Month: December 2020

The Manhattan feels like the perfect cocktail for New Year’s Eve. The ball dropping and confetti flying is literally the iconic moment of the whole NYE celebration (sorry West Coasters). And in non-pandemic years, the parties across the island to ring in the New Year are second to none. With most of us still under quarantine for the 2020-2021 changeover, this is as close as you’re likely to get to Times Square.

For homebound revelers, the Manhattan is a very easy cocktail to mix. Better still, it takes very little effort to make over and over again as you refine the recipe for your palate, get increasingly buzzed, and dial in those mixing skills at home. It really just comes down to good bourbon, sweet vermouth, and Angostura bitters with a little orange and some quality cherries.

Even if you miss NYE, bookmark this for January. It’s light, full of winter vibes (thanks to the bitters), and a really satisfying cocktail to master.

The true beauty of this drink is that you can make it yours. Whereas some bartenders like to use Orange Bitters with the Angostura, I prefer fresh orange oils over the cocktail. That’s just me. Other recipes will call for strong rye. That’s cool. I prefer mine with a nice bourbon. Want to get all bespoke with a fancy Italian sweet vermouth no one’s ever heard of? Have at it! Play around! Riff! Experiment!

Let’s get to mixing.

The Manhattan

Ingredients:

• 3-oz. bourbon
• 1.5-oz. sweet vermouth
• 4 dashes Angostura Bitters
• Orange Peel
• Luxardo Maraschino Cherries
• Ice

Let’s talk about the base ingredients. A 2:1 ratio is the best bet to keeping balance in a good Manhattan. I’m using standard Woodford Reserve Bourbon. It’s crafted to be a workhorse bourbon that’s both nice as a sipper and nice as a mixer. It’s not exactly “cheap” but it’s not crazy expensive either, as it falls in the $30 to $40 range depending on where you live.

As for the sweet vermouth, I’m using Martini Rosso. No, it’s not fancy. But, it’s super accessible and gets the job done for $10 a bottle.

From there, I like to use a spritz of orange oils where other bartenders might use Orange Bitters. The orange oils, I think, add more depth. Plus, you can rub those oils all around the glass, creating a more complete experience.

Lastly, don’t skimp on cherries. Luxardo or Amarena cherries are a must. One, they’re darker and sweeter. Two, they add more to the drink with their syrupy nature.

You’ll Need:

• Coupe, cocktail glass, or Nick and Nora
• Mixing jug
• Barspoon
• Strainer
• Fruit Peeler or pairing knife
• Jigger

Method:

The first step is to set up the mixing station with everything. I then fill my coupe with ice to pre-chill it.

Next, I add the bourbon, sweet vermouth, and bitters into the mixing jug.

I fill that jug over half-way full with ice and start stirring.

I end up stirring for about 30 seconds or until the outside of the mixing jug is completely frosted over and the level of the cocktail has doubled. I also taste the cocktail at this point for balance.

Mine was a little spicy, so I added in a barspoon more of sweet vermouth and stir for another ten seconds. I test it again. Perfect.

Let’s build this cocktail! I remove the ice from the coupe and strain the Manhattan into the glass.

I then peel a thumb of orange rind from a nice orange. I spritz the oils over the bowl of the glass and then rub the oils all around the rim and stem of the coupe. This will help to create a well-rounded experience while drinking the drink.

Lastly, I use my barspoon to fish out two cherries. I don’t spear them. I like my cherries in the glass with a drop or two of the syrup as it adds a touch of svelte sweetness to the drink. It also means you get a nice little treat at the end of the cocktail.

The Bottom Line:

I could drink ten of these. They’re just so damn smooth, full of spice, oak, botanicals, orange, nuttiness, dried fruit … it’s like winter vibes in a glass. It’s also super to easy to sip.

The clarity of the bourbon next to the spiciness of the bitters and orange that lead towards that sweet cherry end is everything you need right now in a drink. I made another one immediately.

Eminem just broke a 50-year-old Billboard chart record, thanks to his album Music To Be Murdered By and its Side B reissue that came out the week before Christmas. According to a press release from Interscope, the reissue helped the album make the single biggest jump on the Billboard 200 chart in history, from No. 199 to No. 3, after its first week. The last album to hold the record was Bob Dylan’s 1970 album Self Portrait, which jumped from No. 200 to No. 7 in its second week on the chart — the second week of July 1970. It eventually peaked at No. 4.

Updating Music To Be Murdered By with 16 new songs, Eminem joined the 2020 trend of artists releasing supersized deluxe versions of their albums to stoke streams and keep them at the forefront of the public consciousness amid the glut of new projects that have released since the start of the pandemic and suspension of live touring. The album again dissed his 2018 enemy MGK, who wasn’t impressed by the new line about him, apologized to Rihanna for making light of her abuse at the hands of Chris Brown on a leaked track, and helped collaborator Skylar Grey double her Spotify listeners thanks to her placement on Side B.

You can read our review of the deluxe reissue here.

The nightmare that is 2020 will be over in a matter of hours, and before 2021 kicks off, artists have shared their resolutions/hopes/plans for next year.

A few days ago, SZA tweeted, “2021 has NO room for indifference lack of compassion or backhanded statements . I will literally forget your alive.” Continuing on that same thread yesterday, she added, “I want better friendships 2021 so imma be a better friend.”

In a new interview with Complex, Jack Harlow said he’s looking forward to getting in better shape in 2021: “Man, I want to get fit. And I’ve made some real strides towards the end of this year, but I just want to hit it into a new gear. I want to get super fit.” Meanwhile, in Charli XCX’s final quarantine diary entry, she wrapped up by looking forward to next year, writing, “All I can say is light your candles, get manifesting, and bring on 2021. If 2020 has taught us one thing, it’s that we really can’t predict what the future holds… so live your life and live it now because, honestly, who knows what will happen next?”

While not specifically making resolutions, artists like Foo Fighters, Doja Cat, and Khalid suggested or outright declared that releasing new music is among their 2021 goals and/or plans. As for Franz Ferdinand, they just want to get on a stage in front of a live audience again.

Check out some other artist posts below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If you love hip-hop music and the people who tug on its endlessly fascinating narrative threads, you probably know the work of Mel D. Cole. In the early 2000s, Cole made his name as a self-taught photographer, quickly landing on the radars of massive names in the industry — especially amongst the “Soulquarians,” a collective that includes Questlove, Common, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, and other “conscious” hip-hop and R&B stars of the era. In the process, Cole became renowned for intimate pictures that transmitted the raw energy of live shows and captured the charisma of so many of our favorite musicians.

When the quarantine hit (right after the release of Great: Photographs of Hip Hop 2002-2019), Cole’s main job of photographing rap shows evaporated overnight. At the same time, he saw the tenor of political conversations reaching a fever pitch and agonized over the killing of George Floyd. Wanting to get involved, the 44-year-old hit the streets — traveling across the northeast to photograph protests and Trump rallies. He came away with a renewed love of his craft and a passion for documentary photography.

