Housekeeping:
A reminder that the second Famous and Beloved Book Club “Sally September in October” is starting on October 1. If you would like to read Intermezzo with me, consider pre-ordering the book through my Bookshop affiliate link so I can make around $2.50 from your purchase. I can drink almost half of an Iced Dunkalatte, which is a latte with “coffee milk,” milk and “coffee extract,” described as “a latte and tastes like a melty milkshake,” with that!
I have watched the MTV Video Music Awards for as long as I can remember and I don’t know how many more years I can do it. “Anitta feat. Fat Joe, DJ Khaled, and Tiago PZK,” Lenny Kravitz feat. Quavo, “Benson Boone”: this is unacceptable. Shawn Mendes delivered a performance that was so distinctly unbearable my mom said it was “like what you play to make someone surrender,” by which she meant “torture.” I am addicted to Sabrina Carpenter’s album—I think it is so good—and I also think she is beautiful and charismatic. But her performance at the VMAs was a sleep aid, as was Chappell Roan’s, though “Good Luck, Babe!” is undeniably very good. Katy Perry is making me very sad, lately, and Taylor Swift looked very beautiful, but I am very fed-up with waiting for Reputation (Taylor’s Version): I want to scream songs I know and behave childishly about a celeb I like!1
Every couple years a prompt goes around asking people to list their most formative movies, their favorite movies from childhood, or something of the like. I am sure the redundancy and generality of this activity annoys many, but I love it for the same reasons I love seeing peoples’ Spotify Wrapped. The latter is weirdly intimate and charmingly un-curatorial: recalling the playlist-making culture of yore but in a format you have little control over. I learn a lot about what people actually like through an algorithmic report they are excited to share, and I am delighted by their surprise at the results. While using Letterboxd to create a list of movies is far more editorialized, it captures the same spirit of earnestly indulging an intimate look into texts that are important to someone. It humanizes us all and is a uniquely harmless way for us—varying widely in age, interest, and lifestyle—to be nostalgic, of our childhoods or the year past, together.
My manifesto about Beetlejuice had a lot of people texting me something along the lines of, “I didn’t know you felt this way.” Whether they were referring to my scorn toward Tim Burton or lust for the character of Beetlejuice is ultimately unimportant, because I was happy they learned something about me. One of my favorite things I’ve read this year is Kyra’s post about crying in theme parks, which I found a very stirring theory of how spatial and textual mediums are related. I also found it very moving, as someone who has a primal, nearly inexplicable, response to being in Disney World. To read such a plain and vulnerable description of having an affective investment in that place—smells and atmospheres that trigger a memory of the happiest, most worry-free day you forgot you ever had, only for you to be thrust disorientedly to the present—justified my own emotions I didn’t even know I had, nor felt were unjustified. It was satisfying to have my feelings taken from me, explained and made someone else’s. This is how online characters, writers, and friends become people, and how you transform from a witness of others to a participant in their lives. Glimpses into the potential of the Internet to productively revitalize relations to ourselves and others are few and far between, but blogging on Substack.com, posting Spotify Wrapped, and tweeting a screenshot of a list of movies you think shaped you as a person, are some of my favorites.
That’s all fine and good, but I also want an excuse to write about random movies I like or want us all to remember. I have lots to say about the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, for example, but that movie is 21 years old and shrouded in a dark cloud of Katy-Perry-husband and bad guy: when would I ever have the opportunity? Well, this blog is about me, so I’ll make my own opportunity. A real man makes his own opportunity.
These are some movies, new and old, that have worked their way into my psyche in important, formative ways. Not all of them are my “favorite” movies, nor are they “comfort” watches (I never know what that means).2 Some of them are good, but most of them are not, really, that special: only to me. They are organized by themes, to imbue this otherwise intellectually unserious post with both severity and order.
