53. What I Watched in December
(plus one November movie oops)
The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011, dir. Ari Aster)
This is Ari Aster’s 2011 thesis that I left off the list by mistake. Probably because I watched it at Chris and Ali’s house and almost immediately fell down the dark stairs after. It was the scariest injury I’ve experienced (I hit my head - HARD - and apparently kept bringing up Natasha Richardson as Chris tended to me) and I still have a scab on my knee weeks later, but we can laugh about it now. As my head was slamming into the wall, I saw this exact moment from It’s Always Sunny unfold:
(I’m okay. No concussion. I was completely sober as well - I don’t drink.)
The movie in question is a half-hour of undiluted emotional disturbance. I WOULD recommend it for fans of extreme cinema, and while its shocks are best served without content warnings, I need to protect my babies (y’all) and tell you to avoid if sexual abuse, especially child sexual abuse or incest are personally triggering. It is a dark film with a macabre inversion and a horror of humanity over a horror of chainsaws.
Watch in full below:
May December (2023, dir. Todd Haynes)
available on Netflix
I do not have some searing, insightful take that has not already been tooken1 by critics more tenured and learned than I. I will say that when it comes to Charles Melton, that man has been Melton my damn face off for years as a begrudging Riverdale (is there any other way) viewer. I am not new to this. I am true to this. The boy deserves that Oscar. He walks, stands, pronates both like a little boy and a very aged man. It’s a miracle of a performance. Here are people smarter than I am talking about the movie:
“1. Charles Melton, May December
Who else? I could use this space to be smug about the fact that I, the Charles Melton town crier, am finally experiencing vindication, but instead I’ll say this: Give him the Oscar right now. Boy of the year with the paunch of the year. Chad rights. Period.”
The Mummy (1999, dir. Stephen Sommers)
Rewatch, for the 47th time
free on the Roku Channel
When someone asks who was the instrument of your sexual awakening while watching The Mummy, sure you can say Brendan Fraser (the pants!), SURE you’re expected to say Rachel Weisz (“I…am a librarian", the hair, the EYES) but the bad bitches? They say it’s Oded “The Israeli George Harrison” Fehr.
Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God (2023, dir. Hannah Olson)
stream on HBO/Max
ROBIN WILLIAMS, BITCH?!!
I love a cult, as you know. On my arbitrary rubric of novelty, it isn’t the most novel (ascension, malignant polyamory of its leadership) but then…Robin Williams. The QAnon at Woodstock tease. Silver Surfer cosplay. It’s worth a watch. The first five minutes are some of the most harrowing cult footage I have ever seen.
Mr. Monk's Last Case: A Monk Movie (2023, dir. Randy Zisk)
stream on Peacock
Like with the reboot of Frasier, I received the news of a Monk movie with trepidation. I am a white person. We hold our neurotic tweeded televised protagonists as minor gods.
I didn’t have to worry…for the most part. The king Tony Shalhoub breathed life into Monk as easily as you’d Purell your hands. I’m biased, as someone who owns this shirt:
But Monk stating “You give up all the hope you want” firmly, wearily to a blind poodle…pls we are so back.
Might I have preferred a case without a personal tie to Monk? Yes, but I’d really prefer three more seasons of this show. The cast’s easy chemistry is still there: Randy is slightly less of a terminal goober than we left him, but he is still the smiling runt of the pack. Ted Levine is still so hot. So….so hot. They all regard Adrian with the same awe and annoyance. Natalie is there! She’s still…there! (Natalie’s fine, she’s fine, but I am a Sharona and so I have my favorite.)
The final scene, while touching, and while expanding off of a recurring motif we have seen throughout the series, takes the reality of the show and snaps it, a rubber band in the freezer. It can not be viewed without asking serious questions about how Adrian solves his cases, and his mental soundness. I wish it had been left out entirely, or at least deployed in a dream, coma, or a neitherspace that allows for some fungibility.
Dream Scenario (2023, dir. Kristoffer Borgli)
(screener - thanks, Dylan)
An original dissertation on groupthink, with Nic Cage’s most naturalistic work (yes, even more than Pig) which is an achievement for an actor that is (thank GOD) a fount of expression and quirk. Cage’s performance as a professor sucked into novel and Faustian fame is paired in devastating, quiet beauty with Julianne Nicholson’s. Nicholson, like Carrie Coon, is one of my favorite actors for how human her work is: she will style herself plainly, speak without exaggerated affect or inflection, and infuse every project with miles of depth. A shrug, a look away, a shy smile. She is a wonder, and Dream Scenario gives her so much breathable space. This is a movie that makes me wish the big awards shows had an award in duet: not ensemble like the SAG Awards, but a paired performance of mother and son, lawyer and wrongfully accused, or man in David Byrne suit and woman at the pyre.
