2021 is over. As far as pandemic-filled, politically turbulent, socially-shakey years go, 2021 was actually not that bad of a year. I accomplished a lot personally, I found fun where I could, and I watched some great movies and read some great books. Here are some of my favorite things from last year:
MOVIES
LITTLE FISH (2020)
A profoundly moving love story with a sci-fi twist. As a pandemic sweeps the country - its victims stripped of their memories and left with something resembling early-onset Alzheimer's - a couple desperately attempts to cling to their story. Seriously, this film is so great - like a companion piece to ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND.
THE BIG BLUE (1988)
It's an amazing feeling to find a new movie you love. It's an even better feeling when that movie has existed for over thirty years. It's proof that there's still great stuff out there to be discovered. An early film from Luc Besson, the movie follows the friendship and rivalry between competitive free divers Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari. While the divers the movie is based on are real, the story is heavily fictionalized. Jean Reno is fantastic as Enzo Molinari, a brash, confident barrel-chested Italian diver who encourages his friend Jacque to compete against him because he knows only Jacque has what it takes to provide a challenge. Jacque is only interested in the ocean, though - spending his nights frolicking with dolphins instead of paying attention to the girlfriend (played by an absolutely delightful Rosanna Arquette) who quits her job as an insurance adjuster in New York to move across the world in pursuit of love. This film looks fantastic, the characters are so much fun and I didn't ever once feel the weight of the movie's 168-minute running time. THE BIG BLUE is truly a wonderful movie that I can't wait to keep revisiting over the years.
DEREK DELGAUDIO’S IN AND OF ITSELF (2020)
Derek DelGaudio’s IN AND OF ITSELF is astonishing as a piece of personal expression, as a magic show, as pure cinema, as a reminder of why we need to beat COVID so we can go back to watching artists perform in theaters again. Thanks to everybody who recommended it.
THE KID DETECTIVE (2020)
THE KID DETECTIVE, from writer/director Evan Morgan (THE DIRTIES), is 100 percent my jam. Simultaneously funny and profoundly sad, the film follows a former boy detective who never recovered personally or professionally when he couldn't solve the disappearance of a local girl. The movie deftly explores life's expectations versus reality - something many of us cope with every day - while also being a pitch-perfect satire of stuff like Encyclopedia Brown and Harriet the Spy. Seriously, this movie is really, really good - I can't recommend it enough.
THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES (2021)
THE MITCHELLS VS. THE MACHINES is so good. Fantastic animation, great comedy, wonderful characters. The look and texture of the film remind me of a mixture between a YA graphic novel and an oil painting. It looks like nothing else out there. I wish I could have seen it in a theater but I’m just grateful I saw it period. It would make a great double feature with A GOOFY MOVIE.
RIDERS OF JUSTICE (2020)
RIDERS OF JUSTICE is incredible. Mads Mikkelsen stars as a soldier whose wife is killed in a train accident. When a trio of nerds with severe social skill problems tell him the accident may not have been an accident, Mads channels his inner turmoil into killing fools. It's a pitch-black comedy about troubled folks trying desperately to find meaning in a world of cruel chaos. I can easily see an American studio remaking this, so get in on the ground floor and watch the original film so you can act the snob when the Liam Neeson remake comes out.
PIG (2021)
If you described the plot of PIG it’d sound very, very silly. The fact the film achieves profundity is a testament to the filmmakers’ skill. A raw, vulnerable performance from Nic Cage and a tremendous supporting cast all directed with a gentle touch make for a damn good movie.
THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021)
I absolutely loved THE GREEN KNIGHT. Visually, it was everything I hoped for. Foxes, giants, moonlit spirits, trippy mushrooms - this movie has everything. Thematically, I found the film to be an extremely resonant story about accountability and facing the consequences of your actions. In a world where debates about cancel culture are prevalent and the path towards absolution unclear, I found THE GREEN KNIGHT to be a wonderfully timely moralistic story draped in gorgeous fantasy accouterment.
NINE DAYS (2020)
NINE DAYS - Winston Duke stars as a man who must interview prospective souls who vying for a chance to be born. A reverse DEFENDING YOUR LIFE with the heart of Michel Gondry and the aesthetic of the SOCIAL NETWORK trailer. I’m a sucker for these types of movies.
MALIGNANT (2021)
MALIGNANT is grade-A bonkers joy. It combines my favorite parts of ‘00s horror with the stylish flourish of the best Italian horror films. Aggressively weird and wild fun. More horror films like this, please.
SUMMERTIME (2020)
The audience might be limited for this youthful spin on Richard Linklater’s SLACKER where a group of poets and musicians give a rambling tour of LA but its open-heartened earnestness left me enamored. Goofy, sweet, and highly rewatchable, I predict.
