Top 12 Shows of the First Half of 2025

1. Resident Alien (Syfy) – Long one of my favorite series on the airwaves, the increased entanglement of characters in the alien storyline has the potential to improve the sprawling ensemble piece into a tighter catharsis. It's only four episodes, but the infrastructure is really coming together.

2. The White Lotus (HBO) – The first three episodes were too slow of a burn for an eight-episode season. There were minor character tics that didn't quite land: The power lady trio never got hooky enough, the Scott Glenn character's actions made no sense, Sam Rockwell's relationship to his sexual and drug wagon were too tangential, and a White Lotus Parker Posey was more over-the-top than even a Christopher Guest Parker Posey. Still, this is by far, the best thing on TV and has so much ambition and craftsmanship at every step.

3. The Four Seasons (Netflix) – Unfairly compared to the original film by the critical sphere. Steve Carell, restless from his marriage (to Kerri Kinney), experiences a mid-life crisis and subsequent May-December romance that threatens to throw off the long-standing equilibrium of the friendship between three couples. The show's format of rotating over four vacations is clever. The show is largely populated with comedic actors, but it's oh so sweet, and the automatic reaction by the gang to the May-December romance is surprisingly salient.

4. Deli Boys (Hulu) – The show operates at that dark comedy level around Good Girls or the TV version of Fargo, but I'm not sure if I've seen a dark comedy that's so funny despite the WIDE proliferation of this genre. Poorna Jagannathan as the aunt steals every scene, and it's a blast seeing Brian George take on something new (speaking of something new, the Pakistani member of Queer Eye debuts as an Indian mobster). Aasif Ali and Saagar Shaikh handle every turn with this unique comic energy as if they've just boarded a roller coaster that they didn't know was going to be so intense.

5. Poker Face (Peacock)-Leans on the same three tropes every episode -- accidental murderer, detective in the right place at the right time, and deus-ex-machina to get the hero kicked out of her home every -- BUT Riann Johnson imbues every episode with movie-level quality. That's a pretty high level of consistency for a show that switches settings every episode

6. Ghosts (CBS) – My iTunes bill can confirm that I can't get enough of this show even when I think I've quit it. It's a rare sitcom that harkens back to the whimsical comedy of the mid-2000s as laugh tracks were getting left behind. It keeps expanding its world without losing charm: The show is the most evenly balanced and strongest ensemble.

7. Grosse Pointe Garden Society (NBC) – Even with a flat murder twist, the show delivers a compelling take on adulthood adrift and the intersecting plots are doubly rich. Two actors that have been begging for meatier work --Melissa Fumero and Josh Radnor -- turn in career-high work here.

8. America’s #1 Family (Amazon Prime Video) – Ramy Youssef pivots fully into comedy, shedding introspection for a breezier, punchier sitcom approach. It's an animated family sitcom and it fully uses the capacity of animation to make characters visually funny.

9. Black Mirror (Netflix) – Three episodes this season—Hotel Reverie, Bête Noire, and USS Callister: Into Infinity—were fully realized, while one episode (Eulogy) came close but ended up more of a downer than a provocative episode. Still, going four for six at this level of ambition this late into an anthology show's run is highly impressive.

10. Running Point (Netflix) – A sports-family sitcom powered by inspired casting—Kate Hudson, Drew Tarver, Justin Theroux, and Scott MacArthur—as siblings who inherit a basketball team. It moves fast, cleverly segments certain episodes to tangential stand-alone shots, and features a great array of guest stars.

11. Going Dutch (Fox) – Military culture gets a sharp satire here. The humor is a little broad at the dialogue level, but the basic premise-- a military support base that's exclusively designed for bowling, laundry, and cheese-making -- is pretty hilarious. The chemistry is so great between Taylor Misiak and Dennis Leary as a headstrong father and daughter working out their baggage years after childhood has ended, I'm here for it. Catherine Tate is miles better as a foil than she was on The Office.

12. Krapopolis (Fox) – Animated show set in a city adjacent to the glory of Athens. The show gets endless mileage out of reality-bending plots and mythology gags. There's plenty of amusing in-fighting within this clan, but it's more along the lines of a family sitcom, making it a kinder and gentler cousin to the nihilistic-leaning Rick and Morty and Solar Opposites.

