Rapper 21 Savage’s younger brother Terrell Davis was murdered in London last Sunday, November 22. Today, the London Metropolitan Police reported the arrest of a suspect, Tyrece Fuller, 21, of Tavy Close, Lambeth. Davis was also a rapper and performed under the name TM1way. He was stabbed to death, allegedly after a disagreement with Fuller. At the time of his death the London police shared a statement with XXL:
“Police are investigating a fatal stabbing after they were called at 17:59hrs on Sunday 22 November by the London Ambulance Service to a location in Ramillies Close, Lambeth, SW2. Officers attended, along with colleagues from the London Air Ambulance, but the 27-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene. The man’s next of kin have been informed and they are being supported by specially trained officers. No arrests have been made at this stage. A crime scene remains in place at the location, and officers are continuing their enquires.”
Born in London but raised and currently based in Atlanta, 21 Savage shared his grief on Instagram the day after his brother’s passing: “Can’t believe somebody took you baby bro I know I took my anger out on you I wish I could take that shit back,” he wrote.
Craft beer has exploded over the past two decades. It’s boomed and plateaued and boomed all over again. Currently (excluding short-term COVID closures), there are more than 8,000 breweries operating in America. And while states like Colorado, California, Oregon, and Vermont get tons of praise for their high-quality beers, you shouldn’t sleep on the IPAs, stouts, pale ales, and lagers coming out of… well, anywhere in the country.
That’s why we’re laughing “Brews By State.” The series offers a chance for us to profile our favorite beers in any given state in the union — from Hawaii to Florida to Alaska and all points in between.
We’re starting today with New York. From Buffalo to Babylon, breweries and brewmasters are pushing the envelope and making names for themselves in the process. Below you’ll find 10 of our favorites examples of the deep commitment to craft and creativity in the Empire State.
Prison City Mass Riot
ABV: 6.9%
One of the best (if not the best) IPAs in America, Prison City Mass Riot is the Auburn, New York’s flagship beer for a reason. It’s filled with Simcoe, Amarilla, and Citra hops as well as oats and wheat. The result is a brightly hoppy, juicy, hazy beer you won’t just want to sip in the warmer months.
Finback Between The Dead
ABV: 10%
While you can’t go wrong with the brewery’s Harambe Imperial Stout, it’s ramped up by being barrel-aged in ex-bourbon cask for Between The Dead. The result is a dark, super-rich, chocolate, espresso, coconut, vanilla, and cinnamon bomb perfect for the cold days ahead.
Industrial Arts Power Tools
ABV: 7.1%
Industrial Arts is cranking out amazing beers. One of its best (and most awarded) is Power Tools. This IPA is perfect for hop heads with its majestic mix of resinous pine and sharp, tangy citrus. While a perfect post-lawn-mowing beer, it’s a great respite from darker, wintry brews.
Other Half All Green Everything
ABV: 10.5%
Pretty much any beer you pick from Other Half is going to be a winner. But one of its all-time best brews is All Green Everything. This potent (in a good way), citrus-filled, crisp, Imperial IPA is loaded with Amarilla, Citra, Mosaic, and Motueka hops. It’s double dry-hopped to create a great mix of juicy tropical sweetness and subtly bitter hop flavor.
Thin Man Trial By Wombat
ABV: 7%
Buffalo might be more known as the city of #BillsMafia and its love for jumping through folding tables, but the city has become a center for beer fans. Thin Man is cranking out tons of great offerings, especially its award-winning Trial By Wombat. This hazy, juicy IPA is filled with a citrusy explosion of Galaxy hops as well as tropical flavors like guava, pineapple, and zesty orange.
Evil Twin Imperial Biscotti Break
ABV: 11.5%
If you’re a fan of roasty, dark, rich, chocolaty, caramel-filled brews, this is the beer for you. Like the name would make you believe, this is basically a dessert in a can. Brewed with coffee, vanilla, and almonds, this is the perfect beer to pair with the onslaught of holiday cookies to come.
Sloop Juice Bomb
ABV: 6.5%
When you Google “crushable beer” there should be a photo of Juice Sloop Bomb. This 6.5% ABV hazy IPA is as juicy as its name dictates. This is the beer for fans of sweet, mango, pineapple, and dripping peach juice-flavored beer with just the right amount of resinous, bitter hops.
Interboro Bushburg
ABV: 5%
Any good list of craft beers deserves a good, crisp, refreshing pilsner. One of the best in New York State is Interboro Bushburg. Made with 100% Pilsner malt along with German lager yeast, and Noble hops, it’s fresh, subtly sweet, and perfect for any occasion.
Big Ditch Hay Burner
ABV: 7.2%
While most of us aren’t tailgating this year, there might not be a better beer for next year’s tailgate (or a holiday socially distant gathering) than Big Ditch Hay Burner. It has all the flavors IPA fans love. It’s filled with citrus notes like grapefruit and orange as well as a nice kick of bitterness at the very end.
Brewery Ommegang Witte
ABV: 5.2%
Since you’re not likely going to travel to Europe any time soon, you can grab a taste of Belgium from the heart of New York by cracking open a bottle or can of Brewery Ommegang Witte. This white ale is refreshing, crisp, hazy, and filled with hints of coriander, orange peels, and cloves.
Picking out the perfect boozy gift for the holiday season (or any time of year for that matter) has never been easier. Whiskey boxes, cocktail sets, beer calendars, and entire special release collections get dropped year-round these days. Still, now’s the time when most people are looking for that perfect alcohol gift set to give to the aspiring home bartender or whiskey aficionado in their lives. And they have a plethora of options to choose from.
The choices for alcohol gift boxes span a wide range. Fancy vodka martinis? Yep, there’s a box for that. Know someone who loves all things Johnnie Walker? The brand sells a box with tasters of their entire line. Is there an IPA diehard in your life who you need to get a gift for? Stone’s 12 Days of IPA is a classic.
If you know someone who likes booze-related gifts, there’s a box they’re sure to love.
To help make sense of all the options out there, we thought we’d call out 12 of our favorite alcohol-related gift sets. We tried to keep the net fairly wide here. There’s a mix of beer, wine, whiskey, and cocktail gift boxes that range in price from $25 to $169. These picks are proof that while the 2020 holidays may not be quite as social as we’re used to, they can still be merry and bright.
Two 375 mL cans of Underwood Rosé, two Underwood branded glasses, and a wine cocktail recipe book.
Bottom Line:
Wine in a can is always a win. This is basically one bottle of wine with some nice glasses and an excuse to get into wine cocktails. The wine is a solid selection from Oregon’s Union Wine Co. but the price is the best part. $25 is hard to beat for a gift this tasty.
Stone IPA, Delicious IPA, Tangerine Express Hazy IPA, Scorpion Bowl IPA, Fear.Movie.Lions Double IPA, Ruination Sans Filtre Double IPA, Go-To IPA, Exotic Destinations IPA, Cosmic Runestone IPA, Sublimely Self-Righteous Black IPA, Soaring Dragon Imperial IPA, and Features & Benefits IPA.
Bottom Line:
This is 12 solid days of IPA from one of the U.S.’s biggest craft breweries. Stone and IPA are almost synonymous at this point. The San Diego brewer’s IPAs lean into all styles and offers one hell of a “12 days of Christmas” sampling.
One bottle of Aberfeldy 12 Single Malt Scotch Whisky, one 6.8 oz. bag of Limited Edition ABERFELDY Golden Hot Chocolate Mix, two mugs, two drink stirrers, six Aberfeldy-infused marshmallows, and four grams of edible gold glitter.
Bottom Line:
Aberfeldy is honey-forward whisky from one of the best Master Blenders working in Scotland today. Their 12-year is a great mixing whisky. Tell us, doesn’t a little whisky in a mug of hot chocolate sound like the perfect drink/ gift right now?
Two mini bottles of Peach Flavored Whisky, two mini bottles of Salted Caramel Flavored Whisky, two mini bottles of Black Blended Canadian Whisky, two mini bottles of Fine De Luxe Blended Canadian Whisky, two mini bottles of Regal Apple Flavored Whisky, and two mini bottles of Vanilla Flavored Whisky.
Bottom Line:
Crown Royal is a very underappreciated Canadian whisky. Their line runs deep, with varied expressions and flavors. This box set will give anyone six entry points into the wide world of Crown Royal without breaking the bank when it comes to giving the gift of whiskey this year.
