Everything I watched in 2023, ranked (definitively)

Being sedentary and slovenly is cute when I do it

I’m kind of terrible at blogging, for the simple reason that I almost never care about whatever the Big, Important Thing everyone is talking about is (and even when I do, I’m not great at cranking out pithy hot takes about it). Right now, it sounds like everyone is losing their minds over the fact that Barbie only got eight Academy Award nominations, which ten years ago would have sounded insane (“Can you believe the two-hour commercial for a doll didn’t sweep every single category???”), but in a year that beings with a “202” actually makes perfect sense.

I still haven’t seen Barbie (or Oppenheimer!), though, because in the age of streaming, there are thousands of movies and TV series I actually want to watch, right at my fingertips. And I haven’t looked at the Oscar noms, either, because I…just…don’t…care…and I sort of think it’s weird that other people do (like…if Margot Robbie had been nominated for Best Actress…that would have materially changed your life…how, exactly?).

I tend to watch stuff on my own time, which I guess means I’m a normie whose opinions you should probably ignore. But a lot of you read my “everything I read this year” posts, so I guess at least some of you don’t want to ignore my opinions. So let’s do it again, with film and TV. As always, the ranking means nothing, aside from “I liked this one better than this one”; anything I didn’t finish is asterisk*d.

List commences after the break:

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The ones I loved:

1. Mrs. Davis (complete series) (2023, cr. Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof)

Shortly after I published a 2,000-word essay praising this series to the skies, I got an email asking me to fill out a very lengthy survey on what I liked about the show—I suspect because Peacock was completely blindsided by how big of a hit it was. There are a lot of reasons Mrs. Davis (essentially a glorified b-movie about a nun who goes on a quest for the Holy Grail to defeat an evil A.I. algorithm) is great—it’s laugh-out-loud funny, the production values are high, and the cast led by Betty Gilpin does an unimpeachable job of selling the silliness—but I think the main thing it gets right is simply treating religion as something for grown-ups. Too many stories about religion either lazily mock it or handle it with kid gloves, but Mrs. Davis just picks it up and plays with it, fearless of offending anyone—which, in an era as censorious as ours, is worth a lot.

(Full review here.)

2. Severance (season 1) (2022, cr. Dan Erickson)

This one was initially a tough sell for me, I think because there’s no way to sum it up in a sentence or two without making it sound colossally stupid—a series about office workers who are psychologically “severed” from their day-to-day existence in order to protect company secrets? It sounds like THX 1138–meets–The Office, and that’s pretty much what it is—but man, is this show good at building suspense. I know every “prestige” drama tries to end its first season with a big, shocking cliffhanger, but Severance really pulls it off—with four separate cliffhangers, each one more shocking than the last, and all of them collectively leaving me desperate for the season two that still hasn’t shown up. 🤞🏻

3. His House (2020, dir. Remi Weekes)

Jump scares and socially conscious horror movies are a dime a dozen, but it’s still fairly rare to see those things done well. In His House—in which a couple of Sudanese refugees discover that their U.K. home is haunted by a witch who followed them there from Africa—every jump scare means something, and the characters are fleshed-out people, not political symbols. One of the scariest and smartest movies I’ve watched in a long time.

(Wrote a bit more here.)

4. The Exorcist (complete series) (2016–17, cr. Jeremy Slater)

I had somehow missed the fact that this Fox show existed until my agency’s TV rights rep said she’d be using it as a “comp” when she pitched my book. I’m glad she told me about it, because it was a lot of fun, even if it was arguably lacking the gravitas of William Peter Blatty’s original novel or William Friedkin’s film. Taking its inspiration from The X-Files and American Horror Story as much as anything, the Exorcist TV series depicts two renegade priests traveling America’s back roads, banishing spooks, and slowly uncovering a conspiracy in the Vatican (which sadly goes unresolved, thanks to the show’s early cancelation—oh well).