Best sketch of each episode sampler

I am transitioning more of my work to here as I keep chugging along:

The full list is at http://www.patreon.com/okjournalist

Jack Black:

First Play:

Jack Black has a certain rambunctious-yet-likeable comic energy that can carry lackadaisical sketches like everyone playing the base. First play might not have been the best Jack Black sketch of the night, but it was supremely clever. The kind of interplays with historical and meta concepts like imagining what a play would be like to people who had never been introduced to fiction: A lot to work with. Chloe shines here quite a bit.

Runners-Up: Kissing Nurse, Flying Sex Three Way

Mikey Madison: 

Group Chat Cold Open:
I generally skip the cold open. I’m rarely that impressed by a replay of the latest news conference with slightly augmented caricatures in place of politicians. On top of that, the Trump era is too depressing to want to relive it that much. But I admire cleverness in form. This is what’s known as cross-genre humor: A classic SNL political sketch mixed in with a teen slumber party. It’s also notable as the first attempt to try to fully enrich the satellite characters of politics like Pete Hesgueth and Marco Rubio

Runners-Up: Devin Walker as fitness guy at WU, Joanne’s Fabrics at WU, Jury Duty

I don't mind sketches that give every cast member 10 seconds to shine and Ego Nwodim plays a great straight man. Ashley Padilla is one I've been rooting for and this was the moment where what she has to offer to the show gelled together the best. Devin Walker had his best showcase of the season

Lady Gaga:
Lord Gaga on Weekend Update

It’s short and sweet but the sketch crafts such an absurdist backstory out of a known premise. It's also a little bit of a different flavor of Mikey Day.

Runner-Up: Friendly’s Birthday
It’s nice to have a sketch’s escalating elements be the addition of more cast members. It’s rare to get everyone in on the fun. One of the key ingredients of good comedy is when it hits a chord with something you’ve experienced but never voiced out loud. It’s surely everyone’s little secret that they’ve lied about when their birthday is to get a freebie somewhere.

Shane Gillis:
Wedding Interruption Coupon

The plot follows an arc similar to 12 Angry Men in a much sillier way. Shane Gillis is the equivalent to Henry Fonda. He interrupts a wedding, believing that he has a legitimate coupon for a blow job from the bride and is the sole outlier in the room. But then gradually it is revealed that Sarah Sherman’s character is the crazy one. In contrast to the rage that there was some misogyny in this sketch (it’s pretty clear this was an equal opportunity offender, and the haters just can’t get over Shane Gillis once against being let on TV after 5 years of paying his dues), I give credit to how organically they worked in Ashley Padilla’s angle of “one lesbian sess” or the non-sexual favors such as "foot rub" and "hugs and kisses for dad."

Runner-Up: I liked Shane Gillis last year, but this was a surprisingly thin episode

Timothee Chalemet:
Medcast

Rarely, do I think commercials are the highlights because it’s a tired format. But sometimes it hits and I think this one worked because it spread the laughs among three characters and multiple people doing bits like Emil Wakim and an unsuspecting Kenan Thompson admitting to having a lack of a sex life. The twist at the end that this was all made into an actual podcast really hit.

Runner-Up: Barista Training

This one has good fourth-wall breaking and Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner make great straight men. It’s always fun to watch the hosts show off their talents, and loved the political incorrectness of Timothee Chalemet playing a def jam comedian. I also loved the trope of having someone just flat-out leave the sketch in Jane Wickline just being "I don't belong here, good bye". I rarely see that in small-scale sketch comedy (i.e. I've taken sketch comedy classes)

Dave Chapelle: Evacuation Alert

Chapelle barely did anything in this episode after an extremely long monologue, so I barely had anything to work with, but this is a sketch with strong escalation. It involves a lot of what is known as noodling: Referring to a crazy situation that happens off-screen.

Martin Short: Sabado Gigante with Paul Rudd

Martin Short is among my favorite comic actors of all time, but what was this?? The monologue was too self-congratulatory and I'm against excessive cameos from the mainstays (i.e. Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, etc.) on principle. I don't have much familiarity with Peanuts and it was an overuse of Bowen so I can't endorse that sketch. Airport parade was a lazy premise that didn't need to be rolled out twice. Parking lot altercation did not need to be recurred.