In short, he created opportunity out of chaos.

With the year winding down and the inauguration coming up, I spoke with Cole about his work, his recent career shift, and the treatment he’s received at Trump events. He threw in a classic Diddy story for good measure.

First of all, tell us how you went from photographing hip-hop to photographing politics. Because obviously, so many people know you from your history in photographing the legacy and the culture of rap music. At what point did you start saying, “Okay, I want to photograph politics and see what we have there”?

I’ve always been drawn to conflict, and I always said to myself that if something was to happen in my own backyard, I’m at the point in my career where I’m going to handle it. I’m going to document it. What happened? COVID happened. A couple of times, maybe four or five times, I went out in my car and I took photos from the car.

Then, when the marches and the protests started when George Floyd got killed, I was just inspired to go out and document, because felt like I had to use my platform to make sure that the story is being told correctly, from my point of view. That led to everything else. You start having all these counter-protests, and things like that. I became fascinated with the other side of the coin as well.

I don’t think that’s a particularly common fascination right now. A lot of people in culture get a lot of pushback for showing any interest in the “other side.”

I got to the point where, when I would go to these protests and counter-protests, and there were clashes, I would stay on the other side of the barricade. It’s a little bit more interesting, after spending months embedded, basically, with Black Lives Matter, so it’s like, “Why not be on this other side in this?” Especially when they weren’t fucking with me, they weren’t telling me to leave. They weren’t telling me all the classic, “Fuck you. Get the fuck out of here!” kind of shit. I’m like, “I’m going to take advantage of it.”

They didn’t deny you access at all?

I figured out, as long as you are not out there talking that same shit that the opposition is, no one’s going to fuck with you. You just keep your mouth shut and just document. I’ve been that way the whole time.

Is it easy to do that shit, being a Black man? Fuck no! It’s not easy, because sometimes it’s like, “Fuck.” I forget that I have the camera, and I have this white guy yelling — not necessarily at me, but at someone that looks just like me. It’s like, “Fuck.” I want to scream back at him but I just try to keep it as professional as possible.

I can’t imagine that you feel safe as a Black man or as a journalist in some of these scenarios.

I’ve been punched in the face in Philly not saying shit, just by documenting it. A guy just clocked me in the fucking face. I’m recording with my iPhone and taking photos. Shit happens. It’s your safety. You not only have to worry about COVID, but you got to worry about the police and also the racists.

So… yeah, that’s how I pretty much got into photographing politics. It was something that I never thought that I would be interested in, let alone focus on. [Fall 2020] I ended up at my second Trump rally in Pennsylvania. Being fucking like… 20 feet away from the man, it is super fucking interesting.

Some people seem torn on whether every Trump supporter is a raging racist or a silent racist or if it’s possible to support his agenda and somehow not be a racist. You’re indicating that you found some level of hospitality around Trump fans, at times. Do you feel like the Trump fan is a person who code switches to at least seem un-racist?

I have really good friends that are Trump supporters that flat out told me that they voted for Trump. White guys. One is a really good friend. When he ran the first time, we had a discussion about the situation. I tried to tell him, like, “Yeah, man, I don’t know if he’s going to switch into presidential mode.” He was hooked on, “Yeah, he’s just doing it to get in office,” which seemed like what a lot of people were saying who were on his train. What I found out now is that I don’t think that everyone that supports him is a racist. Are there plenty of racists that support this man? Abso-fucking-lutely. Absolutely. The Proud Boys, the super right-wing, the white supremacist type of people — absolutely. I think that they are racist as fuck. I don’t really want anything to do with them, but if I had the opportunity to document them and be embedded with them… yeah, I would do it. But it’s like, to be homeboys and chill, have a beer just on some personal shit? No, I’m good on that. But if we could chit chat and talk and I could document the whole experience, all right, cool. I’m down.

Not because you’re an apologist for them, obviously, but because you’re a storyteller.

Absolutely. In no way, shape, or fashion would I turn down the opportunity to photograph Donald Trump. I don’t agree with him, and no, I didn’t vote for him, but as a storyteller, as a… I guess now I can call myself a photojournalist, and today I put “journalist” on my nameplate. There’s no way you could turn down the opportunity to talk to arguably the most famous man in the entire fucking world. You just don’t do it as a storyteller. You take the opportunity.

Just to back up a little bit. You came into my life through hip-hop. You’re a person who saw rap music, saw what it was doing, and just knew, from my impression, like, “Oh, fuck. This is where the action is. I’m going in.” Is that how you perceive it? Then, if that’s the case, when did you just know?

It all came from just a love of the music. Basically, my whole life I always knew that I was going to be a “somebody,” so to speak. I just wasn’t going to be a guy that worked a normal 9:00 to 5:00 job, I was going to do something. But for a lot of the years of my life, I didn’t exactly know what that was going to be. I didn’t have a clear-cut direction.

I wasn’t the kid that grew up, “I’m going to be a firefighter,” from nine years old, or, “I’m going to do…” whatever. Any of those jobs. Growing up in Syracuse, I knew that I was going to be bigger than what was happening at the moment. That took some years, and I thought I found it for awhile — I was going to be a teacher. But my father owned a record shop and music was always the shit to me.

You felt that energy in a special way.

When it really clicked is when Common put out Electric Circus back in 2002. I took a couple of disposable cameras to his concert at SOB’s in the city, in New York. I took photos. I was a big fan, standing out. I’m like, “Common, yeah!” For me, the Neo-Soul era is one of my favorite eras of hip-hop. I wanted to grow dreads and live in Philly and hang out with Questlove and The Roots and be in these sessions. I always imagined myself being there.

That night really changed my life, because I took those photos, and then the next thing you know, I put them in a shoebox, Adidas shoebox, and it was maybe a year, month, whatever it was, I started to read more magazines and started to really dive in. Next thing you know, a light bulb went off and I was like, “Fuck, I think my photographs are just as good as this shit that I’m seeing in Rolling Stone, in Complex, and Billboard,” and all these other publications. The shit that I’m seeing on the blogs. It was like, “I think I can do this shit.”

That jolt of confidence that propels a dream.

I went and I bought a digital camera, and shit. Boom. I just started shooting. It was a way for me to … I would go to parties, events, take photos. I would go to concerts. I became the guy with the camera. “Here’s Mel. Mel with the camera.” Kept coming back, and back, and back, and back. I’m self-taught. I taught myself how to use the camera, how to take photos.

To me, it’s like hip-hop is a love of my life, but being able to also use hip-hop in a way to branch off and do different things, like what I’m doing now with my work, is amazing. Because without me being who I am and working so hard to be one of the best, shit to push my career forward, a lot of these doors that are open for me now wouldn’t be open. Like me working in the soccer world, and me shooting politics and Black Lives Matter, and all that stuff. People wouldn’t know that I could shoot all this stuff; they wouldn’t be seeing it if it wasn’t for hip-hop.