200 ml bottles (just under 1/3 of a regular bottle) of Heaven’s Door Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Heaven’s Door Double Barrel Whiskey, and Heaven’s Door Straight Rye Whiskey.
Bottom Line:
Bob Dylan’s Heaven’s Door Whiskey out of Nashville isn’t a cash grab, it’s a damn fine whiskey company. The juice is well blended and bottled. These bottles show the brand’s core line and offer a great connection point for the Dylan-lover in your life.
200 ml bottles of Caol Ila 12 Year Old, Clynelish 14 Year Old, and Talisker 10 Year Old.
Bottom Line:
Diageo’s single malts continue to dominate the world of whisky. These three whiskies lean towards the smokier side of things with Caol Ila and Talisker from Islay and the Isle of Skye respectively. Clynelish, on the other hand, is a Highland whisky that makes up a large portion of Johnnie Walker’s Gold blend.
One bottle of Bulleit Bourbon Kentucky Straight Whiskey, one half-bottle of Bulleit 95 Rye Whiskey, and one 10 oz. Bulleit Branded YETI Rambler.
Bottom Line:
Bulleit remains one of the most popular bourbons and ryes in America. Their juice is a solid choice at a very accessible price point. Add in a YETI Rambler for sipping that whiskey (with a little ice and water, we hope), and you’ve got a great gift. Plus, once the whiskey is gone, whoever receives this gift will still have a YETI Rambler for years to come.
Two mini bottles of Blue Label Blended Scotch Whisky, two mini bottles of Aged 18 Years Blended Scotch Whisky, two mini bottles of Gold Label Reserve Blended Scotch Whiskey, two mini bottles of Green Label Blended Scotch Whisky, two mini bottles of Double Black Label Blended Scotch Whisky, and two mini bottles of Black Label Blended Scotch Whisky.
Bottom Line:
What’s cool about this gift is that you’ll be able to recreate UPROXX’s own tasting of Johnnie Walker! Also, this is a very solid all-around selection of whiskies with real heavy-hitters like Johnnie Blue, Gold, and Green, making this an excellent entry-point to scotch overall.
Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label with Sugarfina Pop The Champagne Gift Set
One bottle of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label, Champagne Bears (gummies infused with the finest Champagne in sparkling flavors of brut and rosé), Bubbly Bears (tart Champagne-infused gummies), Baby Champagne Bears (a tiny version of Sugarfina’s best-selling Champagne Bears), and two Champagne flutes.
Bottom Line:
Moving towards New Year’s Eve, this gift is sure to make a long night a little more fun. Boozy gummy bears and a bottle of champers with two glasses is a solid gift for that special person in your life who you’re eager to ring in 2021 with.
One bottle of Uncle Nearest 1856 Premium Aged Whiskey and one bottle of Uncle Nearest 1884 Small Batch Whiskey.
Bottom Line:
Uncle Nearest is doing some of the best work in Tennessee whiskey right now. The heritage brand has been racking up award after award for their refined whiskeys and this gift set makes for the perfect place to get introduced to the line.
One bottle of Absolut Elyx, one bottle of Lillet Rosé, Elyx Copper Cocktail Coupe Gift Set (set of 2), and Sugarfina Martini Olive Almonds in Shaker.
Bottom Line:
Absolut Elyx is one of the best luxe vodkas you can buy or drink. We’re talking about a beautifully crafted spirit. Mixed with Lillet Rosé (a light fortified wine), and a little ice and you have yourself a perfect martini. The set also comes with rad copper coupes and a copper shaker for mixing up your cocktails.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
This is the album I was born to make, says Miley Cyrus of her latest, Plastic Hearts. Invoking that tiresome, clichéd phrase is what artists tend to do when their career is lagging — except, in the case of Plastic Hearts, it’s actually true. It’s not that Cyrus has been lagging, per se, it’s more that she’s been desperately searching, casting about for a sense of self. And, like many a lost young person before her, she has finally found that center in the sweet embrace of rock and roll. Plastic Hearts is decidedly not a pop record, it doesn’t even try to be, and perhaps for some fans, that transition won’t take. Those fans can kindly kiss Miley’s ass.
There have been so many iterations of Cyrus that it’s easy to eye-roll when a new edition is unveiled. From the squeaky clean, tween Hannah Montana empire — which produced her three earliest, toothless albums — to the twerking Bangerz star pillaging rap for beats and weed, to the flailing, absurdist theatrics of Dead Petz, to the re-sanitized, hip-hop rejecting rainbowland of Younger Now, to the drugs-and-rap-are-good-actually posturing of last year’s She Is Coming EP, Miley has worn out her welcome when it comes to reinvention. But she’s rarely been the kind of star to let other people’s opinions dictate her behavior.
After a wildfire burned down her home in Malibu, and with it, most of the music she’d recorded for an announced three-EP release, a messy public divorce came on the heels of a surprise wedding to long-term boyfriend Liam Hemsworth, and an obsession with Miley’s sexuality and infidelity dominated headlines. It’s easy to see why the sound and fury of rock music captured her imagination. And yes, she’s moved from teen pop, to hip-hop, to country pop, and is now jumping to rock — but isn’t that the same way most of her generation consumes music, too? The sometimes-suffocating ideas this culture has about artists sticking to one genre or one sound, and the mild uproar that occurs when they pivot (recently, see: Machine Gun Kelly) is growing rather tiresome.
Or, maybe this most recent pivot wouldn’t be worth defending if Miley hadn’t pulled it off so dang well. Will you accept a great rock album, even if it was made by a former pop star? Only a fool would look this gift horse in the mouth. Plastic Hearts is finally covering the ground listeners want to hear her speak on, with apologetic and reflective songs that no longer shirk topics like cheating, sex, and celebrity. Album opener “WTF Do I Know” sets the tone as an unapologetic divorce anthem anchored by a growling bassline, and even if the title track wastes perfect percussion, “Angels Like You” quickly shifts the blame back to herself for a Joanne-indebted ballad that soars like “Wrecking Ball” once did.
The Dua Lipa-featuring “Prisoner” slips right into the album’s careening ’70s glam-rock theme, but might be the most pop-oriented song of the bunch, and her next collab, with Billy Idol, is an unlikely success. That track, “Night Crawling,” and her final feature, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, turn out to be more than empty rockstar name grabs. Instead, the synths and ferocity of the former make it one of the best songs here, and “Bad Karma” with Joan turns an orgasmic vocal sample into the ultimate f*ck-you riff. No, it’s true — largely because Mark Ronson helps shepherd this potential trainwreck into a purring locomotive.
Miley doesn’t need any fellow stars to pull off great rock hits, either, “Gimme What I Want,” “High,” and “Hate Me” are textured, bluesy explorations of reclaimed sexuality, grief, loss, and yes, lingering guilt. All the latent aggression that has driven some of Miley’s most antagonistic, erratic behavior in the past is fully unleashed, and so is the sadness that anger actually stems from. The combination of those two extremes of course make for great rock songs, and her voice is maybe better-suited to the growling and preening of rock than detractors realized. Closer “Golden G String” is a great example, a song that seems like it could be a kiss-off to those who have lit into her for flaunting her body, but instead it’s a serious reflection on shame, mental illness, and sexism that evokes Kesha during her own Rainbow phase.
There isn’t a lot else here to rope lead single “Midnight Sky” into the mix, but the groundwork for a Miley disco-country album was set back in 2018 with “Nothing Breaks Like A Heart,” even if her work with Ronson on Plastic Hearts leans more gospel than glitz (“High,” “Never Be Me). Instead, a series of covers at the end of the record include a Stevie Nicks-featuring “Midnight Sky” remix interpolating “Edge Of Seventeen” for “Edge Of Midnight,” and renditions of “Heart Of Glass” and “Zombie,” rather obvious codas for where Miley wants to position this album in the rock landscape.
But avid listeners of ‘70s rock might find themselves asking, as much as Nicks, Debbie Harry, and Dolores O’Riordan are aspirational figures, wouldn’t incorporating a little of the Wilson sisters and Heart make this new Miley era stick better? “Barracuda” would be much better suited to her range and ethos, and “Crazy On You” is long due for a resurgence in popularity. If she’s going to stick around in this era for another album, I hope she really digs in, and that’s my only real critique. Back to the present, “Hate Me” dips into contemporary ‘90s grunge-pop a la Liz Phair, and pulls it off well enough to suggest she should explore that more. On this song, Miley ponders what her funeral would be like, if her friends would party and celebrate her life, and if an unnamed entity would, for once, not hate her. Whether addressed specifically to Liam, another ex, or the public at large, the song gives a fascinating glance into Miley’s psyche: We’ll miss her when she’s not around. Best enjoy her while she’s still here.