5. The Whale (2022, dir. Darren Aronofsky)

Halfway into this 2022 multi-award-winner, I said to myself, “Wait a sec, this is a play.” It’s also my least favorite genre of play: the kind where miserable people stand around in a cramped apartment and yell at each other about their failures for two hours. That it works as well as it does is testament to the profound empathy of playwright/screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter, who manages to treat everyone from the morbidly obese guy to the religious fundamentalist as humans with dignity—something that made perfect sense in 2012, when the play debuted, but is an anomaly in the 2020s.

6. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor among Thieves (2023, dir. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley)

I am absolutely not in the target audience for something like this—I’ve never been much of a tabletop RPG fan, and I regard Hasbro’s determination to turn all its properties into hit films as deranged at best—so it had a long way to go to win me over, and man, it won me over. The writing here is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, the heist plot line is edge-of-your-seat stuff, and the cast is pitch-perfect. Honestly, I think I’d follow Justice Smith to the ends of the earth at this point—the dude elevates absolutely everything he touches.

7. Futurama (season 8) (2023, cr. Matt Groening)

This was another one I was deeply skeptical of—it seems like every time they bring Futurama back, it’s slightly worse. Not everything has to be revived for streaming, guys! This time, though, I was thrilled to be wrong: I’m not sure season eight achieved the heights of the series’s heyday on Fox, but it made me laugh out loud pretty consistently—sort of a problem, since I was watching it while I lifted weights, but I escaped with minimal injuries.

8. Cunk on Earth (complete series) (2022, cr. Charlie Brooker)

Philomena Cunk—the clueless reporter created by actress Diane Morgan, originally for the news spoof show Charlie Brooker’s Weekly Wipe—tells the entire history of the world, complete with all the expected obliviousness and confusion. Arguably more informative than a lot of other documentaries.

9. The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (complete series) (2009, dir. Ken Burns)

Being stranded for three days in Death Valley (long story) left me wondering what the history of America’s national parks was, so I finally got around to watching this classic PBS doc from Ken Burns. Turns out that it’s a colorful history, though I doubt it could have been told the same way if the documentary came out today—there were a whole lot of people kicked off their land to make these parks possible, including (obviously) a ton of Natives, but also a decent number of black and white families that had been on the land for generations. This doc brushed over that issue as quickly as possible to get back to more flag-waving—par for the course in ’09, but absolutely not something you could get away with in 2023, and I think that’s probably good.

10. The Detransition Diaries: Saving Our Sisters (2022, dir. Jennifer Lahl)

Documentary that focuses on the most-neglected individuals in the trans rights debate: the women who were briefly convinced they were men, and are now living with the irreversible changes they’ve made to their bodies. An important topic, but the best thing about this movie was the theme song “I Am Stardust” by detrans musician Cat Robot.

11. Quiz Lady (2023, dir. Jessica Yu)

It seems likely that if I gave a second watch to this one—a fairly average buddy comedy about a brilliant-but-boring woman with a unique talent for gameshows and her colorful loser of a sister—I wouldn’t like it anywhere near as much, but it was an absolute blast the first time through. Part of what makes this movie work is just how hilarious Awkwafina and Sandra Oh are together—and it also doesn’t hurt that they both lean so hard into playing against type here, and pull it off. As a bonus, this one is usually willing to lean into its less-PC jokes—which, I feel like a broken record, but…comedy has been hurting for those of late.

12. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022, dir. Rian Johnson)

I really didn’t want to like this movie—much as I loved Knives Out, I thought it was consistently at its cringiest when it tried to be political and relevant, and this one sounded like it would be a whole movie of that, wearing its “lol, Elon Musk is dumb, actually” theme on its sleeve. Somehow, the whole thing worked for me, though—the mystery was engaging, the cast was excellent, and even the political jokes mostly landed for me. Johnson isn’t great at everything, but he absolutely is great at consistently surprising me.

13. Spontaneous (2020, dir. Brian Duffield)

Teen romcom set against the background of a small-town senior class that starts exploding, one-by-one. Thought this movie was the perfect mix of funny, horrific, and sweet, even if its politics have already aged like milk.

