A complete ranking of every movie I watched in the last calendar year (starting in June).
44. 65 65 is a sci-fi adventure starring Adam Driver as an astronaut that crash lands on a distant planet that looks a lot like Earth, only with dinosaurs. It turns out that the planet actually is Earth! It turns out Driver and his companion (a 12 year old girl whose family is killed when the ship crashes) are actually from a distant planet 65 million years ago, and they happened to crash on Earth. And they also look, talk, and act exactly like modern humans. What are the odds?! It’s the type of movie where Driver and the girl don’t speak the same language, but after a day of hiking together she basically understands and can talk in English, just in short, grammatically incorrect sentences. The kind of movie where people get pierced by metal and thrown against rocks by giant dinosaurs, but are able to shake it off and heal a couple minutes later. I shouldn’t have been surprised because I kind of knew it was going to be bad going in, but tried to convince myself that it might have some good action and dinosaur scenes that might make it entertaining enough to watch. Spoiler alert: it was not.
43. Poor Things Multiple people I talked to about Poor Things said they started to watch, but stopped because they could tell it was going to be bad. If only I had made the same decision. Director Yorgos Lanthimos has always made strange, somewhat hard to watch movies (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer), but Poor Things is the least enjoyable of them all. Emma Stone plays a character that jumps to her death off a bridge, but is brought back to life by mad scientist Willem Dafoe, who transplants the brain of her unborn baby into her body. And it gets weirder from there. Stone’s character is a fully grown adult that has the brain of an infant. She won best actress for the role, which was admittedly impressive, and along the way most of the men she interacts with try to control her or take advantage of her. There are plenty of humorous moments, especially the arc of Duncan Wedderburn, the cad played by Mark Ruffalo. But overall it was a very unenjoyable movie to watch. I read reviews by a number of people that loved the movie and talked about how Stone’s character is able to grow and take charge of her situation, but I just found it hard to watch as she works as a prostitute and interacts with increasingly vile men. I must be in the minority because it got nominated for Best Picture, but I found it to be truly unpleasant.
42. Anyone But You Can someone that reads this please explain why people like this type of movie? As a rule of thumb, I can’t stand romance movies. Yes, there are some notable exceptions (if you consider movies like Groundhog Day and LaLa Land romances), but for the most part I find them predictable and painful to watch. The characters meet, often under awkward or humorous circumstances. They fall for each other. Something tears them apart, often under awkward or humorous circumstances. Finally, in spectacularly dramatic fashion, they end up back together. I knew that Anyone But You was going to be this type of movie, so I have no one to blame but myself for watching. But after I kept hearing people talk about how funny and fun it was (not to mention it was on Netflix and I was desperate for something to watch), I gave in. Unfortunately it’s exactly what I thought it would be, with a couple of good looking actors in a pretty location (Australia) that can’t help make up for the fact that the script is bad, the plot is bad, and they’ve been making different versions of this movie for as long as I’ve been alive.
41. Knock at the Cabin This is one of those setups that only a movie director could come up with. A gay couple and their adopted daughter are vacationing at a cabin in the woods. Suddenly 4 strangers appear at the door. The strangers look menacing (mainly because one of them is Dave Bautista) but they seem calm and serious. They have a modest proposal - choose a member of your family to die, or the world will come to an end. Yes, really, that’s the premise of the movie. A variety of apocalyptic events keep happening on TV and outside the cabin (like a plane crashing), and eventually everyone becomes convinced that maybe this is real after all. Unfortunately, I was never quite convinced that it was anything other than a silly movie plot device.
40. Heart of Stone The “Heart” is an AI device that is capable of tracking and predicting almost any event around the world. The “Stone” is Rachel Stone (Gal Gadot), an MI6 agent tasked with making sure the heart doesn’t get into the wrong hands. It’s a typical Netflix action movie - a couple big names, some decent action. And just entertaining enough to watch all the way through, though not significant enough to remember many of the details more than a week later.
39. May December In May December, a famous actress (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah, Georgia to spend time with and research a family she is studying for her next role. The couple she is visiting, Gracie (Julianne Moore) and Joe (Charles Melton) have settled into family life after making tabloid headlines 20 years earlier when 36 year old Gracie went to jail for having a relationship with Joe beginning when he was 13. The story is loosely based on the life of Mary Kay Letourneau, a middle school teacher in Washington who went to jail after having a child with one of her students. It’s hard to deny that the movie is well made. Each of the actors is great in their role, and it’s fascinating to see the human side of the tabloid story. But it’s also a movie that’s really hard to actually enjoy. So many scenes are filled with tension, and even in scenes that aren’t necessarily tense, the score ratchets up the anxiety and reminds you that something bad is probably about to happen. I realize that’s on purpose, and the whole point of the movie is to explore the characters behind this tension, but it’s always been hard for me to watch this type of movie.