Plastic Hearts is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.
After a ten-episode first season of The Walking Dead: World Beyond, the endgame has finally snapped into focus. After previously hinting that Iris was the “asset” that the CRM and Elizabeth were seeking, we learned in the two-hour season finale that it’s actually Iris’s sister, Hope, that CRM wanted all along. Why? Because Hope is secretly a genius, even though it was Iris who gave her school’s valedictorian speech when the series kicked off, which was all part of a ruse to make us think that Iris was the more important character to CRM.
What is the importance of Hope’s genius? Recall that the CRM is collecting “A”s — who are test subjects to be used in experimenting with a zombie cure — and “B”s, who are useful in creating the future of civilization. Rick Grimes is a “B,” and so is Hope, although her “genius” seems to extend mostly to the ability to crack rudimentary codes and make homemade wine, which maybe isn’t something to dismiss so quickly, considering how difficult it has been to create palatable beer on Fear the Walking Dead.
What CRM is doing is not eugenics, exactly; they’re not trying to create a master race through genetics. They are, however, trying to assemble only those whose skills might prove useful to the continuation of the species. Everyone else is expendable. That is why the CRM massacred (most) of the Campus Colony in the opening episode, and why Elizabeth — now in possession of Hope — essentially put out a kill order on the rest of them: Silas, Elton, Felix, and even Hope’s sister, Iris.
The other twist, however, is that Hope is not exactly the genius they believe she is; her “genius” is only compatible with her sister. They’re a good team, but their parents too often gave secret credit to Hope while publicly acknowledging Iris’ intelligence. In the end, Hope — who figured out that Huck was a CRM spy — allowed herself to be captured, because she reckoned that she could take CRM down from the inside while working in tandem with her sister, Iris, from the outside.
So why the season-long journey? This is maybe the silliest aspect of the entire season. Huck planted messages to make it appear as though Hope and Iris’ father was in danger, and Elizabeth (the lieutenant colonel of the CRM) left a map to the CRM headquarters in New York for Hope to find. Elizabeth wanted Hope to journey across the country with her daughter, Huck, so that she could gain some experience in the world outside of her sheltered Campus Colony. That experience, combined with her intelligence, is what Hope such a valuable “B.”
There’s another aspect, too. Hope and Iris’ father, Dr. Bennett, is working for the CRM, but he obviously doesn’t know about the arrival of Hope. Dr. Bennett’s girlfriend, Dr. Lyla Bellshaw, is not only privy to that information but also engaged in human experimentation that Dr. Bennett obviously would not appreciate. Dr. Bennett, meanwhile, is growing suspicious of CRM’s motives, and in revealing that to Dr. Bellshaw at the end of the episode, Dr. Bennett may have inadvertently put himself into danger.
Meanwhile, Felix’s boyfriend, Will, appears to have assembled some survivors from the Campus Colony, and it is strongly suggested that Felix and Iris will join them in an attempt to take down the CRM with the help of Hope (and potentially Dr. Bennett) from the inside. Silas — captured by CRM soldiers at the end of the episode — may help from the inside, too, while Elton and Percy (who escaped the CRM) may join Felix’s new group and help them take down the CRM from the outside.
It all essentially sets up a second season in which Hope and Iris and their alliance will be pitted in an “All Out War” with the CRM.
Even though the streaming wars are heating up and every studio/network seems to be building their own platform, Netflix still has, arguably, the best movie library of them all. They’re getting better at categorizing them too, but when you have a film library that big, it’s hard to make sure all of the worthwhile titles get seen. That’s where we come in. Let this must-watch list be your guide to the overcrowded streaming landscape and an end to the mindless scrolling through Netflix’s movie catalog. There’s something for everyone here and it’s all good.
The Indiana Jones franchise has been housed on Amazon Prime for a while now, but it’s finally making its way to Netflix with the streaming platform hosting all four feature films. Of course, nothing beats the original, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as far as travel and adventure go, this movie has everything you could possibly want. A hero with a love for archeology and whips? Check. An adventure to recover a stolen artifact with destructive powers? Check check. Harrison Ford beating up Nazis while uttering sarcastic one-liners and with a twinkle in his eye? Did movies even exist before this?
Jack Nicholson stars in this dark drama about a criminal who cops an insanity plea to avoid jail time and finds more than he bargained for at his court-ordered psych facility. Nicholson plays McMurphy, a delinquent who hopes to serve the remainder of his prison sentence in a cushy mental hospital. His plans are thwarted by a strict, manipulative nurse in charge of the facility against whom McMurphy actively rebels. He recruits his fellow patients in his plot to cause chaos at the facility, liberating some, dooming others, and ensuring he meets his own tragic fate. The film has been hailed as one of the best of all time, and it’s certainly one of Nicholson’s best performances — both reasons enough to watch.
Daniel Day-Lewis stars in this gritty, Oscar-winning drama from Paul Thomas Anderson playing a turn-of-the-century prospector, who risks his faith and his family for oil. Daniel Plainview is a shrewd, callous businessman who adopts the orphaned son of a dead employee to make himself look more appealing to investors. When he hits oil in California, he wages a war with a local preacher and his family who stand in the way of Daniel’s progress. Violence and yes, plenty of blood, follow.
The Oscar-winning animated film follows a young kid named Miles, who becomes the web-slinging hero of his reality, only to cross paths with other iterations of Spider-Man across different dimensions who help him defeat a threat posed to all realities. Mahershala Ali, John Mulaney, and Jake Johnson make up the film’s talented voice cast, but it’s the striking visuals and daring story-telling technique that really serves the film well.
Martin Scorsese delivers another cinematic triumph, this time for Netflix and with the help of some familiar faces. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up (again) for this crime drama based on actual events. De Niro plays Frank Sheeran a World War II vet who finds work as a hitman for the mob. Pacino plays notorious Teamster Jimmy Hoffa, a man who frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law and the criminals he worked with. The film charts the pair’s partnership over the years while injecting some historical milestones for context. It’s heavy and impressively cast and everything you’d expect a Scorsese passion-project to be.
Before FX gave us some spectacular follow-up formatted for TV, the Coen brothers introduced us to the cold, weirdly-accented world of murder and cover-up in Fargo, a thriller continues to stand the test of time. The premise is probably familiar by now: a criminal mastermind’s plan goes awry thanks to the ineptitude and bungling of his henchman and the persistence of a dogged policewoman (the unfairly-talented Frances McDormand). Still, it’s worth a rewatch.
Oscar-winning writer/director Alfonso Cuaron delivers what may be his most personal film to date. The stunningly-shot black-and-white film is an ode to Cuaron’s childhood and a love letter to the women who raised him. Following the journey of a domestic worker in Mexico City named Cleo, the movie interweaves tales of personal tragedy and triumph amidst a backdrop of political upheaval and unrest.
Casino Royale marks Daniel Craig’s first James Bond entry, but he plays the suave MI6 agent like he’s been doing it for decades. The film gives fans of the spy franchise a soft reset, as we’re introduced to the new Bond when he sets off on his first mission as 007. Bond’s tasked with catching a private banker funding terrorist operations by beating him in a high-stakes game of poker in Montenegro, and he’s joined by Vesper Lynd (a terrific Eva Green), an MI6 accountant with a secret that threatens to derail the mission and may cost Bond his life.
Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, and Cybill Shepherd star in this Martin Scorsese crime thriller about a veteran with mental health issues who works a night job, driving a taxi around New York City. De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a Vietnam war vet who moonlights as a cap driver to cope with his insomnia. During a long shift, he contemplates assassinating a politician to help out the woman he’s fallen in love with (Shepherd) and killing a pimp after befriending an underage prostitute (Foster). It’s a wild ride, full of darkly comedic moments, and an even more harrowing looks at the consequences of war.
Public scandal often makes for good drama, but that’s not why Todd McCarthy’s biographical re-telling of one of the most shocking cases of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church makes this list. Yes, the film has a famous list of names attached, including Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton. Yes, it’s a true story about a group of Boston Globe investigative journalists, who uncovered decades-worth of corruption and molestation accusations buried by leaders of the church. Yet with McCarthy’s restrained direction, the film rejects the trope of glorifying its heroes and sensationalizing its narrative to instead give us an accurate, detailed, and unbiased look at history.
