This year, in an effort to rebel against our culture’s tendency to wait until the end of the year to make lists of the stuff we dug, I have started making end-of-month recaps of the movies, books, television shows, and other stuff I enjoyed. Here are January, February, and March’s lists.
And here’s all the stuff I liked in April:
MOVIES
THE NORTHMAN (2022)
Verily, I actually saw THE NORTHMAN in March but I wasn’t able to talk about it. CONAN THE BARBARIAN meets HAMLET, with a dash of BEOWULF - Robert Eggers infuses Norse mythology with trippy action spectacle. Oh, how I wish I was twelve and watching this film for the first time. Eggers, the director of THE WITCH and THE LIGHTHOUSE, knocked this film out of the park. Emotional, bloody, inventive, just plain cool - this film is guaranteed to melt faces and put hair on the chest of men and women.
AMBULANCE (2022)
Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II star as brothers who botch a bank robbery and take an ambulance driver and a wounded cop hostage as they speed through the streets of Los Angeles in search of freedom from the cops and feds chasing them. There was a moment that literally made me toss a napkin in the air in surprise. It’s got the sentimentality of a Folgers commercial, the aesthetics of a military recruitment video, and the camera work of a shark (if it stops, it dies). Solid pulpy action.
TOGETHER TOGETHER (2021)
An absolutely charming movie about a single man (Ed Helms) and the twentysomething surrogate (Patti Harrison) carrying his baby. A tremendous cast, a smart script, and a really tender and humane look at the complex emotions that spring up where you don’t expect them. I really did love this sweet little film. Harrison in particular was a revelation. I knew she was funny, but she blew me away with her dramatic range in this film.
THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS (1979)
I have not been able to stop thinking about this weirdo psudo-science documentary featuring a synth soundtrack by Stevie Wonder. This movie makes so many bizarre choices - and I was there for every single one of them. There is a scene in THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS where a Russian scientist straight-up murders a head of cabbage in order to get a rise out of another plant. There’s also a scene where a woman tries to teach her screaming cactus Japanese. Cinema!
RRR (2022)
I was a day away from flying to Vegas and I didn’t wanna risk dying in a crash before I saw the movie everybody was talking about. Yeah, buddy - I’ve lived a good life. The film stars N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan as two accidental BFFs who discover they are on the opposite side of the 1920s Indian revolution. Jaw-dropping action scenes, musical numbers, and vibrant, kinetic energy that pulses through every minute of the nearly three-hour runtime. RRR left my chest pounding. If I die before I get to see it again I’ll haunt the shit out of an airplane.
COMICS
REFRIGERATOR FULL OF HEADS - Rio Youers and Tom Fowler’s sequel to the comic book BASKETFUL OF HEADS by Joe Hill and Leomacs takes everything established in the original premise - there’s an ax that, when used, leaves behind immortal bodiless heads who can talk (mostly about how much it sucks being separated from your body) and cranks it up to 11. New Norse weapons with terrifying powers, a giant headless shark that eats everything in its path, returning characters, and great new ones. I might like this sequel even more than I liked the original comic book.
HULK: GRAND DESIGN - I really do love the Grand Design books that Marvel has been putting out. The series takes a cool alternative comic book creator and asks them to summarize decades worth of comic book continuity in highly designed summaries. It’s like Cliffnotes for comics, except beautiful to look at. Jim Rugg’s take on the Hulk is wonderful - a compact and stunning exploration into almost six decades of smashing.
BOOKS
MAGGOTS SCREAMING! - I absolutely loved Max Booth III’s novel - a weird and wild book about a family that discovers dead doppelgangers buried in their garden. Once these dead clones are unburied, though, both the live and the dead varients become to decompose. Slowly, unendlessly, always rotting. Imagine if Frank Henenlotter directed a loose adaptation of Mary Roach's STIFF and you'll get close to this book's contents. Great dialogue, gruesome mind candy, and a wonderfully humane center that compliments the extreme body horror that surrounds it - MAGGOTS SCREAMING! is a super fun read.
THE SHADOW GLASS - Josh Winning’s book is super fun! The son of a legendary puppeteer who directed an '80s fantasy epic must battle his daddy issues and real-life versions of his dad's creations come to life. A loving homage to THE DARK CRYSTAL but also a wonderful look at toxic fandom. It'd be easy enough for THE SHADOW GLASS to coast on nostalgia but Winning wrote a book that's first and foremost a rip-roaring adventure full of great characters and fun twists. If you are a Jim Henson fan or grew up reading THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD, give this book a read!
MUSIC
Father John Misty’s new album “Chloë and The Next 20th Century” is a wonderful concept album that takes inspiration from the golden age of Hollywood through the New Pop Wave of the ‘60s. Take some big band, some jazz standards, a bit of Harry Nilsson, and a touch of John Barry and you’ll get this exquisite collection of songs. This past month has some incredible music releases - new albums from Lucius, Calexico, Orville Peck, Craig Finn, and Reina del Cid - but Misty’s album is the one I keep going back to.