By process of elimination I have to go with Sabado Gigante which was a GREAT recurring bit. Ironically, it didn't even include the host but it did have Dana Carvey

Underrated performances from 2024:

A colleague and acquaintance of mine Jesse Hassenger wrote a great piece in the Guardian on underlooked performances of 2024 so I thought I'd follow suit:

Glenn Powell of Twisters-If Tom Cruise can garner a slight bit of Oscar buzz just for being a matinee idol and holding together a popcorn movie on pure charisma, Powell deserves the same. It's a good reward for a prolific last 18 months, and his performance is based on an actual character, so he should get that non-fiction bonus.

Dolly De Leon-Between the Temples-As a practicing Jew who has been around all sects of the religion, she taps into a fairly wonderful experience of converts who don't fit the traditional mold embracing the religion. She embodies traditional judaism so wonderfully that no one gives a second thought to see a Filipino being a Jewish mother

Jodie Conner, The Bike Riders-Her accent work and her gradual shift in attitude are impressive here.

Kate Winslet, Lee-The story behind the story matters, and she did pretty much everything for this film, including paying the crew out-of-pocket for a couple weeks when financing fell through, mico-managing various departments, and keeping this project going for eight years. I hate to give too much credit to things like make-up and such, but it's certainly a complete transformation.

Sidenote: And no, Andy Samberg doesn't deserve credit here. Even if he did serviceably, that was a bizarre casting choice. Watching the Lonely Island's poster boy in a serious World War II film just took me out of it the instant he appeared on screen. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Samberg has zero history being anything but goofy on screen. Why start here. It's like if Adam Sandler went straight from Happy Madison Productions to Schindler's List.

Jason Schwartzman, Between the Temples-Is this his best performance? It's not too far from his introspective blankness that launched him to stardom in Rushmore, but this film had some insane mood whiplash that Schwartzman navigated with aplomb.

Robin Wright, Here-The put-upon housewife who spent years trying to decide where the line was between accepting her lot in life and taking that chance on something better. The nice touch of complexity in Robin Wright's character and her relationship with Tom Hanks's character is that you know she waited too long to do it. The Thanksgiving scene was a highlight, but it's too spoilery to reveal more.

Jessie Buckley and Anjana Vasan, Wicked Little Letters-Giving a shout out to Olivia Colman seems boring because she always gets recognized, even if she is more of a character actor than a lead. Buckley embodies the typical female firecracker trope but I'm a sucker for those. I wouldn't really advocate for Vasan for an award if I was running PR for this film because her screen time is too small (and that applies to Isabella Rossellini, I'm no hypocrite), but it's a small role, I could see a lot more potential with if it went the right way.

15 Actresses Most Overdue for Oscar

Looking at Hollywood’s Most Underappreciated Actresses When It Comes to the Grand Prize

Photo by Samuel Ramos on Unsplash

1. Glenn Close-To have that kind of streak in the 80s is something few actresses can manage, and she has followed it up with the kind of good female roles that rarely get recognized in old age

2. Annette Bening-She’s been in prestige films A LOT, and had a well-deserved 5th nomination in Nyad. Close and Bening are almost like Bradley Cooper/Leo DiCaprio and that they might give off the illusion of trying too hard to choose films based on Oscar potential at this phase.

3. Naomi Watts-I view her as on part of the Nicole Kidman/Rene Zellweger/Reese Witherspoon generation that just never got her due despite consistently being in great films

3. Sigourney Weaver-Maybe, it’s the ghettoization of her action or comedy roles, but she’s still been around for a long time

4. Amy Adams-Yes, to have 6 nominations without winning puts you at the upper echelon, but I do feel like it’s competitive at the top and while I adore her from an underdog perspective in years like Doubt or Juneburg, I do feel that Goliath Amy Adams is less appealling (like the due narrative that accompanied Vice).

