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Franz Lyons knew it was going to be all good as soon as Seth Meyers asked if any of the members of his band Turnstile had a MacGruber tattoo.

“We just hit it off, and he was just kicking it with us,” Lyons says, a tinge of disbelief noticeable in his voice, even over the phone as he recalls the hours leading up to their acclaimed late-night television debut.

Everyone at Late Night With Seth Meyers was “really excited to rock with us. The music producer for the show just hung out with us every step of the way. He had mad other responsibilities, but he was like, ‘nope I’m with the guys.” Even Meyers’ others guests, Marisa Tomei and Matthew McConaughey said hello. It seems these days everyone wants to kick it with Turnstile, rock’s most exciting band.

But such is Lyons’ dedication to the grind that the day after Turnstile’s late-night set, Lyons was calling from a warehouse, helping his “brothers” in the streetwear brand Carpet build out their new headquarters. “You’ve got to be true to yourself,” he says. “I don’t do nothing different or special. I got back from Seth Meyers, and I came here and just got my hands dirty.”

Turnstile, which counts amongst its members the perpetually shirtless frontman Brendan Yates, guitarists Brady Ebert and Pat McCrory, and drummer Daniel Fang, got their start in Baltimore’s notoriously tough hardcore scene. Like any good hardcore band, they worked hard, grinding away on multi-bill sets and releasing cheaply recorded EPs. They made the type of music you could get beat up to, and they were great at it. But what was remarkable was that even in their early stages, Turnstile made bruised cheek music, sweat-soaked work ethic, and blood-pumping catharsis sound like a total blast.

Turnstile builds their songs on top of the deep rhythmic beds created by Lyons and Fang, which gallop with punk thrust but also incorporate R&B bounce. Upon the release of their 2015 debut album Nonstop Feeling in 2015, one writer compared them to funk greats The Gap Band, while others noted that Yates could actually sing, when he wanted to. That album led to Turnstile signing with Roadrunner, a major label affiliate known for its success with Slipknot, for whom they made their second album Time & Space in 2018.

The five members of Turnstile are all locked into seemingly perfect unison, creating a machine of perpetual motion. But even then, Lyons is key, laying down a low end theory for his bros to follow, while bringing a relentless series of ninja jump kicks to their live sets. Which, yes, do require some stretching beforehand. “I can’t accurately tell a room how I feel about playing my guitar, if I don’t absolutely show you all how I feel while playing my guitar,” he explains.

But even then, he admits to some nerves when the band decamped to Gallatin, Tennessee to record their third album Glow On with Mike Elizondo — a pop-music professional who co-wrote 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” and has worked with Dr. Dre, Fiona Apple, and Mastodon — whom Lyons describes as “a bass guitar specialist.”

“Mike is a stone-cold professional, like bro was Dr. Dre’s link, from what I gather, I think he was like the only one really allowed to touch the button in the studio besides Dre,” he says. “I was in the panic room a little bit. But it was everything you would want to comfortably step outside of your comfort zone. It was all a sick-ass learning episode.”

Glow On — which comes in 4th on the 2021 Uproxx Music Critics Poll — is a basement punk on an arena level, bright, big-sounding, and utterly professional in the best ways, but it still crackles with the burning need to connect that fuels this genre. For some people, albums and bands like this are a renewable energy source, a way to psyche yourself up to push through another day. Even a departure like “”Underwater Boi,” a shoegaze-y ballad that features backing vocals from Julien Baker, still sprints rather than lurches. “‘Underwater Boi’ is mad chill, but it has just as much pressure,” says Lyons. “It’s a real in-the-pocket head nod. And that song is just as strong as any other song on record.”

It would prove to be a major leveling up when it was released in August, becoming a late-entry album of the summer for headbanger nation and earning rave reviews from Stereogum, Rolling Stone, and Pitchfork, which had actually trashed Time & Space. (Turnstile’s online fanbase very much relished that particular turnabout.)

The success of the album has given Turnstile opportunities that rock bands, particularly volatile and decided un-chill bands that were incubated in the loud-fast-rules world of hardcore punk music, don’t see much anymore in the streaming era, including tours with rap hitmakers, clothing lines with streetwear brands such as Lyons’ friends Carpet, and late-night television appearances that set Twitter on fire. Ever fashionable, Lyons was also psyched he got to cop a pair of Off-White Jordans. He’s had a great year. (The only real downspout for the band was that someone pooped in the pit in one of their shows, an incident about which he offers no comment.)

“We made a lot of ill new relationships with people. We’re just thankful that we were fortunate enough for them to hear the record, and the record did the work. The word of mouth has been very strong,” he says, sounding giddy that he got to work with one of his favorite brands on a line. “That team up has yielded a whole different group of people. I don’t even know what their musical preference is or if we were in their visibility.

“We’ve been really fortunate enough to run into people that are real ones lately,” he adds. “And the ones that we’ve been holding on to for a long time have been riding with us for like a decade now. So it’s solid.”

Glow On argues that anything can be hardcore, as long as Turnstile are doing it. That includes ambitious short-films, arena rock solos that bring to mind the Red Hot Chili Peppers, latin-funk-indebted breakdowns, and hazy R&B comedowns that feature Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, who guested with the band at their New York show, which somehow features a thousand stage divers from the moment the band started. “For him to put himself eye to eye with us, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s a real one for real.’”

We are at the point in our cultural history where we don’t need someone to Save Rock ‘n’ Roll, as savior myths are a bit icky, and the genre is doing just fine, thank you. But their success does come at an interesting time, as several of the year’s Big Event Pop Albums felt overcooked and underwhelming, while pop stars such as Olivia Rodrigo, other “Myspace-Revivalist Acts” such as Willow and Machine Gun Kelly, and even the rapper Polo G brought sugar-y guitar hooks back to the charts.

