The 10 Best Films of 2023

2023 was the year that movies finally and fully returned to normal. Except, of course, they didn’t.

The 10 Best TV Shows of 2023

2023 was a revealing year for what I like to think of as the television class divide.

The 10 Worst Films of 2023

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… and not necessarily in that order. Yes, we’ve reached the end of 2023, which means it’s time to highlight the highs and lows of the past year in pop culture. And because I like to end each year on a positive note, let’s get the bad out of the way first.

“Wish” is a Fairy Tale Devoid of Magic

It’s no secret that 2023 has been a rough year for Disney.

“Godzilla Minus One” is the Best Blockbuster of the Year

Few characters have endured in pop culture as long and as profitably as Godzilla. With a franchise stretching seventy years and over three dozen films, Japan’s most famous monster lizard puts even icons like James Bond to shame. And it’s not difficult to see why – the desire of mass audiences to watch a laser-breathing lizard monster level Tokyo while battling a massive mutant butterfly was potent in the 1950s and remains potent today.

On “The Marvels” and the Future of the MCU

Upon exiting the theater after seeing The Marvels, I texted a friend the following: “This is the first movie I’ve ever seen that requires you to watch three different TV shows beforehand to understand the plot.”

Air, Tetris, BlackBerry: The Brand Movies of 2023

There’s a funny animated short called Logorama that won an Oscar a number of years ago. The film takes place in a world where absolutely everything and everyone is a corporate brand – the cops are Michelin Men, chasing a bank-robbing Ronald McDonald; there’s an Esso waitress working at a Pizza Hut. The film runs about fifteen minutes and crams literally thousands of logos into its runtime, from Bentley and Pringles to Coca-Cola and the Jolly Green Giant. It envisions a world that is quite literally built on branding.

Movie Roundup: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Fast X, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

By some measures, summer movie season has just begun – temperatures are peaking, school’s out, and vacation is on everyone’s mind. By other measures, summer movie season is already almost over – as I write this, most of the major tentpole films have already been released.

West Wing 7×15: Welcome to Wherever You Are

[Writer: Josh Singer | Director: Matia Karrell | Aired: 3/26/2006]

“That is an album title, right?” – Josh

It’s tough to judge an episode like “Welcome to Wherever You Are,” given its place in the season. It’s the episode set right before a major two-parter which is itself something of a grand finale (with the five episodes which follow serving as a protracted series epilogue), and as such, it’s got a lot of weight to shoulder. Pieces moving in place, so many, so quickly, with some getting too much attention and others receiving not enough.

West Wing 7×14: Two Weeks Out

[Writer: Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. | Director: Laura Innes | Aired: 3/19/2006]

“It can make you president.” – Bruno

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the West Wing writers’ room during the early weeks of the seventh season. All signs indicate there was a fierce tug-of-war regarding the outcome of the election – should the winner be Santos? Should it be Vinick? Should Robert Ritchie win as a write-in candidate? (I actually don’t think that possibility was discussed, but it of course would have been a hilarious twist.)

The 10 Best Films of 2022

Compiling a list of the best films of the year is even tougher than making a list of the year’s best TV shows. There are all sorts of questions to contend with – what qualifies as a film “released” in 2022? Should it refer to initial or wide release? For foreign films, should we go by American release date? And are theatrical films be judged by the same standards as streaming-exclusive features?

The 10 Best TV Shows of 2022

Every December, I sit down to reflect on the greatest TV shows of the past year. And every year I get the same nagging feeling: Am I missing something? Did I not watch enough television to give a fair assessment of the year overall? Should I have made time in my viewing schedule to check out this sitcom, or that drama, or one of those other limited series that is allegedly Based on a True Story?

The Ten Worst Films of 2022

Before we get into our annual reflection of all the films we’d rather not reflect on, let’s get a couple of rules out of the way.

West Wing 7×13: The Cold

[Writer: Debora Cahn and Laura Schmidt | Director: Alex Graves | Aired: 3/12/2006]

“It was bound to happen sometime.” – Donna

It was around the production of “The Cold” that Team Wells finally got the news that many of them had been expecting for weeks: The West Wing had been cancelled. The show’s ratings had been dropping for months, and it was effectively a dead series walking the moment NBC banished it to Sunday nights. Although ideas had been floated around for an eighth season – one that would focus on the first year of the post-Bartlet administration – these plans were quickly scrapped, and the writers began building to a definitive conclusion.

West Wing 7×12: Duck and Cover

[Writer: Eli Attie | Director: Christopher Misiano | Aired: 1/22/2006]

“That is how we change the story.” – Bruno

“Duck and Cover” is among the high water marks in The West Wing‘s final season, a taut and laser-focused episode that doesn’t get bogged down with unnecessary prattling. It marks a key turning point in the election storyline, and handles the pivot with aplomb.

“Bodies Bodies Bodies” and the Age of Gen Z Horror

As I’m writing this, A24 has just celebrated its tenth anniversary. The critically adored company has built its brand on unconventional indie films, from horror (The Witch) to thriller (Uncut Gems) to sci-fi (Ex Machina) to intimate personal drama (The Florida Project). They’ve built a small but loyal fanbase on the promise of distinct and innovative cinema, and it’s been paying off for a decade and counting.