5. Carey Mulligan-Saoisre Ronan was a child star who lucked into her first nomination (so I’d give her 3 noms rather than 4) which is the same as Mulligan who had a little more agency as the lead in education. The Dig and Promising Young Women are complete opposite ends of the spectrum and she can do period pieces

6. Margo Robbie-I don’t love her, but she’s creeping closer to due territory.

7. Scarlett Johansson-She’s never gone a few years without making something noteworthy. Even something minor like Joseph Gordon Levitt’s Don John or The Man Who Wasn’t There, she brings something to.

8. Saoisre Ronan-She keeps making her way into fantastic films. Counting the one she wasn’t nominated for (Grand Budapest Hotel), all her nominations have been in 5 Best Picture nominees, which bodes well for her.

9.Keira Knightley-Personally, I would have had her winning 2 Oscars already for A Dangerous Method . She can do period and she can do comedy, and is ideal for rom-com (Begin Again, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World)

10. Isabelle Hupert-The Oscars show also include international diversity as well as racial diversity, and this French star has had some major hits

11. Angela Bassett-They probably shouldn’t have given her the honorary Oscar so young (she was around 62–63 by my calculations when the Academy announced the award) and I suspect it was wanting to hedge their bets by awarding a Black actor in case the Academy didn’t nominate any. She’s a personal favorite and honorary usually doesn’t affect in-competition voting but I think she’s worth a lead statue

12. Rosamund Pike-Gone Girl was one of the most epic parts ever to lose an Oscar (or at least in the 2010s) and she is always taking prestige roles. You can see her trying to spin Oscar bait out of subpar material like Beirut.

13. Toni Collette-I get the sense she’s more likely in supporting, but she rarely goes a few years without something experimental and wild like Midsomar or I’m Thinking of Ending Things and she’s prolific

14. Michelle Pfeiffer-Here’s the thing: With women, they sometimes drop off in noticeable roles as they age. I don’t like it any more than anyone, and with Stardust, White Oleander, and Hairspray, Pfeiffer fought strong, but it just might be difficult for her to find a good script today

15. Lily Tomlin-I’m not sure how much of a glass cielling voters would consider to have a lesbian win lead actress, but she’d be that and a rare comic actress to win the Award. When she acts in Grace and Frankie or 80 For Brady, it’s kind of sad thinking she’s the only star on screen not to have won an Oscar and only got nominated once.

Personal Wish List: Elizabeth Shue, Charlotte Rampling, Kerry Washington, Keri Russell, Jenny Slate (she has headlined the films before, but her films have been lower visibility, Marcell the Shell might have broken that), Olivia Williams (AKA the other Olivia), Christina Ricci, Kelsey Asbille, Kelly Reilly, Riley Keogh

15 Actors Most Overdue for Oscar

1. Ralph Fiennes — Longtime cinephile's favorite online publication The Film Experience often refers to him as the best actor of his generation not to win. In addition to his two nominations in the 90s, he also was a great lead in another Best Picture nominee in Quiz Show. In the 00s, he garnered buzz in Constant Gardener, and the trifecta of Reader/In Bruges/Duchess (which might have split votes) in 2008, in addition to infusing one of the decade’s big franchises with Voldemort. He also got in on the Hannibal action in Red Dragon. In the 2010s, his output lessened. He likely was the most inventive Wes Anderson protagonist ever put to film in Grand Budapest Hotel (sorry Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore) and was quietly brilliant in The Dig a bit more recently.

2. Bradley Cooper -- While finishing a distant third in this past year's Oscar race, Cooper is well-known to have education bona fides (he went to an elite school) and to be a serious actor with a capital S. His streak of 3 straight nominations from 2012-2014 shows and 5 total shows that he's managed to break through at the top of wish lists by now. He’s getting so immersive (and possibly desperate) that he might pull a more extreme stunt like Revenant and get himself eaten by a bear.

3.  Paul Giamatti — I think the voters and media got a taste of how good the possibility of “And the Oscar Goes to Paul Giamatti” would have sounded. That he does not like a conventional leading man has worked in his favor as he is very much an ordinary man in the same way that Dustin Hoffman and Ernest Borgnine captured our imaginations.