There are images that hip-hop fans know of yours. What are the images that you get asked about or that people talk with you about the most?

From hip-hop? Common and Erykah Badu at SOB’s. Questlove in the bathroom putting on the hairspray. More recently, work stuff — Kendrick Lamar, Drake, a lot of Trey Songz photos. Stuff with Talib Kweli, being around him and Mos Def. I feel so privileged to just sometimes be in the same room with these motherfuckers, even though a lot of these guys are my friends now.

Being able to pick up this phone and text Talib, or whatever, having access to … I could have Mos Def say, “What’s up?” That shit still fucking gives me a little tingle. I’m like, “Yeah.”

You became a voice of hip-hop culture rising up from fandom, which is a thing that can happen now, probably, but happens in a much different way. Whereas when I think back to then it was… Do you feel like it was kind of the Wild West, where everyone was like, “Look, if you want in on this thing, this is what’s happening”? Like, “This culture is evolving really quickly. If you’re going to hang out, you gotta get involved.” Was that the attitude?

When I started, there wasn’t anyone photographing the type of music, and the type of events, and parties, and nightlife shit that I was really shooting. There were a couple of other photographers. When you compare it to now, you go to a concert and it could be 30 photographers. 30 people with real cameras, and then everybody’s iPhones. I wouldn’t necessarily say it was the Wild West, it was more of just like, “Do your thing,” you know what I’m saying?

“Capture it, and keep coming.” The way I worked, it was like I just kept coming back. I never really asked for favors, or any of that shit. I tried to let the work speak for itself so I can get the attention of these people. Like Questlove. Having his attention and having him be on my side was fucking humongous. It was huge.

One person believing in your talent — especially at that caliber — can make all the difference in the world.

Quick story. There was an instance where I was at Santos in the city in 2009. It was Q-Tip’s birthday party. Q-Tip is there, Jay Z is there, Grand Puba, a couple of other people. They’re all in the DJ booth. Diddy was there. I get up, and in my brain, I’m already like, “Fuck. All right. I see the most epic fucking group shot of all the time. I got to get this shit. This is going to be historic.” I’m going through all of this shit in my brain. I’m slightly nervous. I get waved up to the DJ booth. Diddy turns around, I show him the universal sign, “Can I take your photo?” It was loud as shit in here. Diddy shakes his head no, tells the security guard to get me the fuck out of there, basically. Didn’t use those exact words, but he very well could have.

I get on Twitter, and I start making fun of the situation. Questlove sees this shit. At this time, Quest and I are already friends. He tweets Diddy and tells Diddy that I am going to be the next Gordon Parks. He tells Diddy to fuck with me, basically.

The next day, Questlove gives me a call. I tell him the story. He says, “Oh, man, shit. I thought that’s what happened. Diddy wants to know if I could give him your phone number.” Diddy calls me in two days. Me and Diddy have this fucking amazing conversation. Long story short, he hires me to be his personal photographer for his white party out in Beverly Hills.

Which is a dream on so many levels and amps up your career in a huge way — Diddy is a star-maker.

That was like the next stepping stone in my career, where I was not just a photographer that was shooting downtown nightlife and fucking with that shit, and going to Santos, and all this shit. Then on the music, fucking with The Roots, and Talib, and Mos, and all those guys. Then this party, and I was getting picked up by all of these publications. Black gossip magazines, and online shit. It’s like this shift. I became even more known in a way.

It must’ve felt almost like, “I have to keep pushing” and then a couple of things fell into place, and then it’s like, “Hold on for dear life!” Is that close?

Yeah, man. At that time, in 2009, so we’re still in the Blog era, iPhones really weren’t popping, so I was still carrying around a big ass camera. Then it was like technology just seemed like it just took this fucking leap for photographers, to the point where everybody fucking has the cameras now. Then my shit gets seen as less special, so now I have to hustle extra hard because there’s a whole bunch more competition, and a lot of kids that will come up doing a lot of fucking great work.

A lot of things changed, man. Though I’m still happy to fucking have a career and still be doing what I do.

Let’s talk a little bit about your book. I have it on my shelf — bought it the week it was released — and I feel like it captures the energy of your photography so well, and just tells the story that you want to tell with so much… life in it. What was the motivation behind that, or the thought process? I know, of course, it’s important for a photographer to put a book out, but what was the thought process that governed the whole thing?

I think all important artists — you just have to do a few things. You have to have exhibitions, and you have to have a book. You got to publish this shit. Especially in this day and age, you got to have something tangible for people to have. You put your stamp on your shit.

For me, I feel like, if I want to be taken seriously as an artist, a photographer, I need to have a book. Felt like it was the right time. I’ve been in the game long enough and had a great enough body of work to put out there. That was the reason I did the book, basically. It was like, “It’s time.” Then I was like, “Shit. Nobody has put out a hip-hop book” — featuring just one photographer — in a long time.

I was like, “Shit. I got to get my book out before Mannion does.” Jonathan Mannion, I’m referring to. There are a couple other photographers I tracked. I’m like, “Shit. Let me get this out there.”

Contact High came out before your book, right?

Yeah. I was kind of pissed off that I wasn’t asked to be in that book, honestly. I was like, “What the fuck?” I’m like, “Why am I not in this shit?” But I believe it was a lot of mostly just film guys, I guess because that’s … The “contact” being a contact sheet. I was like, “I have some film work too.” I felt some kind of way about that, to be honest.

I feel you. Five times a day I feel some kind of way if I’m not asked to be part of something where I think my name belongs. But, as the poet says, “success will be the best revenge.” And you’ve taken your success and become the king of the parlay. That said, you parlayed the hip-hop into journalism, into connections, into some portraiture. Now, as you’ve moved into getting more political, you’ve parlayed one career into another? You’re telling human stories, you’re not relying quite as much on celebrity now. How has that been for you?

What I’ve been doing since, I guess, the end of, shit, Memorial Day of this year, has been the most important work of my entire career, of my entire life. There’s been nothing more important than what I’ve been documenting, this uprising. It’s just hard to put it in words how powerful what I’ve been seeing and experiencing has been. I didn’t expect it to be going on this long, to be quite frank. I absolutely see it not ending anytime soon. I’ve had to take emotional breaks from it to just detox. It becomes too much physically, emotionally, and whatever other way. I have a kid at home, I have a wife. Then we haven’t even talked about COVID, and how that is affecting me — just being out and trying to stay safe.

It seems like you were almost called to tell these stories.

I never thought that I would be documenting or shooting any of this. If COVID didn’t happen, if George Floyd didn’t get killed, or … Who knows? I would still be shooting concerts and still trying to be the best at that. Now my goals have shifted to the point where my work has been picked up by the New York Magazine. I was in Rolling Stone, but not for music, which is mind-boggling to me. I have work in the Atlantic. It’s just such a tremendous thing. I have all of these different people follow me, editors from National Geographic and Time Magazine. All of these publications that I thought were out of reach for me.

