The Best Classic Films I Watched in 2025

In an effort to highlight older films, here are the best films I watched this year that were not released in 2025 or 2024.  Entries are unranked and listed below by release date.  I'm starting with the oldest ones this time around. 

Go West (1925) - This is the Buster Keaton feature, not the '40s Marx Brothers movie of the same name.  A western romp, "Go West" features herds of stampeding cattle, lots of cowboy antics, and Buster making friends with cinema's most adorable cow, Brown Eyes.  This isn't one of the better known Keaton features, but it's got charm to spare and I'm surprised I had overlooked it for this long.  Ironically, it's one of the only Buster Keaton films where he's the sole writer and director.

The Scarlet Letter (1926) - I have no love for the source material, and I still have some trouble with the silents, but I found Victor Sjostrom's version of "The Scarlet Letter" powerful and entertaining.  A lot of the credit should go to the leading lady, Lilian Gish, who helped to get the film made despite its controversial subject matter, and recruited Sjostrom to direct.  She also helps to humanize Hester Prynne, who comes across as vulnerable and sympathetic, instead of a cipher from a morality lesson.   

Way Out West (1937) - Another comedic western, this time featuring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy getting themselves mixed up in an inheritance dispute in a frontier town.  The gags and jokes are the main event, of course.  However, many of the Laurel and Hardy films were also musicals, and "Way Out West" is best known as the feature with the dapper duo's famous saloon soft-shoe routine - the one that was lovingly recreated at the climax of their "Stan & Ollie" biopic many decades later.  

Martha (1974) - This is the film that Rainer Werner Fassbinder made immediately before "Fear Eats the Soul," and is likewise heavily influenced by the work of Douglas Sirk.  It's a paranoid thriller about the downfall of a spinster, who comes under the influence of a sinister, controlling man.  Though originally made for German television, it was a bigger budget production than usual for Fassbinder, and features terrific performances from Margit Carstensen and Karlheinz Bohm in the lead roles.  

Rosie the Riveter (1980) - Of all the documentaries I watched this year for various projects, this is the one that I consider the most important, the one that I'd have everyone see if I could.  It gets across two very important points.  First, gender is a construct, and gender roles have and will continue to change as needed.  Second, the American government's biggest target of propaganda has always been Americans, and it's breathtaking to see how drastically the messaging can switch on a dime when they want it to.  

That's Entertainment! III (1994) - Easily the best of the "That's Entertainment!" films.  It not only compiles more clips from classic MGM musicals, but this time focuses more on the craft and the historical context, inviting a more diverse group of presenters to participate.  MGM also raided its vault for deleted musical numbers, alternate takes, behind the scenes footage, and other priceless ephemera that were unseen until the release of this film.  Classic Hollywood fans shouldn't pass this one up.  

How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998) - I watched a lot of Angela Bassett movies this year.  And when you're my age, "Stella" is an inevitable watch.  It is the best version of this story I've ever seen onscreen, long before the term "cougar" became popular.  It's all thanks to Angela Bassett delivering every second she's onscreen, backed up by an all-star cast.  I also watched the other great Terry McMillan adaptation, "Waiting to Exhale," but "Stella" is more memorable, a fantasy that doesn't forget real world concerns.

Analyze This (1999) - This got its own post earlier in the year, and I continue to marvel at how well Robert DeNiro's menace is deployed in the service of a comedy.  An entirely new phase of his career came about thanks to the success of "Analyze This," which we're still seeing the benefits of to this day.  This was also the last Billy Crystal vehicle that really worked, and the last Harold Raimis directed movie that really hit.  And it's always good to see Lisa Kudrow killing it, to remind us that there are no small parts. 

You Can Count on Me (2000) - Kenneth Lonergan's first major film is a fantastic character piece about a long estranged brother and sister and how they try to fit in each other's lives as adults.  Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo give such layered, complex performances, as very different siblings who are both imperfect and tragic in their own ways.  And as we get to know the two of them, we get to know their rural  New York community and the tangle of relationships that they have with a collection of other people.