(Wrote a bit more here.)

14. The Menu (2022, dir. Mark Mylod)

Horror-comedy sendup of the fine dining industry in which a celebrity chef traps “guests” on his private island for delicious food and deadly games. Really appreciated this one’s courage in sticking to its idea and not letting its plot devolve into a generic chase. And has Anna Taylor-Joy ever been bad in anything?

The ones I liked:

15. Netflix Presents: The Characters (complete series) (2016, dir. Andrew Gaynord)

Sketch comedy show where eight comedians are each given a full episode to create as many characters as they want. Some episodes are better than others, obviously; Natasha Rothwell’s, Phil Burgers’s, and Kate Berlant’s are probably the best of the bunch, but there are one or two that are borderline unwatchable.

16. Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005, dir. Doug Liman)

Bored married couple played by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie discover they’re both international super-assassins who need to kill each other. This movie is about as turn-of-the-century high-concept as it gets, and the script isn’t exactly brilliant, but man, do the leads really sell this stuff. I laughed out loud at least a few times.

17. The Last of Us (season 1) (2023, cr. Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann)

Based on the videogame that I only ever played the demo for, this ✨prestige✨ horror-drama tells the story of a man’s quest to keep a young girl alive in a world rendered postapocalyptic by a zombifying brain fungus. I thought the opening episode was an absolute masterclass in how to set up a story (make it clear what your characters want and why they want it; make it clear what the goal and the stakes are; make the odds seem insurmountable), but it only went downhill from there. By the last few episodes, I was wondering which stale trope they would be pulling out of the ol’ bag of tricks next.

18. Seinfeld (complete series) (1989–98 cr. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld)

I finally got around to watching Seinfeld! Now I know what “These pretzels are making me thirsty” means. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

19. John Mulaney: Baby J (2023, dir. Alex Timbers)

Stand-up comic Mulaney bares his soul about his time in rehab. This one was honest and gut-wrenching, but that wouldn’t have meant a lot if the jokes weren’t funny. Fortunately, they were.

20. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022, dir. Eric Appel)

Daniel Radcliffe plays the accordionist/parodist in this spoof of musical biopics written by Yankovic himself, in which we get to see Al climb the charts, date Madonna, and eventually get murdered in cold blood. The worst thing I can say about this one is that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story sorta beat them to the punch, but Weird manages to distinguish itself by cranking the silliness to eleven.

21. The Bicycle Thieves (1948, dir. Vittorio De Sica)

Seminal tragedy of a man searching for his stolen bicycle in the broken economy of post-WWII Italy. It’s bleak, but you have to admire De Sica’s ability to make you care about a character with such an extremely normal problem.

22. The Exorcist III (1990, dir. William Peter Blatty)

A direct sequel to The Exorcist—based on Blatty’s novel Legion—in which police lieutenant William Kinderman discovers his career with demons isn’t quite over. I loved the novel, but a lot of its appeal for me was its gorgeous prose, which (obviously) isn’t present in the film version. Still, the plot is an intriguing one—I won’t spoil it, but there are a lot of twists and turns you won’t be expecting if all you know of The Exorcist is the original.

23. We’re the Millers (2013, dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber)

A drug dealer (Jason Sudeikis) recruits a stripper (Jennifer Aniston) and a couple of kids to play his “family” in order to a score a big Mexican drug run. Am I the only one who keeps confusing Jason Sudeikis with Ed Helms? Anyway, they have a couple of scenes together in this movie, and it turns out they don’t look at all alike, so I have no idea why I can’t keep them straight.

24. The People vs. George Lucas (2010, dir. Alexandre O. Philippe)

Documentary about the eternal struggle between George Lucas (creator of Star Wars) and the millions of Star Wars fans (owners of Star Wars, at least in their own minds). Was hoping this would give me some new insights to the franchise, or the culture around it, or the mess the culture around it has made of the culture as a whole, but nah—it’s just a lot of “Yep, George kept making decisions fans didn’t like, but you can’t please everyone.” Still, there’s something worth thinking about here: Who owns an idea, once that idea has changed the world?