The streaming era has led to a rise in lean-back listening, where labels and artists favor sounds that can blend in seamlessly on a playlist that you can put on while studying, cooking dinner, or just being chill. It’s music for the era of the vibe, the big mood, for a time period where, more than ever, many of us feel numb and burned out, too distracted and terrified to give anything our engagement, where many need a soothing balm, and disengagement is the best they can muster.

Turnstile don’t’ do anything passively. They are terminally un-chill. Instead, Turnstile makes the argument for maximum passion, maximum engagement. They want you to feel alive, even when it’s scary. Be in the moment, with all your body and mind. It’s exactly what many of us needed in year where the world seemed to constantly vacillate between a dial with Absolutely Terrible On One Spectrum and Slightly Less Terrible on the other. But hell if anything is going to spoil Turnstile’s fun.

On Glow On, Yates sounds like someone who couldn’t wait for all the bullshit to end, bragging that he’s ready to celebrate, letting the audience know that if their music makes you feel alive, well, he’s happy to provide. But even if Glow On didn’t have a lyrical theme of being in the moment continually, Turnstile always plays like a band that refuse to exist in the background.

“Like ‘Wild Wrld,’ to me, it’s been one of my favorite songs on the record, and I’ve been calling it an audio motion picture because it’s like, I can’t passively listen to it,” he says.

Turnstile have had a great year, but even with rock music starting to crawl back into the mainstream, is the larger world ready to get in the pit with them? Early signs are encouraging, as the Meyers set already seems iconic, and Lyons heard that Los Angeles influential KROQ has started adding them into rotation. He’s not sure if that will mean anything, but it’s cool nonetheless. And this past fall, Turnstile were the only rock band on the wildly popular hip-hop duo Suicideboys’s Grey Day tour, which brought them, alongside rappers Slowthai and Chief Keef, in front of arena’s full of kids that normally don’t really feel rock music like that.

Lyons says that he ended becoming friends with everyone on the tour, and lost his mind when his new friend Slowthai would jump into the pit and rap the rest of the show in there. And by the end of tour, he notes that some of the rappers were walking on stage to Metallica songs.

“We got a surprisingly awesome response. They had no choice but to listen for 20 minutes. It was like, ‘I know you don’t like guitar music, you just never seen it in real life,’” he says. “A lot of the messages that the band had got during the tour after were like, I’ve never been to a concert before.”

It’s been a big year, and maybe the next one will be even better. But Lyons insists that their victory came a long time ago. After all, he’s in Turnstile. He’s already won.

“I was just I was completely content with what we made for the first time,” he says. “So like, yeah, the critics are definitely important and other people hearing it is important, but I feel like before it, even like left to the mixer, I was completely content with all the decisions that I made on the record.”

“I’m very grateful, but whether the whole world was paying attention or not, if this was fun and it was paying the bills and keeping us happy, in our heart and in our mind, I wouldn’t even care who was listening,” he adds. “We’ve been doing it for 10 years, and I just turned around yesterday and realized where we were at. It just kind of feels like another day.

“Bro, the only thing that we know how to do is be Turnstile.”

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

The 2021 African Entertainment Awards USA were held this weekend and the proceeds generated some attention this year thanks to J Balvin picking up the award for Afro-Latino Artist Of The Year. The situation quickly gained some traction online and became a trending topic on Twitter as may wondered why Balvin was chosen to receive the honor, given that the Medellín, Colombia native is not Afro-Latino.

Even Balvin himself had some uncertainty at least with the award’s name, as in an Instagram Story today, he wrote in Spanish (translated to English via Google), “I’m not Afro Latino, but thanks for giving me a place in the contribution of the Afrobeat music and its movement.”

The video linked to in Balvin’s Story is a PSA from African Entertainment Awards USA, who offers an explanation about Balvin’s win and note that they’ve changed the name of the award to Best Latin Artist Of The Year. The caption reads:

“PSA:
After listening to the concern of our audience we have decided to maintain the purpose of the award but changed the name to Best Latin Artist Of the year.

The Best Latin Artist category is for any artist based in Latin America that is contributing to the African culture especially the Afro-beats sound globally. It is not based on race but more importantly based on pushing the African culture forward on the world stage. This is the first year that we introduced this category to include our Latin brothers and sisters who have embraced Afrobeats music within their platforms. The winner of this category has demonstrated that and is deserving of this award based on the fans votes.

Please remember the nominees in this category had no say in their nomination or influence on the award show. Instead of voicing dissatisfaction, let us encourage these artists to continue bridging the gap between Africa and Latin America. We are asking for your continued support, assistance and guidance in the nomination process for 2022. We thank you for your understanding and looking forward to an open dialogue. We apologize to the people who where offended by this category.”

Some have pointed out that this award follows Balvin’s recent video for “Perra,” in which he walks dog-eared Black women around on leashes. Balvin issued an apology at the time, saying, “I want to say sorry to whomever felt offended, especially to the Black community. That’s not who I am. I’m about tolerance, love, and inclusivity.”

Sometimes, especially in the beer world, simplicity is perfection. A classic crisp lager without any random flavors is a thing of beauty. A bold and robust stout can warm you in the winter without veering too far into the “added spices and chocolate” direction. A biting, tangy, floral, or dank IPA can impress simply with hops, malt, yeast, and water.

But while we love all of these base beer flavors, sometimes we want to get a little crazy with it. Okay, a lot crazy. We’re talking outside-the-box flavors, aging techniques, and fermentations.