Movie Roundup: Top Gun Maverick, Lightyear, Jurassic World Dominion

Welcome to another roundup of movies. Summer movie season in in full swing, with blockbusters returning in force after a hit-and-miss record over the last two years. Some have been good, some have been bad, and some are stuck in a yawn-worthy middle. Today, we will be reviewing three films, one in each of those categories.

West Wing 7×11: Internal Displacement

[Writer: Bradley Whitford | Director: Andrew Bernstein | Aired: 1/15/2006]

“I can be very persuasive.” – CJ

In the several years since this West Wing project began and the many reviews I’ve written since then, I’ve tried to spotlight each key character of the series at some point or another. There are a lot of fun personalities to discuss, and a lot of room in which to analyze them, and it’s always fun to dig a bit deeper and see how each character fits into the overall tapestry of the series.

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” Isn’t Nearly Mad Enough

(Note: The following review will discuss general plot points from the film, but will avoid major spoilers.)

Netflix is Losing the Streaming Wars

The time was October 2011. Real Steel and PA3 topped the box office. Fans cheered the explosive fourth-season finale of Breaking Bad. Beavis and Butt-Head (briefly) returned to the airwaves. And everyone hated Netflix.

No, “Maus” Wasn’t Banned: Debunking a Social Media Myth

Few graphic novels, if any, have achieved the level of acclaim and cultural importance of Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Initially serialized in the 1980s, the Pulitzer-winning work tells the story of the Holocaust, depicting its characters as anthropomorphized animals (Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, Poles as pigs, and so forth). The raw material and indelible artwork have made Maus one of the most widely praised graphic publications ever, and it is commonly used to introduce young readers to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Movie Roundup: Matrix Resurrections, Being the Ricardos, Don’t Look Up

January isn’t known as as particularly good month for new film premieres – studios generally view the month as a dumping ground for their less-than-stellar material. The best films to find in theaters this month are mainly those that had their debuts in December – namely, Christmas blockbusters and Oscar-season hopefuls.

The 10 Best Films of 2021

“The movies are back!”

We heard that sentiment a lot during the past year. But was it actually true? Plenty of theaters reopened around the country – some faster than others, depending on where you lived. But attendance moved in fits and starts – some films opened to strong numbers, others to near-empty seats. Occasionally, a massive blockbuster would provide a refreshing jolt to anxious theater owners, but even those were in scanter supply than in the Before Times, as several high-profile releases either made the leap to streaming or were postponed (again) to 2022.

The 10 Best TV Shows of 2021

Even before 2021 began, we could tell it would be an unusual year for television. With the pandemic receding, then resurging and receding again, Hollywood moved in fits and starts, and TV production lagged behind the rate of the last few cycles. Few network shows produced a full 22 episodes during the new season, and some anticipated returns were pushed off a year or longer. The first half of the calendar year was dominated by reality shows and docuseries, both easier to produce these days (or any days) than scripted programs.

The 10 Worst Films of 2021

For all my longstanding affinity with cynicism and snark, I did not initially intend to make this “Worst Films” list an annual event. 2020 just happened to be an exceptionally poor year for cinema, with the pandemic limiting wide releases and pushing most of the hotly-anticipated releases to the year that followed. Ranting about bad films felt especially apt in the year of 2020, which seemed to invite new rants with each week.

How “Hawkeye” Became the Best Marvel Book of the Past Decade

It’s been a bit of of a bumpy year for the MCU on streaming television. As Marvel’s film studio has largely subsumed its TV division, the episodic shows are now allowed to tie themselves more closely to the films that spawned them (as opposed to the Netflix series like Daredevil and Jessica Jones, which were ostensibly set in the MCU but often felt like they existed in an entirely different universe). Now all the MCU action is corralled on Disney Plus, and the results – while nominally exciting – have been something of a mixed bag.

West Wing 7×10: Running Mates

[Writer: Peter Noah | Director: Paul McCrane | Aired: 1/8/2006]

“God bless the Internet.” – Sheila

The West Wing began its final winter break immediately after the airing of “The Wedding.” That episode premiered on December 11, 2005, just as the broadcast networks were turning their primetime programming over to Christmas specials.

“Paranormal Activity” and the Decline of a Horror Series

One of the more crushing lessons in our franchise-fatigued world can be derived from horror movies: No idea is scary forever. Dracula was once considered terrifying, until his second cousin started smooching Kristen Stewart. Zombies were frightening when George Romero was behind the camera, but today they serve as cannon fodder on AMC. Slasher films had audiences screaming in the ’80s, before Jason went to space and Freddy Krueger began terrorizing Rick and Morty.

West Wing 7×09: The Wedding

[Writer: Josh Singer | Director: Max Mayer | Aired: 12/11/2005]

“Why is Will Bailey wearing a tux?” – Ellie

“The Wedding” is a microcosm of all the problems with The West Wing‘s seventh season. That’s not to say that it’s a bad season – as stated before, I think it sends the show out on a high note – but it does have its faults, and those faults unfortunately dovetail together in this general dud of an episode.

Will There Ever Be Another Sopranos?

Nearly fifteen years after its finale aired, The Sopranos is back.