I always dreamed of, “Man. National Geographic. It would be awesome to shoot some of that stuff.” But I just didn’t necessarily know how I was going to do it. I have dreams of going to isolated areas in Africa and in documenting some of those people, like I used to see in the magazines back in the ’90s and in high school, and all that kind of shit. Now those things are actually tangible. The type of people that hire and put you on assignment to do those things are fucking with me now. It’s totally mind-boggling.

I was talking to an editor from National Geographic. I’m like, “What the fuck? Who am I becoming?” But this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I still want to do music, but this is it, man. As I’m getting older too, I’m 44. I always thought that I wasn’t going to shoot music forever. I don’t want to be in a club. I love you, Trey [Songz], you my brother, but I can’t be in the clubs with you all goddamn night all the time. I feel like I got a couple more tours and then I’ll just focus in on the photojournalism type of thing.

What do you see the stories you want to tell over the next couple of years?

Good question. I don’t even know, man. I’m just letting it take me where it takes me. I really love shooting things from an outsider point of view. That’s really intriguing to me, just being able to do things that the normal Black guy, Black photographer, Black journalist wouldn’t necessarily be able to do. Or not necessarily unable to do, but maybe won’t do — like going to a Trump rally.

I think for me, that shit, being able to show my followers that, “Here I am. I’m doing this, and I’m talking to these people.” Get outside your little bubble sometimes and see what the other people think instead of just listening or watching it from afar. You can actually go have a conversation with somebody. I think that’s where I want my work to lead me.

In the era of Twitter canceling and notes app apology letters, musicians and celebrities can find themselves backtracking on off-handed comments that go unexpectedly viral. That’s exactly what happened this week when a clip of Young Thug circulated that showed him making a bold statement about his discography in comparison to Jay-Z’s. But the rapper as now clarified his comment, saying that it was blown out of proportion due to “internet sh*t.”

Thugger recently appeared on the podcast Million Dollaz Worth Of Game where he discussed the possibility of joining a Verzuz battle. The rapper responded that he’d be willing to go head-to-head with Lil Wayne because they both have wide influence. Further explaining himself, Thugger compared his catalog of hits to the likes of Jay-Z. “We ain’t talking about stream sales, we ain’t talking about none of that. We talking about anthems, we talking about songs they know. When I perform, I got 30, 40 songs that the whole stadium going to know. They gone know these mothaf*ckers, all 30 songs. […] N****, Jay-Z ain’t got 30 songs like that.”

Thug went back on his comment during the conversation, later saying he was just using Hov as an example of a veteran artist. But fans stuck to his original comment, saying the rapper was being disrespectful.

After withstanding the backlash, Thugger took to Instagram to offer clarification. Blaming his words’ virality on “internet sh*t,” Thug said, “I was talking [too] fast but y’all know what I meant.”

See Thug’s explanation above.

Young Thug is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Throughout 2020, the coronavirus pandemic and the collective responses to it had a profound effect on the music industry — especially independent artists, who often rely more on live shows than record sales for the majority of their income. However, one independent rapper said that his career flourished this year, boasting that it is “pandemic-proof” and that he has been getting his checks in the mail like clockwork despite the economic slowdown.

Russ, who released two projects this year and has been a vocal advocate for independent artistry, told Tidal’s B. Dot in a new interview, “I’m fortunate because I’ve set up my career to be pandemic proof.” He explained that rather than planning for a global breakdown of the live entertainment industry, he instead ensured that he owned the legal rights to all of his output, which guaranteed a bigger slice of the profit for himself. “It’s pandemic proof via mailbox money, you know, and via ownership and owning my masters and things like that,” he elaborated. “TuneCore checks didn’t stop. If anything, I’ve made more money on TuneCore this year than I did last year because I was able to record more, which means I was able to put out more, and I went fully independent.”

His output this year included the full-length project Shake The Snow Globe and its deluxe version, as well as the Chomp EP featuring Ab-Soul, Black Thought, Busta Rhymes, and more. His independent success allowed him to also give away $20,000 to his Twitter followers to boost their spirits during the summer lockdown.

NYE is coming fast. Most years, there are events and parties to choose from. Festivals to attend and planes to catch. In 2020, people in most states are on their own. That means that it’s time to start chilling the champagne.

Picking a bottle of champagne for ringing in the New Year is no small task. Champagne (the real stuff from France) isn’t exactly cheap. That said, it doesn’t always need to be pricey, either — you can get a lot for under $80. And if you want a classic bottle — whether it’s for toasting or mixing cocktails — we’re about to give you our favorites.

A word or two on the methodology of this list. One, we’re only talking about actual champagne, made in Champagne, France. While U.S. producers like to slap the word “Champagne” onto their sparkling wines, those aren’t champagne (and it’s still kind of a dick move for U.S. producers to do that). Two, we’re going mostly on taste with this list. We’re looking at how much we want to drink the stuff. In the end, the price was a bit of a factor in two bottles — one was ranked higher due to its excellent price tag while another missed the first place slot due to being needlessly expensive.

Finally, since these champagnes all fall under fairly strict guidelines — a blend of Pinot and Chardonnay grapes, generally three to five years cellared in oak, made in Champagne, France, etc. — we’re going to focus on the houses that make these bottles special instead of telling you over and over again that there’s a mix of Pinot and Chardonnay in the blend. Beyond those parameters, hopefully, this list will give you a sense of which bottle of champers might suit your palate. Pro Tip: Whichever bottle you choose, you’ll want to get it chilling at least 24-hours before the ball drops.

The deeper the chill, the better. Which is a pretty good attitude to enter 2021 with, in general.

8. Laurent-Perrier Brut

Average Price: $45

The Champagne:

Eugene Laurent and Mathilde Emilie Perrier were a husband and wife team that created the third best-selling champagne in the world. When Laurent died, he left the whole operation to Perrier, who took the champagne worldwide and found massive success.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a beautiful balance of bright lemon citrus and very summery French florals on the nose (think fields of lavender baking in the sun). That citrus leads towards a ripe apricot sweetness and body with a buttery underbelly that’s counter to all that dry fizz and tartness from the citrus. The end is mellow and really embraces the florals, lemon, and apricot.

Bottom Line:

This is by no means mediocre champagne. It’s perfectly suited for toasting in the New Year. It’s just that something had to be stuck in this slot. Also, this one makes for a great French 75 with all that lemony-ness.

7. Veuve Clicquot Brut

Average Price: $60

The Champagne:

The famed Madame Clicquot — or Veuve Clicquot which literally means “Widow” Clicquot — was instrumental in creating the world of champagne that we know today. She’s credited with the riddling process (clarifying the wine), creating rose champagne, bringing vintages (age statements) into the mix, and generally making the sparkling wine a celebratory drink in the highest echelons of the European elite.