Not surprisingly, 2021 gave us plenty of exciting beers full of creativity. Beers that taste like cocktails, beers that taste like dessert, and beers made with heretofore unconsidered ingredients. While we don’t have time to list them all, we would like to highlight eight of the most boldly creative beers that dropped this year. Check them out below.

8) Oskar Blues Death By Flapjacks

ABV: 6.5%

Average Price: Limited Availability

The Beer:

In the past few years, Oskar Blues has dropped a few “Death By” beers. This includes Death By Coconut and Death By King Cake. Its newest release is Death By Flapjacks, a 6.5 percent ABV English porter that was brewed with Honey and Crystal malts. It gets its flavor from the addition of vanilla, lactose, nutmeg, maple syrup, and lemon peel.

Tasting Notes:

The nose is classic pancakes. There are aromas of maple syrup, freshly brewed coffee, vanilla beans, and butterscotch. The palate is highlighted by maple candy, buttery caramel, toasted vanilla beans, chocolate fudge, and more coffee. The finish is sweet, indulgent, and memorable.

Bottom Line:

This is the epitome of a dessert beer. We couldn’t imagine sipping a bunch of these bad boys, but one after dinner is the perfect sweet ending to a savory meal.

7) Boulevard Sugarwood Baklava

ABV: 14.2%

Average Price: $15 for a four-pack

The Beer:

In our opinion, baklava with its layers of pastry, honey, and nuts is one of the best desserts of all time. Boulevard set out to make a beer that tastes like that same beloved treat and definitely succeeded with its 14.2 percent ABV barrel-aged imperial brown ale with maple syrup and pecan flavors.

Tasting Notes:

Best enjoyed slowly, this beer opens with aromas of maple candy, sweet bourbon, rich oak, and a slight nuttiness. Drinking it reveals notes of candied pecans, rich maple syrup, toasted vanilla beans, honey, and oaky whiskey. It ends with a combination of nuts and brown sugar that leaves you craving more.

Bottom Line:

Carrying on the trend of the dessert beer, Boulevard managed to craft beer that totally encapsulates all the flavors of classic, nutty, honey-soaked baklava — that’s no small feat.

6) Firestone Walker Kentucky Mule

ABV: 11.8%

Average Price: $10 for a 12-ounce bottle

The Beer:

The Moscow mule is one of the most popular cocktails of all time. This combination of lime, vodka, and ginger beer has an alternative version called the Kentucky Mule that features bourbon instead of vodka. This year, Firestone Walker decided to try its hand at crafting a beer version of this iconic mixed drink. Part of the brand’s barrel-aged “cocktail series,” this blend of a brown ale and barleywine (each aged for 18 months) was infused with Fiji ginger and California lime juice.

Tasting Notes:

Complex aromas of candied ginger, lime zest, vanilla beans, and maple candy meet your nostrils. The palate swirls with more ginger, wintry spices, toasted marshmallows, butterscotch, and vanilla beans. The finish is sweet, slightly spicy, and filled with whiskey-like oak.

Bottom Line:

This is a truly unique beer that bridges the gap between cocktails and craft beer. Its flavor profile features ginger, lime, and a nice sweet bourbon kick.

5) Great Divide Wood Works Dark ’N Stormy Imperial Red Inspired Ale

ABV: 8.5%

Average Price: Limited Availability

The Beer:

This limited, 8.5 percent imperial red ale was released this summer. It was brewed with caramel malts and El Dorado and Citra hops before being aged in ten-year-old Colombian rum casks for a few months. After maturation, the beer was rested on dry hops with lime leaves, lime puree, and fresh ginger.

Tasting Notes:

On the nose, you’ll find sweet molasses rum, bready malts, vanilla, and a gentle kick of floral, citrusy hops. On the palate, you’re greeted with woody oak, fresh lime zest, light ginger candy, butterscotch, and floral hops. This is the closest thing to a Dark ‘N’ Stormy in beer form you’re likely to ever see.

Bottom Line:

There’s so much going on in the flavor department that there’s simply no way to find them all with one sampling. This is the kind of beer you need to come back to again and again.

4) Stone and Deschutes Let’s Bee Homies

ABV: 7.5%

Average Price: $5 for a 16-ounce can

The Beer:

We love a good beer collaboration. When two well-known brands get together, great things can come from it. This is the case with the Stone and Deschutes collab Let’s Beer Homies. This hazy IPA was brewed with Chinook, Triumph, Cashmere, Comet, and Mosaic hops as well as both Oregon blackberry honey and California orange blossom honey.

Tasting Notes:

Right up front, this beer has classic IPA aromas of resinous pine, wildflowers, grapefruit, and lime zest. But there’s also a slight caramel malt flavor and sweet honey in there as well. Take a sip and you’ll find flavors like lemon zest, tangerine, ripe grapefruit, pineapple, wet grass, peach, caramel malts, and sweet clover honey.

Bottom Line:

Part of the appeal of this creative beer is the way the honey works in unison with the citrus hop, tropical fruit, and bready malt flavors.

3) Goose Island Bourbon County Classic Cola Stout 2021

ABV: 14%

Average Price: Limited Availability

The Beer:

Every year, stout fans eagerly await the announcement of what beers Goose Island will release in its annual Bourbon County line. This year, one of the most interesting launches was its Bourbon County Classic Cola Stout 2021. This bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout gets its cola flavor from the addition of lime juice, orange juice, orange zest, coriander, cassia bark, nutmeg, brown sugar, and vanilla.

