019

But what about Bon Iver and Wilco and The National and Sturgill Simpson and Big Thief, didn’t they all put out albums for late-30s straight white men this year you ask? To which I say: did any of those albums have a song on them called “Unbearably White”? No they did not! And that sort of ironic self-awareness is the kind of shit that has fueled a million straight white male sketch comedy scenes. It is the air we breathe. Also, have you heard “Harmony Hall” lately? Or “This Life”? Or “Stranger”? I mean, come on, leaving Brooklyn to make your “settled down in LA” album is the sort of late-30s straight white guy catnip James Murphy could only DREAM ABOUT. I may not have much these days, other than unlimited power and privilege, but at least I will always have Vampire Weekend, and they will always have me.

9. Lizzo Every year there is one thing that defines the year. One thing that 50 years in the future when someone mentions that year, it will be the first thing that pops into everyone’s head. And in America for 2019 that thing will be the impeachment of Donald Trump. But if there is a second thing, then it’s Lizzo. She was there when the year started, only got bigger as the year progressed and was arguably still getting more popular as the year ended. And she was everywhere. She was on massive stages and behind tiny desks. She was at the movies, she was on TV, she was coming out of every open car window. And she was definitely at every wedding you went to this year. Lizzo WAS 2019.

With the impeachment of Donald Trump I don’t know how far down the presidential line of succession we have to go before we get to Lizzo, but I know we would all be better off if we would hurry up and get there. Lizzo is the best of us.

10. This picture of Baby Yoda 

Ok I was wrong. Take everything I said about Lizzo and double it for This Picture Of Baby Yoda (you know the one, or if you don’t, click the link above). On the wikipedia entry for the year 2019 that definitely needs to be the picture. 

11. Kodi Lee on America’s Got Talent I realize you probably weren’t sitting around watching America’s Got Talent this summer. I certainly wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t happened to be working the live show tapings. But lemme tell you, if you didn’t see the show, you missed out on something truly magical this year. Something that makes you rethink what human beings are capable of. Something that goes so far beyond inspirational that I don’t think our language has a word to fully express it. Kodi Lee is a real life superhero, and provoking emotion is his superpower. Making it thru a full Kodi Lee performance without crying should be the new Turning Test. Forget America; Humans Have Talent indeed.

12. Taylor Swift - “Cruel Summer” Look I didn’t expect to ever find another “Teenage Dream”, but, well, here we are. I mean, a Taylor Swift single produced by Jack Antonoff and co-written by Annie Clark is pretty much genetically engineered to be one of my favorite things ever, but still: wow. Do the kids still use the term “banger”? Because if so, this is why the term was invented. I would have more to say about how great the rest of Lover is as well, but sorry, I gotta go now. I have to listen to “Cruel Summer” for the eight millionth time.

13. Michelle Williams in Fosse/Verdon If there was an award for best acting performance in any medium this would be the clear winner for 2019. In fact, can you win an EGOT for one single performance? What about a Nobel Prize? I can’t come up with an award or a title big enough to truly honor Michelle Williams’ work in Fosse/Verdon.

As a fellow actor very rarely a performance will come along that will make me think: ok we’re done here. Let’s all the rest of us pack it up and go home, because someone just won acting. This is one of those performances. So congrats to Dame Michelle Williams, you’re the new Pope.

14. American Factory My favorite line in all of Shakespeare is “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. And nothing is evidence of that more than the piece of art I have thought about most this year: the documentary American Factory (available on Netflix right now!). So many of the things we in western societies believe are universal bedrock virtues and value are in fact simply products of the society in which we were raised. Individualism, personal expression, autotomy, the importance of leisure time, and so many other things, are not absolute human values, only relative ones. What is important to someone in America, can be ridiculous and incomprehensible to someone in China. And vice versa. And neither side is right or wrong, only thinking makes it so.

American Factory is documentary that doesn’t say WHAT IF EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW WAS WRONG, but instead shows something that is perhaps even more powerful: what if everything you know is simply just that, a thing you know.