Clearly, Clicquot was both an amazing innovator and marketer, and her champagne continues to shine.

Tasting Notes:

Imagine butter-soaked baked apples inside a buttery and slightly salty brioche next to white grapes and sultanas. Hints of tart yet sweet apples mingle with a mist of orange oils as a nutty base leads towards a savory fruitiness. That salty-sweet brioche returns on the dry yet softly sweet end.

Bottom Line:

This is really solid champagne all around. The only real reason it’s this low on the list is the high-ish price and note of sweetness that lingers a little long for us.

6. Moët & Chandon Nectar Impérial

Average Price: $60

The Champagne:

Moët is one of the old-school champagnes that goes back to the court of French royalty. The popularity of this wine cannot be understated. They’re one of the biggest producers of champagne in the world. That’s why we’re picking a little higher-range bottle. The Nectar Impérial is a special blend of reserve wines chosen to add a deeper sense of richness and complexity to the bubbly.

Tasting Notes:

The flute pulls you in with a sense of tropical fruits leaning towards mangos and pineapple while stonefruits lurk in the background. Those stonefruits take over on the palate with apricots and meaty plums leading toward a white grape touch next to a hint of vanilla. Finally, that vanilla takes on a slightly creamy edge (thanks to a touch of Chardonnay in the blend) that really brings a well-rounded body to this sip.

Bottom Line:

This is a crowd-pleaser! It’s light and fruity yet feels like you’re drinking something with a good body that’ll get you a little tipsy.

5. Taittinger Brut

Average Price: $50

The Champagne:

Speaking of Chardonnay, Taittinger is a blend of old monastery wine-making, modern Chateau culture, and a deep history of Chardonnay grapes. The non-vintage wine leans into the Chardonnay grapes in the blend (basically, flipping on its head the ratio of Pinots to Chardonnay in the average blend), making this an outlier in the world of champagnes.

The result is a nice break-from-the-norm bottle of bubbly.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a lightness that’s a bit of a trick, as the nose will tempt you with hints of peaches, buttery and yeasty brioche, summer wildflowers, and a whisper of vanilla. The palate holds onto the stonefruit as a fresh honeycomb sweetness arrives late and brings the whole sip together.

Bottom Line:

This really feels like a well-rounded bottle that is very easy to drink. Really, we’re splitting hairs on the ranking from here on down.

4. Nicolas Feuillatte Brut Reserve Exclusive

Average Price: $36

The Champagne:

This champagne might be the most representative of the region in a single bottle. Nicolas Feuillatte is really more of a collective (or union) of 100 individual winemakers and 82 winemaking cooperatives covering over 5,000 vineyards around Champagne in France. That equates to Feuillatte pulling its juice from a swath that covers around seven percent of the wine grown in the region.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a real sense of dry breadiness next to ripe apricots and peaches that draws you in. The body is effervescent and full of bubbles that burst with that fruit alongside hints of vanilla and musty cellars full of old oak barrels.

Bottom Line:

The price of this bottle really helps it scratch into the top five. There’s really no reason this shouldn’t cost $60 per bottle like so many others on the list.

3. Dom Pérignon Vintage

Average Price: $200+ (depending on Vintage)

The Champagne:

Dom P is Moët & Chandon’s “prestige” line of champagne. So in a sense, this is Moët’s “good stuff.” The bottle was named after legendary monk and champagne cellarmaster Dom Pérignon. The short of it is: Ol’ Dom was instrumental in making champagne into the fizzy wine we love back in the mid-1600s. These days, Moët honors that history with their best stuff.

Tasting Notes:

This is going to vary depending on which “Vintage” you snag. The throughline with Dom is the blend of Pinot and Chardonnay but that can vary a lot depending on the year.

If you come across the 2008 Vintage, expect a really nice dose of mint, lemon oils, and peach up top. That’ll lead towards a sense of orange oils next to musty oak with a creamy body that’s refined to a whipped butter lightness. It’ll just feel right.

Bottom Line:

This is the “good stuff” by definition. Still, we’d argue that there are perfectly good wines that reach these vaulted heights without the price tag. So let’s get to those.

2. Louis Roederer Brut Premier

Average Price: $48

The Champagne:

Louis Roederer is one of the oldest Champagne houses that also happens to be one of the last fully independent shingles. The wine really made a name as the champagne of the Russian Royal Court pre-revolution. As those royals ran for their lives, they spread the love of Louis Roederer to Paris, London, New York, and Shanghai, helping make the wine a truly international brand.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a real sense of an orchard full of stone fruits next to lightly roasted nuts with a hint of a warm croissant on the nose. That butter and yeasty bready fades first as the ripe apricot and gooseberries counterpoint a deep dryness and light bubbles. There’s very little sweetness at play as a touch of oaky vanilla pops on the very end.

Bottom Line:

This is the entry-level champagne that’ll lead you to the infamous Cristal (that brand of champers that rappers wouldn’t shut up about in the 90s.). That aside, this is almost too easy to drink. We’ll put it this way, the bottle will be empty before you know it and you’ll be left wanting more.

1. Bollinger Special Cuvee Brut

Average Price: $65

The Champagne:

Bollinger reaches all the way back to the 1500s with its winemaking skills. The brand spent centuries becoming the icon it is today. The wine got a huge boost when it became the champagne of Queen Victoria’s court in the late 1800s, which led to it being the official drink of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Thanks to the guidance of Lily Bollinger post-WWII, the brand became the champagne the adventurers, jet-setters, and what the so-called cool kids drank.

Tasting Notes:

This draws you in with a sense of over-ripe peaches next to tart apples stewed with dark spices and wine. That spice and apple bring about an almost apple butter feel as the svelte nature of the sip leads towards a brioche loaded with walnuts and that spiced stewed apple next to a buttery foundation.

This is just smooth, subtly bubbly, and just the right amount of dry on the finish.

Bottom Line:

This 100 percent lives up to the hype. It really is that well-rounded, quaffable, and delightful. Cheers! Someone queue up Auld Lang Syne.

As she moves into the post-Star Wars phase of her career, Daisy Ridley is opening up about some of the struggles she’s continued to face as a burgeoning actress. While discussing her upcoming film, Chaos Walking, Ridley revealed that an undisclosed person on set made a comment that caught her completely off guard even after coming off her blockbuster role as Rey Skywalker.

“I’ve been told that I’m intimidating,” Ridley told Tatler. “That was on Chaos Walking. I was having my hair done, having my wig put on. I remember thinking, ‘God, should I be smaller? Should I be quieter?’” While the comment might seem innocuous by itself, Ridley elaborated that it was part of a long line of unusual remarks including a director making her feel self-conscious about her personality. Via Yahoo:

“I’ve been called aggressive, too,” she told the magazine. “My energy is ‘quite aggressive.’ That was during a meeting with a director. I was thinking: ‘But why? Is it because I maintained eye contact? Is it because I’m passionate about what we’re talking about?’ I dunno. You have that horrible sinking feeling of, ‘God, do I not come across the way I think I do?’”