Tasting Notes:

Do you know the smell of whiskey and cola? Well, that’s exactly what this beer smells like. It also has the aromas of dark chocolate, vanilla beans, woody oak, citrus peels, and sweet whiskey. Drinking it brings forth notes of caramel malts, fudge, toasted oak, vanilla beans, wintry spices, and warming, sweet bourbon.

Bottom Line:

It appears that cocktail beers made an impact in 2021. This barrel-aged take on the classic whiskey and cola is definitely not to be missed.

2) Prairie Sundae Service

ABV: 13%

Average Price: $19 for a 12-ounce bottle

The Beer:

There are few indulgences better than a classic fudgy ice cream sundae. The folks at Prairie Artisan Ales understand this. That’s why they created this barrel-aged imperial stout to taste just like the iconic dessert. They did this with the addition of chocolate, fudge, peanuts, sprinkles, vanilla, and cherries.

Tasting Notes:

A lot is going on with this beer’s nose. It literally smells like a chocolate fudge sundae with aromas of vanilla beans, sweet cherries, chocolate, and roasted peanuts. The flavor continues this trend with notes of maraschino cherries, buttery caramel, chocolate fudge, and vanilla beans.

Bottom Line:

In the hierarchy of indulgent dessert beers, it’s hard to top Prairie Sundae Service with its decadent, rich, and sweet flavor notes.

1) Stone Xocoveza Tres Leches

ABV: 8.5%

Average Price: $14 for a six-pack

The Beer:

As if regular Stone Xocovenza wasn’t flavorful enough, the brewers at Stone ramped up this 8.5 percent ABV imperial stout with the addition of chocolate, coffee, Pasilla peppers, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The result is a spicy, warming, and sweet beer well-suited for winter imbibing.

Tasting Notes:

This beer’s nose is both sweet and spicy. There are scents of freshly brewed coffee, butterscotch, chocolate fudge, and toasted vanilla, as well as a slight spice backbone. The flavor is a mixture of sweet vanilla beans, milk chocolate, buttery caramel candy, espresso beans, and slightly spicy heat from the Pasilla peppers.

Bottom Line:

If you’re a fan of Mexican hot chocolate, a pint of this sweet, spicy, rich beer is sure to be a hit.

Earlier this year, fans watching basketball at the Tokyo Olympics were treated to halftime entertainment in the form of a basketball shooting robot that shot from the free throw line, three-point line, and even halfcourt, leading to a lot of jokes about Ben Simmons, Kawhi Leonard, and others.

After impressing early on, the robot was exposed as a fraud, incapable of dribbling and, as the tournament wore on, it got less accurate and started missing shots. However, the FIBA basketball robot got back in the lab — literally, in this instance — and has added dribbling to its arsenal, as it showed off on Monday. However, unless this robot is going back in time to play in 1947, these garbage handles aren’t going to get it anywhere anytime soon.

As happened the first time around with its pitifully slow shooting form, the reaction to the robot dribbling from people was mostly about how they would still destroy it in some 1-on-1.

There were also lots of folks calling out the robot for looking like Stanley from The Office trying to dribble with just one hand.

And, of course, Bob Cousy got slandered by many because, well, what else do you expect from a video of someone dribbling slowly with one hand in a straight line.

Whatever your thoughts on The Matrix Resurrections, and my own were something along the lines of “the best part was when they made fun of the idea of trying to make a Matrix sequel,” I have some information that’s bound to improve your viewing experience.

If you’ll remember, a few months back, the lead singer of the band Brass Against, Sophia Urista, apologized for an incident in which she brought a fan onstage and urinated in the man’s eager mouth during the band’s cover of Rage Against The Machine’s “Wake Up.” You can watch it below, and hey, why wouldn’t you?

As for the background, per Stereogum: “Get my man with the can on his head ready, ’cause we’re going to bring him onstage and I’ma piss in this motherf*cker’s mouth,” she said while Brass Against covered Rage The Machine’s “Wake Up.” “I gotta pee,” she said. “And I can’t make it to the bathroom. So we might as well make a show out of it.”

In my opinion, this was nothing that required apology. The fan clearly was clearly into it, and if I had been at a show where the lead singer peed in a guy’s mouth I probably would’ve considered it great entertainment (it’s certainly not the wildest or the grossest thing a performer has ever done at a punk show). So long as I wasn’t one of the people in the front row who the guy spat the pee on. That was kind of messed up. In any case, it was a really impressive stream. Sophia Urista should be celebrated both for her skills as an entertainer and for her powerful bladder.

Which brings us to The Matrix: Resurrections. After a promising first 30 minutes or so and increasingly exhausting next 90+, the film finally comes to a close in a sort of coda scene, which I won’t spoil here, mostly because I didn’t understand what was even happening at that point well enough to try to explain it. The more salient fact was the song that kicks in during the film’s closing credits: that’s right, “Wake Up,” by Brass Against. Next time you watch it, feel free to nudge your date during that moment and loudly whisper, “That’s the pee song.”

I can assure you that whatever the hell was supposed to be happening in that scene was greatly improved by imagining Sophia Urista shouting “I’ma piss in this motherf*cker’s mouth!” playing underneath as it does. Was this another meta moment from director Lana Wachowski? Who could say, really, but for this viewer, it was a bold choice that truly worked.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can check out his film review archive here.

Gather round, children, ’tis time to participate in a great tradition! Each year, we culture writers spend 50 weeks of the year trying to inspire conversation around works of art and entertainment, attempting to offer nuanced perspectives and building rapport with our readers through shared experiences. And every year, we spend the final two weeks of the year reducing those complex works and nuanced perspectives down to simple numerals, inviting our readers to disagree for the pettiest of reasons and putting that rapport onto a great pyre. Titane over Belfast? Chug diarrhea, moose lips!

