How We Really Feel: Movies & Music 2024
End of Year Wrap Up and The Stories Being Told
We’re not all walking the streets with tears streaming down our faces, but sadness is in the air. We haven’t thrown in the towel, but we’ve come to the end of one long road and found a dead end. Many of us are sad, scared, confused, and maybe even out of ideas but if Janis Joplin was right and freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, we’re in a good spot to change everything in 2025.
The day after election day when we knew our fate, I woke up feeling a spark of optimism shining in the rubble. That spark comes from a sense from all the conversations I’ve had this year on Actual People, and from my own gut, that we are moving ever so slightly away from the sharp corners of our polarized world and toward a middle ground, ‘a middle way’ as it’s referred to in buddhism, a place where we can reinvent and embrace our fellow human beings that does not exist on the extremes where we’ve been living for years.
Kumba-f-ing-ya you might say but I’ve untapped a deep well of hope. That well comes from exhaustion. I’m tired. We’re all tired. Of pointing fingers and having fingers pointed at us. Of the onslaught of urgent messages. The fatigue that’s set in has opened up a space to start a new journey.
How did this figure in the movies and music we consumed this year? (I’ll leave books for another time…) Well, when I started this annual wrap-up, I was trying to remember all the movies and shows I saw and ended up hacking through the endless weeds of my viewing history. That rabbit hole felt like a terrible use of my time.
What did the 100s of shows I started and stopped amount to in the end when only a fistful of gems emerged? The answer I kept coming back to was “slow movie movement.” Just as social media has beat us into anticathexis, the streaming wars have contained multitudes and now we’re opening up one eye and looking around at what we’ve become. Drinking from a firehose of content might need a rethink. No wonder Ivy League freshmen can’t read whole books anymore.
Ten years ago, I did some work for one of the major media conglomerates and part of that work was telling the story of their content acquisition strategy where they used the term “good enough” content to talk about the YouTube style DIY storytelling they were investing in that, on its own, might not be worth that much, but in bulk, with our waning attention spans, might be worth a lot. (This was before TikTok perfected the medium of short form attention retention).
It’s fantastic that we’ve made it easier to produce content from our living rooms, but are we creating too much so that great stuff gets lost and garbage shows cloud our minds and clutter our time?
What did the 100s of shows I started and stopped amount to in the end?
Like the slow food movement before it, maybe we can slow it down and take bigger swings at nuanced stories and step away from the cheap shock fodder and dopamine hits we see today. For one, just because it’s devastating, deranged, or depraved (aka “edgy”) doesn’t mean it’s good. This gripe figured into the movies and shows that did make my list and then I’m on to music where women ruled the roost and will do so into the future. So here it is, my best of my 2024 as far as I know:
The Watch List 2024
Wicked! The movie of the year for me was Wicked. It left me speechless. It was thoroughly entertaining and life affirming, with dazzling sets and costumes. Like Barbie the year before, it didn’t miss a note. Where Barbie dismantled and healed us from stereotypes and harmful self beliefs that were already starting to break down with “Free Britney” and our reframing of women previously bashed or demeaned like Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, and so on over the past 5 years - watching Wicked felt like I had done myself a kindness. With all of the shows that use depravity and soullessness in place of authenticity (looking at you Industry…), it’s brave to be able to tell a healing story that doesn’t inform us that we are all sick monsters.
Emilia Pérez - Wow wow wow. Here’s big bold storytelling from the heart following no trope and using a most inspired narrative device to talk about identity and self understanding beyond the showiness of identity politics. Pérez evokes an intuitive sense of longing and shows us how that longing gets enmeshed with violence and desperation. It’s a story of friendship, loneliness, altruism, alienation, and love all told without a morsel of moralising.
Ronny Chieng, Love to Hate It (Netflix) - I was already gunning for Ronny as the next full time host of The Daily Show. He’s hilarious and sharp as a tack and this special only magnified how very singular his take on politics is as he exposes hypocrisy with compassion, a rare lens. This special is a must-see. I’m also half way through Interior Chinatown on Hulu which is amazing.
Jamie Foxx, What Had Happened Was - I’m a long time fan of this multi-hyphenate hottie. In addition to being hilarious, he’s a fantastic actor. I remember discovering this side of him watching Collateral in the theater, a taut thriller where he plays a cab driver caught up in some Tom Cruise mayhem. He can also sing his ass off. His voice sounds the way the best men’s cologne smells against the smoothest, cleanest, most handsome man’s neck. He’s a treasure and we all thought he was going to die last year. This comeback special is beautiful and emotional for how utterly unslick it is. It’s more a show of raw humanity and vulnerability than an effort to make us think he’s just fine and I love him for that. Also, his shoes looked goofy with his pants and for some reason, that made me like it even more.