You can see Ridley on the cover of Tatler below:

Unfortunately, Ridley has had lots of practice dealing with criticism. Her role of Rey has been a lightning rod for controversy in the Star Wars community ever since her first appearance in The Force Awakens, and things did not get better when the sequel trilogy came to an end with the critically panned The Rise of Skywalker. While Ridley has put on a brave face publicly, she recently admitted that it was tough seeing the mixed reactions to the final film.

“January was not that nice,” she told the DragCast podcast. “It was weird, I felt like all of this love that we’d sort of been shown the first time around, I was like, ‘Where’s the love gone?’” However, despite the backlash, Ridley is still “really proud” and “thrilled” to have been a part of the Star Wars saga.

(Via Yahoo!)

Amid millions of Americans falling into unemployment, the president spreading false information about the election, and number of other tragic events in recent months, Fox News anchors have decided to direct their outrage on two things this year: Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion flaunting their sexuality in the “WAP” video and Harry Styles wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue. Though the photo of Styles in a dress was published back in November, one Fox News guest is still up in arms about it.

Appearing on the Fox News segment The Ingraham Angle Tuesday night, conservative author and producer Raymond Arroyo listed off his opinion on things to avoid in 2021. Included in the round up was a direct message to Styles: “Harry Styles, please stick to Armani menswear or at least pants. The gender-bending wardrobe is not edgy or artistic, you look ridiculous. And you’re not breaking any new ground. David Bowie did this decades before you were even conceived — and the pearls were a really bad look.”

Of course, Styles fans jumped to the singer’s defense. They wondered why conservatives care so much about a singer’s choice of clothing and it sparked a viral and NSFW hashtag.

Some showed love to Styles while others simply used the hashtag as an opportunity to dunk on Arroyo.

People also pointed out the flaws in Arroyo’s argument.

Earlier this week, former One Direction member Liam Payne also came to Styles’ defense about his clothing choice. “He’s enjoying himself and he’s free to do as he wishes,” he said in a recent radio interview. “I think people don’t need to be so bothered about stuff. There’s been a lot more stuff going on this year, and whether or not he’s wearing the right clothes in someone else’s mind… in my opinion, just let him on with it.”

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been a weird year. I know we say that a lot, but it bears repeating. The weirdness of this year is impossible to ignore when attempting to choose your favorite movies. A handful of movies came out in theaters like normal at the beginning of the year, mostly in the January/February months that are the traditional studio dumping ground for their schlockiest schlock. After that, everything got either delayed indefinitely or delayed and then released online.

Except for Tenet, of course. Christopher Nolan is a strict theatricalist, and so Tenet opened in theaters, as if Christopher Nolan willing things to become normal would make it so. Hardly anyone saw it until months later, myself included, and when I finally saw it in an empty theater during the brief window when theaters were allowed to open, it ended up being the most incomprehensible nonsensical big budget blockbuster I’ve ever seen. I would’ve loved to see the conversation surrounding Tenet if everyone had seen it around the same time.

The reverse has basically happened with Wonder Woman 1984. Normally, different critics groups see the superhero movie in successive waves, and then the fan reactions gradually roll in from different times and places, and the conversation plays out predictably. This time around, Wonder Woman 1984 went online the same week as the first reviews hit and it seemed like half the country watched it at the same time. As a critic, it was rare to instantly have that big of an audience for all the jokes I wanted to make. Which is, ultimately, something I care much more about than whether you believe in my “rare expertise” as a movie-enjoyer.

Those are two specific examples, but in general, the salient factor this year was that it was impossible to tell which movie was the “important” one in a given week. Usually there are two or three wide releases in theaters and two or three more limited ones or simultaneous limited/VOD releases. This year, it seemed like every week brought with it 5-10 new movies, all online, and it was hard to tell which ones were someone’s labor of love and which were some megarich failson’s glorified tax shelter.

As much as I find Christopher Nolan’s hard line theatrical-or-nothing stance both obnoxious and over-precious, I do think there is something to the theater-going experience that you can’t quite replicate at home (my pandemic solution would be to close the theaters, but subsidize them enough that they can eventually reopen). It’s not so much the size of the screen or the quality of the sound (though there is also that), it’s more that the theater-going experience still requires a different level of attention span. Your phone is stashed away (unless you’re an asshole), no one is dropping off packages at the door, your dog isn’t rolling around on your lap looking for scratchies, and rewinding is out of the question. Ironically, going to see a movie in a room full of people is still the purest way to create the most direct relationship between you and the movie. As a filmmaker, how could you not want your film to be seen that way?

It’s probably no coincidence that the top two movies on this list were movies I saw in a theater. Even beyond just being able to pay closer attention to them, seeing a movie in a theater cements the viewing in your mind as an experience, rather than just a mundane thing you do at the end of the day before bed. When I write up my end-of-the-year lists, I don’t just tally up my initial rating. “Memorability” is a key part of the equation. Thus movies I actually saw in a theater have a distinct advantage. As do movies I didn’t see as part of my end-of-the-year rush to catch up. Those always have the distinct disadvantage of reminding me of homework — things I have to do because someone else said they were important. That’s tough, a less “important” movie is always more fun. That being said, every once in a while, we do get a streaming release
that takes a few sittings to digest and/or a few watches to appreciate, where streaming-first is actually an asset.

On that note, there were a lot of critically-acclaimed “important” movies this year that to me just didn’t seem that good. It’s always nice when a movie I love also lines up with my politics, and I do find it slightly harder to love good movies with terrible politics, but good art and good politics are not automatically synonymous, or vice versa. It does tend to be easier to criticize a movie with bad politics and harder to criticize one with good politics — hence the existence of all those awards movies we secretly hate. That’s true to some extent every year, but 2020’s overheated political climate, mixed with a rise in displays of feigned corporate accountability and a relative dearth of options, not to mention the ever-more precarious career options for most professional critics, has seemed to exacerbate the situation. Or, you know, to each their own and what not.

Phew. Now that we’ve outlined my seven hundred words of meticulous caveats, we can get to my actual list. Art is subjective and blah blah blah, but suffice it say, if you think any of these are wrong, it’s probably only because you’re a big, dumb baby. Agree to disagree.

10. (Tie) Extraction / Borat 2

Extraction, a Netflix release starring Chris Hemsworth, is a fairly straightforward action movie, and well done. The action sequences were some of the best executed I’ve seen in a long time, and that includes the John Wick movies. The best action scenes aren’t just about how tough the hero is or how badly the bad guys get beaten. They should have rhythm and a sense of humor. A good stunt is like a good joke, or a good magic trick. No matter how short or simple it is, the best ones usually have a beginning, middle, and an end, and maybe a twist. They rely on novelty and surprise and play on your expectations.