Why build up all that credibility only to throw it away for a few cheap clicks every December? Uh… tradition, mostly? I dunno why we do it, we just do. To paraphrase Hansel in Zoolander, who cares? It’s only movies.

So in the interests of gripping it and ripping it, living my life with a lot of flair, here they are, my favorite movies of 2021. If forced to generalize, I’d say that this year’s crop of films was a lot better than last year’s, if disappointingly structured. I thought that perhaps an unprecedented pandemic that forced many companies to make changes in the way they plan, shoot, release, and market movies might cause some of them to take stock, and maybe make some of those changes permanent.

But for the most part, nope, they went right back to doing it the way it had always been done as soon as it seemed even moderately tenable. For instance, remember how studios used to crowd all of their releases with any artistic pretensions at all into the last six weeks or so of the release calendar? Well guess what, we’re doing that again! I want to fault studios for this, but yet again, most critics-associations year-end best movies lists seem to consist mostly of movies that sent them FYC mailers in November. Why release a good movie in January when no one will remember it?

Obviously, the big question for the movie industry is the future of the theatrical window. We’re in a weird place where the pandemic killed it for some, reduced it in other places, and allowed it to persist in others. I’m not a business analyst (and I think it would greatly improve society if more people stopped playing “fantasy business analyst”) so I’ll simply say that I still appreciate the theater-going experience. To be able to set aside time to truly experience a movie, without hearing your kids shouting from the other room, the temptation to look at your phone, etc, is still the best way to view a movie.

This is conditional, of course, because the theatrical experience these days has its own problems. Probably a good half the time I went to the theater this year, the screen seemed too dark, the house lights were left on too long, the sound seemed muffled… whatever. What should be a venue for ideal viewing conditions often simply isn’t. Theaters have clearly reduced the number of staff who understand how to work things, not to mention dimming lights and reducing power to speakers to extend the life span of their equipment.

Whether this is corporate greed or necessary cost-cutting in the face of declining attendance I’m not entirely sure (fewer execs and more projectionists sounds like a great solution to me). But it’s starting to feel like a downward spiral. The shittier theatergoing gets, the more people stay away, and the more people stay away, the shittier it gets, and so on. I hope that cycle breaks somehow, because I still like sitting in a comfy chair and spilling popcorn everywhere and the sound of my feet sticking to the floor while I watch movies in a single sitting. At home, I think it took about 10 hours of actual time to get through Being The Ricardos, which claims to be just over two.

As for my picks below, they were about half and half home watches vs. theater. The distinction between a “straight-to-streaming” and a theatrical release seems to be disappearing in general. And that’s great! I’d love the freedom to be able to choose whether to spend $12 to go out or $12 to stay home and have both be equally viable.

Anyway, here are my top 15 of 2021. You’re free to disagree but then we have to fight.

15. Vacation Friends

I’ve seen Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar on a few best-of lists this season, and I did ultimately enjoy that one after nearly turning it off (the turtle scene won me over). But as long as we’re on the subject of low-stakes mainstream comedies, it seems everyone slept on Vacation Friends, a forgotten John Cena/Lil Rel Howery gem from late August that went straight to Hulu. If you didn’t see it, I don’t blame you. I would’ve been the first to tell you to avoid a wacky studio comedy with a reductive title starring John Cena. After F9 I never wanted to see that big dumb face again, trust me.

Yet Vacation Friends, from director Clay Tarver, turned out to be much funnier than I expected and John Cena far more tolerable. Rather than an extended sketch about John Cena and Meredeith Hagner as the “nightmare couple” that Lil Rel and Yvonne Orji’s boringly sensible characters sensibly try to avoid, it takes the shape of an unconventional four-way friendship, which you end up kinda-sorta caring about. John Cena plays a Caucasian twist on the Magical Negro trope, both an inspired flip and a constant sight gag, thanks to Cena’s weird shaved armpits and baby smooth body and giant cinder block head. Comedy relies on surprise, and Vacation Friends was a nice surprise.

14. The Lost Daughter

Maggie Gyllenhaal was always an unconventional sort of actress who didn’t do the usual kinds of projects, and with her directorial debut in The Lost Daughter (which she also scripted, adapting from Elena Ferrante’s novel) she proves to the same kind of storyteller. This is the kind of movie you naturally expect to be morose, meditative, meandering — all of those M words that become de facto synonyms for “dull.” Inasmuch as Olivia Colman might look at first glance like one of those bog standard sad-heroine-in-an-awards-film characters (movies like Pieces of a Woman or Cake come to mind), she’s much weirder than that. Colman’s “Leda” is more like an arthouse Larry David, with the dial set one more degree towards pathological.

Gyllenhaal seems to have an eye for actors who are as unique and talented as she is, so she has Olivia Colman as the lead, with Jessie Buckley playing young Leda, with Peter Sarsgaard, Ed Harris, and Dakota Johnson in supporting roles. The Lost Daughter is as picturesque and introspective as you might expect, but it’s also funny, and consistently weird. It could really have used an ending, but it was fun getting there.

13. North Hollywood

A movie no one saw? Don’t mind if I do! Mikey Alfred is a 20-something skateboarder whose mom worked as an assistant to Robert Evans when he was growing up. After founding a skate brand and co-producing Jonah Hill’s directing debut, Mid90s, Alfred figured he could make his own indie movie starring skateboarders, and so he did. When none of the big companies wanted to release it, despite Alfred’s decent track record of working with artists and celebrities, he just released it himself through his skate company.