Guillermo Del Toro’s fantasy war epic focuses on a young girl named Ofelia, who grows up during a time of political unrest in her native Spain after a brutal Civil War ravages the country. Ofelia escapes the horrors committed by her stepfather when she accepts a challenge from a magical fairy, who believes her to be the reincarnation of Moanna, the princess of the underworld. If she completes three tasks, she’ll achieve immortality. The film is a play on folklore and fables from Del Toro’s youth, but there’s an undercurrent based in reality — the real cost of war — that grounds this film and makes it even more compelling.
Another Quentin Tarantino classic, this violent visit back in time to America’s era of slavery carries major Western vibes and gives Lenoard DiCaprio a refreshing turn as the film’s big bad, a plantation owner named Calvin Candie. Tarantino favorite Christoph Waltz plays a German bounty hunter who teams up with Jamie Foxx’s Django, a former slave looking to free his wife (Kerry Washington) from Candie’s clutches. There’s a lot of gore and uncomfortable dialogue and over-the-top action, really, everything you’d expect, but DiCaprio, Waltz, and Foxx make it all worth it.
Dame Helen Mirren gives one of the best performances of her long career in this British biopic about the country’s most beloved monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Michael Sheen and James Cromwell join as then Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Philip respectively, but this is Mirren’s show and she carries it, delivering a nuanced turn as an embattled public figure struggling to revamp her image after a devastating tragedy.
Spike Jonze imagines a world in which Artificial Intelligence can become something more than just a personal assistant program. Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a depressed introvert going through a divorce who starts up a relationship with an OS named Samantha. Things get serious before Theodore begins to realize that romance with an A.I. is more complicated than he thought. What follows is a thoughtful exploration of love, relationships, and the ways human beings find connection in a plugged-in world.
It’s hard not to watch this Aaron Sorkin-penned, David Fincher-directed masterpiece and have your viewing experience colored by Facebook, and founder Mark Zuckerberg’s, many political misdealings. Jesse Eisenberg plays the boy genius, an outcast whose brainchild is the product of a bad breakup and sexism. He partners with Andrew Garfield’s business-minded Eduardo Saverin and the two create the famous social networking site before Zuckerberg outs his friend and alienates himself. The story isn’t new, but watching it play out is still thrilling, mostly because Eisenberg is just so damn good at being a dick.
John Singleton’s directorial debut is this dramatic masterpiece about life in the gang-ridden hood of Crenshaw and how one young man hopes to escape the endless cycle of violence that surrounds him. Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Tre, a smart, capable kid who struggles to stay clear of gang wars and his criminal friends while working towards his dreams of college. His buddies — gang members, former inmates, track stars — all navigate the bloodshed on the streets of their hood with varying results but when a tragedy brings them together, Tre’s forced to make a choice between the life he wants and the one he’s stuck in.
Aaron Sorkin’s star-studded courtroom drama is finally here, and besides carrying some serious Oscar buzz, it’s also delivering a handful of ridiculously good performances from its impressive cast. That cast includes everyone from Succession’s Jeremy Strong to Sacha Baron Cohen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, and Watchmen breakout Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. The film follows the true story of a group of anti-Vietnam war protesters charged with conspiracy counts and inciting riots during a demonstration at the 1968 Democratic Convention. We heard that Strong asked Sorkin to tear-gas him for this thing so, yeah, it should be an intense watch.
The early aughts action-comedy borrows elements from famous Kung Fu films of the ’70s and pairs them with a completely ridiculous plot and some impressive cartoon-style fight sequences to produce a wholly original flick that we guarantee you’ll marvel at. The film follows the exploits of two friends, Sing and Bone, who impersonate gang members in the hopes of joining a gang themselves and inadvertently strike up a gang war that nearly destroys the slums of the city. Of course, the real draw here is the absurdist, over-the-top comedy that takes place during some of the film’s biggest action sequences. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, but only if you check your brain at the door.
It wasn’t over and it still isn’t over… our love for this sticky-sweet melodramatic romance from Nicholas Sparks that is. Netflix knows what the people want — a rain-soaked Ryan Gosling professing his undying love for Rachel McAdams — and the streaming platform is giving it to us. The movie is a staple of the romance drama, and, whether you love it or hate it, Gosling and McAdams have chemistry and talent that’s undeniable. Be warned though, as sweeping as this love story is, it’s also devastatingly heartbreaking, and there are more than a few scenes that require an abundance of tissues as a viewing companion.
Keira Knightley stars in this dramatic adaptation of a beloved Austen novel. Ask any British literature fan, and they’ll tell you the best interpretation of this story is either the ’90s mini-series (with Colin Firth) or this Joe Wright masterpiece. There’s no middle ground. Knightley plays Elizabeth Bennet, an independent, quick-witted young woman, who resents her mother’s schemes to find herself and her group of sisters’ husbands to advance their station in life. She also, ironically, ends up falling for a wealthy, aloof lord named Mr. Darcy (Matthew Macfayden), and it’s their contentious, electric romance that fuels much of the action.
Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz star in this dark, absurdist comedy about a man searching for love under some very strange circumstances. Farrell plays David, a man whose wife recently left him. David is sent to a hotel where he’s told he must find a mate within 45 days or be turned into an animal. While there, David witnesses strange rituals and must follow strict rules in order to find love, but it’s not until he ventures into the woods, where the “loners” live, that he pairs up with a woman (Weisz) who may be his soulmate. It’s weird, eccentric, and the perfect Farrell-starring vehicle.
Edgar Wright’s 2010 action comedy about a hapless boy, who must defeat evil ex-boyfriends in order to win the hand of the girl he loves, is a fast-paced ride that bombards the senses. Michael Cera plays a loveable goof in the titular hero, a young man enamored with a woman named Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). In order to be with his lady love, Scott must fight her evil exes (six guys, one girl), who challenge him to truly strange contests. The film is a cinematic mash-up of Japanese anime and gamer culture, intended for the crowd who grew up on Nintendo and comic books, but it brings plenty of laughs all the same.
Greta Gerwig’s love letter to her hometown of Sacramento, California follows Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf as they navigate the often-frustrating relationship between mother and daughter. Ronan plays “Ladybird,” a young woman attending Catholic school who longs for the culture and change of scenery that New York City promises. Her mother, Metcalf, is overbearing and overprotective, and the family’s lack of money and social standing contributes to a rift between the two. Some hard truths are explored in this film, but watching Ronan manage teenage angst, first love, and everything in between will give you all kinds of nostalgia.
Charlie Kaufman’s latest film is based on a book of the same name and stars Chernobyl’s Jessie Buckley as a young woman meeting her boyfriend’s parents for the first time, which normally would be a happy event except she’s secretly been planning to break up the with the guy. That guy is Jesse Plemons, who seems to be in everything these days, and along with Toni Collette and David Thewlis who play his parents, they make for hellish dinner mates. There’s a sinister vibe permeating everything about this straightforward plot so if you think you know how this ends, let us be the first to tell you: You don’t have a clue.
Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight will always be remembered for winning the Academy Award for Best Picture after a mix-up that initially named La La Land as the winner. But that’s just an asterisk attached to a momentous coming-of-age story set over three eras in a young man’s life as he grows up in Miami, grappling with the sexuality he feels will make him even more of an outcast while searching for guidance that his drug-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) can’t provide. The film is both lyrical and moving and won justifiable acclaim for its talented cast, including a Best Supporting Actor award for Mahershala Ali as a sympathetic drug dealer.
Noah Baumbach’s star-studded divorce drama is pure Oscar bait, but in the best way. The film takes a look at messy breakups with Scarlett Johansson playing an actress and mother named Nicole, who is intent on separating from her stage director husband Charlie (Adam Driver). Laura Dern and Ray Liotta play their hard-hitting lawyers, who don’t help in diffusing the tension and resentment building between the pair when Nicole moves herself and their son across the country. It’s an intimate look at the emotional wreckage of a divorce and the struggle to put a family back together again, and it’s carried by some brilliant performances by Driver and Johansson.
This adventurous mindf*ck starring Adam Sandler finally landed on Netflix, and our only advice before watching this criminally-good romp is this: prepare yourself for a wild, over-the-top ride. Sandler gives one of his best performances, and the Safdie Brothers prove they’ve got a knack for crafting thrillers textured with grit and a realness that just can’t be beaten.