TITANE (2021)
Julia Ducournau manages to out-Cronenberg David Cronenberg when it comes to sexy car body horror but then, without warning, the movie undergoes its own transformation, becoming something profound and strange and impossible to look away from. I’m in love.
AGNES (2021)
Mickey Reece’s art-house exorcism film is 100 % my kind of jam. A possessed nun draws a web of lost and searching souls. The dialogue in the film is so rich and luxurious I want to use it as shampoo. Also, the film looks absolutely gorgeous. So dang good.
FREAKS OUT (2021)
The only X-Men reboot we need for a while. A quartet of freaks in WWII-era Italy finds themselves conscripted into a Nazi circus run by a six-fingered pianist who can see into the future. Part Jean-Pierre Jeunet, part Álex de la Iglesia, all wonderful.
LAMB (2021)
Holy shit. This baaaaadass movie is one of the best things I’ve seen in years. Alternatively heartwarming, cringe-inducing, funny, tragic. The puppeteering is a flickering magic trick. I can’t believe this movie is getting w wide release. God bless cinema.
SILENT NIGHT (2021)
The Ending of The Mist: The Motion Picture. A bleak (but very funny!) holiday film about a group of college friends who spend one last holiday together before they kill themselves and their kids to avoid a poisonous gas cloud enveloping the globe.
ISHTAR (1987)
Elaine May's much-dragged comedy is lightyears better than its reputation implies. Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty are clueless, talentless musicians who find themselves pawns in a cold war skirmish. The schmuck/smuck scene is the funniest thing I watched this year.
RED ROCKET (2021)
Sean Baker's coming-of-asshole comedy stars Simon Rex as an ex-porn star who moves back to the armpit of Texas - a refinery-filled region that acnes the state's coast - to make a go at restarting his life only to fall back on old habits. Any film that uses NSYNC's "Bye Bye Bye" as not one, not two but three cathartic epiphanical moments is a treasure to behold. Rex is outstanding as a sleazy, perpetually fully frontal would-be lothario - simultaneously charming as hell and repulsive. In the film, a movie set in Texas City, a seventeen-year-old girl named Strawberry inexplicably has a WILD BEASTS movie poster on her wall. I choose to believe that, in the film’s backstory, she saw BEASTS at the Dismember the Alamo marathon I programmed in Katy. Please, nobody take this away from me.
BELFAST (2021)
Essentially Kenneth Branagh's 400 BLOWS, the movie follows a young boy in late '60s Belfast, Ireland as his family deals with growing civil strife and must decide whether they stay in their home or leave the country for better opportunities elsewhere. Branagh pulls from his own childhood for the movie and, like Truffaut's Antoine Doinel films, BELFAST mixes the intensely personal with the universally cinematic. The film uses the heightened reality that comes with remembering things to create something larger than the truth because it's the truth of the soul. Gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, a soundtrack from Van Morrison, and a great ensemble cast - what more do you need to know?
LICORICE PIZZA (2021)
Goddamnit, I loved LICORICE PIZZA so much. Such a lovely, rambling movie that builds to something messy and imperfect but wholly lived and loved in. My favorite PTA film since MAGNOLIA. It was fortuitous that I watched the same week I've been reading A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES because the movie and the book seem cut from a very similar cloth. They are both assembled like a layer cake - slatherings of supporting characters that orbit the main story, building and building on top of the experience as a whole to create a portrait of a person, a place, a period of time all simultaneous and built of equal care. I think the thing I loved most in LICORICE PIZZA is, weirdly, also the reason I loved Charles Band’s memoir - I love stories about hustlers. Not people who exploit other people, but people who exploit situations. People who are always looking for the next opportunity or angle. I often like to think of myself as a go-getter but the truth is that I'm often complacent. I don't push myself to find the next big opportunity, not like Mr. Band or like Gary Valentine. LICORICE PIZZA is a very special movie with an amazing cast. I can't wait to revisit this film many more times to come over the next few decades.
BOOKS
TRUE BELIEVER: THE RISE AND FALL OF STAN LEE by Abraham Riesman
Abraham Riesman’s TRUE BELIEVER, is a fantastic portrait of a complicated man. You’ll read things that will make you consider Stan Lee in a different light, but don’t let those revelations completely shatter your image of the man. He did bad, but he also did so much good as well. Lee succeeded in the comic book industry because he gave superhumans the ability to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes. Let’s never forget to let humans make mistakes too.
ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS by Elan Mastai
Time travel fiction is a favorite of mine, and Elan Mastai’s ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS is a remarkable achievement in time travel fiction. Clever, funny, unrepentantly emotional, the book is a machine gun of ideas and philosophizing of said ideas. The basic plot follows a man living in a scientific utopia who, while on the first recorded time travel expedition, screws up the past and changes his present. Now, stuck in something more resembling our world, he has to figure out a way to fix things. But should he? Despite not having access to the wonderful technology and world peace from his previous reality, his personal life is somehow better. PALM SPRINGS meets THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT with a dash of Tomorrowland, the ride - not the movie. Highly recommended.