Alfred’s debut, a kind of American Graffiti for Gen Z skate kids in LA, reminded me a lot of watching early PTA films for last week’s PTA rankings. They weren’t always as thematically rich or narratively complex as they would eventually become, but they always had a look, something about them that made you want to keep watching. North Hollywood has that. It also has Vince Vaughn in an unexpectedly enjoyable turn as a dorky dad and skateboard kids doing their own stunts, a few of whom, like Nico Haraga (above right) can really act. It also seems to have a few things to say about this generation’s hustle culture that we haven’t seen before. And how many recent movies have had anything to say about anyone under 50?

12. Some Kind Of Heaven

I don’t usually put a ton of docs on this list because I generally like most of them even if they aren’t always great artistic achievements. But Some Kind Of Heaven, director Lance Oppenheim’s profile of The Villages retirement community in Central Florida, is not only one of the most visually beautiful films I saw all year, it also had some of its most memorable characters — from Reggie, who spends his days tripping balls on powerful hallucinogens to the chagrin of his much more conventional wife, to name-dropping drifter Dennis, to Barb, who seems determined to find love and try new things, even though it hasn’t been going too well so far. They’re all in their 80s, incidentally.

It’s a film that proves once and for all that getting old doesn’t have to mean growing up. Or maybe just that half the state of Florida should have their own reality show. Some Kind Of Heaven is basically a perfect watch, and I’m going to be pissed if I find out any of these people are dead now.

11. Finch

It might not exactly be a revelation to discover that Tom Hanks is really great at carrying a movie in which he spends the whole time yelling at non-human characters, but that doesn’t make Finch any less enjoyable to watch. Some people may have written off Finch (my review) as too derivative of Castaway (the only reason I can think of that it wasn’t more widely seen or better reviewed, other than that it was released on Apple+), but frankly I think it was better than Castaway. Castaway is about a guy going through an ordeal who has to maintain his will to live. Finch is about a scientist on a ruined Earth trying to train a robot to take care of his dog. Granted it helps that I’m a dog person and the dog from Finch is an extremely handsome boi, but I have a hard time imagining a sweeter, more humane premise than that.

10. The Eyes Of Tammy Faye

Before this, I was never a huge Jessica Chastain fan, on account of I feel like I’ve seen her play the same “no-nonsense hardass” character 15 times now (with probably some residual annoyance left over her having given voice to the worst line — “I’m the motherfucker who found him, sir” — in one of Hollywood’s most insidious hack jobs, Zero Dark Thirty). But in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, Chastain delivers a livewire performance as Tammy Faye Bakker, a character who seems almost pathologically grating and borderline unhinged, yet is also openhearted and generous in a way that professional religious folks almost never are.

Certainly The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, directed by Michael Showalter from a script by Abe Sylvia, feels like it might partly be a case of liberals trying to retcon Tammy Faye in their own image. But its signature moment, Tammy Faye interviewing a gay man with AIDS live on Christian television, was a real thing that actually happened, so there at least seems to be some justification for it (fun fact: the guy she interviewed, Steve Pieters, is still alive, despite having full-blown AIDS and being diagnosed with two types of terminal cancer in 1985, about as feel-good a story as you’ll ever find). However close it is to the truth, Chastain’s portrayal of Bakker is unforgettable, one part nightmarishly unhinged and two parts preternaturally empathetic, with a singing voice that somehow chilled me to the bone and made me giggle simultaneously.

9. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

After years of demanding that mainstream films show the dongs going in, one crazy bastard in Romania finally did it — Radu Jude, director of Romania’s Oscar submission, Bad Luck Banging, or Loony Porn. The film opens with a sex tape, shown in all of its explicit glory, starring a teacher named Emi, played by Katia Pascariu, and her husband, played by the porn star Stefan Steel. The sex tape has leaked online, and in part one of Bad Luck Banging, Emi has to run a series of errands around Bucharest while dealing with the fallout.

Jude shoots part one guerrilla style around the city (at one point, an older woman looks directly at the camera and calls the cameraman a nasty word), in a perhaps slightly overmeditative sequence that questions what happens to a person’s humanity when she becomes yet more imagery, of the kind we’re all bombarded with at all times. Part two is an odd glossary of historical facts, jokes, and aphorisms, and in part three, Emi has to face her colleagues and the parents at her school in a sort of kangaroo court straight out of Curb Your Enthusiasm (if Curb depicted full penetration). It’s a wildly idiosyncratic movie but also a wildly memorable one. It’s about as close to a straight up sex comedy as foreign awards movies ever get.

8. Titane

Speaking of idiosyncratic foreign art films, we have Titane, from Raw director Julia Ducornau, who cements herself as one of the most balls-to-the-wall filmmakers on Earth. Julia Ducornau is punk as hell and I love her for it. I could try to tell you what Titane is about but it’s probably best that you just watch it. My wife walked in halfway through my viewing and I had to try to explain it to her: “So, this girl kills people, and I also think she might be pregnant with a car? Now she’s pretending to be this guy’s dead guy’s son.”

7. Benedetta

As thankful as I am to have up-and-coming filmmaking voices like Julia Ducornau, I’m equally thankful to have old masters like Paul Verhoeven (Robocop, Showgirls, Basic Instinct), still as much of a horny little Dutch freak as he ever was at the age of 83. Benedetta (original review) is a religious (sacrilegious?) fever dream about the plague, the Catholic church, and lesbian nuns. It balances pure schlock escapism with just enough exploration of ideas about power and religion that you know it’s there (which is about the right level for a Verhoeven movie, I find). There are times Benedetta feels like Skinemax-lite and times it feels like a Sundance movie.

