What I'm Watching: The Color Purple, Zone of Interest, Skinamarink, and More

Lucas Paul, Skinamarink, IFC Midnight/Shudder

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I watched, read, and listened to last week:

The shows:

• Without giving anything away, I can tell you that the Doctor Who Christmas special this year is a delight and a half. Millie Gibson is great, Ncuti Gatwa is otherworldly, and the whole thing is just bursting at the seams with new-era energy. I’ll have more to say about all this once the episode’s out!
• Other than that, I’ve mostly just been watching Cheers. I’m nearly to season 5 now and still missing Coach desperately. At the risk of sharing opinions that make me sound like every person in America circa 1985, I still think Sam and Diane are pure fire (crackling, full of energy, unbearably hot and also just unbearable) whenever they’re together, and I still prefer the episodes that stay inside the bar.

The movies:

• Past Lives has to be my favorite film of the year. It’s a beautifully realized, deeply human story about missed connections and love with bad timing. I didn’t realize how hard it was hitting me until the credits rolled and I suddenly sobbed. I hope everyone gets the chance to watch it – it’s so much better than any awards season conversation it’ll end up being a part of.
• I finally caught Oppenheimer this week and was impressed. The movie pulls viewers’ focus in unexpected directions and is perhaps strongest in the middle, during the searing, scintillating bomb test scenes, but overall it pulls off exactly what it means to – which is quite a feat.
• I’m haunted by Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest, a movie about a family of Nazis living beside Auschwitz. A story about grotesque evil juxtaposed against everyday mundanity, the movie is understated, purposely distant in its filmic gaze, and most of all unforgettably horrifying.
• I wish I could embrace the new musical adaptation of The Color Purple as much as I’d like to, but I’m somewhat bothered by the fact that it leaves out very key aspects of the Alice Walker novel for no reason that I can discern. I haven’t read the stage musical on which this film’s based, so it’s possible the problems begin there, but either way I think the best version of The Color Purple remains Walker’s original. That being said, there’s still a whole lot to love in this movie, from its emphatic but never extraneous musical numbers to its ability to balance the story’s pain and joy. Despite my gripes, I definitely recommend watching this one.
• All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a gorgeous and lyrical feature directorial debut from Raven Jackson. The quiet film about the life of a Black girl living in Mississippi holds its emotion in meaningful touches, steadily building its story around memories and physical connection points between friends, families, and lovers. If you liked RaMell Ross’ knockout documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening a few years back, definitely don’t miss this.
• Here’s the point of the newsletter at which I awkwardly recommend the silly time travel Netflix Christmas movie The Knight Before Christmas, which stars Vanessa Hudgens and a cute and charming lad called Josh Whitehouse — and which has absolutely nothing in common with any of the other movies on this list. It was a date night pick, okay?
• In keeping with the weird detour from award season contenders, I also finally caught up with the Harvey Weinstein drama She Said, which I watched after hearing of Andre Braugher’s passing. There’s nothing really groundbreaking here, but it’s a solid retelling of the story for anyone who’s somehow unfamiliar, and there are a few glimpses of greatness between all the scenes of people talking about how they don’t want to talk about anything.
• Back to 2023 award season fare: I expected to love Passages, Ira Sachs’ film about three people entangled in a messy romantic predicament, but I found the film tough to latch onto emotionally — solely because I thought Franz Rogowski’s character was a lot more unbearable than I think the movie meant for him to be. It’s not bad at all, it just wasn’t what close to what I’d been building it up to be in my head in the months since I first heard about it.
• Speaking of hype, I came away from one of this year’s most-talked-about scary movies, Skinamarink, feeling torn. As a horror fan, I’m thrilled that Kyle Edward Ball was able to translate Youtube’s analog horror phenomenon into an experimental movie with mainstream success. Yet I also felt like the movie tried to have its implied horror cake and eat it too, maintaining energetic camerawork and attention-grabbing editing choices while refusing to let us actually see much from which we could make meaning. Fun and unique? Sure. One of my favorites of the year? Nah.

Odds and ends:

• 2023 has been a surprisingly prolific reading year for me, and Douglas Stuart’s Young Mungo is one of the better books I’ve come across. The novel is about a Scottish teenager trying to survive a dysfunctional home life and enormous social pressures in ‘90s Glasgow, and it’s built on tremendous, clear-eyed prose that’s a joy to read. “Joy” isn’t the first word I’d use to describe Young Mungo overall, though, since it’s also a brutal read full of violence and harsh realities. It’s great, though, and I wish the bookworms who romanticize A Little Life would throw that book in the trash (I am a known A Little Life hater and am happy to explain why at length) and read this one instead.
• Here’s my list of the 10 best TV episodes of 2023. I’ve noticed these year-end lists aren’t as fun now that Twitter’s caught in an endless, boring death rattle that makes engagement impossible, so feel free to @ me and tell me what you think I got right and wrong here, just for kicks.
• Here’s my Reacher season 2 review, which Digital Fix so kindly included in their review roundup for the show.
• I wrote a couple quick pieces about Andre Braugher this week. It hurts that he’s gone.
• Word on the street is I’ve got another quote on a billboard! If you’re in LA driving down Hollywood Boulevard and happen to go past North Gramercy Place, wave at me calling Our Flag Means Death season 2 “funny, dark, and brilliant”!

I hope you’ll begrudge me this week’s late edition: I flew home for Christmas last night, got to my mom’s house, and slept a solid 13 hours straight. Today’s also my birthday, and I’m so happy I got to spend an hour of it with all of you. In lieu of gifts or good wishes, celebrate by replying and telling me about one movie, book, or show you’ve really loved this year!