Movies I can recite from memory
Titanic (Jim Cameron, 1997)
Neither the romance nor human drama of Titanic do much for me, as I think every single person in the ensemble of Titanic gives an absolutely horrific performance and that the premise of Titanic is humiliatingly stupid. That is not to say, however, that those performances are not purposeful, on the actors’ or Jim’s parts, nor do I think the premise is unenjoyable. I, in fact, think Titanic is one of the most enjoyable movies ever made. I have said “there aren’t enough boats, not enough by half” at least once every 24 hours of my life since I was around 6 years old. I am riveted and enthralled each and every time I watch the Titanic sink: the ship will sink and in an hour or so all this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic!
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Gore Verbanski, 2003)
Alternatively, I think everyone in this movie gives an absolutely inspired and generation-defining performance. The action is slick, the romance(s) are sexy, the set pieces are fun, and the score is one of the best to ever be composed. The other Pirates are not good, but they gave us Davy Jones played by Bill Nighy with a tentacle head, whose plight is being down bad for a woman, and Captain Salazar, so maybe they are, also, good, after all.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002)
I don’t know why this is the LOTR movie that imprinted on me, but it is probably the worst, and relative badness has always been a quality I am drawn toward. Viggo Mortensen is one of my grandest celebrity crushes, but when I was a child I also had a crush on Wormtongue. When he gets scared or thrown down the stairs it is fun for all.
Movies I am embarrassed to love
The Princess Bride (Rob Reiner, 1987)
People are increasingly dismissive of this movie as history marches on, but if you don’t want to see Andre the Giant manipulate Cary Elwes like a puppet, that's really your cross to bear. When Mandy Patinkin tells “Miracle Max,” “we are in a terrible rush,” I laugh and I laugh.
The Emperor’s New Groove (Mark Dindal, 2000)
Admitting that Disney cartoons possess any redemption is a humiliating act for anyone, but this is likely the best of them and certainly the best of the 21st century.3
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
No one on the earth is above this movie, but they like to pretend that they are. It takes itself seriously enough for everyone, and does thereby not ask anything from its audience. The bait and switches are effective, the performances are good, the action and bureaucratic world-building are satisfying, and the Joker is hot. When everyone forgets, once and for all, who Sarah Palin is or that we used to call memes “spoofs,” children will watch The Dark Knight for the first time and say, “hey, that was pretty good.” I hope you’re all prepared for that.
Movies you could guess would be on here
Austin Powers (all of them)
Mini Me aime bien le chocolat. Scotty, ne pas.
The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)
I like all of Luhrmann’s movies to varying degrees but think this is the most underrated. His truly unique maximalism speaks to the feeling of a digital era far more earnestly and interestingly than Harmony Korine’s, because Luhrmann adapts classic junk into new junk that is proud to be junk: it is the ultimate and most modern appreciation of lowbrow, citationally overloaded and unabashedly girlish. The asynchronicity is also much more palatable here than in a jukebox musical, and it gave us Elizabeth Debicki, who is beautiful and talented, Joel Edgerton, who has made movies that everyone thinks are bad but I think are fine, and Jason Clarke, who I call “Chappaquiddick.”
Gaga: Five Foot Two (Chris Moukarbel, 2017)
Because of my loyalties, no one will believe me if I say that this is an actually very moving and interesting approach to celebrity documentary—it’s about the bad album—but I will say it anyway.
Movies I can’t stop watching
Anna Karenina (Joe Wright, 2012)
This movie stars Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Matthew Macfadyen, and I love men. It is one of the greatest cinematic adaptation of classic literature, and I find it patently beautiful.
Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005)
I could make a joke about being Joe Wright’s bravest soldier, but it’s not really a vocation I would describe in a joking manner. This, however, is quite funny:
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017)
Knives Out and Glass Onion were so offensive to me, I find no shame nor untruth in calling Rian Johnson a disgusting individual. It is a fool’s errand, however, to attempt to shirk the star-making vibrancy of Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley sword fighting on each others’ backs. There is so much to love in this movie: creatures and fake proper nouns, sexting Adam Driver through your mind, and the famous American film character, Chewbacca.