This time-hopping drama set in the backwoods of West Virginia is basically an excuse for director Antonio Campos to assemble his own Avengers-style squad of Hollywood A-listers. Seriously, everyone’s in this thing — Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Bill Skarsgård, Eliza Scanlen, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Haley Bennett, that kid who played Dudley in the Harry Potter franchise. The whole gang’s living in shacks and picking up hitchhikers only to murder them later and speaking in tongues and falling victim to generational trauma. It’s a heavy watch, and there’s not really a happy ending, but boy does Pattinson deliver a batsh*t crazy turn as a perverted preacher.
Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet star in this sci-fi romance about a couple reliving their romance following a painful break-up. The movie stars Winslet as the free-spirited Clementine, who decides to have her memories of a past relationship with beau Joel (Carrey) erased. Once Joel learns of this, he too decides to erase their time together, and the film is a reverse narrative of their love story, charting their break-up and all the things that led up to it. It’s a quirky romance, one that ends on a hopeful note and has just enough futuristic tech to feel worthy of the genre.
Before he scored his own MTV show, filmmaker Nev Schulman was exposing cons on the internet in this documentary, that basically introduces the term “catfish” to the cultural lexicon. The film captures Nev’s growing online-only friendship with a young woman and her family, exposing the secrets and lies they’re keeping along the way and reminding us all: you really can’t trust people.
This beautifully animated French fantasy film follows the story of a young man named Naoufel, or rather, his hand which has been severed from his body and spends most of the film escaping labs and trying to get back to its owner. The film flits between the past and present, watching Naoufel’s life unfold from a young orphan to an accidental carpenter’s apprentice — which is how he lost his appendage — all while exploring themes of love, loss, and destiny.
Any Spike Lee joint is worth a watch, but this genre-bending thriller about a group of black Vietnam War vets returning to the battlefield decades later feels especially timely. That’s because Lee manages to shed light on a little-known part of our shared history: the way our country treated Black soldiers returning from the war, but he also raises the stakes with a subplot that includes a buried treasure hunt and a heartwrenching mission to retrieve the remains of a fallen comrade. The cast, which includes Black Panther’s Chadwick Boseman, is brilliant, the story is gripping, and you’ll probably be seeing more talk of it come awards season, so go ahead and watch it now.
This teen comedy officially put Emma Stone on the map, handing her the lead in a modern-day retelling of The Scarlet Letter — just without most of the Puritanical bullsh*t and witchcraft slander. Stone plays Olive, a fairly clean-cut student who sheds her good-girl image when she pretends to have sex with a friend at a party. She starts trading imaginary sex for clout (and gift cards) but her growing reputation begins to wreak havoc on her friendships and romantic life. Stone has enviable leading-lady status here and she’s supported by a terrific cast.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars in this truly bonkers crime thriller from Dan Gilroy about a con-man who muscles his way into L.A.’s crime journalism scene and very quickly becomes the star of his own reporting. Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) is a petty thief who stumbles his way into the stringer profession — photojournalists who chase crime scenes to sell the footage to local TV stations. As Lou begins to record more exciting crimes, demand for his work grows and he starts staging scenes, obstructing police investigations, and inserting himself in high-speed chases to get the best shot. It’s a twisted, depressing look at the ethics of journalism and the consequences of consumerism, and Gyllenhaal has never been better.
Netflix spent much of 2017 trying to establish itself as an alternative to movie theaters as a place to find quality new films. The results were mostly strong, and none stronger than Mudbound, Dee Rees’ story of two families — one white and one black — sharing the same Mississippi land in the years before and after World War II. Rees combines stunning images, compelling storytelling, and the work of a fine cast (that includes Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan, Garett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Mary J. Blige) to unspool a complex tale about the forces the connect black and white Americans and the slow-to-die injustices that keep them apart.
Matthew McConaughey’s Dallas Buyer Club is a searing look at how the world failed the LGBTQ community during the devastating AIDS crisis. McConaughey stars as Ron Woodruff, a man diagnosed with the disease in the 80s during a time when the illness was still misunderstood and highly stigmatized. Woodruff went against the FDA and the law to smuggle in drugs to help those suffering from the disease, establishing a “Dallas Buyers Club” and fighting in court to the right to aid those in need. The story is all the more powerful because it’s true and McConaughey delivers one of the best performances of his career as Woodruff, a man who changes his entire outlook on life after being dealt a tragic blow.
Chris Evans stars in this sci-fi thriller from auteur Bong Joon-ho. The film, set years into the future following a devastating ice age caused by mankind, follows Evans’ Curtis who lives in poverty on a train that continuously circles the Earth and contains all that remains of human life. Curtis is part of the “scum” that the people relegated to the back of the train while the “elite” enjoy the privilege of wealth and status that comes with living in the front. Curtis sparks a rebellion that ends in bloodshed and a devastating reveal when he makes it to the train’s engine room and discovers just how the elite have been fueling their operation. It’s a dark, grimy action piece that should give fans a new appreciation for Evans’ talent.
This documentary, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, is based on the unfinished manuscript, Remember this House, by James Baldwin. The author and civil rights activist recounts the history of racism in the United States through personal observations and his relationships with friends and leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It’s a beautifully-shot, sobering reminder of how far we have yet to go when it comes to equality.
Writer/director Trey Edward Shults followed up his unnerving family portrait in 2015’s Krisha with a look at another family under the most desperate of circumstances. After an unknown illness has wiped out most of civilization, a number of threats — both seen and unseen — come for a family held up in their home out in the wilderness. It’s a subtle, dream-like tale that stars Joel Edgerton and Christopher Abbot as two patriarchs intent on keeping their families safe, no matter the cost.
Michael Sheen and Frank Langella deliver award-winning performances in this biopic from director Ron Howard. The film covers the series of post-Watergate TV interviews Nixon (Langella) did with British talk-show host David Frost (Sheen) and how they served as a public trial of sorts for the world’s once most powerful man. Frost is the empathetic underdog here trying to score the story of his career while Langella plays Nixon with a cheeky, knowing authority that makes you glad you aren’t in Sheen’s shoes.
Salma Hayek turns in an inspired performance of the famed revolutionary artist Frida Kahlo in this early aughts biopic. Hayek plays the visionary in her later years, as she navigates a tense, passionate marriage with fellow artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) and works to define her voice amidst crippling health problems. There’s plenty of joy to be found in her triumphs, but Hayek is at her best when the film asks her to display her emotional range, focusing on Kahlo’s lowest moments to paint a full portrait of a woman who would one day make history.
Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte star in this Southern crime thriller about a convicted rapist who’s release from prison after serving a 14-year sentence and decides to use his newfound freedom to stalk the family of the lawyer who convicted him. Nolte plays Sam Bowden, a lawyer and family man who made sure his client Max Cady (De Niro) was convicted for his heinous crimes. Cady comes back with a vengeance, using his knowledge of the law, knowledge he gained while in prison, to hunt down those closest to Bowden in order to get revenge on his former attorney. De Niro plays a particularly nasty bad guy, but Nolte is more than up for the challenge here.
It seems almost perverse to think about watching The Hateful Eight at home, given how big a deal Quentin Tarantino made of its 70mm format at the time of its release. And while it looks great on the big screen it’s not like that’s an option right now. And, in some ways, the film feels just at home on the small screen, since it’s at heart a chamber mystery that brings together a collection of unsavory characters (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and Jennifer Jason Leigh among them) as mystery and murder unfold in their ranks.
Patricia Highsmith made her name with dark, misanthropic thrillers like The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. But her early work also included The Price of Salt, a novel about the relationship between a shopgirl and an older married woman. Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett bring this doomed romance to life, playing a pair of lovers kept apart by societal conventions. Their heartbreaking romance ends as well as can be expected, but the journey definitely involves some tears.
Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce play off each other in this fictionalized comedy about two of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church. Hopkins plays Pope Benedict XVI near the end of his tenure as he struggles with the disillusionment of his role and his faith. Pryce plays Cardinal Bergoglio (who would later become Pope Francis) who’s also going through a crisis of faith and wishes to leave his post. What follows is two hours of two of the greatest actors paling around with each other, delivering some laughs as they get deep about the philosophical leanings of these two great men.