25. A Glitch in the Matrix (2021, dir. Rodney Ascher)

Documentarian Rodney Ascher looks at the question plaguing all of us, and by “all of us” I mean “Elon Musk”: Are we living in a simulation? I usually like Ascher’s work—his film The Nightmare (a documentary about sleep paralysis) is genuinely one of the scariest things I’ve seen, and Room 237 (a look at the conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining) was captivating in its own way, but this one was a little boring to me. I’m not sure why, except that maybe the simulation theory has never struck me as all that interesting—its proponents steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the host of cultural, technical, and metaphysical assumptions that underlie it, and this film does nothing to change that.

26. Chris Rock: Selective Outrage (2023, dir. Joel Gallen)

One of the many Netflix comedy specials we’re all supposed to be mad about for some reason? I forget why, though. I remember thinking it was pretty funny when I watched it.

27. The Night House (2020, dir. David Bruckner)

After her husband dies, a woman discovers he was building a house identical to theirs across the lake, and then things get weirder from there. I really enjoyed this one—it gets a bit silly when the mystery is finally explained, but until then it’s a beautiful, haunting film.

28. Pumping Iron (1977, dir. George Butler and Robert Fiore)

The documentary that put bodybuilding—and Arnold Schwarzegger—on the cultural map. I don’t particularly care about bodybuilding (aside from lifting weights myself), but it wasn’t hard to see why this film became such a hit—the journey of these bodybuilders to victory is a compelling thing to watch. And Arnold, as always, has charisma out the wazoo.

29. Run Lola Run (1998, dir. Tom Tykwer)

Simpsons did it.

30. Freaky (2020, dir. Christopher Landon)

Landon has been one of my favorite directors ever since I saw Happy Death Day—which, despite its embarrassing title, is a really smart, funny movie. This one—a body-swap comedy in which the “slasher” and the “final girl” trade places—isn’t quite as funny as the Death Day duology, but it has one thing they don’t: Vince Vaughn giving the performance of a lifetime as a teen girl trapped in the body of a serial killer. This might be the first body-swap movie where I actually believed the body swap was real, which has got to be worth something.

31. Poker Face (season 1) (2023, cr. Rian Johnson)

Natasha Lyonne stars as a trailer trash Jersey girl on the run from the mob—a girl who never met a lie she couldn’t see through and never met a mystery she didn’t want to solve Columbo-style. Lyonne owns every moment of this series, and the writers do a great job of keeping things fresh by finding a unique setting for each episode (a retirement home; a stock car track; on tour with a metal band; etc.).

32. The Dust Bowl (complete series) (2012, dir. Ken Burns)

I actually lived in Oklahoma for ten years, and man, that place is an area with a lot of partially-healed scars. While I had read some about the Dust Bowl (briefly: the ecological disaster caused by overfarming, in which the whole state essentially turned into a dune-filled desert), the images, video, and interviews in this doc made the whole thing all too real. It’s wild how many people suffer because of man’s hubris.

33. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, dir. George Roy Hill)

More confirmation that westerns just aren’t for me, although I did like it better than most of the others I tried. Most of that owes to the witty script by William Goldman (of The Princess Bride fame) and the undeniable chemistry between Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Still, I was ready for this movie to be over half an hour before it was. It was all downhill from the cliff jump (I mean, literally, but also metaphorically).

34. Chappelle’s Show (complete series) (2003–06, cr. Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan)

This was a weird one, because I was always doing my best to ignore it during my college years—all the most obnoxious guys in my dorm were constantly blasting it on their TVs, and Comedy Central’s let’s-offend-people-for-fun ethos never really appealed to me back then. But…I don’t know, man…that ethos seems pretty refreshing in an age as censorious as ours. Also, the humor here was a lot smarter than I gave it credit for back then, so that’s on me.