4. Harvey Keitel — With luminaries like James Caan, Ned Beatty, and Danny Aiello tragically gone, he might be the last of the greatest generation of character actors who changed acting in the 1970s. Like Bill Nighy or Bruce Dern with recent norms, it might never be too late

5. Daniel Craig — Sean Connery won an Oscar for James Bond, but Craig had a far wider range and showed before and after Bond that he was willing to take risky roles, like Truman Capote’s lover in Infamous or a detective whose idiosyncrasies seemingly are modeled after Foghorn Leghorn. There are a ton of great roles in between in Craig’s filmography and his turns as Bond and LeBlanc make him a more marketable figure than, say, Colin Firth.

6. Johnny Depp — I’m not sure I’d cast him on a film because his drunken and difficult on-set behavior has become quite legendary (exacerbated through accounts at the Amber Heard trial), but to the degree that he would get cast, he’s never less than brilliant and superbly inventive. That can’t be denied.

7. Hugh Jackman — A convincing musical lead is hard to deny like his work in Les Miserables or Greatest Showman (a fan favorite, didn’t go so well with critics on the left). With his popularity with the Wolverine roles, and his range of work like The Front Runner or The Fountain, it’s not far-fetched at all that in a given year, he might have the best performance of the year. If it’s close, I have faith that the extremely amicable Jackman could get the award by doing well on the awards circuit

8. Benedict Cumberbatch — I tend to think best actors should be a little on the older side, and after Casey Affleck and Rami Malek, I’m happiest with actors winning the lead award over, say, 40, which is why Adam Driver seems a bit young for me (he’s 39, and nowhere near due). Cumberbatch might be there at 48. Damn, how the time has flown. He’s been superb in movies dating quite a while, and even if he doesn’t have a gazillion nominations, he does have an Emmy, and he’s the kind of guy you know could nail any future challenging role. He has been in 5 Best Picture nominees (War Horse, Imitation Game, 12 Years a Slave, Atonement, 1917), so his filmography is solid, even if his roles in a couple of his pictures were small.

9. Ed Norton — An actor’s actor, Norton has had some great break-out roles in the 90s, and has acted in a wide range (he even directed a romantic comedy). Motherless Brooklyn (his second directorial film) and his role in the Glass Onion show he’s still pretty ambitious.

10. Liam Neeson — His batting average of noticeable performance to regular performance is low considering how prolific he is, but he’s pretty beloved, and he has an excuse for acting in so many movies (it helps him get over his wife’s death). The probability that he has another brilliant performance like Kinsey or Schindler’s List shouldn’t be that far out of reach.

11. Eddie Murphy — The degree to which he held up SNL and the film industry in the 1980s can’t be underestimated. If you want to give a comic star an award, Murphy would be a good choice. The problem is that there isn’t that often a role like Dolemite is My Name or Dreamgirls.

12. Michael Fassbender — In 2011, he broke out with simultaneous plaudits for Shame, Dangerous Method, X-Men, and Jane Eyre all at once. He got two nominations in the next four years and I think he’s still growing strong. He’d be on the newer end of nominees.

13. Jon Hamm — The leading man on Mad Men fits the mold of a leading man very easily and I’m often thinking he’d be a good lead whenever I armchair cast a film idea I think of in my head.

14. Steve Martin — Hard to think of a more beloved legend in comedy. Roles like 2005’s Shopgirl show he can do something big if he gets the right role. He’s retiring soon, so he can market such a win as his swan song.

15. Richard Gere — This 75-year-old actor has had roles in key films in the 1970s (Days of Heaven), 1980s (Officer and a Gentleman), 1990s (Pretty Woman, Primal Fear), 2000s (Unfaithful, Chicago, Amelia), and 2010s (Arbitrage). He’s never been the preeminent of his generation and he’s never had the hot streak of a lot of great movies in a row, but his filmography stretches back a ways. With a good role, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be cheered as a consummate screen icon.

Top 20 Movie Scenes of 2023

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1. Bernstein Conducts at The Ely Cathedral Conducting Scene, Maestro­: Like most biopics, one of the selling points of Maestro is how much Bradley Cooper put his heart and soul into the role. It’s hard to tell if the anecdote about how he wanted to be a conductor as a kid is true, but he certainly mastered this esoteric art for the film. In a scene shot in Ely Cathedral with the London Symphony Orchestra, Cooper (the director) makes the brilliant decision to shoot Bernstein’s highly animated conducting largely with the camera’s focus on the director as the camera zooms in and then outward of its principal subject.