38. Napoleon Joaquin Phoenix is an excellent actor. Ridley Scott has directed some classic movies (Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator). The story of Napoleon Bonaparte is a fascinating one. Yet somehow the movie Napoleon felt boring. I can’t put my finger on exactly why - maybe because the viewer never really feels invested in any of the characters. Maybe it’s because the battle scenes seem cold and it’s hard to care much about the outcome. Maybe it’s because the plot thread with Napoleon and Josephine feels distracting. Probably it’s a combination of all of these things. Scott hasn’t made a good movie since The Martian in 2015, so maybe it shouldn’t come as a total surprise, but I was still disappointed by the movie as a whole.
37. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Others When I heard that Wes Anderson was making short movies out of several lesser-known Roald Dahl works, I was thrilled. Two of my favorite things! I love almost all things Wes Anderson (with the exception of The French Dispatch), and Roald Dahl is one of my all-time favorite children’s book authors. Anderson had already adapted one of my favorite Dahl books (The Fantastic Mr. Fox) into a very entertaining movie, and I was expecting something similar. Unfortunately, the short story adaptations were….fine. All of the adaptionions (Henry Sugar, The Rat Catcher, Poison, The Swan) are rather small affairs, with a small cast, not much in the way of visuals, and a narrator that essentially just reads the whole story. The minimalist approach is intentional, but it didn’t grab me at all. In the first one I watched (Henry Sugar) I kept waiting for the narration to stop and the actual movie to begin, and after 15 minutes I realized “I guess it’s all going to be like this.”
35 and 36. Rebel Moon part 1 and 2 Whether you enjoy this movie or not probably comes down to whether you like Zach Snyder movies (300, Justice League, Watchmen). Snyder has a distinct visual style, with washed out colors, slow motion action, and lots of fighting. It’s a style that makes for a great trailer, but not always a great movie. From the trailers and press around the movie I was interested because it was clearly an homage to Star Wars. But the movie actually owes more to the Seven Samurai (which of course Star Wars itself was inspired by) - a village on a distant moon, being oppressed by an intergalactic warlord. A feisty young warrior (Sophia Boutella) sets out to assemble a team of mercenaries to help defend the village against their oppressors. Both of the movies are mildly entertaining. As with all of Snyder’s movie’s the action looks great, and there are plenty of inspiring speeches before heading off into a seemingly hopeless battle. The acting isn’t necessarily bad, but most of the actors felt like the people the casting director called after they realized they either didn’t have the budget or the clout to get the people they really wanted. “Hi Zack, so we couldn’t get Jason Momoa, but we got another really buff guy that kind of looks like him. We were also able to get Djimon Honsou, you’ve heard of him right?!” The only exception is a bit part robot that head-scratchingly is voiced by Anthony Hopkins. I liked the second movie more than the first, but I honestly didn’t mind either one. If you’ve ever thought that you wanted a sci-fi version of The Magnificent Seven that isn’t nearly as good as Star Wars but does have some good action scenes, this might be for you.
34. The Killer Director David Fincher has an incredibly interesting catalog, from Best Picture nominees The Social Network and Mank to thrillers Zodiac, Seven, and Fight Club to the underrated The Game. I’ve noticed that almost all of his movies feature a misunderstood, sometimes aloof protagonist, and even the films themselves have a certain calculated coolness. The Killer fits that formula to a T. Michael Fassbender plays a loner assassin, the best of the best. Quiet, cold, calculating. He even listens to the Smiths while he’s working to keep himself calm. When a job goes wrong, he becomes hunted and tries to tie up loose ends. Like everything Fincher does it’s interesting, but at this point I feel like I’ve seen a few too many hit man movies, and this one feels a little empty.
33. God & Country God & Country is a documentary looking at the rise of the Christian nationalist movement. I can’t say that I enjoyed watching the movie. Not because I thought it was bad, but because as a Christian, the whole Christian nationalist scene that has exploded since Trump’s presidency is terrifying to me. The movie paints a scary picture of a church movement that’s become increasingly involved with politics. While I agree with what the movie has to say, and think that it’s important for people to realize how the Nationalist movement has distorted Christianity, I would’ve preferred a bit more subtlety in how the message was conveyed. The picture painted here is extreme, and maybe the situation is extreme, but I also think there’s a dialogue to be had between normal Americans that may or may not be Christians and have different political views that involves respecting each other’s opinions and learning that we may disagree on both political and religious views, but that we actually do have some common ground.
32. Argentina 1985 Argentina 1985 is the true story of the trial against Argentina’s military leadership, led by Julio Strassera (Ricardo Darin) and a group of young, inexperienced lawyers. In 1985, Argentina’s new leadership sought to restore trust in their government by allowing the former military leaders to stand trial. Very few, including even Strassera, thought that the responsible parties would actually be brought to justice. But his team worked tirelessly to uncover stories of people that were kidnapped, beaten, and “disappeared” under the old dictatorship, and to bring those stories to light. It’s more than just a courtroom movie, but it’s a good reminder that when done well, legal movies can be very entertaining.
