I have a mildly complicated relationship with year-end lists. I have always devoured them from sources I trust (shout out Entertainment Weekly from 2004-2012), but I always panic for no discernible reason when I think about making one.

Last year on Letterboxd, I made sure to say that my favorites list was in NO PARTICULAR ORDER, just a loose top ten so no one could get mad at me. Aki Kaurismäki hasn’t emailed me yet, so I’m good.

So, this year, I’m going to take a ride through the various artistic mediums I consume and talk about what I liked.

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FILM

My favorite film of the year:

La chimera

Alice Rohrwacher’s comedy/epic romance/celebration of Italian weirdoes, while technically a 2023 release in Italy1, was released here in the States by Neon in March. The film follows Arthur, a hapless British man, played by Josh O’Connor in a perfectly rumpled suit, living in Italy in the 1980s. Freshly released from prison, he’s pulled back in for another job with the band of tombaroli2 he’s worked with. But finding Beniamina, his long-lost love, is his primary objective, far exceeding any interest in selling ancient artifacts to traders and other shadowy underworld figures. O’Connor’s performance, which he shot during gaps in Challengers production, is a beautiful portrait of a man in freefall, mixing an innate British gentility with a deeply moving sense of resignation. Arthur has nothing left to lose, but not really in the cool way, more in the total apathy way. La chimera also features lovely supporting work from Isabella Rossellini as Beniamina’s mother, a voice teacher living in her family’s decrepit mansion, and Carol Duarte as her Brazilian student Italia who connects with Arthur.

Through gorgeous, sun-dappled 16 mm landscapes, Rohrwacher and cinematographer Hélène Louvart create a dreamy vision of a country holding fast to a storied history, jolting in and out of the ancient past with a soundtrack toggling between Verdi’s L’orfeo and Italian new wave. The central tensions, between the past and present, between death and life, are tricky to wrap your arms around, but I couldn’t help but be enraptured with this movie.

The filmmaker I fell in love with this year:

Les Blank

I initially got into Les Blank through his infamous feature Burden of Dreams, which follows Werner Herzog in his frankly insane quest to film Fitzcarraldo. Blank also famously directed Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, a short subject about Herzog eating his leather boot after losing a bet.

The Criterion Channel has an excellent collection of Blank’s non-Herzog work, which became pretty much all we watched in my household for about a month this spring. Blank’s films hyper-focuses on various American subcultures, from polka fandom to the Creole and Cajun enclaves of Louisiana. His less overtly ethnographic works Gap-Toothed Women and Garlic is as Good As Ten Mothers are Blank at his best. He turns a non-judgmental eye (or camera) to people with super-specific passions and traits and lets us bask in their sincerity and uniqueness. In a time where the press and academia pick apart customs unfamiliar to them with noses upturned, Les Blank’s films are lovingly devoted to their subjects, an elegant expression of the patchwork that America can be.

TELEVISION

Here’s the thing. I’ve gotten really bad at watching TV, probably to my benefit. I haven’t watched a full series or even a season of television straight through since Succession ended. I’m lost without my Roys. But, there were a couple of things that I watched and loved worth mentioning.

My favorite new show:

Ren Faire

This three-part miniseries from Lance Oppenheim and the Safdie Brothers follows the Lear-esque saga of “King” George Coulam, the diminishing impresario behind the Texas Renaissance Festival and the underlings jockeying for power.

But somehow, I found this deeply ridiculous show is a near-perfect analog for our current political situation. Perhaps Coulam, prone to rage and obsessed with his prestige and image as a benevolent ruler, is a stand-in for any of the ancient, senile political figureheads that Americans are supposed to worship. His underlings, constantly toeing the line between dissenting and ass-kissing, remind me, at least, of every aide-de-camp and think-tank freak who keep the trains running. And Oppenheim and his team, with their propensity for blurring the lines between reality and fiction, represent the American corporate media, who come up with a spin on an issue before they have any facts.