Ellen DeGeneres For Your Approval - She pet my dog once in a store and my dog pulled away and went to another customers open hand. She looked to me for reassurance and I found that endearing - but maybe I have this all wrong. Maybe she’s a jerk. She’s a bully. She sucks. Banana peels. All that. But she got up and acted human and became vulnerable and told us she deserves to continue to exist. If you can’t tell, I’m just done with the polarisation of everything and everyone. I wanted to hear what she had to say and she’s fucking funny as hell. I missed her and I’m glad she’s back. Hope she treats people well and that people treat her well too.
Penelope - A girl finds herself in the woods and you wander along with her forest bathing and adapting to nature. It’s not real life but it’s a worthwhile mediation that feels like a sublime lo-fi track in movie form. It’s what you might need on a rainy Saturday.
Blink Twice - I was engaged but not enthralled until the 39:44 mark. As someone stalled on a book vaguely on the same topic, the line at that time stamp pricked up my ears. They’re partying on a secluded island, guests of a rich powerful man and his bros. There’s nothing exactly bad going on. Nothing you can put your finger on. This isn’t Knives Out. It’s not Invitation to a Murder. But as women who lived in certain cities in our 20s, we all know that feeling of being in a social situation with men, conscious of the fact we are being played like cards. To them, we are not quite people. We are decor or worse. I have limited my time in these situations as I always felt afraid in them. You’re inherently not in control when you are in a gilded cage. These women are reliant on their hosts to be good people. They are at their mercy. They start off feeling grateful. Feeling picked. Like they are in a club. Yeah, they’re in a club alright and it ain’t a good one.
I loved Presumed Innocent, Supacell, Baby Reindeer, Rebel Ridge, Nobody Wants This, Society of the Snow, Man in Full, The Lost Children, Colin from Accounts (LOL funny), English Teacher, Between The Temples (weird but good), and bingeing Alone and Outlast (riveting!). I’d recommend The Perfect Couple (a little silly but still fun) and Never Have I Ever if you need something to watch with tweens/teens and Moana 2 to watch with the kids. We unabashedly love Dwayne The Rock Johnson in my house…
A note about Conclave which I just saw: I didn’t love it but I liked the message of accepting uncertainty. Certainty is the way the Catholic Church has historically controlled its flock and abused its power. Certainty wears a cloak of false bravado and led us to elect Donald Trump because even in his profound ignorance, he exuded to more than half the country, a kind of certainty that held sway over the masses. It’s the Democrats vagaries that got us in the end. All despots and demagogues shill certainty so for examining the evil of certainty alone, Conclave is a major movie of the year. Unfortunately, it relies on a lot of opening and shutting of doors, drawers, and shades for effect to the point of tedium and sometimes I felt like I was watching C-Span.
And I will see The Substance. I promise I will. On an empty stomach. Look back here and here for a dissection of beauty standards.
Women are the music moment
It’s indisputable that female voices are crushing it with the freshest, most vibrant music and most wry, delightful lyrics over the past few years rising to a crescendo in 2024.
Lola Young is the dazzling “mess” (e.g. white hot talent) of South London and makes me remember being 20 with a voyeuristic dread / thrill.
Charli xcx makes me want to dance.
Sabrina Carpenter is hilarious and totally original with her tongue placed firmly in cheek in every song. She’s a superstar.
Chappell Roan is clearly a sensation and is probably saving lives. Kink is my Karma is still my favorite song though.
SZA defies categorization and has a new album to dive into.
Brilliant Philly punk band Mannequin Pussy came out with the brilliant track Loud Bark on their new album.
Doja Cat is her own universe and is coming out with an album in mid 2025.
Billie Eilish is pure love and her latest album was bliss.
Olivia Rodrigo is due for an album soon. She has a rare talent for specificity and has the spunk and innocence to draw the youngest of fans while impressing us olds.
Blondshell put out a song and we’re all on the edge of our seats waiting for more. While her songs I admit make me feel anxious, it’s hard to turn it off because she’s so damn good.
I’m not a big Taylor Swift fan but I respect her strong songwriting chops and am happy for the enormous success of the Eras tour which only seems to spread joy and money to the right people.
The Whole Country Went Country
2024 was the year the whole country went country. The Week calls 2024 “the year of Black country artists” where Beyonce blazed the trail out of pop to claim her Texas roots in country with a fantastic album and opened doors for others (even after doors were shut on her in years past) but it went beyond that: Everyone’s a bit country even if they’re a little bit rock n roll (or pop. or rap). Sabrina Carpenter is a bonafide crooner on her latest album. Post Malone, also from Texas, embraced his roots in country, (though he never apologized for crossing genres in the first place). I admit I really don’t like pop country but the rapper turned country singer Jelly Roll only captured my attention once he turned to country songs because in them he captured the malaise of most of America, especially the opioid plague, but also the alienation, joblessness, and pain of an entire country in crisis.
But music, like movies, gives us hope and paves a path for the future so if we put our minds to what we want to imagine, not just to what we can imagine, we might be in better hands by this time next year.
Here’s to 2025! 🥳
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