[Rerun!] TVaMOTY list!
Hey folks,
No big new post this week as all I have been able to think about all week is how much I really hate the new season of The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, and as a result I am working on something about that but it’s not quite done yet. Even though all the episodes still won’t be out by next weeks post, I think I will have had enough time to sit with my thoughts on the first few episodes to have something for you! Plus I’ll have some extra time to rewatch some episodes to get a clearer picture of what it is that makes me so fricken angry about this season.
In the mean time, I hope you enjoy this list of some of my favourite things I watched in 2022 - not all of these things are actually from 2022, just stuff I watched and really liked. This originally posted back in January of this year, when I was still doing two posts a week (that was a mistake lol).
I also wanted to include a few other recent pieces here in case you missed them - last week I wrote a list of podcast suggestions, a short essay on why I’m excited for the imminent (re)release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), and over on Letterboxd I reviewed Scream VI (spoiler: I loved it) - I’m very happy with all of these, so please consider checking them out.
Thanks so much for sticking around, it really means a lot to me. I’ll talk to you all again really soon. 💚
Kia ora, friends!
So, you may have noticed that there was no Monday post this week. This is because this post took me a really long time to write, and I’m starting to realise that committing to two posts a week, every week, might have been a bit much.
I don’t have a whole lot of other writing to show y’all right now - I had planned on sharing some of a story I wrote around 17 years ago, but I password protected the files back then and I don’t remember the password!! So unless I remember that password, those pages aren’t seeing the light of day any time soon. Hashtag sad face. I may actually be able to remember some of the themes and scenes, though, so I might try to recreate some of it from memory and share that. I guess we’ll see.
This is all kind of a round-about way of saying, for now at least, I’m going to be cutting this back to just the Monday posts, and I’ll only do a Thursday post if I’ve got something to talk about. I hope you all will stick around, though! I’m not quitting, just trying to be a bit more realistic about the amount of content I put out on a regular basis.
With that out of the way, I thought I’d do a bit of a roundup of TV and movies I watched in 2022 - a TVaMOTY list, if you will. If you’ve seen my Letterboxd, then you know I watch kind of a lot of movies, but I also like to watch a bunch of TV shows. I don’t typically watch new TV shows and movies - but last year I did more than usual, and I wanted to talk about some of them. I also want to spotlight a few ways I heard about movies that I otherwise might not have, which I’ll leave until the end, but I’ll start with my top ten things I watched in 2022 (in no particular order).
Strap in, because this is kind of a long one - alright, here we go!
The Peripheral (TV)
Despite the fact that this show is very confusing, I still really enjoyed this. I will watch Chloë Grace Moretz in anything. I talked to a very smart friend of mine about this after we had both watched it, and she was even more confused than I was, yet somehow I still consider this an endorsement. I think the biggest problem that this show has is kind of the opposite of what a lot of sci-fi does; a lot of big budget Hollywood sci-fi treats its audience like they need everything explained to them, sometimes multiple times, whereas this show just keeps throwing concepts at you and expects you to keep up with little or no explanation at all. The Peripheral is a Jeff’s Website Original, but I’m sure you’re very resourceful and you can find it elsewhere if you really want to. That said, please don’t pirate this show because they might not make a second season if you don’t watch it legally!! There are some really cool and interesting concepts here, and I will always love a good (or weird, at least) time travel story.
Scream (2022)
I’m not a super big horror film person, but as long as they keep making Scream movies, I will keep watching them. It was a bummer to hear that it almost none of the original cast will be returning for Scream 6, but at least Courteney Cox is the one returning. If you like Scream, you will like this. I think they did an incredible job of capturing what makes the series special without the guiding hand of Wes Craven, RIP.
Never Let Me Go (2010)
This movie is so, so good. Carrie Mulligan is another one of those actors who I will watch in anything. The first movie I ever saw her in was Promising Young Woman back in 2020, and I loved that movie too, but not as much as this. I only wanted to put one Carrie Mulligan film on this list, but I have to throw out an honourable mention to The Dig, which I also fell in love with in 2022. Never Let Me Go is about a group of kids who grow up together in a school for, what it at first seems like, gifted children. As they get older, they have ever more complicated relationships with each other, as well as the facilities they grew up in and what their futures have in store for them. I really liked that they don’t tell you up front here what is actually going on, because the way it is revealed is very bittersweet.
Grabbers (2012)
Unless you are Irish or live in Ireland, you’ll probably want to watch this one with subtitles. I always watch things with subtitles because I have audio processing issues, but this film didn’t have subtitles on Jeff’s Website, so I was constantly pausing and rewinding to try and understand what people were saying - and I still really enjoyed this. Grabbers is a kind of fresh take on the alien invasion genre, with a really silly twist. This one is on my list of films to show to future partners to find out if we are really a match or not because the sense of humour on display here is so fucking funny.
Veronica Mars (TV)
One of my all-time most favourite shows, Veronica Mars rules. I watched the entire canon of this show in 2022, and it’s still just as great as it was way back when, I rewatched the movie from 2014, and I also watched the revival season from 2019 for the first time. Ever since I first saw it, I have always adored this show; I have seen every empisode multiple times, I was a kickstarter backer for the movie, and this show got me through a really rough time in my life so it really has a special place in my heart that not a lot of other media does. I was a bit bummed that the fourth season takes place after the events of a several novels I have never read, which take place after the movie, so there was a bunch of context for things that I was missing. But it was still really enjoyable, despite the way they avoided saying “fuck” was to replace it with “cuss”, which I found to be kind of annoying. I won’t spoil things here, if you havent seen this show you absolutely should.