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence star in this drama that’s equal parts rom-com and a harrowing look at mental illness. Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a former high school teacher who recently completed a stint at a mental institution. Things aren’t going well for Pat. He’s moved back in with his overbearing parents (a wickedly-funny Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver), his now ex-wife cheated on him, he doesn’t get along with his therapist, and he’s operating under the delusion that if he gets fit and gets his sh*t together, he can get his wife back. Lawrence plays Tiffany, a young woman with problems of her own. She’s depressed after the death of her husband and prefers sex with strangers to drown the pain. The two strike up a friendship that pushes both to their mental and emotional limits. It’s a messy, complicated love story, which makes for a nice change of pace if sappy-sweet rom-coms just aren’t doing it for you.
Carey Mulligan stars in this 1960s coming-of-age drama from screenwriter Nick Hornby. Mulligan plays Jenny, a bright, gifted young woman with plans to attend Oxford University after completing her studies. She meets and falls for an older man named David (Peter Sarsgaard) who treats her to the finer things in life. Believing him to be a man of taste and means, her parents allow Jenny to travel with David, even become engaged to him before the truth about his past is revealed. As disappointing as the ending of this film is, it’s an interesting look at a young woman’s introduction to the world and to love.
Walking Dead alum Steven Yeun stars this psychological thriller from South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong. Yeun plays Ben, a rich millennial with a mysterious job who connects with a woman named Shin Hae-mi on a trip to Africa. The two journey back home together where Ben meets Shin’s friend/lover Lee Jong-su. The three hang-out regularly, with Lee growing more jealous of Ben’s wealth and privilege while he’s forced to manage his father’s farm when his dad goes to prison. But it’s when Shin disappears, and Lee suspects Ben’s involvement, that things really go off the rails.
Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams take on the planet’s most-watched singing competition with this campy comedy about an Icelandic duo named Fire Saga, who are set on achieving glory on the world’s biggest stage. Ferrell and McAdams play Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdottir, artists chosen to represent their nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, a real competition that features musicians from all over the world, who are often performing in wild get-ups. Dan Stevens almost steals the show while Pierce Brosnan and Demi Lovato make appearances. We’re calling it now: “Volcano Man” is going to be a bop for the ages.
This coming-of-age indie is based on a beloved book, but if fans were worried that the story of a depressed teenager who finds friends and a sense of belonging in a group of lovable misfits wouldn’t translate on screen, they shouldn’t have been too concerned. Stephen Chbosky wrote the novel, but he also penned the screenplay and directed this flick, which sees Logan Lerman play Charlie, the social outcast, and Emma Watson play Sam, the alt-pixie-dream girl he falls for. Everyone’s good in this, but it’s Ezra Miller’s Patrick who really stands out.
Is your town’s economy inexplicably dependent on a Christmas-themed event? Are you a white woman in finance, law, or publishing forced to return to your small town and rediscover the meaning of the holidays? Has your hyper-masculine ex-boyfriend/crush who cuts his own wood and runs a Christmas tree farm become a distracting obstacle in your company’s mission to take over the town and build a mall? If you answered yes to any of these, you might be in a Hallmark, Lifetime, or Netflix Christmas movie.
It’s that magical time of year when the various networks release their latest batch of Christmas catnip: a lineup of formulaic romance dramas set in snowy small-towns that are obsessed with the yuletide season and always in danger of something. A mom-and-pop shop being shut down. A single dad never finding love again. The town festival not having a jolly Santa Claus. A baking competition gone wrong.
Sure, you’ll rarely be surprised by any of the conflict or conclusions to these sweet-as-sugar-cookies stories, but there’s something familiar and comforting about them, especially this year. That’s why we’ve done the fairly easy, noncommittal work of ranking the holiday movies streaming in 2020 by only their plot. That’s right. We’re judging before we watch (if we watch at all), and honestly, we’ve been pretty fair and understanding about the whole thing. Here’s a completely biased, incredibly unresearched ranking of (most) of the Christmas movies coming to TV this year. Do with it what you will.
Hallmark
20. A Nashville Christmas Carol (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: A workaholic television producer in charge of a country music Christmas special deals with the return of her childhood sweetheart, and she receives a visit from the ghost of her recently deceased mentor, Marilyn warning her about her dark future. The ghost recruits both the Spirit of Christmas Past and the Spirit of Christmas Present to help her get back on track.
Why It’s Here: Wynonna Judd is the Spirit of Christmas Future. Enough said.
19. Christmas on the Vine (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: A young marketing executive is assigned to help a struggling family-owned winery in a town that has lost its Christmas spirit due to a large wine conglomerate.
Why It’s Here: Hallmark might be all about saving the small-town Christmas tree farms and Bed & Breakfast Inns but Lifetime ain’t about that nonsense. No, Lifetime knows the true Grinch of the holiday season are these massive wine conglomerates snatching up family-owned vineyards across the country. Will there be booze? Yes, and that means we might also get some drunken catfights and a subplot with an Australian hunk from Yellowtail romancing an alcoholic grape farmer. The possibilities are endless.
18. USS Christmas (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: Maddie, a reporter for a Norfolk newspaper, embarks on a Tiger Cruise during Christmastime where she meets a handsome naval officer and stumbles upon a mystery in the ship’s archive room.
Why It’s Here: Hallmark told Lifetime: “We see your unconventional vineyard and we raise you a military-themed cruise complete with a Murder-She-Wrote who-dunnit.” We only have one question: is the mystery in the ship’s archive room COVID-19? Is it?!
17. Cross Country Christmas (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: Former classmates Lina and Max are traveling home for the holidays, until a storm hits and they have to work together to make it home in time, no matter the mode of transportation.
Why It’s Here: I know they’re not going to be cross-country skiing to get home in time for Christmas. I know that. But, what if they did? What if the only way to make it back to their remote, snow-covered hamlet in Wisconsin after all other forms of transport have been grounded because of the “surprise” blizzard is to strap on some skis and bicker their way across miles of uncharted terrain?
16. Love, Lights, Hanukah (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: As Christina prepares her restaurant for its busiest time of year, she gets back a DNA test revealing that she’s Jewish. The discovery leads her to a new family and an unlikely romance over eight nights.
Why It’s Here: I’m sorry, if you don’t laugh out loud at the idea of a white woman learning she’s Jewish from a 23 and Me test and then reexamining her complicated feelings about the holiday industrial machine, I just have one question. Who hurt you?
Lifetime
15. Feliz NaviDAD (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: David (played by Mario Lopez) lost the holiday spirit after his wife passed, and now his daughter and sister are determined to bring it back. Their solution: Set him up on a dating site and bring new love into his life.
Why It’s Here: Is your single-dad still mourning the untimely death of his one true love? Is his grief just ruining your Christmas cheer? Do you want him to find a meaningless, temporary sex-buddy to keep him occupied so you can just enjoy your eggnog and Michael Buble in f*cking peace?! This is what I imagine the promo for this movie looks like.
14. The Christmas Lottery (2020) — BET
The Plot: The Davenport sisters have drifted apart over the years but when their Dad wins the lottery all he wants is to have his girls home for Christmas. Getting over years of resentment proves a big task but it’s pushed aside when their mother suffering from dementia loses the ticket. They put aside their differences to help find the ticket and in doing so get over their differences and finally learn to come together.
Why It’s Here: It’s like is Succession did a holiday episode and played a Christmas-themed game of “Boar on the Floor” but instead of a sausage link, everyone had to oink for a lottery ticket.
13. The Christmas Waltz (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: A woman dumped by her fiancé a month before her storybook Christmas wedding decides to take the series of ballroom lessons intended for her wedding dance.
Why It’s Here: Lacey Chabert is the Meryl Streep of Hallmark Christmas movies and this one might give her the chance to dive into her dramatic side. It’s an incredibly depressing premise tied in a holiday bow and sure, it’ll end with Chabert falling in love with her dance instructor, but if she wants to go dark for a bit — maybe do some lines of cocaine and strip in the backroom of a dive bar — we wouldn’t hold it against her. Not in 2020.
12. The Christmas Chronicles 2 (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: Kate Pierce, now a cynical teen, is unexpectedly reunited with Santa Claus when a mysterious troublemaker threatens to cancel Christmas – forever.
Why It’s Here: Do you know what this holiday season really needs? It’s not gingerbread men or mistletoe, it’s Santa Claus Snake Plissken surfing a snow-tsunami, defeating the Belsnickel, and saving the world. This movie might give us that future.
11. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: Set in the gloriously vibrant town of Cobbleton, the film follows legendary toymaker Jeronicus Jangle whose fanciful inventions burst with whimsy and wonder. But when his trusted apprentice steals his most prized creation, it’s up to his equally bright and inventive granddaughter (and a long-forgotten invention) to heal old wounds and reawaken the magic within.
Why It’s Here: Any movie that has the gall to give a main character such a blatantly fictitious, wholly ridiculous name as Jeronicus Jangle is sipping the kind of Christmas-flavored Kool-Aid I want to be high on this year. Will this movie lean into its chaotic-good roots? Will it give us a steampunk-themed Willy-Wonka holiday adventure? Is Jeronicus Jangle the new Grand Moff Pascal Tarkin? So many questions need answering from this plot.
Hulu
10. Happiest Season (2020) — Hulu
The Plot: A young woman with a plan to propose to her girlfriend while at her family’s annual holiday party discovers her partner hasn’t yet come out to her conservative parents.
Why It’s Here: Because the Gays deserve Christmas miracles too!
9. Christmas Comes Twice (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: A top newscaster who has achieved her career dreams but still has regrets about the guy who got away five years earlier goes on a ride around the carousel that magically takes her back in time to the carnival five years before… giving her a second chance at love before she must return to Christmas present.
Why It’s Here: Despite the time travel and the potential for Jackee to spontaneously appear, this is, surprisingly, not the carousel-themed-Christmas-romance we’re most excited for. Still, a possible Jackee guest spot ranks it high on the list.
8. Holiday Heartbreak (2020) — BET
The Plot: Karma hits hard at Christmas when a loving father discovers that his womanizing past is coming back to haunt his daughter after a curse destroys her love life.
Why It’s Here: Black magic and an orgy-loving dad who can’t keep it in his pants long enough for his daughter to find romance? This ain’t your grandma’s Christmas movie.
7. The Christmas Set-Up (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: New York lawyer Hugo heads to Milwaukee with his best friend to spend the holidays his mom who is also in charge of the local Christmas celebrations. Ever the matchmaker, Kate arranges for Hugo to run into Patrick, Hugo’s high school crush, who has recently returned after a successful stint in Silicon Valley. As they enjoy the local holiday festivities together, Hugo and Patrick’s attraction to each other is undeniable but as Hugo receives word of a big promotion requiring a move to London, he must decide what is most important to him.
Why It’s Here: It’s a Christmas movie for the Gays, but with Fran Drescher. Your move, Kristen Stewart.
Hallmark
6. Time For Us To Come Home For Christmas (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: Five guests are mysteriously invited to an inn to celebrate Christmas. With the help of the owner Ben, Sarah discovers that an event from the past may connect them and change their lives forever.
Why It’s Here: There’s a 5% chance this thing ends with a group of strangers getting murdered in a Christmas-decorated B&B. The parting shot will be the townsfolk adding their bodies to a mass grave disguised as a Christmas tree farm. A Mariah Carey jingle will play us out as the front desk receptionist takes a reservation for next year’s festivities. We’ll learn later that Jordan Peele produced.
5. Just Another Christmas (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: After taking a very nasty fall on Christmas Eve, grinchy Jorge blacks out and wakes up one year later, with no memory of the year that has passed. He soon realizes that he’s doomed to keep waking up on Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve, having to deal with the aftermath of what his other self has done the other 364 days of the year.
Why It’s Here: On a first pass, you might write this movie off as a Christmas-themed Groundhog’s Day comedy but look again. This dude lives a whole year, loses his memory of it, and must piece together what happened on Christmas Eve as everyone else is rushing around doing their holiday business. It’s the holiday version of Chris Nolan’s Memento, y’all.
4. A Sugar & Spice Holiday (2020) — Lifetime
The Plot: A rising young architect returns to her small hometown in Maine for Christmas where her Chinese-American parents run the local lobster bar. Following the loss of her beloved grandmother who was a legendary baker in their community, Suzie is guilted into entering the local gingerbread house competition. Teaming up with an old high school friend Billy Suzie must find the right recipes and mix of sugar and spice-infused with her cultural traditions to win the competition and perhaps find some love in the process.
Why It’s Here: (Insert Stefan voice here) This Christmas movie has it all: culturally diverse casting, a town-wide baking competition, the death of a sweet old grandma, a big-city-hotshot rediscovering her roots, an up-to-code lobster bar.
3. A Christmas Carousel (2020) — Hallmark
The Plot: When Lila is hired by the royal family of Marcadia to repair a carousel, she must work with the Prince to complete it by Christmas.
Why It’s Here: Where did all the manic pixie dream boys go? To Hallmark, where they play royal heads of state in nondescript all-white European countries with nothing better to do than fix a run-down carousel. Let the swooning commence.
2. The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: When Duchess Margaret unexpectedly inherits the throne to Montenaro and hits a rough patch with Kevin, it’s up to her double Stacy to save the day before a new lookalike, party girl Fiona foils their plans.
Why It’s Here: So this sequel requires a bit of a plot primer. Vanessa Hudgens played a baker and princess in the first film. Her baker is doing well, being married to a prince and all, but her princess is having boy trouble so, of course, they’re going to It Takes Two-s it again. But they’re also adding another lookalike to the party. You can’t tell us this whole holiday franchise isn’t just an elaborate ruse for Hudgens to indulge her multiple personality fantasies but the real reason we’re interested is because we NEED to see where this ends. Will we make it to five lookalikes? Or six? Will we one-day reach The Princess Switch: Switching Teams, where dozens of alternate Hudgens fight against each other in a Hunger-Games-arena-style bake-off competition?
Netflix
1. Dolly Parton’s Christmas On The Square (2020) — Netflix
The Plot: A rich and nasty woman, Regina Fuller, returns to her small hometown after her father’s death to evict everyone and sell the land to a mall developer — right before Christmas. However, after listening to stories of the local townsfolk, reconnecting with an old love, and accepting the guidance of an actual angel, Regina starts to have a change of heart.
Why It’s Here: Dolly Parton as a benevolent angel intent on rescuing a small, inconsequential town? Christine Baranski doing her best Miranda Priestly impersonation? The villainous caricature of malls, the unacknowledged scourge destroying the fabric of society, making us slaves to oversalted pretzels and Yankee Candles? Yes to all.
With Ron Howard’s high-profile awards movie, Hillbilly Elegy hitting Netflix this past week, just a few months after the lower-profile release of the much better The Devil All The Time, hillbilly movies are suddenly all the rage. For my money, the best hillbilly movie is Winter’s Bone. But long before that we had Deliverance, if not the “original” hillbilly movie, arguably the original prestige awards-bait movie about hillbillies.
The 1972 best picture nominee embedded the phrases “squeal like a pig, boy” and “you got a purdy mouth” so deeply into the fabric of pop culture that I knew them long before I ever saw the movie. Those lines, along with “Dueling Banjos” and the “inbred” banjo boy, have been homaged and parodied so many times that Deliverance‘s status as “the squeal like a pig movie” has long since eclipsed anything else about it. But is that all there is? How has the legacy of Deliverance affected the cinematic portrayals of hillbillies we get today?
The film follows four friends from suburban Atlanta — Lewis, Ed, Bobby, and Drew (played by Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox) — on their trip to canoe down the Cahulawassee River in north Georgia. It’ll be their last chance to see it before a new dam turns the whole area into a lake. The film was an adaptation of a John Dickey novel, and Dickey’s Cahulawassee was supposedly inspired by the Coosawattee, in the Blue Ridge mountains, which was dammed in 1974. Thus the four are the proverbial city boys traveling into America’s heart of darkness searching for Eden, only to find an indifferent mother nature and primordial evil, in the form of inbred hillbilly rapists.
Within that structure, Lewis (Burt Reynolds) and Drew (Ronny Cox) are a sort of middle-aged Jack and Ralph from Lord Of The Flies; Lewis as the dog-eat-dog hunter survivalist Jack, and Drew as the literal guitar-carrying Ralph, who just wants to play his music in the sun. Beatty’s Bobby, meanwhile, plays the Piggy, an insurance salesman who Lewis instantly nicknames “Chubby,” even though, by 2020 standards, Beatty is barely overweight. They stop at a gas station along the way, where they spot a handful of flea-bitten locals (“talk about genetic deficiencies, isn’t that pitiful?” says Bobby) who are at least smart enough to recognize the condescension radiating from their city betters. Drew starts a jam session with the inbred-looking “Banjo Boy” in the famous “Dueling Banjos” scene (the song won a Grammy in 1974), leading us to believe that maybe this whole getting back to nature thing is going to work out just fine.