31. Roadhouse I actually watched Roadhouse twice this year. The first time I partially watched with no sound and closed captioning on while I played cards around the firepit on a friend’s back deck. The second time time I fully watched it, with the sound on. To be honest it wasn’t much different of an experience. Sure, the dialogue and fully watching help explain things like why the guy was being eaten by an alligator, or why Conor MacGregor was walking around naked, but as far as all the fights and boat crashes and general mayhem, it was pretty much the same. Roadhouse is a remake of the Patrick Swayze movie (I’d call it a classic, but let’s be real here) of the same name. This time around the down-on-his-luck bouncer is a former UFC fighter, played surprisingly convincingly by Jake Gyllenhall. It’s as over-the-top as it gets, bouncing from one fistfight to the next, with about as much character development as you’d expect from a remake of Roadhouse. Mindless fun, but fun nonetheless.
30. The After (short) The After is a 20 minute Oscar-nominated short. It’s available on Netflix and stars David Oyelwo as a man grieving the loss of his wife and young daughter. It will probably make you cry.
29. The Holdovers Meh. When I saw the trailer for The Holdovers I was confident I knew exactly what the movie was going to be like, and I wasn’t really interested. Curmudgeonly professor and wayward student are forced to spend the holidays together. They dislike each other and get on each other’s nerves at first, but then after spending some time together they overcome their differences and learn some valuable life lessons along the way. But after all, it is directed by Alexander Payne (The Descendents, Sideways, Election), and stars Paul Giamatti, and got nominated for Best Picture. So I decided to give it a shot, and it ended up being exactly the movie I thought it would be, maybe even a little worse. For the life of me I can’t understand why so many people thought this was good. Maybe if you’ve never seen this type of film it seems profound, but for me it was trite and the acting felt over the top.
27. Spider Man Across the Spiderverse I thought the first animated Spiderverse movie was incredible. At a time when I was just starting to get tired of superhero movies, it felt original and creative, with spectacular animation style, great voice work, and a fun soundtrack to boot. The sequel has arguably even better animation, great voice work, and a fun soundtrack, but felt like…a sequel. If I hadn’t seen the original, I probably would’ve been more excited about this one. If I hadn’t seen approximately 1,000 other Marvel movies about the multiverse in the past 5 years, maybe I would’ve been more excited about this one. As it is, it’s a fun movie with a few fun new characters (Spider Punk!), but it just didn’t have the same excitement for me as the original.
26. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny The first Indiana Jones movie in 15 years begins with an aging Harrison Ford about ready to call it quits on his career. When a curious goddaughter (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and an old Nazi rival both turn up looking for Archimedes Dial, Indiana Jones is called back into action again. The movie is fun, and certainly much better (and more coherent) than the previous sequel (Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, an all-time bad movie). Most of the movie is fairly predictable and certainly feels like a sequel, but I can’t say I was unhappy to spend a couple of hours watching Indy fight bad guys and look for artifacts again.
25. Tiger 24 While T 24 may sound like another Terminator sequel, fortunately they haven’t actually made that many Terminator movies, and this is actually a documentary about a wild tiger. More specifically T 24 is a tiger in India that is accused of being a man-eater. Tiger 24 was filmed by Warren Perira, a Portlander and graduate of Lewis and Clark, who returned to his birth country of India to make his first film, a documentary about tigers. During filming, he came across T 24, also known as Ustad, a fierce, dominant male that had supposedly killed a couple of humans that illegally wandered into his territory. By the end of the movie, Ustad has (maybe?) killed again, and has been captured and put into a zoo. Ustad ends up becoming a celebrity throughout India, with some arguing that he should be set free because the people that he killed were not legally allowed to be in his territory, and others arguing that he should be put to death. It’s a fascinating story, and one that ended up making it all the way to the Indian supreme court. Side note: If you’re interested in this type of thing, there’s an excellent book called The Tiger by John Valliant about a similar story, this time a Siberian tiger that becomes a man-eater.
24. Society of the Snow In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed into the Andes, killing half the passengers and stranding the rest high in a remote section of the mountain range. It’s a story that’s been told before - the 1993 movie Alive recounts the same events. It’s been 30 years since I’ve seen Alive, but it was still familiar enough to me that watching Society of the Snow felt a little like a movie I’d already seen. If I had to recommend one or the other, I think I’d say I preferred the more recent version. For one, it is in Spanish and feels like a good call to have Uruguayans played by actual Uruguayans, rather than say, Ethan Hawke. I also felt like this version was more poetic, which seems like a strange thing to say about a movie where people die in a plane crash and starve in the mountains, but Society of the Snow captures the beauty of the characters and the landscape in a way that I don’t think Alive did.
23. A Thousand and One A Thousand and One tells the complicated story of Inez and her son Terry as they navigate life in New York City. When we first meet them, Inez has just been released from jail, and Terry is unhappily living in foster care. When Terry breaks his arm and ends up in the hospital, Inez decides to take him and run away. The rest of the movie follows two decades of Inez and Terry’s life on the margins of the city as Terry grows up, Inez finds work, and tries to build a better life for the two of them. Inez’s ex-flame Lucky wanders in and out of their lives, providing a father figure, albeit an unstable one, in Terry’s life, and Terry does well enough in school that he starts to think about college and other options for his life. The story is both heartwarming and heartbreaking at times, and the breakout star of the movie is Teyona Taylor, playing Inez. I hadn’t seen her in anything before, but apparently she is a singer and has a reality show as well. She’s a force of nature - sometimes it was hard to watch, but Taylor is outstanding and has an incredible screen presence. I expect that she’ll go on to bigger things.