Extraction, directed by stunt coordinator Sam Hargave, did a wonderful job focusing on the execution of the action. In one scene, Chris Hemsworth’s character leg kicks one bad guy practically in half, choke-slams another into an end-over-end roll, kills a third with a coffee mug to the throat, and nearly decapitates a fourth with a table’s edge. It has suspense, surprise, slapstick, shock — it’s an entire story in miniature. That‘s how you do a stunt. Meanwhile the camera functioned like an effective referee — good enough that you didn’t much think about it. I’m sure the movie also had a plot, but who really cares?

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (original review)

There was a lot working against Sacha Baron Cohen in this 14-years-later sequel, starting with the fact that Borat is mostly too famous to do stunts in character as “Borat” anymore. In his place we had Cohen double disguised as Borat in a series of second disguises, including my personal favorite, a singer named “Country Steve” with a string of onions around his neck. Meanwhile, Borat’s daughter, played by Maria Bakalova, someone most of us had never seen before, did much of the heavy lifting. I don’t know if it’s entirely an actor‘s skill that made Bakalova so great, as Borat stunts seem to involve equal parts clowning, improv, and ambush journalism, but Bakalova was shockingly good. It seems like I’m not the only one saying she should be in the awards conversation, which is nice. Though it does also raise the question: shouldn’t Sacha Baron Cohen get awards consideration for doing what he does all these years? I don’t know that Borat movies are necessarily a triumph of acting, per se, but I do know that Sacha Cohen is about the only guy in the world who can do it.

Sure, Borat’s brand of cringe isn’t for everyone, and even as a Borat fanatic, Borat 2 probably isn’t the high-water mark of Borat. But it is still endlessly compelling — spontaneous and surreal in ways few things are, and full of unforgettable moments. A rightwing rally emcee breathlessly running backstage to ask a guy in an obvious fatsuit and dutchboy wig “are you Country Steve?!” is one of those perfectly idiotic moments that will be forever seared into my brain. God bless Borat, God bless America.

9. The Devil All The Time (original review)

Admittedly, you may need a slightly wicked sense of humor to appreciate this one. Sure, on the face of it, The Devil All The Time is an unrelentingly grim tale of violence, dysfunction, murder, and mayhem. It’s also, at least to me, darkly comedic. Terrible things happen, but always with a punchline. It’s as unsentimental about its characters as George RR Martin and as “sensational” as it is, something about it just has the whiff of authenticity. Directed by Antonio Campos, The Devil All The Time was adapted from a novel by Donald Ray Pollock, a guy who worked in a paper mill in Meade, Ohio (where the story is partially set) and didn’t publish his first work until he was 53. The film, starring a geographically eclectic cast of young stars including Robert Pattinson as a horny preacher (nothing against R-Pattz, but I don’t really understand why he gets so much acclaim when the rest of this cast was arguably even better) is partly notable for doing things other movies have attempted, only much better.

The Devil All The Time includes basically the same scene as this year’s higher-profile Appalachian Netflix release, Hillbilly Elegy, both illustrating the adage “never start a fight, but finish one.” Only The Devil All The Time’s version is intense, disturbed, and actually has a point. In a lot of ways, The Devil All The Time feels like the movie Three Billboards was trying to be, just not as self-regarding or reductive. But sure, probably too bleak and morally ambiguous to hear much about it during awards season, which is a shame.

8. The Trip To Greece (original review)

Few movies are as well-suited to streaming as The Trip series. Which is probably because they’re not really movies at all, but British TV shows recut into movies for their American release. Someday we’ll work it out so that Americans can watch British shows without pirated DVDs or VPNs. But for now at least we have The Trips, in which Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon travel to exotic locales doing impressions at each other over fine food. It’s a testament to these guys that many Americans have come to enjoy these movies despite not at all understanding the origins of the celebrity that underpins the whole endeavor. Rob who?

The Trip To Greece, which is actually the fourth installment of The Trip series (The Trip, The Trip To Italy, The Trip To Spain), is a little more melancholy than its predecessors, but also joyful, and without losing the low-stakes charm that makes them so appealing. The Trip movies almost make me wish I was British, just so I would understand all of the references. Almost.

7. Mank (review)

Mank led to one of my most memorable emails from a reader this year, which I shall now share (in slightly edited form):

“Are regular people supposed to watch this movie? Netflix gives its artists total freedom, and I want to think that’s a good thing, but a lot of these movies — I also saw Charlie Kaufman’s movie on Netflix, and that stunk — and Mank didn’t stink, but I just don’t understand how the average person is supposed to watch this movie and get any enjoyment out of it. I just wonder if Netflix is making a case for some of these big studio dinks to come in and commercialize these movies a little bit.”

Oddly, it’s possible for me to agree with this emailer’s sentiment almost completely and still love Mank. It took me a few sittings to finish Mank and some additional context to entirely appreciate it (as I pointed out, 1999’s RKO 281 makes an ideal double feature, provided you can actually find a copy somewhere), but once I did, there’s a lot to love. Mank tells the story of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz’s friendship with William Randolph Hearst, disillusionment over the 1934 California gubernatorial race, and his eventual crowning achievement with a brutal portrait of his ex-friend in Kane. It’s a little arcane, but that 1934 governor’s race is worth remembering — arguably the first time Hollywood used its might to affect politics, the supposedly-liberal libertines snuffing out an insurgent socialist in Upton Sinclair. It’s a memorable portrait of that time, with great performances from Amanda Seyfried and Charles Dance.

That being said… did David Fincher have to do it as such a stylistic homage to Citizen Kane? The black and white, the heavy shadows, the echo effect on all the dialogue… between that and Gary Oldman playing a navel-gazing alcoholic in the first batch of scenes, even I had to battle the urge to shut it off and do something else for the first 15 or minutes. Ultimately I’m glad I didn’t and was eventually rewarded, but I’m not sure it had to be that way.

6. The Invisible Man (original review)

Yes, I wish this one had had a slightly different ending, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t something special.

Is Leigh Whannell the best pulp director working? Whereas most directors as good as Whannell want to make us think, Leigh Whannell is content to merely make us shit our pants. In Whannell’s The Invisible Man, the umpteenth Hollywood take on the Invisible Man, the title character is, just as in Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man (2000), a villain rather than a hero. But whereas the central question posed in Hollow Man was “what would you do if you didn’t have to look yourself in the mirror every morning?” The Invisible Man asks “what would your psychotic ex do if he didn’t have to look himself in the face every morning?”

Elisabeth Moss plays the tormented heroine, turning in yet another nearly perfect awards-worthy performance in what may be the ultimate gaslighting thriller. In fact, just as the term “gaslighting” itself was becoming so overused as to be almost meaningless, Invisible Man and Elisabeth Moss came along and made it terrifying again. The Invisible Man is one of those horror movies so well done that the main consideration in recommending it is whether it’s too intense.