Aspirational Slut (2022 short film)
Honestly I couldn’t tell you how I found out about this short film, but I’m really glad I did! Just the title alone was enough to make me go “I need to watch this immediately.” So I did. I can’t really tell you a lot about Aspirational Slut without spoiling it, but I really, really enjoyed this. It’s extremely sex-positive and the characters are all super great, I’ll definitely watch this a lot, I think. Another thing I can’t really do is responsibly tell you where to watch this because it doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere, but the official website has a trailer and contact information for the people involved. You can probably find it though, if you look in the right places.
Christine (1983)
You’ve probably already heard of this movie and you’ve either already seen it or it’s on your watchlist. Christine is definitely in my top 15 all-time horror movies, even though by today’s standards it’s not really very scary. The practical effects here are really great, though, and still hold up today. If you’re a baby like me who can’t do scary movies, this one might be for you! There are no jumpscares or scary monsters, it’s just a car who is evil and likes to kill people. Charming!
The Game (1997)
Remember that stupid mind game from the internet in the 90’s and 2000’s? No? Lucky you. Anyway this movie has nothing to do with that. Michael Douglas is an arrogant old rich white man who has it all until his brother enrolls him in The Game, turning his whole world upside down. This film manages to still be pretty creepy despite its age, and it’s one of my old favourites that I revisited in 2022 for the first time in a while.
Licorice Pizza (2021)
I fucking love HAIM so much. This movie is honestly great, but I really think it would not have been the same without Alana, Danielle, and Este. I also really adored that their parents in the movie are also their real parents. There was absolutely no need to do this, but it endeared this movie so much to me. This was the first time I had seen Cooper Hoffman (son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, RIP) in anything, and he’s really great too. This movie is a little over two hours long though, so I suggest do what I did and watch it over two sittings.
Being Erica (TV)
I first discovered this show in around 2013-2014, a couple of years after it had ended, and I was at a similar point in my life as the titular Erica, so this show really struck a chord with me. Starring Erin Karpluk, Being Erica is a Canadian comedy/drama about a woman in her early thirties who feels like she’s lost and going nowhere, until a therapist named Dr Tom (played by Michael Riley) comes into her life who has the ability to send her back in time to moments where something happened that Erica regretted, and let her change how things played out, learning a valuable life lesson or two along the way. This show is great and if you love a good dramady (and you can find it) you should absolutely watch it. There are a ton of great characters here, and really interesting storylines. I lost count of how many times this made me cry, both over something sad, or something sweet.
I wanted to give a quick honourable mention to my TVaMOTY number 11 of 2022: The Matrix: Resurrections. Judging by the box office sales, you probably didnt watch it (at least not legally anyway), but you absolutely should. If you liked the previous Matrix movies, you’ll like this one, I promise. I love the friendly robotos!!!
So that’s my summary of what I watched and loved in 2022. I hope you liked it! If you want to read a little bit about any of the movies I mentioned here, you can find my reviews on Letterboxd. There are also a ton of other reviews by other people on Letterboxd too, though, many of whom are smarter and much more articulate than I!
One person in particular who is smarter and much more articulate than me is Emily Higgins on her movie podcasts Tasteless and Strong Female Leads. On Tasteless, Emily compares two movies that contain similar themes, but where one is usually more well-liked and/or critically acclaimed than the other but the other deserves some attention too. And on the Strong Female Leads, Emily interviews women in the film industry who have played strong female characters in movies and TV. I find Emily’s insight into the industry fascinating. She always brings two seemingly very different films to the Tasteless table, and it’s always interesting how she manages to tie them together.
Another place I often find inspiration for moves and shows to watch is Laser Time. I haven’t listened to them a ton recently, but the most recent episode #436 The Summer of 1989 is great and put me onto so many movies I had not heard of or not thought about in years. The host, Chris Antista, has a really… unique sense of humour, and an unquenchable thirst for anything movie, game, or othewise pop-culture related.
Finally, I wanted to give an shout out to a podcast I loved dearly that died last year. In September, F*nbyte * (censored to avoid ending up on their SEO radar!) laid off most of their staff, completely gutting the content creation side of the website, thus ending all of their podcasts. Relevant to this post was You Love To See It, F*nbyte’s own movie review podcast. At the time of writing (17 January 2023), the episodes are still available to listen to on Spotify (linked above) and Apple Podcasts, but you can also find You Love To See It episodes and more F*nbyte podcasts on my Internet Archive account, in case the current website management decides to pull them from other services. I highly recommend you go listen to this show, hosted by Danielle Riendeau and Fernanda Prates.
Now I want to remind y’all again that, starting next week, I will be down to just one newsletter per week, but just for the time being. I teased a little while ago that I was looking at making one of the biweekly posts into a kind of serialised thing, and I’m still planning to do that! I’m getting to work on getting some “episodes” in the tank so once I start that, I will be less likely to miss a week - look for that soon-ish.Fair warning, though, some of that is likely to be paid subscribers only.
Thanks so much for reading! I wouldn’t still be doing this if I didn’t have y’all to keep me going. As always, if you have comments, questions or suggestions, feel free to hit me up in the comments on this post or at the social medias in the links below. And if you enjoyed this post, maybe tell a friend? You can hit the nice and convenient share button below!
I hope you all are having a great week, and have a wonderful weekend.
I love you, and I’ll talk to you all again on Monday. Ka kite anō au i a koe! 💚