22. The Boys in the Boat Boys in the Boat is a fairly straightforward adaptation of the excellent book by Daniel Brown. Both book and movie tell the true story of Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) and the rowers from the University of Washington crew team that went on to represent the United States in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. If you’ve ever seen a sports movie, you can probably predict most of how the film is going to unfold. We get a little bit of the backstory of Rantz and a couple of the rowers (much more in depth in the book), but the second half of the movie focuses mainly on the races. It’s a nice film, and there’s a reason people keep making underdog sports movies - they’re usually pretty inspiring. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking that this could’ve been better. The movie lacks some of the tension that makes the book great. There’s also a thread in the book that goes into what was happening in Nazi Germany at the time of the Olympics, and how they were covering up what was happening to the Jewish people, and the movie skips all of that, which is fine, but it’s also part of what made the story feel like it had real stakes. I felt like every female character in the movie was there to look pretty or be a cheerleader for the men, which certainly didn’t add anything to the story either. In the end it’s still worth watching, but also felt like a movie that could’ve been better in different hands.
21. Anatomy of a Fall Did she or didn’t she do it? That’s the question at the heart of Anatomy of a Fall. Sandra Hueller plays a German writer living in the French Alps. In the opening scene Sandra flirts with a young woman that is interviewing her in her home. Sandra’s husband blares music from the attic while he works on remodeling their home. When the interviewer leaves to conduct the interview at a later date, Sandra and Samuel’s son also goes out for a walk. When he returns, his father has fallen to his death. Or was he pushed? When details of Samuel and Sandra’s rocky relationship begin to emerge, she becomes the chief suspect in the death. She ends up hiring a friend that she used to be in a relationship with to defend her. The second half of the movie centers around her trial, with the son caught in the middle. I didn’t think I’d enjoy the movie, and at times it’s hard to watch, but I thought the characters were so believable and the story so well done that I actually ended up enjoying it quite a bit.
20. No Hard Feelings In No Hard Feelings, Andrew Feldman plays Percy, a socially awkward high school graduate. His overprotective parents are convinced that he needs to experience more before he heads off to college. Enter Maddie (Jennifer Lawrence), a desperate 30-year-old who just lost her car and is about to lose her house. And in the kind of setup that could only happen in a movie, Percy’s parents concoct a plan to pay Maddie to “date” Percy. Despite being a bit predictable, it’s a pretty funny movie with some sweet moments. With so few comedies being made these days, I’m usually willing to go to the theater to see almost anything that seems remotely amusing. It’s fun seeing Jennifer Lawrence in a comedy role, and she certainly goes for it (the skinny dipping scene where she attacks some beachgoers that have stolen their clothes is….memorable). Not exactly fine cinema but worth watching.
19. They Cloned Tyrone I usually don’t have super high expectations for direct-to-Netflix movies, but this was a pleasant surprise. John Boyega plays Fontaine, a drug dealer that gets shot early on in the movie, only to wake up unharmed in his bed the next morning. Fontaine enlists the help of Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) to try to figure out what’s going on. From there unfolds a story of secret underground labs, clones, and a conspiracy involving grape soda, hair products, and experimenting on black people. If it sounds crazy, it is,with fun actors, wild plot twists, and a wildly entertaining story.
18. Leave the World Behind There’s a new genre of movie - people rent a vacation house and something goes wrong. (I can relate - about 5 years ago a friend of mine rented a house on the coast for our weekend crabbing trip and it turned out to be a total scam - not a rental house, just someone else’s house.) In Leave the World Behind, the something going wrong is much bigger - like maybe the end of the world. Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke play the parents in a wealthy family that rents a luxurious beach house for the weekend. The first night they are staying at the house they get a knock on the door from a mysterious stranger (the always excellent Mahershala Ali) and his daughter, claiming that the house is theirs and that there’s an emergency and they need to stay there for the weekend. The fact that the guests are white and the family claiming to own the house are black adds another layer of tension. Over the next few days lots of strange things start happening, including a giant ocean liner crashing into the beach, and wild animals gathering in large numbers in the yard. What’s actually happening remains mysterious, but the real focus of the movie is how do people react and who do they become when they are faced with difficult and confusing circumstances. Both sets of parents, the kids, and even the neighbors (Kevin Bacon!) reveal something about who they really are when they feel threatened. Leave the World Behind makes you uncomfortable at times but it’s provocative and well worth watching.