2. The Climactic Negotiation, Tetris: Who would have thought a film about intellectual rights could be so thrilling. The film follows a Dutch entrepreneur (Taron Eggerton) who mortgages his house and future in his quest behind the Iron Curtain to secure the rights to the titular game. The film’s climactic scene features a cross-cutting between our protagonist, the an amoral father-son (Anthony Boyle and Roger Allam) conglomerate who screwed him over, and a befuddled middle-man (Tobey Jones) as they try to make their case in darkened rooms with the KGB breathing down their necks. Although fictional, the negotiation is topped off with a chase out of the country a la Argo.

3. Diana Makes it to Land, Nyad: The docudrama chronicling Diana Nyad’s historic 2013 swim from Cuba to Key West has an ending that’s pre-ordained. The challenge, therefore, is to sell the audience on the strength of the two key relationships in the film: One between two best friends (Jodie Foster as trainer Bonnie Stoil) and another with a foil tempering her unound optimism (the boat’s captain played by Rhys Ifans). This all comes to fruition at the sight of Diana Nyad making it onto land after 50-straight hours of swimming. She’s so dazed that she can’t make the final steps without Bonnie coaching her step by step, until the two fall into an embrace (shortly joined by her captain). A litmus test of emotion-driven films is how well one interprets the power of their ending. This one hits.

4. The Cowboy Dances with the School Teacher, Asteroid City: Like all of Wes Anderson’s big ensemble films, Asteroid City has a few characters providing the central story and a lot of characters who are sprinkled in to provide different dashes of color. The marmish school teacher (Maya Hawke) and the rugged cowboy (Rupert Fiend) exhibit the kind of sexual chemistry that seems destined by the Western tropes that encoded these caricatures in the first place. Then again, they exist in a Wes Anderson movie which often keeps the characters in a rigid state of introspection. Fortunately, spontaneity wins out and the pair share a very spirited dance with virtually no segue beforehand.

5. Latte’s “Wipe Out” Dance, Fool’s Paradise: Charlie Day’s Fool’s Paradise combines the physical comedy of the silent clowns, with the comedies about idiot savants who fail upwards like Being There and Broadway Danny Rose. In this pivotal scene at a Hollywood party, the song “Wipe Out” plays and our previously catatonic hero suddenly awakens like a wind-up toy. He loses all inhibitions as his limbs flail widely through a crowded party and dances on a the ledge of a skyscraper, before falling into a pool. In a possible homage to The Graduate, Latte sinks to the bottom with a sense of childlike wonder.

6. Elizabeth Reveals Her Voyeurism in a Talk on Method Acting, May December- Iconoclast director Todd Haynes’s latest film challenges us to think about how we classify people as pariahs in our society. The film centers around a doppelganger of 90s scandal Mary Kay Letourneau (Julianne Moore) who prayed on a middle school student and is still married to her victim (Chris Melton) 25 years later. Natalie Portman plays a method actor who travels to her home to study her for the role. But she’s not so innocent herself. In a speech given to the local high school, a version of Elizabeth creeped in that showed herself to be devious and her motives for capturing a subject to be less than pure.

7. Keith Shares a Drink with his Viewers, Dumb Money-Judging by how often the pandemic has been dealt with in real films, it appears that the public might have been too traumatized by it to enjoy seeing it presented on screen. But the pandemic gave way to moments of unique social celebration that are worth celebrating. The scheme of a bunch of have-nots to short-circuit the stock on Reddit is the kind of social media ingenuity that is hard to believe wasn’t strengthened by the pandemic. The emotional touch of ring leader Keith toasting his viewers on line and revealing to a group of (by some definitions) strangers that his sister just died: That’s something.

8. Richard Calls the CEO of the Company, Flaming Hot-This rather typical story little-engine-that-could docudrama tells of a janitor at the Frito-Lays company, Richard Montanez (Jesse Garcia), who invents a spicy new brand of snack food. The movie’s fairly by-the-book, but one stand-out scene distinguishes the film. After hitting the predictable red tape of a factory janitor who wants to revolutionize the company, Richard takes a gamble and calls headquarters from the janitor’s closet. He gets through to Tony Shalhoub’s CEO who responds with the kind of tempered curiosity one would expect. It’s a very effectively written scene. It also channels that frustration we all have in this age, where getting through to someone on the phone is a relic of the past.

