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 and February’s lists.
And here’s all the stuff I liked in March:
MOVIES
I’m not including the stuff I watched at SXSW because I wrote about those films already.
STRAWBERRY MANSION (2021)
This film, from filmmakers Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney, follows a tax collector in the not-too-distant future who audits people’s dreams - taxing them based on how complex their imagination is. When he travels to the home of an elderly woman to audit her fantasies, he begins to fall for the woman. In between romps through the dreams of his soul mate, the taxman begins to uncover the dark secrets behind his profession. STRAWBERRY MANSION is the kind of movie you watch and are then filled with a deep burning desire to make a movie yourself. It’s pure and wonderful unbound imagination.
ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL (1979)
This Roger Corman-produced teen comedy from director Allan Arkush is just plain F*U*N. P.J. Soles stars as a Ramones-loving high school student who rebels against her authoritarian principal. Like a live-action Mad Magazine spread, ROCK ‘N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL is at once both low-brow comedy and high-art satire. It’s stupid, silly, wonderfully serene goofiness. It’s also kind of interesting to consider that today’s kids would be the ones more likely to burn records than their parents.
APOLLO 10 1/2: A SPACE AGE CHILDHOOD (2022)
Most folks would be content just writing a memoir and calling it a day. Richard Linklater, the overachiever that he is, turned his memories of growing up in Houston during the '60s Space race into an absolutely charming animated film. APOLLO 10 1/2 is a super niche film about Texas - specifically Houston - during the late '60s. Naturally, I loved it. Trips to Astroworld, made-up playground games, flooding, Whataburger. It's all here. I could have listened to Jack Black narrate Linklater's memories of what movies he watched as a kid and in what now-closed Houston-area theaters he saw them in for hours. There is, of course, a whole other part of this movie that deals with the Moon Landing - and that's great too - but I fell in love with the cultural specificity that Linklater gave his film. APOLLO 10 1/2 is like a Gulf Coast version of A CHRISTMAS STORY. It's so damn good.
DEAD MEN DON’T WEAR PLAID (1982)
Steve Martin and Carl Reiner reunited for this spoof of Hollywood noir. Using repurposed footage from a variety of films starring some of Golden Age Hollywood’s biggest stars, this film stars Martin as a private investigator on the trail of a missing scientist. Besides its clever use of stock footage, DEAD MAN DON’T WEAR PLAID is fun exactly because of how stupid it is. It’s the kind of movie you can turn your brain off and enjoy - and I know turning your brain off at movies has gotten a bad rub in recent years but I encourage you to try it. It’s fun to just let yourself be stupid.
CARNIVAL MAGIC (1981)
This bizarre family film is about a magician and his talking chimp and the movie culminates in a scene in which a legion of carnies storm an animal research lab in order to stop the monkey from committing suicide. <Vin Diesel voice> “The movies.” </Vin Diesel voice>
TELEVISION
THE BOYS PRESENTS: DIABOLICAL (2022)
I really dug this animated spin-off from Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic book about corrupt superheroes and the assholes who police them. The show features eight animated shorts - all featuring different animation styles and tonal approaches - exploring the larger world around the show and its characters. Most of the episodes are funny - my favorite being Parker Simmons, Justin Roiland, and Ben Bayouth’s “An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents” - but a few were surprisingly deep. Andy Samberg of all people wrote a particularly touching story about a janitor trying to save his dying wife.
COMICS
NOT ALL ROBOTS
Mark Russell and Mike Deodato Jr.’s mini-series is a razor-sharp satire about toxic relationships and the fear of living with abusive partners but told through robots. The robot uprising has happened, but humanity is kept alive and doing pretty much the same thing they always did - the only difference is that giant potentially-dangerous robots make most of their decisions for them, sleep in their homes, and supervise them at work. The book is as funny as it is depressing. OK, it’s probably funnier than it is depressing so you should read it!
BOOKS
THE BLOODY CHAMBER AND OTHER STORIES by Angela Carter
A collection of fairy tale retellings that dig into the root of the original stories. Remixed, reinterpreted highly sexualized fables about the dangers that lurk at the fringes of young women’s lives. Several of the stories were adapted into A COMPANY OF WOLVES. Almost all the other stories would make wonderful films in their own right. As it is, though, the collection is an absolute treat - a dance of words, ideas, sex, and horror.
NO BEAST SO FIERCE: THE TERRIFYING TRUE STORY OF THE CHAMPAWAT TIGER, THE DEADLIEST MAN-EATER IN HISTORY by Dane Huckelbridge
I wrote about it earlier this month.
SWEAT: A HISTORY OF EXERCISE by Bill Hayes
A personal and historical exploration of the history of exercise - from the pre-historical evolution of humanity to the original Olympics to the modern fitness craze. Hayes takes readers on a journey around the world and across time as he weaves together extensive research with his own memories about his personal relationship with fitness. I really enjoyed Hayes’ SLEEP DEMONS and I’m glad I saw he had a new book that was recently published. I’m even more glad that I loved the book as much as I did.
LUCKY TOWN by Pete Vonder Haar
This Houston-set mystery is about a pair of private detective siblings as they attempt to locate their missing brother. Government conspiracies, a ton of movie references, a glimpse into the wild world of Houston traffic. This book is a ton of fun and really captures the local Houston scene, albeit through the lens of crime.
PODCASTS
CRYPTO ISLAND
I know next to nothing about the world of cryptocurrency - but I’d be lying if I said the world doesn’t fascinate me. PJ Vogt, a former co-host from REPLY ALL, has this new podcast that digs deep into the culture - including episodes about a pair who tried to trick investors into buying into an island that’d be home to only other crypto investors and a group of internet trolls that tried to buy the US Consitution using a DAO.
MUSIC
I haven’t really heard much from Wackbirds before, but the song popped up in my Spotify feed due to the fact that Murder By Death’s Sarah Balliet contributed cello to the song. I really dug the tune and definitely want to listen to more from the band.