17. Suncoast In Florida in the 1990’s, a woman named Terry Schaivo was hospitalized after a heart attack left her brain-dead and in a coma. I remembered hearing about her because her case became a political lightning rod for the right to life/right to die movements in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. At the same time that Schaivo was in hospice care at a medical facility in Florida, director Laura Chinn’s teenage brother was in the same facility during the final months of a long terminal illness. The movie Suncoast is a fictionalized version of what she experienced; The protestors outside the facility. A single mother that was overwhelmed and bitter from dealing with caring for a dying child. And the burden of having to try to hold it together and help care for her brother while trying to fit in and be a normal teenager. Chinn’s role is played here by a terrific Nico Parker (who I just figured out is Thandie Newton’s daughter). Woody Harrelson plays a protestor that strikes up a friendship with the daughter and provides a sort of caring parent figure at a time when her own mother is coming apart. It’s ultimately a sad story, but it also does a nice job of showing that stories like the Terry Schaivo case have a human side that is complex and not so easy to boil down to a political viewpoint about life.
16. Godzilla Minus One Normally I’m not a huge fan of the giant monster movie genre. We’ve seen Godzilla and King Kong smash enough cities, fight against each other, fight other monsters, etc. to be good for a long, long time. But….I kinda liked this one. By focusing on the characters fighting Godzilla and a little less on the monster, the story is centered in a way that makes it easy to root for the good guys when they team up to try to take out Godzilla. Is it breaking any new ground? No. Although using freon to sink Godzilla to the bottom of the ocean? Creative! Even though it’s not a new story, the approach is fresh enough and the Godzilla heat ray is cool enough that it is worth watching.
15. Mending the Line In Mending the Line, Sinqua Walls plays Colter, a veteran wounded in Afghanistan who is sent to a VA rehab facility in Montana. Colter wants nothing more than to get out of the VA and back into the military, but it is clear that his physical and mental trauma is too much for him to be back on duty. At the VA his therapist pairs him up with retired vet Ike (Brian Cox), who reluctantly agrees to teach Colter how to fly fish. Along the way he also connects with Lucy, a pretty young woman that volunteers at the VA. The narrative arc that follows doesn’t exactly break any new ground, but the story doesn’t unfold exactly how I thought it would either. Each of the characters has their own trauma that they are dealing with, and I appreciated that the movie didn’t have the saccharine ending that I expected. The fishing scenes in the movie are beautiful (and surprisingly realistic), and you might guess that I am a sucker for a movie that prominently features fly fishing. There are surprisingly few movies that highlight fly fishing, and Mending the Line does a nice job of representing the sport and showing the healing power of casting a fly line to trout.
14. The Creator In the future, humans and AI are at war, and John David Washington plays a special forces soldier that is sent to try to find The Creator, the architect of the original AI that supposedly holds the key to ending the war. As he gets closer, he is surprised by what he finds. I thought this was one of the best sci-fi films of the year. It’s a different take on the humans vs. robots theme that is central to classics like Blade Runner, The Terminator, Aliens, and probably dates all the way back to Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Creator isn’t on the level of those movies, but between this, Rogue One, and Monsters, director Gareth Edwards is building an impressive sci-fi catalog of his own.
13. The Fall Guy I could watch Ryan Gosling in almost anything (well, maybe not The Notebook). He has an impressive resume, from big movies like Barbie and LaLa Land to gritty movies like Drive and The Place Beyond the Pines, and even some of his early roles were great, like Half Nelson and Blue Valentine. In The Fall Guy he plays Colt Severs, a stuntman who is badly injured working on a film with his girlfriend Jody (Emily Blount). When Jody gets a crack at directing her first movie, Colt decides to try to make a comeback. What unfolds next is an absurd plot that involves the actor he’s a stunt double for, some henchmen, and a dead body. All of it is just a setup for lots of action set pieces and ridiculous stunts. Blount and Gosling are always entertaining, the stunts are great, and it makes for a pretty fun couple of hours.
12. Reptile Reptile is the best kind of trashy movie. It's a crime thriller that opens with a realtor found dead in a house she was showing. There are plenty of seedy characters all around; her boyfriend (Justin Timberlake) and his mother, her ex (Former LO student Carl Glusman!), and an old cop (Benicio Del Toro) assigned to investigate the case. There are plenty of twists and turns and undercover plots that are stumbled into, most of which are over the top. But what makes the movie worth watching is Del Toro. He’s always been a favorite of mine, and this is best role in years. At his best (Sicario, 21 Grams, Traffic, Che, The Usual Suspects), Del Toro is magnetic - charismatic, tortured, and impossible to take your eyes off. Seeing him steal every scene in an otherwise mediocre movie reminded me just how good he is.
11. Hit Man Another hit man movie, but this one is about a hit man that isn’t really a hit man. Glen Powell plays Gary Johnson, a college professor who has a side gig for the police as a fake hit man who helps catch people that are trying to have someone else murdered. With the number of movies with hit man characters and the number of movies with college professor characters, we were bound to eventually get a college professor hit man! Why do so many characters/shows feature characters that are college professors? I think it’s a nice plot device for the director to sneak in some character development, or maybe tell us what the movie is really about while the professor is teaching the class. I’m definitely using this plot device when I make my first movie. Things go sideways when one of Gary’s hit man characters gets hired by Madison (Adriana Arjona), a sexy woman trapped in an abusive relationship. Gary predictably falls for Madison, and things get complicated. It would be a fun movie just on the surface, because Powell and Arjona are fantastic - they look great, have great chemistry, and great dialogue. But because it’s a Richard Linklater film, it’s more than just a surface level romance/thriller. There are some interesting plot threads about identity and who we choose to become (I know because I paid attention during the parts where the college professor was teaching), and about the impulses that lurk within us. Like almost all of Linklater’s movies it’s fun and interesting.