So many movies — most I would say — tend to start dragging around the one-hour mark. By contrast, that’s when Benedetta starts to heat up. I was sold on the opening, sort of halfway invested for a while after that, and then around the hour-mark the whole thing feels like it just keeps speeding up and speeding up until it explodes into a glorious grand finale. Very few movies can you say this about. Also, medieval fart lighting.

6. The White Tiger

The White Tiger hit Netflix in January and I had to check last year’s list to make sure I hadn’t included it there. It feels like I saw it half a lifetime ago. Yet the fact that I still remembered it clearly enough to look should tell you something about how good it is. There are movies I saw in June that I’ve completely forgotten by now. Anyway, Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of a novel by Aravind Adiga is a beautifully shot, witty exploration of class starring a chauffeur-on-the-make, Balram, played by Adarsh Gourav.

The White Tiger exists on a continuum of similar, also-good movies set in different countries, from this year’s 7 Prisoners (good but not quite as good as The White Tiger) out of Brazil and 2019’s Parasite (which is better, but Parasite is a stratospherically high bar) out of Korea. Set in 2010, The White Tiger is also one of those stories that manages to be relevant not by generalizing, but by keeping every detail of its original context, from the outsourcing boom still in its infancy to Balram’s letters to then-Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. It’s smart, funny, looks great, and it moves.

5. The French Dispatch

I’d been a little down on Wes Anderson in recent years as I thought he was sort of stagnating as an artist, our dancing little whimsy monkey doing his kitsch dance for the NPR tourists. When I saw Owen Wilson wearing a beret in the trailer I did not have high hopes. But The French Dispatch (my review) was Anderson’s best film in at least a decade, a love letter to overwrought prose (which Wes Anderson parodies better than anyone in the world) that was earnestly horny rather than twee, vulnerable where he can sometimes be deadpan and detached, exuberant rather than subdued. It was, frankly, pretty wonderful.

An homage to the New Yorker, The French Dispatch takes the form of an issue of the titular paper, with separate sections and title cards. Bill Murray plays the paper’s benevolent despot, with a “no crying” sign over his office door and a stern but patient attitude towards his excitable, precocious charges. To whom he often delivers his signature advice, “Whatever you write, just try to make it seem like you did it on purpose.”

That’s just about the best advice for doing anything. In The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson takes so many things that might feel like tics or oopsies in other movies and makes them feel fully intentional. It’s not only a great movie in it own right, but functions as a kind of user’s guide to his other films.

4. Red Rocket

Simon Rex, who had his own history with starring in porn (he doesn’t want to talk about it, though I don’t entirely blame him) turns in one of the performances of the year as Mikey Saber, a down-on-his-luck ex porn star returning to his Texas hometown in Red Rocket (original review), from Florida Project director Sean Baker. What begins as a sort of The Wrestler for porn gradually devolves into a kind of slow motion, satirically cheerful car crash.

It’s hard to remember a character this simultaneously watchable and awful outside of The Sopranos. As he always seems to do, Sean Baker also gets unforgettable performances out of a handful of first-timers and non-actors in supporting roles. It’s rare to find a movie about porn that neither smears nor sugarcoats, but Baker clearly did his homework. It might be his best film. For Rex, it’s also one of those once-in-generation confluences of actor, character, and public persona.

3. Dune

Yeah, I liked Dune. Dune your mom!

Dune would be worth it simply for the opportunity to do this idiotic joke at least 50 times this year, but the movie was pretty great too. I had somehow managed to never read any Dune books or watch the previous Dune or see the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune before this year. Denis Villeneuve’s fairly straighforward (I assume) take on the source material was just about perfect for me, the idiot Dune virgin.

Almost immediately I came to understand that Dune was basically what George Lucas had been going for in Star Wars. Seems like Lucas mostly just took Dune and put it through a sieve so he could sell it to babies. He took out all the stuff about commodification and colonialism and made the same tale of a special boy from a desert planet into a slightly corny cowboy story about “light” and “dark.” A brilliant marketing move to be sure, but a little boring if you like sci-fi more as a way to explore human nature than to escape it.

Denis Villeneuve did a brilliant job adding that nuance back in. He gave the whole thing scale, spectacle, and a realistic grounding without losing the silly and surreal elements that make Dune so delightful, like the special dance one has to do to avoid getting eaten by giant sand worms. Ride with me! We shall do the worm dance of our people!

2. Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson, who gave us the sexually-liberated, freewheeling 1970s in Boogie Nights, and the conspiratorial, cultish, drug-addled 1970s in Inherent Vice, completes (continues?) his 1970s trilogy with Licorice Pizza (original review), a more personal look at the seventies specific to showbiz and the San Fernando Valley.

It’s hard not to wonder if there’s a little of PTA in Gary Valentine (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper), a former child actor and budding Dale Carnegie who snaps up every opportunity that comes his way. PTA is a college dropout, after all, the son of a semi-famous TV personality who directed his first feature (Hard Eight) at 26. A really damned good first feature, I might add.

Licorice Pizza is gorgeous, as all Paul Thomas Anderson movies are, and, characteristically full of perfect performances from a mix of old veterans and fresh faces. Yet there’s also something about it that makes it feel more central to understanding who Paul Thomas Anderson is as a person than some of his previous films. There aren’t many two and a half hour movies that make you want to start them over as soon as the credits roll but Licorice Pizza is one of them.

1. Green Knight

I’m not usually one for abstract, spooky head trips, but Green Knight (my review) was the kind of movie that could change that. Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain, a young knight on a quest to fulfill his bargain with the mysterious Green Knight, represented here as a sort of magical tree man, in director David Lowery’s adaptation of a mysterious 14th century poem whose true meaning scholars have debated for centuries. In Lowery’s telling, The Green Knight seems to represent mortality in some way. Should Sir Gawain (whose name the king, played by Sean Harris, memorably and inexplicably pronounces “GARRR-win”) go and face death, because that’s what it means to be a man? Or try to cheat death because that’s what it means to be a survivor?

