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, March, April, May and June’s lists.
And here’s all the stuff I liked in July:
MOVIES
RENT-A-PAL (2020)
Uncomfortable, mean horror where the monster is in the all-too-real grip of loneliness. An adult man who lives with and cares for his ailing mother is having a hard time finding a connection, even with the use of a video dating service. When he picks up a VHS tape called “Rent-A-Pal” on a lark, he discovers an eerily potent friendship via the on-screen host (played by Wil Wheaton). The film’s structure is impressively constructed, but the movie’s real strength is in the Phillip Seymour Hoffman-like performance from star, Brian Landis Folkins.
THE BROKEN HEARTS GALLERY (2020)
I was shocked by how great this movie was. I mean, it was really, really good. But I’m sure my initial dismal of the movie says more to my own prejudices than anything else. A twentysomething art gallery assistant creates a museum to break-ups in order to get over her own recent breakup. The script features fun, snappy dialogue and star Geraldine Viswanathan has so much charm and comedy chops. It’s totally not the kind of movie I would have expected to dig but ... I dig it I really did. A lot.
SCARFFACE (2022)
This “documentary” explores the subculture of competitive eating, specifically the rivalry between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. Well, kinda. The film is a weird hodgepodge of truth and lies and jokes and weirdness and I don’t know what else. Is the whole movie a joke? Maybe. But my theory is that the filmmakers started making a documentary, realized what they had wasn’t very interesting and then just said “fuck it” and had fun with the premise. I think I loved it, or I could have just loved the experience of watching it. Literally half the theater walked out because they thought we were showing SCARFACE.
VENGEANCE (2022)
I wrote about the film here.
NOPE (2022)
I wrote about the film here.
TELEVISION
THE BOYS - SEASON 3 (2022)
THE BOYS took a juvenile cult comic book written for an edgelord audience from a decade ago and turned it into an incredibly timely and brilliant show that takes a mirror to these fucked up times we're living in. Each season of the show gets better and better. What I love most about the show is its optimism that people are capable of doing the right thing. I love Garth Ennis comics, but that is a gentleman who I suspect doesn’t think too highly of the human race. I need aspirational entertainment in my life right now.
THE BEAR - SEASON 1 (2022)
THE BEAR is like a scruffy, emo version of TED LASSO. A young chef with fine-dining experience moves back home to Chicago to take over his recently deceased brother’s Italian beef diner. I admit, I don’t understand how the show’s restaurant functions. It looks like a hole-in-the-wall Italian beef spot and the plot tells me they are struggling to pay the bills but the menu changes every episode and it seems like they are constantly prepping. I’ve worked in the restaurant industry for ten years and trying to figure out how this restaurant functions on a day-to-day basis drove me nuts. That said, the show is great. Between it and the new episodes of BETTER CALL SAUL, my anxiety levels were through the roof and I couldn’t be happier - even if it did stroke my desire to move to Chicago. Watching THE BEAR made me almost put everything I own in my car and drive north.
BOOKS
WOLF AT THE DOOR by Joel McKay
Imagine if Edward Albee had written a werewolf novella and you’ll get a feel for this book. Lies, secrets, and resentments bubble to the surface when a family’s Thanksgiving dinner is interrupted by a werewolf attack. It’s short, sweet and violent as heck. Read it!
SWAN SONG by Robert McCammon
Flight delays this past weekend gave me a chance to catch up on some reading and I finally finished SWAN SONG by Robert McCammon. I’ve been wanting to read the book since its cover gave me nightmares as a kid and it was definitely worth the wait. Nuclear war almost wipes humanity off the map and the survivors must piece together their society as they deal with mutations and a Satanic presence that wants nothing more than to finish the job the nukes began. I’m not a religious dude but I do love me some religion in my post-apocalyptic stories. I think a fear of the world ending goes hand in hand with a fear of being wrong about the whole “faith” thing. It’s depressing how timely McCammon’s novel - cold-war nuke hoedown - still is.
MUSIC
Murder by Death, my current favorite band, released their new album SPELL/BOUND this past week. I flew to Tennessee to see the band perform the entire album (plus another hour of back-catalog music) in a cave in the middle of nowhere. It was fantastic. “Strange Song” is my favorite song off the new album but, honestly, every song on the album is a banger.