9. The Score Powers Through the First Look at the Mushroom Kingdom, Super Mario Brothers-There’s very little chance this film will go down as a classic. That’s not to say that the score didn’t deliver the nostalgic feels for a 90s kid like myself, and that it didn’t have striking visuals to match. This is especially apparent when Mario gets his first site of Princess Peach’s castle and the full vista of the Mushroom Kingdom after being led there by Toad.

10. Ernest Meets His Fate in Tom White, Killers of the Flower Moon-At the 2005 Oscars, Chris Rock got flack for one of the least controversial comments ever made at an Awards ceremony: That actor Jude Law acts a lot. Aww, quaint times. When Killers of the Flower Moon gets nominated for an Oscar (a near certainty), Jessie Plemons will have the distinction of having been in an Oscar nominated film seven of the past nine years: In other words, a new Jude Law. Is this a good or bad thing? There’s a such thing as overexposure, but Plemons’ ability to say a lot with silences can certainly have a chilling effect when utilized correctly. In Killers of the Flower Moon, Plemons instantly establishes himself as the adult in the room when he visits Leonardo DiCaprio’s wreckless manchild and tells him in few words that there will now be consequences for his actions.

Ten Runners-Up in Slightly Less Detail

11. Next Goal Wins- Oscar Knightley revealing himself as a cameraman who moonlights as a federation soccer executive, kicking off a running gag of everyone taking on multiple jobs in the impoverished Samoan economy. 

12. Oppenheim-The very real explosion. Conducted with no CGI. Certainly worth the hype that the first half of the movie was building towards.

13. Holdovers-That electric kiss between Angus and Miss Crain’s niece. The niece was a bit childish and immature (she did finger paints, after all), but it had a great sense of youthgul playfulness

14. Asteroid City-Jason Schwartzman’s Augie photographing ScarJo’s Midge like an avant-garde French movie. 

15. Maestro- Maya Hawke initiating a dance to the Clap Song and everyone joining in; the family’s culminating in an emotionally messy hug.

16. Saltburn-Ollie’s cryptic seduction of Venetia. It’s the first time that Ollie’s undertones of deviousness are shown and it comes out of nowhere. 

17. Holdovers-Mary gifting Paul an open book. Mary also made a mark for being gracious in accepting the same gift that Paul gave to Angus, but subtly pointing out how it’s not a particularly thoughtful gift. 

18. Migraton-Carol Kane’s heron alternating between extremely threatening and highly accommodating to the protagonist duck family. Sometimes cartoon characters can endear me to them lightning-fast simply by being drawn in a certain way. This was one of those cases 

19. Dumb Money- Pete Davidson putting the breaks on being a douche for a second to bond with his brother over their dead sister, running, and their shared goals. 

20. Quiz Lady-Awkwafina’s winning the audition round on a gnarly acid trip.

Top Ten TV Villains of 2022

 As a staff writer at TV Fanatic, I contributed to the list of 2022’s Villains We Love To Hate — TV Fanatic. Check out that list!

My entries were:

Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews), Dropout, Hulu-In this docudrama of the Stanford-educated fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, Sunny is the idle millionaire who initially forms a friendship with Elizabeth as an 18-year-old studying abroad in China. As the relationship veers from age-inappropriate to worthy of many more red lights, Sunny starts to gradually take control of Elizabeth’s better instincts as a CEO. Docudramas are at their best when they frame true stories in novel ways. In this version, Elizabeth Holmes (who, yes, is still responsible for her crimes) as a proverbial Othello to Sunny’s Iago figure. Like all the best villains, there’s a dash of sympathy to the character at the start — he’s lonely; he’s sold his life invention so his best years are behind him — before his crimes start to catch up with him.

Adult Misty (Christina Ricci) Yellowjackets, Showtime-Full disclosure: The show’s inaugural season hasn’t revealed enough to determine whether Misty is the big villain in the present-day. But that’s ok: Misty has done enough bad deeds in the show’s B-plots to qualify her. And holy cow, is she pretty ingenious when it comes to evil doing. In a show as dark as Yellowjackets, Misty is a playful enough personality to balance out the resigned trauma of Shauna or the unsolved anger of Natalie. Without Misty’s presence, it would be a completely different show.