15. White Claw Life is an endless parade of infinite options, possibilities, and choices. So I have no idea how you personally chose to spend your 2019. With one exception: I Know What You Did Last Summer. You drank an alcoholic seltzer water. Probably many of them, but at least one. At a park, at a beach, in a backyard, definitely at a party. If at some point this summer your paws weren’t wrapped around a White Claw (or a similar product) then you didn’t actually experience 2019. Because this is the year we all collectively got obsessed with combining America’s two hottest drink trends: flavored sparkling water and…hold on, lemme look up the name of this stuff…alcohol?

History may record summer 2019 as Hot Girl Summer, but those us who actually lived it know the truth: it was Hard Seltzer Summer

16. Marriage Story A movie that fundamentally misunderstands things I care about deeply - theater, Los Angeles, how the entertainment industry works - is my favorite movie of the year because of how deeply it gets right the thing I care about most: human beings. The way we talk, the way we behave, the way we love, the way we hurt, the way we create bonds that never fully go away. It’s been said a lot, but part of the beauty and magic of this movie is that it doesn’t take sides. Both people are right and both of them are wrong. And that’s how human relationships often work in real life, but rarely in art. There are no heroes, there are no villains; there’s only being alive.


(Also, Adam Driver, Imma let you finish, but Raul Esparza doing “Being Alive” is one of my favorite YouTube clips of ALL TIME. If you ever need to weep uncontrollably and you don’t have time to watch Marriage Story, then Raul Esparza’s “Being Alive” will do the trick)

17. Lil Nas X - “Old Town Road” “What kind of music do you like” used to be a very important question. Your sense of identity used to be defined by the type of music you listened to and what that choice said about you. But now music-as-cultural-signifier is as dead as the concept of owning music itself. Rap music is for elementary school kids. Country music is made by queer black Americans collaborating with Dutch teenagers. Billy Ray Cyrus and Korean pop stars appear on remixes of the same song. A song about an old road and an antiquated mode of travel becomes a massive hit thru the brand new music app TikTok. What kind of music do we like in 2019? All of the “kinds” of music at once, in one marvelously inescapable two minute burst of joy. Music is dead; long live music.

18. Chernobyl If you thought it was crazy that the year’s biggest song was a novelty country/hip-hop track by an unsigned artist rapping about trying to find parking for his horse, then wait until you find out what the summer’s biggest hit TV show was about! I mean, nothing screams “summer fun” like nuclear radiation and shooting dogs. But as always, no one ever truly knows what people will want until you give it to them. And clearly what we really wanted in our LOL Nothing Matters age was a captivating reminder that life on earth truly could end at any moment. Some things very much DO matter. And that something as dramatic, devastating, and consequential as Chernobyl could have happened in the fairly recent past and already have been largely forgotten about is incredible. But if you can take such a compelling story and tell it as well as the makers of Chernobyl did, then people will watch and learn and better understand an issue of vital importance, no matter how seemingly uncommercial it might be. So in a very 2019 sentence: thank you creator of the the Hangover franchise for your miniseries about a 1980 Russian power plant explosion. It was our collective summer obsession. (2019 was a weird year.)

19. Raphael Bob-Waksberg - Someone Who Will Love You In All You Damaged Glory

“I think about how loving someone is kind of like being president, in that it doesn’t change you, not really. But it brings out more of the you that you already are.”

Back in the day, Raphael Bob-Waksberg had a tumblr that was so good it both single-handedly inspired me get much better and writing my thoughts and putting them on the internet (thus what you are reading right now) and intimidated me out of doing it more often (why I now do this only once a year). In fact, I’m almost positive I had his tumblr listed as one of my top things of a year in the past, which is really the highest honor a tumblr account can receive. It was one of the single most impactful forces in the direction of my creative life. And now Raphael has taken the voice that created that tumblr and created my favorite TV show (BoJack Horseman) and wrote my favorite ever Craigslist post, and used it to create a book about love and loss and being human. And it feels like a wonderful treasure that was written just for me. It IS my worldview, expressed better than I ever possibly could. When I meet people now rather than doing the usual introductory small talk I am just going to hand them a copy of this book.