10. A Million Miles Away Once or twice a year I stumble across a movie that got no publicity and no hype that I end up loving. I would’ve just scrolled past A Million Miles Away if a friend hadn’t recommended it to Jodie, and it seemed like the rare movie that both of us could watch together. I’ve ended up recommending it to a bunch of people since. Michael Pina plays Jose Hernandez, an immigrant farm worker that ends up working for NASA and eventually becoming an astronaut. Is it a bit formulaic at times? Yes. But sometimes you’re just in the mood for a feel-good movie, and this is an inspiring true story that is hard not to love.
9. Asteroid City For me, Asteroid City was both a return to form for Wes Anderson, and a slight letdown. A return to form because his last major movie, The French Dispatch, was by far the worst movie he’s made. I know not everyone feels this way, but I thought it was awful. Asteroid City is much better. Jason Schwartzman plays a dad bringing his kids to the Junior Stargazers convention in Asteroid City, a town in the middle of the desert. The convention brings together an eclectic group of adults (Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansen, Jeffery Wright, Maya Hawke) as well as all the junior stargazers. Teenagers and adults alike are surprised when the convention is visited by some unexpected guests. I enjoyed the movie and the characters (lots of Wes Anderson’s go-to’s and plenty of other A-listers) and all of the usual Wes Anderson flourishes (the music, the sets, the dialogue, etc). It felt fun to watch. What disappointed me was the framing device. The “movie” is actually supposed to be a play, and several times throughout the story we are pulled out and back into the world of the playwright, thinking about and talking about the scenes in the play. I thought it was an attempt to be too clever that didn’t really work, and would’ve enjoyed the movie quite a bit more if it had just stuck to the original story and totally removed the framing device.
8. American Fiction In American Fiction, Jeffery Wright plays a college professor and author whose books aren’t exactly leaping off the shelves. He becomes increasingly frustrated as he sees other black authors that lean into black stereotypes and pander to their audience with “authentic” stories have great commercial success while his don’t sell. He invents the pen name Stagg R. Lee and writes the most stereotypical trash he can concoct, and sends it to his publisher to see what will happen. The book ends up being a smashing success and movie rights quickly follow. In the aftermath, Wright is left wrestling with how to deal with the success that feels fraudulent to him, while also dealing with a personal and family life that is falling apart. From the previews I thought this looked contrived, but I ended up really enjoying it, mostly because of Wright. He’s one of those actors you’ve seen in a million supporting roles, and starring in a few smaller films, but I thought this was the best work of his career. His situation is absurd, but his acting gives credibility to the complexity of the character and gives a center to a movie that at times is hard to believe.
7. Dream Scenario In Dream Scenario, Nicholas Cage plays Paul Matthews, a very ordinary college professor with a fairly boring personality and a fairly boring life. One day a friend mentions that they had a dream about him the night before. More and more people start saying the same thing, and eventually he realizes that people all over the world are dreaming about him. In most cases the dreams are fairly innocuous. Initially he’s just a bystander, but as time goes on he becomes more heavily involved in the dreams. Very quickly he becomes a bit of a celebrity, although no one quite knows why he’s showing up in their dreams. He’s getting interviews on TV. He starts getting endorsement offers. People want to work with him. But as soon as he becomes famous, things take a turn. The dreams people are having about him become nightmares. He’s hunting people down and killing them. He’s torturing people. Now all of the people that were amused by him are terrified. He’s shunned at work, and even his own family turns on him. It’s a great premise, and one of the most interesting movies of the year. In many ways it feels like a Charlie Kaufman movie, even down to the detail of starring Nicholas Cage (who is excellent in the role). The movie is a fascinating commentary on viral fame and how quickly we become infatuated then discard people in today’s online culture. I’m putting the movie high on my annual rankings because it’s one of the most creative movies of the year, but it comes with a caveat - the movie is almost guaranteed to leave you feeling bummed out. There isn’t any kind of redemptive arc for Paul, and while he isn’t blameless, you can’t help but feel sorry for how this thing that was more or less out of his control ends up ruining his life. It’s the kind of movie that doesn’t necessarily “feel” enjoyable, but will stick with you for a while and make you think, which is a pretty great thing to say about a movie.