From Louie’s Red Bull obsession to Jeffrey’s earnest rendition of a number from Shrek the Musical in his car, Ren Faire is studded with insane personal details about the players. Like the best of reality television, you feel slightly dirty and evil after watching it, but Ren Faire’s cinematic sheen and dramatic heft make the whole thing worth it.

Another new favorite:

Very Important People with Vic Michaelis

The comedic juggernaut that is Dropout, fka CollegeHumor, probably deserves its own article, but my favorite from this year was the improvised talk show Very Important People hosted by Vic Michaelis.

Based on an earlier CollegeHumor concept by Josh Ruben, Hello, My Name Is…3, the new concept gives Dropout’s deep bench of improvisers, including Ruben, Ify Nwadiwe, and Zac Oyama, opportunities to play. The catch, of course, is that the improvisers have no idea what costumes and makeup they’re wearing until they see themselves in a mirror.

Highlights for me include Lisa Gilroy’s tour-de-force performance as Vic’s senile ex-step-grandmother, Kimia Behpoornia and Jacob Wysocki as two French porcelain dolls searching for their maker, and Anna Garcia as Zeke Aaron McKinley, a fourth grader who is “rocks now”. At the heart of it all is Michaelis’ performance as a chipper, status-obsessed journalist who clearly wants to take themself very seriously but is consistently undermined by the show, its guests, and their own twisted sense of decorum4.

The best thing, however, is the simple fact that the improv on Very Important People is really, really good. I could go on forever about bad improv, but there is a unique alchemy here, likely spurred by the sheer panic of the guest performers as they frantically try to build their characters as the show plows ahead. The show is also unafraid of showing Michaelis or their guests breaking, which just charms me5. I love when the question of what works about comedy is taken seriously, and the team behind Very Important People is clearly devoted to exploring that. But also, a deeply silly show is a great reprieve from the tortures of everything, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

MUSIC

My favorite new album:

Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman

This album topped my Spotify Wrapped this year, which I was initially suspicious of, but after a long and hard thought about it, I realized that MJ Lenderman’s latest was absolutely the album I listened to the most this year.

There’s not much I can write about this album and MJ Lenderman’s work that hasn’t already been said by actual music critics, but the interplay between his blissed-out country rock sound and his deeply witty lyrics is just so special. Like a (slightly) less morose David Berman or a more well-read Neil Young, Lenderman paints portraits of young men with big hearts and racing minds who can’t get out of their own way.

While the songs on his previous releases Ghost of Your Guitar Solo and Boat Songs trend toward the broadly observational, the narrators on Manning Fireworks are preoccupied with the many varieties of heartbreak. Whether it’s the pain of realizing that “a perfect little baby” can grow up to be “a jerk” in the title track or the despair at a “wristwatch that’s a pocket knife and a megaphone” that also “tells me that I’m on my own” in “Wristwatch”6, Lenderman and his Guys are facing a deep sense of panic and loneliness. Amidst capitalist atomization, earnest social ties are precious, and anything that damages those, particularly a breakup or withdrawal from society, is enough to ruin a life. As the narrator in “Rip Torn” observes, one has “to learn how to behave in groups”.

Lenderman’s economical guitar playing and rock-solid drums, bolstered by his Wednesday bandmates’ contributions (particularly Xandy Chelmis’ delicious fiddle and pedal-steel guitar and Karly Hartzman’s backing vocals), are the perfect surface for his lyrics to lay themselves on. Manning Fireworks is a confident entry in an already-righteous discography which leaves me eager to see what’s to come.

My favorite live-show experience:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Salt Shed

Perhaps it’s recency bias, but my favorite live music experience of the year by far was seeing Canadian post-rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor in early November. Touring in support of their latest record No Title as of 13 February 2024 28340 Dead7, G!YBE came to Chicago on the heels of a unsurprising but disappointing election result with an urgent message of hope and solidarity with all oppressed peoples.