It was obvious even then that with these obvious parallels to Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies, Deliverance was trying extra hard to do a symbolism. In his original two-and-a-half-star review in the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert wrote, “Dickey, who wrote the original novel and the screenplay, lards this plot with a lot of significance — universal, local, whatever happens to be on the market. He is clearly under the impression that he is telling us something about the nature of man, and particularly civilized man’s ability to survive primitive challenges.”
Storytellers tend to fall back on symbolism when their story feels like it’s missing something in terms of either import or believability, and Deliverance feels that way. After cocky macho guy Burt Reynolds — who appears to be wearing some kind of wetsuit vest, which seems like a self-defeating choice of clothing on few different levels — pays filthy yokels the Griner Brothers to drive their cars downstream, the group sets off down the river. Everything is going just fine until a different set of filthy, toothless hillbillies holds Ned Beatty and Jon Voight hostage in the woods with a shotgun, raping Beatty and about to force Jon Voight to perform oral sex just as Burt Reynolds finds them and shoots one hillbilly dead with a bow and arrow.
With the benefit of hindsight, there seems to be more going on than just the overt modern vs. primitive conflict that audiences would’ve noted at the time. Arguably even more obvious in 2020 is how much Deliverance feels like “Easy Rider on the water,” to use a Hollywood shorthand.
In his recent book, The People, NO: A Brief History Of Anti-Populism, historian Thomas Frank positions Easy Rider as the defining film of “The New Left,” a movie about free-loving, dope-smoking drug runners getting murdered by bigoted rednecks. It was released in 1969, at a time when the counter-culture was consciously beginning to distance itself from the rural and working class, who had traditionally been part of the Democratic coalition but who the counter-culture had come to blame for the Vietnam War. It’s a fairly uncontroversial point to make about Easy Rider, considering its screenwriter, Terry Southern, said as much himself. As Southern described the ending, he intended it as “an indictment of blue-collar America, the people I thought were responsible for the Vietnam War.”
It’s hard not to see Deliverance, released three years later, as reactionary in many of the same ways. It portrays human hillbillies as inextricable from mother nature, basically part of the landscape, and representatives of the primitive. “Za ovahwhelmink eendeefference of nature,” as Werner Herzog describes the bears in Grizzly Man.
Toothless, inbred, and perverse, the yokels are sort of mindlessly predatory. Whether out of envy or genetic predisposition, it feels a bit like the sixties hippie equivalent of “they hate us for our freedom.” And why not, it’s easier on the ego to assume that everyone who doesn’t like you is an unchangeable state of nature rather than a human being with free will who has made a rational decision that you suck.
Of course, Deliverance‘s anti-working class theme isn’t the only thing going on in it, and in some ways it’s softer than Easy Rider‘s. Thomas Frank notes that Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, whose father was in Grapes of Wrath, was an explicit rejection of the previous generation’s politics. Yet it’s notable in Deliverance, that, after being raped and savaged by dangerous yokels, the surviving group does arrive in town to find that the Griner Brothers have indeed parked their cars for them right where they promised. There’s even a group of “nice hillbillies” nearby, with the family belongings stacked atop a pick-up bed and a kid sitting on top in a chair, a clear echo of Grapes Of Wrath.
Still, when a local notes that everything in the town is about to be drowned underneath a lake, he says “that’ll be about the best thing that ever happened in this town.” The Sheriff gets more or less the final thought, saying “I’d kinda like to see this town die peaceful.”
In that way, Deliverance is an actual elegy to a hillbilly lifestyle that Hillbilly Elegy is not. It’s hard not to be taken by the romanticism of it. The church cemetery featured in the film actually is now hundreds of feet underwater, just like the movie said it would be. It actually is the literal glimpse at a lost landscape it says it is.
It’s hard to believe Hillybilly Elegy would exist if Deliverance hadn’t, that JD Vance would’ve felt compelled to write his memoir if he didn’t feel the sting of city slickers thinking his home people were all toothless raping hillbillies. Hillbilly Elegy feels to some extent like it grew out of a perceived slight, responding reflexively and defensively and using the same language of movie tropes. Thus it feels trapped in the same cycle of reheated culture war recriminations, which is maybe part of why it’s been so poorly received.
Yet you don’t get much sense that Vance has lost anything once he goes to Yale in Ron Howard’s movie. He’s simply outgrown the other hillbillies. He’s pulled himself up by the bootstraps and now he’s gone. It’s a statement of identity more than anything else. Deliverance is at least romantic about the landscape, even if it couldn’t quite see the people in it. When Ned Beatty’s character says that there’s something about the woods that we’ve lost in the cities, Burt Reynolds’ answers, “We didn’t lose it. We sold it.”
Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.
The South Korean pop group BTS have had quite the 2020. They’ve released two albums this year: Map Of The Soul: 7 , from February, and the new Be, which dropped earlier this month. Now the latter has a deluxe edition, and its release has nabbed the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts.
The deluxe Be sold 242,000 equivalent album units, of which 177,000 were album sales and 30,000 streaming equivalent album units. Its first-week total is the most any group has posted since their own previous album, Map Of The Soul: 7. That means they’ve had five chart-topping albums in the last two years. The last artist to accomplish this feat at a faster rate was Future, who landed five No. 1s in one year and seven months, spanning from 2015’s DS2 to 2017’s Hndrxx.
Megan The Stallion took the No. 2 spot with her debut, Good News, which logged 100,500 units. The album is now the rapper’s highest-charting release, surpassing her projects Fever and Suga, which debuted at No. 10 and No. 7 respectively. Good News also the most-streamed album of the week, thanks to 115.85 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs.
You can revisit our review of Megan The Stallion’s Good Newshere.
Star Wars has a new, Lego-themed holiday special out, and it’s been well-received — unlike the original Star Wars Holiday Special, which has been considered a bad TV classic since it aired in November 1978. The notorious one-off spin-off is the stuff of legend, no less because it’s never been officially released on home video, forcing the morbidly curious to subsist on bootlegs and YouTube uploads. While it’s amused and horrified many over the decades, those who were actually involved feel very differently — among them one of its stars, C-3PO actor Anthony Daniels.
Daniels was one of many from the original cast who were obligated to do the special, and unlike the clearly not-having-it Harrison Ford, he at least had a metal helmet to block his winces. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he said it was clear from the shoot that what they were filming wouldn’t be an instant classic, at least not in the good sense.
“This thing was meant to be a happy Life Day,” he told EW, referring to the bizarre, hazily defined holiday the characters were meant to be fêting. “Then we’re in this giant set draped with black, it was just awful.”
Daniels continued:
It was like being at a weird funeral, you have to watch it on YouTube for the full horror. Watch the last 10 minutes, and you’ll see why [the new show] contrasts rather well and is rather fun. Poor Mark, poor Carrie, poor Harrison – you can see it on their faces! They’re gritting their teeth and it shows; they’re like hanging onto each other. I think people learn their lesson, and I think we may be on track to make a regular Life Day holiday special, and why not?”
Forty years later and Daniels is still playing C-3PO, including on the Lego Star Wars Holiday Special. In fact, the English actor, now 74, has no plans on retiring with his most legendary gig.
“Until I choose to retire, I would not be comfortable with [somebody else playing the character] because it wouldn’t be Threepio as I have known him for 40-something years,” Daniels said. “I don’t want that to happen while I’m still cognizant and able to do it because — and this is not me aggrandizing myself — he’s the way he is and he’s the way he is is because of me. And if I’m around, that’s the way it should stay. Eventually, I will leave this planet, and I want him to go on and somebody will take over as that’s the nature of show business. I would not like him to disappear from the galaxy, even though I have.”
In the meantime, it is the holidays, so it might do you good to track down the original Holiday Special, and bask at such sights as Bea Arthur tending bar, Harvey Korman cooking, several minutes at a time of unsubtitled Wookiie-speak, The Jefferson Starship rocking out for some reason, and Carrie Fisher singing John Williams’ main Star Wars theme, this time with lyrics. Shooting it may have felt like being at a funeral, but it didn’t exactly kill the franchise. But not for lack of trying.
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