One year ago, everything changed for this site and for me. It was traumatic in many ways but clarifying in others. Although I had not yet brought politics to this site, I had been outspoken on X (Twitter) because I felt I had to be honest and not try to exist in both worlds amid our Virtual Civil War. I knew the Left was intolerant beyond anything I’d ever seen in my life. We were never the side with blacklists, now we were. We were never on the side of angry mobs with pitchforks, now we were. We were never the side that demanded art always project the same message for like-minded people, now we were. I knew, on some level, I was diving into the fire when I began speaking honestly, not out of fear. I guess I never thought it would be that bad.
I won’t retell the story because I’ve told it enough. The point isn’t to bring that up again, but to talk about angels. I have focused too much on people who are emotional cowards, who allow politics to define everything about themselves (because to them, it is a religion now, not politics). And then there are those who don’t. I’m lucky to know so many people, many of whom have been reading this site their whole lives, who are still able to see the human being. They’re not the loud minority of puritans and scolds. They are the silent majority, the bulk of the readers here.
I don’t know all of those who comment here. I stopped reading the comments long ago as a method of survival. For one thing, those who comment are not those who read. They are those who wish to be heard, and there is a difference. But I have to hand it to them that they’re still here, actively engaging, discussing, fighting, and debating. For many of them — you — this site has become a home and a place to have your voice heard, and even if you can’t stand me, I am grateful to you for still being able to hold on to something of value here.
Right after everyone left this site to try to salvage something of their own careers, when this 26-year-old website that I built from scratch in 1999 was now deemed “toxic,” I wanted to shut it down. I wanted to walk away and pretend I never invested so much of my blood, sweat, and tears in an industry that could be that shallow and fake. I know, everyone says that about Hollywood, but after a while, you start to believe their own publicity that they are actually the good guys — well, I’m here to tell you that most of them aren’t. It isn’t that they’re bad. It’s just that they’re fake.
Film Twitter is filled with mostly terrible people. They really do seem to think they are better than everyone else and that they can treat others who don’t agree with them like human garbage. That the Oscars and so much of film criticism have been sucked into that mindset is partly why things have become so dire in Hollywood. They’re playing to the wrong audience.
But there was one good thing that came out of it. A writer named Scott Kernen, who had become a friend on Twitter/X, offered to write a column. Or maybe I asked him. I can’t remember which. Either way, he now has a popular weekly column here called NextGen Oscarwatcher and does our weekly podcast. Scott has managed to retain his wit and sarcasm, and his love of movies, despite how he’s been treated on Film Twitter (aka the big fish in a small pond).
And then, a few months ago, someone who comments here, going by the name Jerm, wrote to me one of the kindest things I’ve ever read and asked to be a writer on the site. I warned him what that could mean, how vicious people will be, and how hard it is to be someone who associates with me online, but he said he didn’t care about any of that and just wanted a chance to write. People like that are rare, especially online, especially in the film criticism business.
To me, Scott and Jeremy are angels. They just appeared out of nowhere, almost, and reminded me that there was still some value in keeping this site running, at least for now. So if you were hoping for me to fold up shop and end this madness, you can blame them for keeping it going.
Some of the films I have seen this year have renewed my faith in movies, and for that I am grateful. I really did think we were living through the end. Dogma and strident activism had swallowed the industry whole, and there would never be any good stories coming out of Hollywood again.
By good stories, I mean those that have somehow managed to exist outside the framework of those who demand that all marginalized groups be represented. That rallying cry, of which I was part for many years, made those who run Hollywood feel guilty and responsible, and thus, they collapsed their industry and destroyed their brand chasing absolution.
Once, we had the Hays Code, the “decency” rules that pushed Hollywood to portray life in America as artificial, a mirrored utopia that many of us growing up watching those movies reached for but never attained. Now, we have the opposite. We have a Hollywood that refuses to show us any kind of real life of the ordinary person in America, and instead, either shows us extreme identity obsession or else the sadistic ritual of punishing audiences by schooling them on everything that’s wrong with them, especially men.
What I did love:
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a wildly alive love letter to those who brought so much music into our culture. Sure, there is one way to look at it, by seeing all of us in America and the world as cultural vampires who took from the Black community what wasn’t ours to take. But Sinners isn’t so much about that as it is the redemption of blues greats like Robert Johnson, who didn’t play the “Devil’s music” or sell his soul to the Devil. It came from something and somewhere else. But even if I didn’t take it down a few layers, I could still enjoy it as an entertaining movie, I thought I’d never see again from Hollywood.
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is a revelation, unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and a film that haunts me almost every day. It isn’t just that the magnificent leads, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, are all over TikTok, and I feel like I could almost reach out and touch them, just like Agnes does when she sees the play for the first time. But is that, too? Mescal, with his watery blue eyes, looks beautiful to me now, where I never noticed before. Buckley, when she speaks in that Irish lilt, I swoon. And Zhao herself, having gifted all of us with something deeply and profoundly moving, has now become one of the greats, at least to me.
The double-hitter of Ari Aster’s Eddington and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Bugonia proves art is alive, even if so many people didn’t get these movies now, they will someday because in their own strange, surreal ways, they tell the truth about the time we’re living through just by trying to scratch at the surface of the lies we tell ourselves. Both films play with perception. Nothing is as it seems. Even if the final analysis is that humanity can’t be saved or that social media has destroyed everything, this is still the thing we can do. We can create art if the artist is free.
Guillermo Del Toro’s magnificent Frankenstein was a reminder that great movies can still exist on Netflix even if they aren’t directed by David Fincher. Frankenstein is spectacular on a great TV and probably even better on the big screen, though I don’t think that’s necessary considering how well it plays on high-def. It is not just Del Toro’s lifelong love of Frankenstein that makes this movie so good — it’s also Jacob Elordi’s sensitive portrayal of the creature. He’s the reason so many people are talking about this movie now.
I’ve seen other movies I liked this year, like Sentimental Value, It Was Just An Accident, and Train Dreams, but many of those on offer I either have no desire to watch because I feel like I’ve already seen the movie, or I was disheartened by them because of how closely they adhere to the sensibilities of Film Twitter (One Battle After Another), or how they deliver something that could have been great but falls short for one reason or another (Wicked: For Good, After the Hunt).
I am hopeful that The Housemaid will be good, and perhaps Avatar: Fire and Ash might help take the American film industry back to number one for the annual global box office. We’ll have to wait and see.
I’d like to wish my American readers a Happy Thanksgiving, and to my international readers, a thank you for still giving me a chance. It means the world to me. And to those who have put themselves at risk by contributing to The Gate Crashers (report coming soon) – Jeff Wells, Chris Gore, Alan Ng, Dante James, Christian Toto, John Nolte, The Film Bee, The Cinescape, Kristi Coulter, Bill McCuddy, Michael Grei, Ed Douglas, Scott Menzel, Jordan Ruimy and Jeff Sneider, thank you.
And of course, as always, our pals at The Contending. We wish them all the very best and hope, one year later, things are going great.
One day, the era of puritanical pitchfork mobs will be over, and we’ll be sifting through the wreckage. Maybe there will be some brave storytellers out there willing to talk about everything that’s happened over the past ten years, maybe not. I’ve certainly learned a lesson or two about people, that’s for sure.
Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving as a season of giving thanks. To you, readers, especially, and those who have written me so many kind letters of encouragement. All the best to you.