EVERYONE SAYS THAT AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Owen Egerton
It's fitting that Owen Egerton, a man deeply linked in my head with Fantastic Fest, wrote a novel that reminds me so much of what I love about the film festival's programming. EVERYONE SAYS THAT AT THE END OF THE WORLD is a sprawling, funny, emotional, and weird exploration of the apocalypse. Every flavor of the end times is represented in this book, about a handful of Texans trying their best to figure their shit out as the world ends around them. The book reminded me of the films of Yoshihiro Nakamura and Sion Sono, but it's deeply regional - a loving portrait of Texas' wide-open, spiritually-nuanced identity. And one of the film's central characters is a hermit crab. Owen's a great guy and a great writer. I'm glad I finally caught up with his 2013 novel. It's a special one.
LATER by Stephen King
I really dug the new Stephen King book, LATER. A kid with the power to talk to ghosts is forced to use his gift by his mom’s corrupt cop ex-girlfriend. A companion piece to THE DEAD ZONE (and also, kinda, IT), but written with the punchy prose of crime fiction. Good stuff!
THINGS HAVE GOTTEN WORSE SINCE WE LAST SPOKE by Eric LaRocca
As deeply disturbing as it is beautifully written. Mental health, parasitic relationships, and antique apple peelers, oh my! Read it!
ELIZABETH by Ken Greenhall
Like the author’s HELLHOUND, it’s a fantastic, brisk read with a wonderfully sociopathic narrator. Greenhall has a real way with words, especially when he’s describing wicked people doing wicked things.
THE ALBUM OF DR. MOREAU by Daryl Gregory
A whodunnit crime story in which the suspects are members of a human-animal hybrid boy band. Agatha Christie meets THE BOY BAND CON. I highly recommend this endlessly witty and smart novella. So many puns…
THE WEREWOLD by Benjamin Percy and Francesco Francavilla
ALIENS to CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF's ALIEN. Lycanthropy is a pandemic sweeping the nation and, for one sleepy street, trusting the neighbors is a luxury that can't be afforded. I loved this werewolf novella so dang much.
CONFESSIONS OF A PUPPETMASTER by Charles Band and Adam Felber
I finished Charles Band’s CONFESSIONS OF A PUPPETMASTER this morning and absolutely loved it. What a wild, inspirational life - a tale of true perseverance through the ups and downs experienced in a life in show business.
BEOWULF: A NEW TRANSLATION by Maria Dahvana Headley
Bro! I was blown away by Maria Dahvana Headley's new translation of BEOWULF. I read the poem in school (and dug it in the way boys dig poems about monsters and the men who kill them) but the new translation unlocked something in the poem and its themes that I had not previously felt. It's smart and funny and hip in a way that my using the word "hip" signifies that I am not. The modern vernacular (yes, there is the use of the phrase "hashtag blessed" in this translation of BEOWULF - and it works) helps drive home the fact that the poem may be about warriors but these ancient warriors share the same emotional DNA as men and women today. This new version of BEOWULF has rocketed up to the top of my favorite pieces of literature. BEOWULF is the source code for most modern action entertainment and now the original poem is as (or more) entertaining than most modern action entertainment.
WHISPER DOWN THE LANE by Clay McLeod Chapman
Whoa. I expected the novel to be great, I did not expect it to hit me in the chest like a sock full of quarters and emotions. The novel - about a man reckoning with something terrible he did as a child and the tendrils of consequence that find him as an adult - may be dripping with '80s nostalgia but it's also wonderfully timely in the current cultural climate we're in - where "canceled" is a buzzword. How long do your actions define you as a person? Is there a road to redemption in the eyes of others? In your own eyes? And to take this cultural conversation and turn it into a genuinely creepy-as-hell horror story? Dang! I cannot recommend this book enough.
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole
I finished A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES today and, yep, it's now one of my favorite books. It's truly a wild experience to finally read something that has clearly influenced and informed so many of my favorite books and shows and movies over the years. A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES was always there, in the background, informing my tastes, sense of humor, and my own writing. Finally reading the book is like meeting my great-grandfather. I'm glad I finally know who I've been ripping off all these years.
COMICS
STRAY DOGS by Tony Fleecs, Trish Forstner, Tone Rodriguez and Brad Simpson
This comic by Tony Fleecs and Trish Forstner is sooo good! The comic follows a group of foster dogs who realize their new owner is actually a serial killer who murdered their previous owner. If you like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS but wish Don Bluth had made it, check this book out.