While not the only surprise appearance, I did hit Dylan in glee when my other favorite Dylan (Baker)2 showed up at a dinner party. I love Dylan Baker so much that Matt made me this for Christmas:
You can read the screenplay for free, thanks to Deadline.
Air (2023, dir. Ben Affleck)
stream on Prime
We also watched Air. I often feel that as a New Jerseyan, I am prone to the lore of Massachusetts pahking the cahr in the Hahvud yahd of my haht. I think Ben Affleck and Matt Damon should kiss. I think they should star in a road trip comedy as their characters from The Last Duel. I love Good Will Hunting and think about Mother God Spiritual Advisor Robin Williams talking about his dead, farting wife all the time out of truly nowhere. I own Dogma on DVD.
Ben Affleck films Matt Damon in beatific, loving light, directing him into a performance that is exactly why your mom loves Matt Damon so much. I wonder how many days he was directing Matt while having to wear that White Jheri Curl wig. Matthew Maher, someone I don’t think I have seen in anything before except I’m lying because he was also apparently in Dogma and Jersey Girl, is the performance of the movie as Peter Moore, Nike shoe designer, a bit phlegmy, a bit benignly off, and framed like an unsung hero (my first question after the movie was whether he had been paid his due for his designs).
Onto, as prophesied by Dylan, the muthafucking bangers. Air and its lil Bezos Budget flipped through a Koreatown karaoke book with two closed eyes and one pointing finger and bought up every song that finger dropped down upon.
wrote on several key figures of the soundtrack in the 2023 recap which is, again, required reading. I will be quizzing y’all later:
Saltburn (2023, dir. Emerald Fennell)
(another screener)
So apparently that’s Barry Keoghan’s real dick. After watching that funeral….god, I hope he’s circumcised. (I didn’t pause to check. One of you dirty little sluts can tell me, I’m sure.) Imagine how many Vaseline coated Q-tips he had to go through if he wasn’t. Being European…chances aren’t good.
Jacob Elordi is, to quote Twitter user @dannah_montana, "a yassified Adam Scott” and I found his performance more shaded than I expected, a lesson I should have learned writing my ode to Charles Melton above. These boys are more than their soapy teen dramas!! If I had Elspeth’s voice and Poor Pamela’s wardrobe I would rule the world. I found the vampire scene kinda hot. Give Alison Oliver more work and put Conversations with Friends back on Hulú.
Christmas Movies
Matt and I watched all three of those Christmas Prince movies on Netflix with the girl from iZombie. I have never seen cheaper set design in my life. Royal crests printed on foam board at Kinko’s, royal “heirlooms” right out of Charming Charlie’s, Rose McIver with terrible temple frizz (I recognize that most of these Christmas movies are filmed in outright sultry summer heat, but then give her a little beret or a hairclip or a curl that starts at the root). A trilogy that looks like it was filmed where you’d take your dachshund to get its photo taken with Santa Claus.
We watched one with Denise Richards as a radio DJ in Ann Arbor. We watched Hannah Waddingham’s singing Christmas special on AppleTV (I spent most of it telling Matt that if I had her body, I would rob banks). We watched Pottersville on Christmas morning - remind me next year to dedicate an entire post to Pottersville.
We also watched EXmas, starring the criminally undercast Leighton Meester (I implore you to watch Single Parents, a show in which Lance Bass’s Space Camp for children is a recurring plot device). This movie is wacky not in a Duck Soup way but in a “the DSM-V called and it wants its index back” way. Everyone in this film needs to follow 1-7 Instagram Psychologists accounts and learn their attachment style. Everyone in this film needs to do the work. This film’s primary point of interest is that instead of a Christmas movie with a faith-and-family conservative message, the parents are Christian conservatives and this is played for laughs. The choice was fresh and relatable.
Here is a very cute interview promoting the movie between Meester and her husband, Seth Cohen Adam Brody.
We also watched the Twin Flames Netflix docuseries and I don’t think I can responsibly comment on this one because the big twist of how far they took these people…they may be my new favorite cult. Again, my “favorite” cult means that its ringleaders are the people whose mugshots I most want to see, not that I admire them or their manipulative turpitude. Shania and what’s-his-fucking-name should be put to the wall. Tomorrow.
I’ll talk about one or two other watches in Friday’s newsletter. Thank you for reading!!!
Love you bitches,
TG
First name Dylans. Obviously, Bob Dylan throws this list off.
I love the big tv/ movies post and may copy your idea. Love Has Won was bonkers good. May December is on my must list. Happy Holidays and happy New Year to you! I’m glad I found your Substack.
Riverdale encompassed the weird world of Archie Comics (I'm still a fan of the comics Lol). Even the weird time travel arc came from Jugheads time police. I'm not so much into modern shows. I think some studios have lost their way. Maybe thanks to you I'll give one or two a chance