2023 Recommendations: Movies, Podcasts, Music
It's been a year and it doesn't seem like 2024 will let up on stress, grief, trauma and anxiety, so save these recommendations for when you want to escape.
MOVIES: I watch fewer and fewer movies in the theater and fewer and fewer movies that are big studio releases, this started before Pandemic but definitely accelerated during COVID. Time is short, so I’m pickier, I am looking forward to seeing some of the end of year movies that may garner award buzz and also find myself totally uninintersted in many of the films that are being pushed as all that. Below are the movies that I not only loved when I saw them but also still recommend to folks month later. In order of my passion for them!
Past Lives (Apple TV+): I cannot stop thinking about how I felt watching this movie and how I feel whenever it crosses my mind. I will continue to encourage everyone to see this movie. I found it moving, tender, and real - the three leads are excellent actors, and the characters we get to know are honest, vulnerable and have no delusions about the choices in front of them.
Joyland (Amazon): This is a wonderful, quiet, loud, moving and funny movie from Pakistan about family, desire and conformity in society. I was lucky enough to see it with the director and actors in a talkback in NYC a few months ago. It was banned in a few provinces in Pakistan, included the largest, Punjab, because it involves Queer/Trans and Feminist storylines, with a trans lead. The cast was wonderful (in their performances and in person).
“The right way to feel love, and the right way to feel part of a family, are the insoluble difficulties at the heart of this mysterious, sad and tender movie from Pakistan, a drama brimming with life and novelistic detail, directed by the first-time film-maker Saim Sadiq…This is a movie about people who find their inner lives and sense of themselves don’t match up to what is expected of them. Their feeling of wrongness is part of what they have to suppress, from day to day.” - Subtle Trans Drama from Pakistan is Remarkable Debut
Rye Lane (Hulu-Movie): This wonderful British movie is now added to my personal list of romantic-comedy faves. The banter is A+ (why do the British do it so well?), and the ridiculous situations the two leads put themselves in give laughter and opportunities for vulnerability. There is a special cameo to pay homage to another British RomCom Love Actually, and the movie itself is reminiscent of Before Sunrise (in good ways) and Notting Hill. The debut director Raine Allen-Miller said she wanted to do a movie like this but in parts of London she actually hung out in, and the Brixton-Peckham locations are fantastic.
Causeway (Apple TV+): This is a very quiet movie about a veteran returning home to get better and the friendship she has with a mechanic who also has some trauma to heal from. It is so good, so quiet, and both Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry are fantastic.
PODCASTS:
The Retrievals (Podcast): This series is only 5 episodes, but it is worth a listen - it’s about the opioid epidemic in this country, it’s about disparate punishment based on race, it’s about institutions that protect themselves above all else, it’s about how the medical system allows these things to happen, it’s about the lengths that women will go through to become mothers - and what they will put up with to do so, it’s about how society judges lack of fertility and then lack of ability to deal with pain as a weakness or failure.
“…all these stories revealed something about women’s pain. How it’s tolerated, interpreted, accounted for, or minimized…” - The Retrievals (Podcast)
Vibe Check: I recommended it in its first year (2022) and will continue again. You already know I love the hosts: writer, poet and culture critic Saeed Jones, journalist and culture critic Sam Sanders, and journalist and entertainment producer Zach Stafford. These friends are knowledgeable, funny, empathetic and honest in every way - they are serious and also know when not to take things seriously. In 2023 they dealt with grief, Beyoncé, breakups, Britney, poetry, politics - US and International - and started a book club.
MUSIC: Except for my tribute to George Michael earlier this year, I am not known for my music recommendations. I enjoy music and have many memories tied to music but I get new music from a few friends (you know who you are), tv and movie soundtracks (sometimes commercials even). For 2023, I want to recommend one song and on artist.
Growing Up by the Linda Lindas: The Linda Lindas went viral during pre-vaccine pandemic for their excellent performance of their song, Racist, Sexist Boy at the Los Angeles Public Library. This song, Growing Up, has pep and great lyrics and par for the course, I first heard it in the closing credits of both Joy Ride and Quiz Lady - some funny Asian-led films in 2023.
I am also excited to recommend Allison Russell and her first two albums, The Returner (2023) and her debut album, Outside Child (2021).
The genre is Americana, some may say folk, some say country. I was introduced to Allison Russell through Tressie McMillan Cottom (you already know I read all her thoughts!) and her work on Black artists in country, folk and Americana in two seminal articles: The Black Vanguard in White Utopias and How Brittney Spencer, Joy Oladokun, and Other Black Women Musicians Are Reframing Country Music. I first read the articles, then listened to her playlist inspired by them, and then continued listening to each artist’s work individually. All the artist’s on Cottom’s playlist are now on mine, and Allison Russell has stuck with me, enough that I went to see an intimate live performance in NYC a few months ago that was sublime.
I grew up in the southern United States, and country and folk music were all around and I liked quite a lot of it, but stopped listening to it in the late 90s/00s/10s and there were reasons: it didn’t speak to me, both the words, artists and rhythms. A few stood out but were clearly on the edge of mainstream or “indie.” Thanks to Cottom, I have a better understanding of the history of it all, and if you want a short intro to it, I recommend this short piece she wrote which started my understanding of my own movement back and forth into these genres.
And I also recommend this short podcast episode Cottom did with Sam Sanders (of Vibe Check fame) on his recently cancelled podcast Into It. This history of Billboard genre names alone is worth this podcast time.
Next week, I’ll share my TV recommendations for 2023!
Having grown up in Nashville and been exposed to a lot of country music, really appreciate your thoughts on country music here.
If you like Allison Russell, check out Po'Girl. She teamed up with Trish Klein from the Be Good Tanyas and a couple other folks, and it was lovely. When I first heard her solo, before her first album came out, I kept thinking "Where have I heard her before?" and then a friend pointed out that she'd been in Po'Girl and it all fell into place.