Movies that are bad
LOL (Lisa Azuelos, 2012)
LOL is an adaptation of a French movie of the same name, which I have also seen. The American version seems a word-for-word Google translation of the original, and is formally and narratively illegible: it takes place in Chicago, Miley Cyrus has trouble speaking, and her character’s name is Lola but “everyone calls her Lol.” This line alone has been stuck in my craw for over a decade. Lola is easy to say, but Lol is more difficult.
The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (Garry Marshall, 2004)
I loved the first Princess Diaries when I was a child, but rewatching it as an adult I get bored. The second one has a more charming direct-to-video quality that no longer exists in quite the same way, because everyone in it seems to be having fun. Mostly, however, as you will hardly be shocked to learn, my obsession with this movie is due to the fact that Chris Pine is in it as a mean love interest.
Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008)
The only movies I rewatch seasonally are the 1994 and 2019 Little Womens at Christmas and Twilight in the fall. I don’t watch these every year to preserve some of their magic, but Twilight is always an acutely pleasurable time capsule. If you haven’t seen it in a while, I strongly recommend revisiting. In the retrospective shadow of its leads’ careers, I wonder more each year if it is, actually, good.
The new canon
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)
Whenever it was I learned that Clint Eastwood had given his Beyoncé-led A Star is Born remake to Bradley Cooper, I felt the ground move beneath me. One of two things was to come of this: 1) Bradley Cooper, the actor, was going to make an incredibly bad adaptation of A Star is Born that would make me laugh for years and years, or 2) Bradley Cooper, the talented actor, was going to reveal himself as, somehow, a talented director. I entered the theater on October 3, 2018, expecting the former and bracing for the latter, and within 20 minutes felt legitimately scared for my life. “Talented” is a bit of a stretch, but Bradley Cooper, director, is uniquely attentive to the emotional mechanisms of celebrity and masculinity, and it would be a disservice to deny our culture his whimsy and tenderness. He is so, so funny. That he and Lady Gaga created something so insane as “Ally” and “Jackson Maine,” that it is as heartbreakingly romantic and self-referentially ridiculous as it is contemptuous of fame, that it is not his best film (but the one I find more magical), are gifts.
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
I wrote recently that “I have loved many new releases since 2021, but none have been nearly as promising—as aesthetically sweeping and challenging to the medium—as Annette.” Elsewhere I have said that The Beast’s “overwrought and distinctly European regurgitation of and commentary on 2010s American culture would not exist without Annette, which tees up Henry McHenry to be memorialized by the more severe facsimile of Louis Lewanski.” Now I will tell you that few contemporary films so distinctly distill what makes their historical moment interesting, imbuing that sense of historicity so deeply into their form. Annette joins Adam Driver’s indomitability with an understanding of what makes the cinematic medium special. We moved on too quickly from its good humor about “problems of society,” and I will never forgive that “The Conductor” did not inspire Tár-levels of posting.
Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022)
Reader: she does this regardless of a new Taylor Swift album, each and every day she is alive.
My “favorite movies,” which is a label for a succinct, editorialized list of movies that I personally connect to, aren’t embarrassed by, and which I think are “good,” are: Beetlejuice, Moonstruck, The Silence of the Lambs, All That Jazz, Dracula, Nashville, and The Bling Ring. Relatively recent watches that, after a few years of marination, will make their way onto that list are: Showgirls, Eastern Promises, A History of Violence, and A Bigger Splash.
Excellent perfect taste in movies, all absolute bangers, feel like I really Understand you. Love, of course, the inclusion of the Bradley Cooper BTS footage.
The Matt Canon would include…. Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Bridges of Madison County, Titanic, Batman Returns, and the Oogie Boogie parts of Nightmare Before Christmas 😀