THAT TEXAS BLOOD by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips
I love the myth of Texas. I love comic books. How is it, then, that it took me so damn long to read THAT TEXAS BLOOD? Well, I spent the day binging all twelve issues of the series, and, let me tell you, this book is damn, damn, damn good. A bit of Coen Brothers, a smidge of STRAY BULLETS, a dash of other beloved shows, comics, films that I feel might be a spoiler to namedrop - THAT TEXAS BLOOD captures the wide, gnawing emptiness of West Texas and the fear and ghosts and - most of all - regret that call it home. Every issue is beautifully written and illustrated (the coloring alone!) and there are enough hints at what might shake out to be the larger story to leave me confident in saying this series is going to be an all-timer. Read it, subscribe to it, consume it! This is Texas gold.
NOT ALL ROBOTS by Mark Russell and Mike Deodato Jr.
Set in a future in which robots and mankind enjoy a mostly peaceful, if very stressful, co-existence, this series takes a look at toxic masculinity by superimposing the themes onto a sci-fi setting. It’s funny, smart as a whip, and timely as hell.
THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE by James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez
A deeply creepy ongoing series about a group of friends and strangers brought together to spend a weekend away from the world at a beautiful lakehouse. They don’t suspect, however, the friend who invited them has ulterior motives and there’s no escape from this paradise. Stunning artwork, an engrossing story, and some fun design elements.
PENNY NICHOLS by Greg Means, MK Reed and Matt Wiegle
An aimless young woman finds her purpose when she joins a group of filmmakers working on a no-budget horror film. PENNY NICHOLS is so dang good! A perfect combination of very funny script and very funny art.
OLD HEAD by Kyle Starks
This comic has everything I look for in my entertainment. TOP GUN references. That’s all I look for. But the book, about an over-the-hill basketball player tangling with a Dracula-worshiping cult of “bros,” had all sorts of other great stuff too.
IN by Will McPhail
Besides being beautifully illustrated, this book is a devastatingly honest portrait of how hard it can be to get out of your own head and connect with other people. THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, but for a generation that has turned inward.
THE FANG by Marc Palm
Pocket-sized comics about a muppet-looking vampire who moonlights as a monster hunter. The attention to detail in the art on each page is staggering and both books are funny as hell. Goddamnit, I’m in love with these comics.
TELEVISION
HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON
The second season of this show just finished its run and - like the first - it’s a wonderful exploration life in all its messy glory. I can’t even comprehend how John Wilson and his team put together each episode - but that’s what makes this show special. It’s like a magic trick.
THE MCU MOVIES AND TELEVISION SHOWS
This is a catch-all - because I loved them all. HAWKEYE, WANDAVISION, and LOKI were probably my favorites, but I just appreciated having so much MCU content released this past year. I’ve stopped looking at the films as individual movies and instead as episodes of a long-running television series. Now that Marvel Studios is also releasing actual television series within their greater television series, I’m in hog heaven. You can save your “Is the MCU destroying cinema” debate - I don’t care. These movies/television shows make me happy. Let me have this.
MYTHIC QUEST
I binged both seasons of MYTHIC QUEST last year and, I’ve got to say, what a fantastic show. The "A Dark Quiet Death" episode, in particular, was great - but I'm a sucker for standalone episodes of this nature. I love the show’s willingness to reinvent itself season to season or even episode to episode. I don’t even like video games but this show was one of the best things I watched this year.
JELLYSTONE!
Yes, you read that right. Motherfuckin’ JELLYSTONE! The show is a ton of fun! And super weird! I’m glad I don’t have a kid and don’t have to make the call about whether or not it’s appropriate for kids.
RESERVATION DOGS
This show is are Very Good. More shows and entertainment that value cultural specificity, please. I love it when something squeaks through the system that wasn't made to appeal to the widest possible cross-section of audiences. If you’re not watching the show yet, take a break from this hellish website and go watch it - it’s one of the best things on TV right now, easily. RESERVATION DOGS is the kind of seemingly effortlessly good art - humane and empathetic and so friggin smart - that I believe the world would be a better place if everybody watched it. Goddamnit, this show is good.
SWEET TOOTH
This gorgeous-looking Netflix show takes a pretty dark and cynical comic book and turns it into one of the most hopeful and uplifting and, frankly, sweet shows I watched this year. Despite the subject matter hitting close to home - a global pandemic wrecks havoc on society - I found the show’s message and delivery a breath of fresh air in this turbulent year.
ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING
I spent the year writing a whodunit with werewolves and this great celebration of whodunit was a big inspiration as I trudged across the finish line. Steve Martin and Martin Short are fantastic together, gleefully pulling Selena Gomez along for a wild and funny ride through an apartment-bound murder. This show combined two things I love: Murder mysteries and daydreaming about how extremely rich people enjoy their high-rise apartments in New York City.