Share with us your favorite movies and television shows you saw this past year. Mind you, it doesn’t have to be something that was necessarily released this year, but something that you saw for the first time this past year that you thought was especially good.
I spent Christmas with COVID and once I felt some improvement from the Legevrio I finally got around to watching Barbie. I remember when I first heard that the movie was being made by Greta Gerwig. “But she makes good movies!” I puzzled.
As the movie began I mentally cautioned myself to lower my expectations. I’d read such amazing things about the movie, and listened to Michael Moore’s podcast in which he compared it to both This Is Spinal Tap and Dr. Strangelove. I went in expecting to be disappointed.
And I was blown away by it. I still can’t believe the movie even got made. Never in a million years would I have thought that a movie about Barbie would be perhaps the most strongly feminist major studio movie ever made.
I frankly can’t imagine young kids enjoying it. I mean, when a character calls Barbie a fascist to her face….(OK, right there I have to pause and again say a character calls Barbie a fascist to her face) and then a few moments later a tearful Barbie weeps over the accusation, lamenting “I don’t own the railroads, or control the flow of commerce” I mean, how many 8 year olds are going to get that? How many adults, frankly?
I see Oscars for Special Effects, Makeup and Wardrobe, Art Direction, possibly even Screenplay and Director. And Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas need to clear their shelves for their second Best Original Song statuettes.
I resisted critics’ recommendations to watch Ted Lasso for some time. I never cared much for Jason Sudekis. I don’t like sports. I hate soccer (yes, I called it soccer.)
And it took me about three episodes to warm to it. By the end of the fifth episode I was like “This is the best fucking TV show ever!”
The thing about watching Ted Lasso, whose final season streamed this year, is that not only was I tremendously entertained, it was the way I felt afterwards. It somehow made me feel better about myself. Better about the world. I contrast a show like this (as well as Shrinking, a series created by some of the Lasso people that features among other things Harrison Ford in a brilliant comedic performance,) with the shows of Normal Lear. Lear recently passed and while I loved his liberalism and his founding of People For The American Way, I detest his TV shows, which consist of little more than people standing around hurling insults at one another. Ted Lasso is a show full of humanism. Of love for people who have all manner of flaws and idiosyncrasies. The scene where Ted explains to the team psychologist just why he is the way he is….no spoilers here...and he says that he vowed to “Never let somebody get by me without trying to make them feel better about themselves, because you never know what sort of hurt people are carrying around” (I’m paraphrasing here.). Well, it’s one of the most moving scenes I’ve ever seen in a TV show.
There’s a few others I could list here, but I’ve already gone on too long. I want to hear from you!