6. Killers of the Flower Moon Killers of the Flower Moon is one of my all-time favorite books. Written by David Grann, the book tells the story of the Osage murders in 1920’s Oklahoma. The book is non-fiction, but it reads like a thriller, as the reader doesn’t know who is committing the murders, or why exactly the Osage are being killed. The case led to the formation of the FBI, who eventually helped convict William “King” Hale of being the mastermind of the crimes. In the movie adaptation by Martin Scorcese, we know from the start that Hale and his cronies are killing Native Americans for their land and the oil rights that go with it. Hale is played by Robert De Niro who slowly manipulates nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mollie (Lily Gladstone), as well as dozens of others in his orbit. The decision to tell the story from a different perspective puts the Osage people into a more central role in the story instead of just being victims, but it also takes away much of the suspense that I thought made the book so great. I also firmly believe that Martin Scorcese’s recent movies would be better if he shaved about 30 minutes from each one. That said, I still thought the movie was excellent. DeNiro, DiCaprio and Gladstone are all terrific. (A casting side note that I thought was fun; many of the supporting actors in the movie are played by musicians, including Sturgill Simpson, Pete Yorn, Charlie Musslewhite, and Jason Isbell). One of the things that stood out to me is how easily greed corrupted Hale and Burkhart, and turned people that seemed “ordinary” into predators that were capable of killing their family and friends with a smile on their face.
5. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One The latest MI is pretty similar to all the others. Tom Cruise does some crazy stunts (the motorcycle jump off the cliff!). There is a weapon that can’t get into the wrong hands. Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg do their usual humorous sidekick moments. There are some great chase scenes and some great set pieces (the best one is on a train). To be honest all the MI movies kind of blend together for me at this point. But all of them are entertaining, and this one is near the top of the list. I think I made a mistake by not seeing Dead Reckoning in the theater. A movie with this much action really needs to be seen on the big screen. I won’t make the same mistake with Part Two.
4. The Barbie Movie It took me almost a year to finally get around to watching Barbie, but I’ve gotta admit it’s a terrific movie. The Barbenheimer excitement last summer when The Barbie Movie and Oppenheinheimer opened on the same day was a big deal. The biggest movie event of the summer wasn’t a sequel and it wasn’t a superhero movie. It was two big, original movies that were both smart and a joy to watch. Oppenheimer was my favorite movie of the past year, but Barbie was every bit as good for the kind of movie it was trying to be. It helped that one of the blockbusters was directed by Christopher Nolan, and the other was based on a world-famous doll and had two of the biggest stars in the movie industry, but to me it is encouraging that those were the movies people got the most excited about. The Barbie Movie was smarter and funnier than I thought it would be, although I should’ve expected more considering it was directed by Greta Gerwig. I genuinely thought it might’ve been the funniest movie of the year. The scene where all of the Kens are singing Push by Matchbox 20 while the Barbies are pretending to be interested actually had me laughing out loud, as did the scenes where Ryan Gosling’s Ken realizes how great patriarchy is going to be once he explains it to everyone in BarbieLand. It’s absurd, it’s creative, and it was one of the best movies of the year.
3. Past Lives Nora and Hae Sung are childhood friends that grow up together in Korea. When Nora is in middle school her family moves to Canada, while Hae Sung stays in Korea. Over the course of the movie the two reconnect, first by phone, and then later as adults when he comes to visit New York. It’s a premise that doesn’t sound too exciting on paper, but it’s a small, touching movie that’s beautifully acted. It’s interesting seeing how the characters' lives diverge while living in different cultures, and they each connect with different partners later in life. From the descriptions I was a little worried this would be the type of movie where the characters fall into an affair when they rekindle with someone from their past, but thankfully it isn’t that. It’s a gentle movie about friendship, longing, and the different paths that our lives end up taking.
2. Dune Part 2 The Dune movies are, quite simply, masterpieces. For some reason I didn’t see Part 1 in the theater, but for Part 2 I was able to watch on the big screen, and I’m glad I did. The world of Dune is spectacular - the sound, the visuals, the sandworms, the battles, all of it is mind blowing. I really don’t think there is a movie franchise that has done a better job of building a world and interesting characters since the original Star Wars trilogy. The politics of Arrakis and the leadership of the Fremen people are a bit complicated, but in a way that makes you think to follow along (the same reason I enjoy Christopher Nolan’s movies). The casting, like in part 1, is impeccable. Javier Bardem, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Florence Pugh, Stellan Skaarsgard, an unrecognizable Austin Butler, and yes, even Timothy Chalamet and Zendaya are perfect in their roles. It’s not worth recapping the plot, partly because it’s complicated, and partly because if you haven’t seen it yet, you should just buckle up and enjoy the ride.
1. Oppenheimer At this point it is a pretty safe bet that in a year with a Christopher Nolan movie, that movie will probably be the #1 movie on my list. Oppenheimer is a little different from the rest of Nolan’s catalog - no time travel, no action, much less in the way of special effects, but it is spectacular in its own right. It’s essentially a 3 hour long movie about physics and politics, but there was never a moment I felt bored. It helps to have a great cast (Cilian Murphy is incredible as Robert Oppenheimer, and the rest of the cast is excellent too), but everything about the movie is interesting. It’s a fascinating story - the race to successfully build an atomic bomb before the Germans during WWII, well told, well acted, and beautifully shot. There are some spectacular scenes - in particular when they first test the atomic bomb in New Mexico is probably my favorite scene of the year. Even the score by Ludwig Goransen is unique and really enhances the movie (As an aside, Goransen has entered the conversation as the heir to John Williams and Hans Zimmer as best movie composer). One of Nolan’s best movies.