Seeing Godspeed is less about listening to music and more about basking in pure sound. My wife and I stood in the back of the venue, next to the soundboard, and spent a good chunk of the show with our eyes closed, swaying to the angular themes and martial percussion. I also spent some of the show watching Karl Lemieux prepare and present their bespoke film loops, which seemed to freak out the dude next to me who kept trying to talk to me.

This was my second time seeing the band, and I was struck, like the first time, by the focused, meditative quality of their live show. The band gives you permission to just be in that space for two hours and feel whatever it is the music triggers in you. Given the band’s outspoken opposition to the music industry’s complicity in the defense industry, as well as the anarchist press tabling in the lobby, I thought of Gaza and the violence of borders and how we can organize themselves so we can move forward.

As the band, in their customary fashion, left their instruments on the stage, feeding back, I returned to the show’s opening image; a flickering film strip with “HOPE” etched into it. There’s always a way forward, and the music of Godspeed You! Black Emperor is as fine an engine as any for that momentum.

Honorable mentions:

After watching the excellent film Plastic, I discovered Contact From Exne Kedy and the Poltergeists, a fascinating Japanese glam-rock album that inspired the film. Written and produced a few years ago by Kensuke Ide but purporting to be a lost album from the ‘70s by a band called Exne Kedy and the Poltergeists, this is a very cool and groovy album that I returned to a lot this year.

Speaking of film music, the soundtrack for Jane Schoenbrun’s gorgeous film I Saw the TV Glow was such a mammoth entry into this year’s list of releases that I couldn’t ignore it. Not only does it feature fifteen new songs from some of our best independent artists (Bartees Strange! L’Rain! Frances Quinlan!), Schoenbrun revived the long-lost art of the accompanying soundtrack album, an artifact of the ‘90s and early-aughts that functioned more like a mixtape to accompany the vibe of a film than anything else. “Claw Machine” will get snubbed by the Oscars, and that’s a damn shame.

I also saw Neko Case and Jeff Rosenstock in Iowa City this spring, which were two rollicking shows that I would be remiss to not shout out.

PODCASTS

My new must-listen:

Bad Hasbara: The World’s Most Moral Podcast

If you are incensed by the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but also like fart and dick jokes, Bad Hasbara is the show for you. Started by Jewish anti-Zionist comic Matt Lieb a year after October 7, Bad Hasbara casts a critical eye on the sycophants of the Israeli media and their compatriots all over the world. Around seventeen episodes into the show’s run, writer and composer Daniel Maté joined as a co-host, and the Bad Hasbara formula, where Lieb’s toilet humor bounces off of Maté’s masterful puns, really got rolling.

While the show initially focused exclusively on hasbara, a form of Israeli propaganda that takes its name for the Hebrew word for “explaining”, the podcast has evolved into a long-form conversation show, with guests such as Rashid Khalidi, Najla Saïd, and Hadar Cohen discussing their experiences in Jewish and Palestinian diasporas and how corporate media’s uncritical view of Israel has brought us to where we are now with regard to Palestine. Additionally, episodes like the recent “Germany Report” with German journalist Hanno Hausenstein8, which focused on Germany’s state-sanctioned philosemitism, and a discussion of Thom Yorke’s antipathy toward the BDS Movement with Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Efrim Menuck, has proven Bad Hasbara as a show where people with a lot of expertise on elements of Palestinian solidarity can share what they’ve learned.

Lieb and Maté often say that the show exists so people “feel less crazy” while their governments and media unquestionably support the Netanyahu regime and bandy about claims of anti-Semitism. As a diasporic, anti-Zionist Jew who frequently feels crazy when listening to the powers that be discuss Israel, Bad Hasbara has felt like a home of sorts this year. And, at the end of the day, the dick jokes are pretty good, too.

A fun treat:

Jason Mantzoukas’ Episode of Off Menu

This is a specific episode of James Acaster and Ed Gamble’s food podcast Off Menu, a show I started listening to more regularly this year. I want to focus on this specific episode because of the episode’s absolute dynamo of a guest, character actor and comedian Jason Mantzoukas.

