Can something ever really, truly be "the best?"

Depends on who you ask. (exactly)

“Well if that’s love, somebody goofed.”

This is the time of year for many things. So many things. Too many things.

One of said “things” is the assorted lists rankings movies by their relative goodness. I am often in conflict as I enjoy reading these lists far too much when I, at the same time, will espouse that I hate the general idea of them. Cuz remember, media enjoyment is a subjective experience and each piece can give you something different than the next. But it is fun (and often helpful in discovery) to hear what tickled the mushy pink brains of other filmgoers. I had the passing thought of wouldn’t it be nice to try and compile a list of lists sorta thing and wouldn’t you know it, somebody dun di-it already! Yup, the fine folks at Metacritic did just what I was thinking (and have been doing it for years?).

They took a fairly massive sample of “best of” lists and even added some scoring and came up with a “best of the best lists.” I’m not gonna lie, even with my previous statement on the subjectivity of movie watching, I was delighted to see three of my favorite movies of the year sitting atop the charts¹: Everything Everywhere All at Once, Tár and The Banshees of Inisherin. I like to tell myself it’s less a self-centered “I’m right” reaction and more of the semi-altruistic “appreciation and hope that others will discover these great movies” kinda reaction. And even though they set it up in ranked order, I’d look at it more like a list of movies in which you’ll probably find something interesting to love / hate.

Again, the entire list is here. And if you’re wondering what some of them are, email me! I’d love to tell you in a few quick sentences (it’s kinda what I do).

But with all that said, I’d love - like, love - to know what one of the favorite movies you saw this year. Let me (and other readers) know by clicking this very pretty “Leave a comment” button below.

PS I just want to say, as always I appreciate you for reading. I do really enjoy putting this out each week, even if I sometimes dread diving into the depths of my skull to find the words to type. So thank you, and like I tell everyone I can, any feedback / suggestions - good or bad - you want to provide, I’d love to hear them.

PPS love you Dad

White Noise

I’ll tell you one thing, this isn’t about the shit you turn on to soothe your baby (or yourself?) to sleep. Ooooooh no. No sir-ry bahb I tell you whuut. This is, turns out, an adaptation of the famous novel of the same name which also inspired the band that made this song (this song that I listened to far too many times during a certain time in my life because I thought I was having “feelings.²” Oh feelings.) to name themselves The Airborne Toxic Event. Recalling this song led me to listen to another album I played during that same time, Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism. It’s quite nostalgic. Listening to it takes me back 13 years to when I had that shit on repeat (yes, I know it was released in 2003. yes it was due to the same “feelings”). It’s almost as if I can deliver myself to that time by listening to it. But really, I can’t. I’m 13 years on in life. 13 years closer to death.

But I digress.

The pertinent topic here is the movie, even if the novel deserves a more than solid shoutout as source material and 25 millionth entry into the pantheon of books to be labeled “unfilmable.” And yet here we are. Don DeLillo released his lauded novel in 1985 and it’s clearly stayed in the collective consciousness (one review referred to it as one of “the Great American Novels”). I feel like I read it in college, but I also feel like I would 100% remember if I had. But the book’s staying power makes sense when you learn it’s a satire on how “we” (read: Americans) deal with our mortality and in ways that are ridiculous and darkly comical if looked at through a certain lens. And often via the mechanism of consumerism and the distancing ourselves from death via thinking it only happens to other people. Mainstay topics of the American experience to be sure.

This all seems very serious for a director whose breakthrough movie, The Squid and the Whale, sounds like the title of the book you just bought your niece for Xmas. But in fact Noah Baumbach loves diving into the psyche of his characters like few others. So this feels like a perfect fit. Plus, he gets to work with two of his faves (Adam Driver and wife Greta Gerwig) and was handed a big budget with which he gets to do some cool CGI for once. Fuckin’ a right.

But even though this looks kinda pretty and even has some “scope,” it’s still going to be a movie where it might make you consider things, like how you approach the topic of your own earthly demise.

“Greta Gerwig — inches away from going full Carol White — Jack’s fourth wife Babette comforts her 14-year-old stepson (Sam Nivola) that they won’t run out of gas. “There’s always extra,” she says. “How can there always be extra?,” the kid shoots back. Everybody knows they can’t just keep going forever, and yet modern life has made it so easy to believe that you will” - from the IndieWire review of White Noise

I just like to think that if it scares me too much, if I get too wrapped up in the anxiety produced by a very serious situation! and its aftermath, I can hit play on Transatlanticism again and transport myself to when I was staring out the window of a minivan as trees on some random highway on the east coast passed by me at 70 miles an hour. To a time when it wasn’t now, it was then. When I wasn’t a tad closer to dying. A mere digression to the past.

Seems fair.

Out: Friday

Where: Netflix

2 hrs 16 mins | R | 🍅: 64%

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One. One trailer. That’s all you get³. It makes the choice of what to watch easy. Far easier than the “impossible choice”⁴ featured in in the second trailer for Knock at the Cabin from M. Night Shyamalan⁵.

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1. I have most definitely not seen all of the movies on the list, so my favs list is certainly skewed

2. we’re all allowed some mistakes in this life friend

3. kind of, there are two more in the full list, but they’re pretty weak entries honestly

4. like, is it though?

5. Dave Bautista is kind of the dude right now, isn’t he? Oscar nom coming soon? TBD