Frederick Gideon (Kevin Durand), Locke and Key, Netflix-I’m having trouble believing, I put this on my Honorable Mentions list last year, because there is a lot of ham and the actors play the level of danger pretty broadly. Kevin Durand, however, must not have gotten the memo when he signed up for the part of back-from-the-dead Revolutionary War general (from the other side) Frederick Gideon. This dude is appropriately dastardly for a man who already hated his American counterparts pre-resurrection; is currently possessed by demons; and has access to modern technology. His presence also comes with small doses of fish-out-of-water humor as he learns about cars and the rules of libraries for the first time.

Lupe (Regina Orozco), Acapulco, Apple Plus: If you’re working at the lavish Las Colinas resort and want a boss who will go easy on you, then you don’t want Lupe. And don’t even think about trying to date her niece! From her tyrannical hold on the lost and found to her low tolerance for fun on the job, Lupe isn’t easy for the laundromat workers under her domain, but she’s a riot for the viewers at home. But she’s full of surprises: She delivers a show-stopping number during the Christmas episode.

Some other entries I would add:
General Eleanor Wright (Linda Hamilton), Resident Alien, Syfy-General Wright is pretty easygoing with torture and various other forms of cruelty in order to meet her goals. On the other hand, she’s pretty consistent the way a diligent civil servant is. So you at least know what you’re getting with her.

Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried), Dropout, Hulu-Sure Sunny steals a lot of scenes, but this is Elizabeth’s show. As I said above, a docudrama is about framing a story a certain way. In this eminently watchable version, Holmes is initially portrayed as someone caught in a white lie. “So what if our tech isn’t 100% yet? We’ll figure it out sooner or later,” she assumes. Is it a bad gamble or a malicious act? That’s for the audience to figure out.

Anna Delvy (Julie Garner), Inventing Anna, Netflix-Along with The Dropout, Inventing Anna was another docudrama about a woman with a complex relationship with the truth. But this show wasn’t so much about psychoanalyzing the latest headline-making criminal. Rather, Anna was just a batty meme (exhibit A: Chloe Finneman’s delicious SNL parody) and the story was more about her sly journalist counterpart (Anna Chlumsky) was going to get the story out of her. Though not a dynamic character, Delvy was a pretty entertaining villain. Also, a pretty zeitgeisty one in an era when certain politicians have turned personal narrative into something so plastic.

Quentin (Tom Hollander), White Lotus, HBO-He’s got panache. He’s got refinement. And it’s so nice that he’s just openly gay in contrast to the villains who encoded with effeminate tendencies during the more censored eras of Hollywood. But here’s why I really love him: He’s dumb as a rock as an assassin abettor, and that’s plenty entertaining. Think about it. If not for the fact that Greg entrusted him with such a fool-proof plan and Portia wasn’t so dense, his endless monologuing and extremely direct targeting of Portia would have caught most people off guard pretty instantly.

John Kreese (Martin Kove), Cobra Kai, Netflix-I mean, duh. This guy falls more toward the bottom of the list because he’s quite cartoonish in his motivations. I’m sure there’s a good drinking game to be had for how many times he launches into each of his awful monologues (i.e. “everything I did was to make you stronger blah blah blah”). But on the upside, he actually is pretty scary. Our capacity to care whether the good guys won was significantly lower in Season 6 when Kreese was in prison, so that’s a good indication. It didn’t help that one of the faux sophisticated Terry Silver’s methods of terror was trying to sow seeds of discord by (not making this up) inviting the LaRussos to a fund-raiser and then making Danny look stupid by being nicer to his wife than to him.

Satan (Leslie Bibb), God’s Favorite Idiot, Netflix-In this office comedy set at the potential dawn of the apocalypse, Leslie Bibb plays a Satan with a sexy Halloween costume kind of vibe. Comparable to Elizabeth Hurley in the 2000 Rom-Com flick The Bedazzled, Bibb is practically breaking the fourth wall to telegraph to the audience how much fun she’s having here.