Mantzoukas says toward the beginning of the episode that he has an “antagonistic” relationship with food, a great harbinger for an episode of a show about eating, owing to his deathly egg allergy. In classic Mantzoukas fashion, he also subverts the rules of the show by offering up a “shadow meal” with every course, a backup of sorts which ultimately scuttles the show’s traditional formula of asking the guest about their ideal three-course meal.

Mantzoukas’ episode is special to me because of how his unbridled Bostonness mixes and reacts with Acaster and Gamble’s quintessential Britishness. Both parties confuse the hell out of each other along the way, but the pure joy you hear in the conversation keeps the show moving. In the way that Off Menu celebrates the value of sharing meals as a means of getting to know someone, Mantzoukas reveals a lot about himself while talking about food with Acaster and Gamble. Surprisingly, given the chaos of the episode, these insights are super sweet, leaving the listener a little more familiar with one of the more manic comedic presences of the moment.

BOOKS

The new book I loved the most this year:

Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemtism by Ben Lorber and Shane Burley

If there were ever a book for this moment, Safety Through Solidarity would be it. At a time where Jews, both in the diaspora as well as in Israel, are re-evaluating their relationship with Zionism and other forms of nationalism, Ben Lorber and Shane Burley make a strong, anarchism-inflected case for a Jewish home on the Left.

Lorber and Burley take an excellent long view of the history of Jewish safety and power as they prepare their argument. By looking at the history of various Jewish Left tendencies, from Labor Zionism to the Bund, all the way to modern-day Jewish-Palestinian solidarity groups, they argue that the Jews, as a political class, must rededicate themselves to solidarity with other oppressed peoples rather than focus on the nationalist project of modern Zionism.

Detours into fundamentalist Christian Zionism and antisemitic conspiracy theories underline the point that hand-wringing about antisemitism on the Left often turns a blind eye to the dangers that come with hitching a ride with political conservatives. After all, the GOP’s interest in Judaism is contingent on access to Middle East resources and proximity to Jerusalem for Rapture-related purposes. And just wait until they get to the college campuses, those supposed hotbeds of post-October 7th antisemitism.

It’s also worth noting that the book is far from a political handbook by and for Jews exclusively. The authors take an abolitionist framework to structural antisemitism which makes Safety Through Solidarity invaluable for political activists of any stripe.

Like the best political writing, Safety Through Solidarity is clearly-written and a reminder that we can learn from our own history to untie our current political knots. Burley and Lorber are honest about the dangers of statehood and power and remind us all to find strength in each other.

The best book that I finally read after owning it for many years:

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. LeGuin

For many years, Ursula K. LeGuin was a writer whom I deeply respected without having actually read her work. But, finally, this summer, I read The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, a 1975 collection of her short stories, to see for myself.

Of course, I wasn’t disappointed. LeGuin has acquired a reputation as “the discerning reader’s genre9 author”, infusing her stories with a well-informed political ethos. But what I was struck by was how deeply moved I was by many of her stories. She has such a keen sense of character, to the degree where the setting, whether high fantasy or hard science fiction, feels nearly incidental. Characters like Osden, the empath of “Vaster than Empires and More Slow”, who surrenders to the fear emanating from World 4470, or Odo, the anarchist elder who is the focus of “The Day Before the Revolution”, are (forgive the trope) ordinary people in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Their humanness grounds the stories, which was incredibly rewarding for me as a reader.

Also worth noting is LeGuin’s wry sense of humor. While her settings are so richly detailed and immersive, her wit is such a wonderful reminder of the person behind the typewriter.

But most important, for me, in LeGuin’s writing, is her gimlet-eyed optimism After all, the power of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is her conviction that “the place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness”, wherever it is that the titular walkers are headed, is a better world than the one that contains Omelas. LeGuin’s belief in people, shot through the prism of genre fiction10, is what makes her stories so powerful half a century later.

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So, that’s a run through some of my 2024 favorites. I hope that my recommendation encourages you to check some of these things out.

Have a happy new year, and here’s to a wonderful 2025.