Don’t go in expecting a sword and maidens swashbuckler, but for me Green Knight was utterly unexpected and near-to perfect, with the best cinematography of the year and perhaps the best performance: Alicia Vikander, doing double duty as Gawain’s earnest peasant concubine and a flirtatious noblewoman. All that plus visible semen! The prop guy deserves a raise for that one. 2021 was a horny year in cinema, and for that I’m thankful.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can check out his film review archive here.

Warner Bros. has a belated holiday present for us all: a new trailer for The Batman. But unlike Batman Returns, it’s not very festive (it does have the Penguin, though). The trailer has Robert Pattinson’s Batman and Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman teaming up to stop Paul Dano’s Riddler, who we see for the first time. He crashes a funeral (literally) while wearing a piece of tape over his mouth that reads “No More Lies” and a menacing-looking electronic device around his neck. This Riddler is not afraid of the big, black bat.

The trailer is appropriately morose for a movie where the lead character is influenced by a moody rock star, but there are a few jokes, including Bruce Wayne commenting on Selina Kyle having a lot of cats. “I have a thing about strays,” she responds. Kravitz told BuzzFeed that the “funny thing about working with cats is that they don’t care — which is why we love them. Like, I spent time with all the cats before we shot with them, but they don’t remember me [laughs]. Like, they don’t give a sh*t.”

The cats don’t give a sh*t, but everyone else is excited for The Batman. Watch the trailer above.

The Batman, which is directed by Matt Reeves and also stars Jeffrey Wright, John Turturro, Peter Sarsgaard, Andy Serkis, and Colin Farrell, opens on March 4, 2022.

A few days ago, Unknown Mortal Orchestra declared that on Christmas Day, they were releasing something called “SB-09.” Well, Christmas has come and gone, and as kids around the world opened their presents from Santa, UMO fans took to their music consumption platform of choice and fired up “SB-09,” a new 19-minute song. As the palm tree-heavy single art suggests, the tune has some laid back tropical vibes to it, marked by its use of slide guitar and relaxed rhythms.

Dropping an instrumental on Christmas has become an annual tradition for UMO, as last year brought “SB-08,” 2019 yielded “SB-07,” and so on.” On Twitter, the group noted this year’s song is “dedicated to chance.” Meanwhile, somebody asked if the album will be pressed on vinyl, and in what was either a joke or a genuine report on the status of the song’s vinyl pressing, UMO responded, “ask adele lol.”

2020 was a relatively quiet year for UMO. June brought a new song called “Weekend Run,” they remixed Arlo Parks’ “Too Good” the next month, and they dropped “That Life” in August. The last major releases from UMO came in 2018 when they dropped a pair of albums: Sex & Food and IC-01 Hanoi.

Listen to “SB-09” above.

The 2024 presidential election is still a ways off, but Joe Rogan is already making a prediction that involves Donald Trump getting back in the game, only to get destroyed by a surprising candidate. That candidate? Michelle Obama. Naturally, Rogan’s prediction involves a dose of potentially problematic wording as well as some anti-vaccine shenanigans as well.

On a recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the podcaster predicts that Obama will be at the top of the ticket with Kamala Harris once again serving as running mate. “We get a double dose of diversity,” Rogan said (via Mediaite) before praising Obama as being “articulate.”

“She’s great, she’s intelligent, she’s articulate, she’s the wife of the best president that we have had in our lifetime in terms of like a representative of intelligent articulate people,” Rogan said. However, the podcaster also predicted that Trump could still win if he forms a “super team” with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and Obama doesn’t push back forcefully enough against vaccine mandates and lockdowns.

“The only thing that would stop her is if she bought into some of these policies that are destroying businesses in America that are making people scared,” Rogan predicted. Considering Michelle Obama isn’t an idiot and believes in science like the majority of the Democratic Party, we’re guessing she’s not going to come out swinging against COVID restrictions, which should be a moot issue by 2024, hopefully. Please.

(Via Mediaite)

Idiocracy landed in theaters over fifteen years ago, and since that time (especially over the past five years), Mike Judge’s movie has remained forefront in the collective consciousness. Obviously, the thought of Terry Crews’ President Camacho blasting firearms springs to mind (while Luke Wilson’s smartest dude cringes), and endless comparisons can be made about the film’s central premise: civilization lies in a shambles in the movie because the smart people stopped having kids, and the not-so-smart people populated the earth with their genes to disastrous effect.

One can barely witness a week of the current political/cable-news cycle without someone, somewhere, comparing the situation to Idiocracy. The pandemic’s exacerbated the situation with the antivaxxers shoving scientists to the side, and yep, this won’t stop anytime soon. Over on Fox Business, however, one of the movie’s key moments was nearly replicated last week by host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, who’s still known simply as “Kennedy,” a moniker that’s stuck around since her 1990s MTV VJ days. As highlighted by Digg, Kennedy reverted into incomprehensible noises during a discussion about student loans. Now, the comparison clip is circulating on Twitter.

Above, Kennedy’s shown reacting to Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Tlaib’s remarks about the sky-high debt that people find themselves in after pursuing higher education. Both of these representatives argued for the cancellation of at least some amount of this debt, and Kennedy wasn’t feeling it. She practically channelled part of Idiocracy‘s Velveeta and Formica exchange (including the “blah blah blah followup”), and yikes. Clearly, the film continues to be prescient, and everything has come full circle now, even if we’re talking about Fox Business, rather than Fox News itself.