Bonus Section: Older movies I watched or re-watched this year
Dunkirk Most years I go back and watch a couple of Christopher Nolan movies because he’s my favorite director. Dunkirk, like Oppenheimer isn’t a sci fi film, but a historical period piece set during WWII. Like everything else he’s made, it’s great.
Interstellar Another Nolan classic. No one else makes big, original stories like this. Smart, suspenseful, interesting.
Uncle Buck When people talk about John Hughes movies, they rarely bring up Uncle Buck, but it’s always been one of my favorites. John Candy was one of a kind.
Prisoners After the Dune movies, Dennis Villenueuve has become a director whose older movies I need to check out. Prisoners is a dark story about two girls that kidnapped and a dad (Hugh Jackman) that will stop at nothing to find out what happens to them.
Heat One of the all time great crime/heist movies.
Baby Driver Another great modern heist movie with a fantastic pairing of soundtrack and chase scenes.
Get Out All of Jordan Peele’s work has been excellent. Get Out is still his best work. A modern classic.
Oldboy I watched this because I wanted to see the hallway fight scene again, one of the best fight scenes ever filmed. It’s a fascinating movie, but they don’t get much more brutal than this.
LaLa Land I don’t like musicals and I don’t like romance movies, yet this is one of my favorite movies of the past decade. The last act is perfect.
Glengarry Glen Ross I don’t know that I actually enjoy watching this movie but it has some great lines that made it worth re-watching. Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin spend the entire movie insulting each other. Coffee is for closers.
Bonus Bonus Section: A ranking and brief comment on shows I watched this year
13. The Afterparty, Season 2 Almost made it through the whole season, but it’s another case of trying to do the same thing as Season 1 and just not being as good.
12. Silo Dystopian show where a community lives in a silo, unable to venture into the outside world due to contamination. Rebecca Ferguson leads a crew that tries to figure out what’s really going on outside.
11. Our Planet 2 I love nature documentaries. This one is decent, but not quite as spectacular as Our Planet. It mostly focuses on animal migrations.
10. Dark Matter The series isn’t done yet but it’s really good. A college professor (where have I heard that one before?) gets kidnapped by another version of himself and transported into the multiverse. Sounds like a Marvel movie but the characters (Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly) give it a grounding the Marvel movies lack.
9. Life on Our Planet My favorite documentary series this year. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, it’s a combination of animation and live action that follows the evolution of life on Earth, from the earliest organisms in the ocean to dinosaurs to today.
8. Only Murders in the Building, Season 1 Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez live in a ritzy building in New York. When someone in the building gets murdered, they start a podcast to try to solve the crime. I loved season 1, but quit season 2 after a couple episodes.
7. Masters of the Air As far as WWII miniseries go, it’s not as good as Band of Brothers but better than The Pacific. It follows a squadron of bomber pilots, and the flight scenes are especially good.
6. Slow Horses, Season 3 If you like espionage movies or shows and haven’t checked out Slow Horses on Apple TV, you should put it on your watchlist now. The Slow Horses are a group of misfits, led by Gary Oldham, that have been essentially exiled by MI6 into boring desk jobs at Slough House, where careers go to die. Each season is a new case, and all of them have been crisp, smart, and entertaining.
5. Hijack Idris Elba plays a negotiator that ends up on a plane that gets hijacked. Apple TV does this kind of show really well.
4. Jury Duty Maybe the best reality show I’ve ever watched? That’s not saying much because I hate reality TV, but the premise is great. A guy named Ron Gladden is selected for jury duty in a case where an employee is being sued by his former boss for ruining her business and reputation. The catch is that everyone besides Ron is an actor. It’s kind of a real life Truman Show, but unlike most reality shows that seem to highlight the worst of humanity, this show somehow manages to showcase the best.
3. Detroiters Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson play lifelong friends that are put in charge of a Detroit ad agency when Tim’s dad goes to prison. It’s the same guys that made I Think You Should Leave which I think is the funniest show on TV. I wish more people knew about this show, it was amazing.
2. Reservation Dogs, Seasons 1-3 Found this show on Hulu and watched all 3 seasons. Very few shows have ever had this combination of funny and poignant. The four main characters (Cheese, Bear, Willie Jack, Elora) are all so good. It's advertised as a comedy but it’s really about a Native American community coming together to deal with tragedy.
1. The Bear, Seasons 1 and 2 Last year at this time I had tried to watch a couple episodes and gave up because it was too stressful. A couple friends convinced me to stick with it, and it’s become one of my favorites. There are still some stressful episodes (I fast forwarded most of the Christmas episode) but we got to know some of the characters better and the show just keeps growing. Forks and Marcus in Copenhagen were two of the best episodes of any show last year. Also, I feel like the soundtrack was made specifically for my enjoyment.
Repeat Viewings
Severance I can’t wait for Season 2 later this year.
I Think You Should Leave, Seasons 1-3 Sketch comedy show. I’ve watched each season 3 times now. It’s my favorite show.
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