35. The Last Days of Knight (2018, dir. Robert Abbott)

Produced as part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, this doc takes an unflinching look at the abusive behaviors of Hoosier basketball coach Bobby Knight—and his well-overdue firing in 2000. It’s wild how much evil people will put up with in the name of winning.

36. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (2023, dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)

Props to the filmmakers here for having the guts to make this as a period piece (uh, no pun intended)—and for not flinching away from the religious themes. Would have been really easy to water down the faith stuff and make the whole thing about menstruation, but they didn’t—it’s a really faithful (uh, no pun, etc.) adaptation of the book, and it really excels because of that.

37. Reality Bites (1994, dir. Ben Stiller)

I’ve heard it said that you have to be Gen-X to really “get” this romcom—in which Winona Ryder has to choose between Ben Stiller’s “suit” character and Ethan Hawke’s burnout—and I suspect that’s true. The idea that “authenticity bro” is somehow preferable “corporate bro”—or, for that matter, vice-versa—is hard to wrap my head around. Good soundtrack, though.

38. The Sweatbox (2002, dir. Trudie Styler and John-Paul Davidson)

Back in the late nineties, when Disney was producing the movie that would eventually become The Emperor’s New Groove (which back then was titled Kingdom of the Sun), they hired Sting to write a slate of songs for it. He brought along his wife, filmmaker Trudie Styler, who documented the whole process—and the resulting film was so embarrassing that Disney never officially allowed her to release it (fortunately, you can watch it online at the Internet Archive). The Sweatbox is an hour and a half of artists banging their heads against a wall of plot holes, deadlines, and clueless corporate execs, and it’s a fascinating look at the fiery crucible in which art is often made.

39. Not Okay (2022, dir. Quinn Shephard)

I’m still waiting for a movie / TV series / novel / whatever that spoofs or critiques social media and actually says something new or interesting about it (maybe Dear Evan Hansen comes closest?). This isn’t that, but it’s not bad, either: Zoey Deutch pretends she’s in Paris on Insta for the social media clout, only for Paris to suffer an enormous terrorist attack that very weekend—and before she knows it, she’s a bonafide influencer. The most interesting thing about this one is its repetition of the social-media-trendy idea that amends are never possible, that no amount of “sorry” can undo the harm done, which—I’m not even saying I disagree with that entirely, but man is it bleak.

40. Fight Club (1999, dir. David Fincher)

This is one of those weird ones where I read the book around the time it came out, but never saw the movie—and of course the movie looms much larger in the cultural consciousness, so I had to get around to it sometime. Movie’s not bad, but I think I like the book better? I heard even author Chuck Palahniuk himself prefers the movie, and I do agree that its ending is more satisfying but…I just spent most of the flick missing his prose. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

41. We Have a Ghost (2023, dir. Christopher Landon)

The other Christopher Landon movie I watched this year, and I can’t say it’s for everyone, but man is it audacious. It starts as a fairly simple story about a family discovering their new home is haunted by a friendly spook, but from there it expands to experiment with a dozen different genres. From thriller elements to satire to some of the best car chases I’ve ever seen…I have no idea if this movie is good, but man is it something.

42. Cool Hand Luke (1967, dir. Stuart Rosenberg)

I don’t know if this deserves to be this low on the list—it’s not a dig, really; I just watched a lot of stuff I liked this year. Paul Newman is as charismatic as ever in this one, and might be the only man in history to make gorging yourself on hardboiled eggs seem cool. Quality first name, too.

43. The Blob (1958, dir. Irvin Yeaworth)

And speaking of dashingly handsome mid-twentieth-century film stars. I’m far from the first to point it out, but this movie is far better than it has any right to be—not only do you get to see a goo-monster destroy an entire town, by the end of the film, you feel like you’ve gotten to know every resident personally.

44. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, dir. Tobe Hooper)

I’m starting to suspect I may have broken the magic a bit on this one with my habit of watching movies in forty-five-minute (give or take) chunks while I lift weights. The first chunk (where our heroes pick up a creepy hitchhiker, etc.) was mesmerizing to me, but the rest just seemed utterly predictable, maybe because I took several days to get through it. Still, it’s not hard to see why it was influential.

45. Training Day (2001, dir. Antoine Fuqua)

I always assumed that Wayne Brady–is–gangsta sketch from Chappelle’s Show was a spoof of Training Day, and now that I’ve seen the latter (along with the former, finally in context), I guess it was, but…there were a lot fewer parallels between the two than I expected? Not one scene where Denzel Washington demanded Ethan Hawke’s sandwich. Still, a tense, exciting little film.

46. Cunk on Britain (complete series) (2018, cr. Charlie Brooker)

I loved Cunk on Earth (#8 above), but I think this one went over my head a bit. I must not be British enough.

47. Killing Eve (complete series) (2018–22, dev. Phoebe Waller-Bridge)

BBC spy thriller set in a universe where all conventionally attractive women are bi-curious (as mandated by entertainment statute #2994). This one works mainly because stars Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are both phenomenal actresses with incredible chemistry. I’ve read that critics have complained that the show devolves into self-parody as it goes on, but personally, I enjoyed it more as it took itself less seriously.

48. Free Guy (2021, dir. Shawn Levy)

This comedy about a videogame character who gains sentience (which should actually be called “sapience,” but clearly those of us who care about what words mean are fighting a losing battle on this one), was about as dumb as I expected, but not bad-dumb—plus, it gave me more Jodie Comer, which I really needed after finishing Killing Eve. I don’t know if there’s anything here that movies like Wreck-It Ralph and The Lego Movie didn’t already do better, but I had a lot of fun with it.

49. Zombies (2018, dir. Paul Hoen)

Disney Channel Original musical about zombies trying to fit in at a high school. You get…pretty much exactly what you expect, given that pitch. Isn’t it kind of weird that they just called it Zombies, though? If they’d just added an exclamation point (Zombies!), we’d at least know it was a musical (or a failed GOP primary campaign).

50. Go (1999, dir. Doug Liman)

Pulp Fiction, but with ravers? Sounded fun. Mostly wasn’t.

51. THX 1138 (1971 [revised 2004], dir. George Lucas)

Before Star Wars, George Lucas made this weirdo dystopian sci-fi film. Then, because he is George Lucas, he added a bunch of terrible CGI to it thirty years later. It’s not bad, but it already contains the seeds of Lucas’s destruction: he was always a director far more concerned with image than with plot or character.

52. Carrie (1976, dir. Brian De Palma)

My absolutely blazing hot take about Stephen King’s novel Carrie is that the beating heart of the story is its school faculty, not the students (which makes sense, since King was teaching high school while he wrote it)—gym coach Miss Desjardin in particular is an example of a deeply flawed person who nonetheless manages to take a bold moral stand when the moment calls for it. In Brian De Palma’s film, she’s renamed “Miss Collins” for some reason, but Betty Buckley absolutely does the character justice, and the film sings because of it.

The ones I thought were okay:

53. The Blue Light (1932, dir. Leni Riefenstahl)

Lena Riefenstahl, of course, is now best known for being literally Hitler[’s official filmmaker], directing Nazi propaganda films like Olympia and The Triumph of the Will (weird side note: she actually lived to 2003 and spent her later life suing anyone who called her a Nazi, even though her ties to the Nazis were, y’know, immortalized in celluloid), but before all that, she directed and starred in this quietly feminist fairytale about a woman who just wants to enjoy a bit of nature but is hunted as a witch by her village. It’s a little on the slow side, but if you’ve got the patience for it, there are some genuinely beautiful moments.

54. The Ring (2002, dir. Gore Verbinski)

Knowing this was one of the Definitive™️ horror movies of my high school years, I thought I should probably check it out, but…I wasn’t that impressed, I guess? This might have been a case of a movie being so influential that it’s tough to view the original (by which I mean, the American remake) with fresh eyes. I dunno, the part where the horse jumped off the ship was cool.

55. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971, dir. John Hancock)

A woman recently released from a mental institution and her husband move into a dilapidated farmhouse (as all characters in seventies horror movies are required to do) and encounter a strange squatter who may or may not be a vampire (spoiler: she is). I won’t say the plot makes a ton of sense, but it’s effectively atmospheric.

56. Foundation (season 2) (2023, cr. David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman)*

I mentioned this briefly in my books post, but I could not get into season two of this show. The first round had moments of brilliance, but also a lot of pointless action scenes to slog through, and because of that I only started season two reluctantly. Made it one episode in and then got distracted by other things, although I haven’t ruled out coming back to it in the future.

57. A Fistful of Dollars (1964, dir. Sergio Leone)

Man, I really wanted to like this one. Seems like all the cool kids love the Dollars trilogy. I was bored out of my mind (sorry).

58. The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022, dir. Loren Bouchard and Bernard Derriman)

I’m a huge booster for Bob’s Burgers, so I really expected to love the movie, but…it was just sort of a long episode of the show? And that isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker, but I really felt like this one gave into a lot of the show’s worst instincts (bizarre conspiracies, pointless musical numbers) in an effort to pad out the running time. It was fine, but nothing to write home about.

59. Woodstock (1970 [revised 1994], dir. Michael Wadleigh)

Michael Wadleigh’s extended documentary of Woodstock ’69, featuring footage of nearly every act that played that weekend, including Crosby, Stills, and Nash; The Who; Janis Joplin; Jimi Hendrix; and many others. It was fascinating as a cultural artifact, and a lot of the performances were legitimately great, but…this movie is so long, y’all. Still, props for showing how thoroughly trashed the hillside was after three days of peace and love.

60. LuLaRich (complete series) (2021, dir. Jenner Furst and Julia Wiloughby Nason)

Amazon’s exposé of leggings MLM / pyramid scheme LuLaRoe. Nothing terribly shocking or surprising here—mainly just a confirmation that most evil in the world is accomplished by people who are incompetent rather than mustache-twirling.

61. What If…? (season 1) (2021, cr. A. C. Bradley)

I’m not even kind of an MCU fan—I’ve been thoroughly sick of superheroes for a decade and a half now—but I checked this one out because I heard it had significant amounts of Howard the Duck content (see here and here for more on my recent Howard obsession). It was…fine. A few clever ideas, a few funny lines…and some PS2 cutscene–quality animation.

62. Upload (season 2) (2022, cr. Greg Daniels)

Amazon’s comedy about the “digital afterlife.” There’s enough good about this show that I want to like it, but most of the time the sitcom, sci-fi, and thriller elements all work against each other instead of together, and the dialog is just so desperately “look-at-us-we-can-say-fuck-because-we’re-on-streaming.” Don’t think I’ll be watching season three.

63. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023, dir. Aaron Hovarth and Michael Jelenic)

There’s probably a whole essay to be written about how, taken together, this film and the old nineties Super Mario Bros. epitomize just how much cultural power Hollywood has lost in thirty years. We’ve gone from a movie industry that was so thoroughly and undisputedly in charge of global tastes that it literally did not care what its movies’ alleged source materials even were to an industry so cowed by geek culture that it’s incapable of giving people anything other than exactly what they want, in massive quantities, whether they need it or not. Neither Mario movie is particularly good, but my vote goes to the weirdo nineties take as the one that’s at least interesting.

64. What We Do in the Shadows (seasons 1–2) (2019–20, cr. Jermaine Clement)*

me, when I first heard about this show: What? The movie was fun, but who needs an entire series of that?

me, when I started watching it: Wait, this is hilarious!

me, after a season and a half or so: Never mind, I was right, this show ran out of jokes fast

65. The Vicar of Dibley (seasons 1–2) (1994—98, wr. Richard Curtis and Paul Mathew-Archer)

BBC sitcom about a female priest sent to take charge of a small-town parish, right as the Church of England was first ordaining women. Pretty much what you’re expecting ensues. The show was frequently funny, and Dawn French was irrepressible as the title character, but I’d had enough after a couple of seasons.

66. Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens (complete series) (2020–23, cr. Awkwafina and Teresa Hsiao)

Semi-autobiographical sitcom in which Awkwafina is the unemployed burnout she probably deserves to be (I kid, I kid). Fun show, kind of a mixed bag—it’s at its best when it stays grounded, less so when Nora is having sex with Icelandic gnomes. Series standout is B. D. Wong as Nora’s long-suffering single father.

67. Teen Wolf (1985, dir. Rod Daniel)

Comedy where Michael J. Fox turns into a werewolf and also a basketball star. Almost definitely would have been forgotten by now if it hadn’t ridden the coattails of Back to the Future to box office success. Did you know it’s set in my home state of Nebraska, though?

68. John Wick (2014, dir. Chad Stahelski)

Finally got around to this one, and I’m not sure I see the big deal? It’s perfectly okay as an unassuming mid-budget action flick, I guess? And maybe that was refreshing to certain people in 2014?

The ones I didn’t like (sorry):

69. Cocaine Bear (2023, dir. Elizabeth Banks)

I only saw this movie because I thought I might be able to write something interesting about it for this blog (my wife broke her leg less than twenty-four hours after I saw it, giving me something much better to write about¹), but what was there to say? You get exactly what the title promises here, and literally nothing else.

70. Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022, dir. Halina Reijn)

A “hurricane party” goes wrong when a killer shows up among the assorted twentysomething guests. I get that this one was supposed to be satirical, but I absolutely could not stand any of the characters, which left me resenting every minute of the movie. There’s a pretty great twist at the end, though, which almost made me want to rewatch the whole thing (but I absolutely will not be doing that).

71. Goodfellas (1990, dir. Martin Scorsese)

I know this one’s an all-time classic, but I honestly just can’t stand mob movies. Which, yes, that probably means I shouldn’t have bothered watching Goodfellas, I guess? I dunno, maybe give me points for trying.

72. Velma (season 1) (2023, dev. Charlie Grandy and Mindy Kaling)*

Yeah, I watched this one (well, the first episode)—everyone was raging about it, and I wanted to see if it was as bad as they all said. My take: it was probably fine for what it is, but it plays more like a mean-spirited parody of Scooby-Doo than a sincere addition to its canon, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if that’s what you’re going for, maybe don’t try to sell it as the other thing? Also, the fact that I didn’t bother watching more than one episode probably says something.

73. Inside Job (season 2) (2022, cr. Shion Takeuchi)

A lot of “adult” animated series try to walk the line of having casts of loathsome, irredeemable characters who are still somehow interesting enough to make you keep tuning in. Inside Job tries to be one of those. It isn’t.

74. Dear David (2023, dir. John McPhail)

A BuzzFeed writer is stalked by an internet ghost after trolling the haters. This was a terrible idea for a movie, and it made for a terrible movie. Look on BuzzFeed’s works, ye mighty, and despair.

(Full review here.)

75. D. B. Cooper: Where Are You?! (complete series) (2022, dir. Marina Zenovich)*

D. B. Cooper, if you don’t know, is the name given by the press to a mysterious man who successfully hijacked a plane, stole a suitcase full of money, and parachuted into the wilds of the Pacific Northwest never to be seen again, back in 1971. He captured the public imagination and became sort of a folk hero (people had, uh, very different opinions of hijackers back in 1971), so no doubt many are still curious as to his true identity. Unfortunately, this doc’s approach of pointing at random dudes and saying “Maybe it’s that guy, who knows!” isn’t a terribly interesting one.

***

The end. What did y’all watch last year? What was the best thing you saw? The worst? The third-worst? Let me know in the comments!

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1. Confession: I briefly tried to combine Cocaine Bear and my wife’s broken leg into a single essay. It was not good. You will never get to read it.