5. Babyteeth (original review)

Babyteeth is an offbeat Aussie drama, anchored by the great Ben Mendolsohn and Essie Davis from The Babadook, that seems to have flown way under most people’s radar. It’s a shame, because it’s one of the year’s great ensembles, in a film that’s both indelible and exquisitely painful. Mendelsohn and David play the parents of a teen daughter, who’s dealing with some problems way above her maturity grade, and who eventually gets involved with Moses, a sort of feral child/drug addict who is equal parts What About Bob and every parent’s nightmare. Or, to use a more obscure analogy, he’s a lot like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in Hesher, the wild card that shakes up a family in the midst of a tragedy. This one is now available on Hulu so you have no excuse.

4. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (review)

I’m an impatient person by nature, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a patient movie. The beauty of Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, from French director Céline Sciamma, is that it actually rewards your patience. A story about a painter sent to paint a portrait of a countess’s daughter in 1700s Brittany (fun fact, the countess is played by Ramada from Hot Shots), with whom she eventually falls in love, it is in many ways the female analog to Call Me By Your Name. As I wrote in my initial review, “Obviously, attempting to know your crush’s features by heart in order to paint her from memory is a much subtler form of seduction than, say, f*cking a peach with a hole in it while thinking of Armie Hammer.”

And yet… it’s somehow also more satisfying? Amor fou this ain’t. It’s more like the love equivalent of day by day, little by little convincing a chipmunk to eventually eat out of your hand — the love shared by the easily spooked. It’s also immensely gratifying when it finally happens, a doomed, self-abnegating kind of viewing experience. I can’t remember the last time a movie was this patient in revealing its charms; reeling you in so slowly and with such a gentle hook that one minute you’re swimming around and the next you find yourself flopping around in the bottom of the boat. Check it out the next time you’re feeling unhurried and slightly morose. This one is also available on Hulu.

3. Dick Johnson Is Dead

One of the difficulties of putting together these lists is knowing what to do with the docs. There were so many good ones this year — 537 Votes, The Swamp, Boys State, The Dissident — but I suppose I limited my documentary inclusions to the one that felt like an achievement in creative storytelling as much as a straightforward reporting (not that movies shouldn’t be celebrated for that!).

In Dick Johnson Is Dead, which is destined to be forever confused with another favorite of mine, The Death Of Dick Long (I guess I just love dead Dicks), documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson deals with her father’s recent dementia diagnosis and impending mortality by having him play himself in a series of death scenarios that she has imagined for him. The movie jumps between those scenes that they’ve filmed, and the documentary version of those scenes as they’re being filmed.

Movies about death and dementia are often too sad or painful to sit through, but Johnson’s method of turning it all into an extended flight of fancy, living in the grey area between fiction, fact, and possibility, actually gives us a language to discuss those awful things in ways that aren’t depressing. It ends up being not only not sad, but weirdly life-affirming. At times even hilarious, like during a staged funeral for Dick Johnson, during which one of his genuinely grief-stricken friends plays for him what can only be described as a “mournful kazoo dirge.” It helps that Dick Johnson himself is a lovable old charmer. It’s a must-watch, especially in a year where everyone has had to contemplate mortality. Long live Dick Johnson!

2. Palm Springs (original review)

Speaking of people who should be in the awards conversation, Cristin Milioti’s delicate dance of sardonic wit and genuine vulnerability as Andy Samberg’s love-interest-sucked-into-a-time-loop in Palm Springs stands out as one of the year’s MVPs. Of course, as is true for most of the movies on this list, the entire cast of Palm Springs is delightful, from JK Simmons’ intensity to Andy Samberg’s goofball charm, not to mention a cameo by Conner O’Malley, a sight gag for anyone aware of his other personae.

Palm Springs is, obviously, something of a riff on Groundhog Day, which is unimpeachable in its own right. But to call it derivative is missing the point; it hijacks an existing premise to comment on something new. Whereas Groundhog Day is mostly a light rom-com, Palm Springs is an introspective meditation on relationships that feels closer to Eternal Sunshine than When Harry Met Sally (and it’s still pretty funny).

Palm Springs is a movie about… being able to find happiness in what can feel like meaningless, repetitive drudgery; about the abiding loneliness of existence, and about ultimately being stuck with yourself. With not just your own tendencies but with the ever-present weight of your history. How much of what you do is because it makes you happy and how much is you building towards some future goal? How much do those future goals really matter, aren’t they ultimately meaningless? What if you stripped away all possibility of any future goal or the normal external benchmarks of personal growth? Would that make your life more meaningful, or less? It’s a movie that stares into the abyss and finds… well, love and humor, mostly. What would we do without The Lonely Island boys?

1. Sylvie’s Love (original review)

For cinematic comfort food you can’t do much better than Sylvie’s Love, a sweeping romance set in 50s-60s Harlem. It’s a film in which the soundtrack, story, and glowing cinematography are all inseparable, and somehow more than the sum of their individual parts. It’s almost an arthouse jukebox musical, with some of the most insanely charming performances ever committed to film and a montage set to Sam Cooke that truly wrecked me. Also, if you liked Lance Reddick in his intense performances as Daniels in The Wire or the boss on Corporate, you’ll love him as a gregarious jazz dad in Sylvie’s Love. Seriously, Lance Reddick should play nice guys more often.

One of the interesting things about Sylvie’s Love is that it almost didn’t get made. Though it’s a simple and seemingly classic story, as star Nnamdi Asomugha and writer/director Eugene Ashe told me, studios and financiers didn’t have a model for a black love story that wasn’t really a rom-com and isn’t really about Civil Rights. Thus they were hesitant to finance it. So what is it? As Ashe told the New York Times, he was partly inspired by the period photography of Gordon Parks, including his 1956 photograph, Department Store, Mobile, Alabama.”

“When I first met with Tessa,” he said, “I had that picture on my iPad and showed it to her. It had the whole picture with the colored entrance sign. I said to her, ‘We’ve seen this movie. I want to make this movie,’ and I zoomed in to where the sign was gone and it only focused on the woman and her child. We talked about making a movie that wasn’t framed through our adversity, but that focused on our humanity.”

Even in an industry that claims to be all about representation these days, it seems as if there’s still only room for certain kinds of representation. Sylvie’s Love didn’t want to depict black people defined by adversity, and so people didn’t know what to do with it. Even though there’s already been a Brooklyn, even though there’s already been a La La Land, there hadn’t been that story with black people. Somehow the moneyed interests still saw them as inherently different. Luckily, Ashe found Asomugha, and they made it happen, and Amazon eventually released it.

The beauty of Sylvie’s Love is that even though it’s kind of like Brooklyn, it isn’t derivative in any way, and even though it’s not strictly about the civil rights movement, the doesn’t exactly pretend it didn’t exist either. Instead, it’s a movie that’s the best thing a movie can be — true to itself and its own specific vision. It’s a testament to the filmmaking that a romance with a bicycle-built-for-two scene can somehow come off not saccharine.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.