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007) - Last but not least, the most timely film on this list is Alex Gibney's examination of the death of an Afghan taxi driver after his extrajudicial incarceration at Bagram by American soldiers.  With plenty of context about similar practices at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Gibney shows us exactly how we got here.  What struck me the most was not only the heinous nature of the programs, but the almost total lack of accountability when these abuses were finally brought to light.   

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Recalibrating My Hype Meter

Marketing media has always been all about building movies and television shows into events, but I've reached the age where I'm anticipating fewer and fewer titles than I used to.  I'll happily watch whatever everyone else is talking about, but there are very few projects anymore that I'll track obsessively months and years in advance the way that I did in the past.  2025, like 2019, saw the releases of several long-awaited pieces of media that I'd been looking forward to for a while, like the last season of "Stranger Things," and I'm realizing that there's not much left in 2026 and beyond that I'm really anticipating.

Sure, I'm curious about "Project Hail Mary" and "Dune: Part 3," and even the new "Mandalorian" and "Avengers" films, but the excitement that I always associated with being a film fan has largely ebbed.  I recently sat down and wrote up a list of everything coming up that I was actively looking forward to, and it was barely a dozen titles.  I know a lot of this is due to me being in my forties and no longer in the audience that the majority of media is aimed at - especially in the case of genre media.  However, there are a couple of contributing factors and specific nuances that I want to take some time to talk about.  I've written similar posts a few times before, but this time I want to get a little more analytical.  

A big issue is the nostalgia wave moving on to Millennial and early Gen Z properties.  I count myself as a late GenXer, and all those remakes and legasequels of 80s and 90s media are becoming scarce.  "Spaceballs" is probably the last big one on the horizon, which does sound like a lot of fun.  Most of the targets for cultural strip mining are now 2000s media like "Freaky Friday," "The Devil Wears Prada," and our recent billion dollar hit, "Lilo & Stitch."  The new "X-men" movies should be right on time.  I have fond memories of a lot of these, but not the kind of emotional connection I have with the big hits of my childhood.  There are a few new attempts being mounted to reboot older kids' properties like "Masters of the Universe" and "The Chronicles of Narnia," but in most cases I've already seen multiple versions come and go, so it doesn't feel like anything special.

I used to have a significant list of projects stuck in development hell that I was waiting for - "Ender's Game," "The Sandman," and "Watchmen" among them.  I think watching a lot of these Holy Grail projects actually get made, and dealing with the inevitable tempering of expectations, influenced me to stop pinning my hopes on them prematurely.  Would I love to see a new version of "The Last Unicorn" or big budget adaptations of "Akira" or "Evangelion" finally hit the big screen?  Sure.  However, I no longer automatically assume that any of these would be an improvement on the media that already exist for these titles.  The big exception, of course, is "The Dark Tower," because there's no way that any new adaptation of that one wouldn't be an improvement on the terrible 2017 film.      

My tastes and attentions have gradually shifted away from IPs and genres and towards specific actors and directors.  I know, for instance, that I will generally enjoy a Christopher Nolan or Greta Gerwig film, but this is not a certainty.  After "Doctor Strange" I've become much more wary of films that look great on paper.  I have never seen a project waste such a fantastic cast on such underwhelming material.  There have also been far too many director and actor passion projects that have turned out badly.  It's honestly a nice surprise when a "Sinners" or a "Life of Chuck" turns out well.  Or even an "Alien: Romulus."    

This doesn't mean that I'm no longer looking forward to new media, or that I'm not going to write up my yearly lists of anticipated films and series.  However, it's an unavoidable fact that many projects fail to meet expectations, and in the case of the ones from development hell there's often a reason why it took so long for something to reach our screens.  I'm going to miss the fun of the hype, but I guess I've been around the block enough times that this aspect of my fandom experience is probably over for good.  The movies aren't any better or worse in the end, though, and this way I avoid a lot of disappointment.    

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New Seasons of Old Cartoons

2025 saw the return of "King of the Hill" on Hulu, and "South Park" taking off the gloves and making headlines.  We also got a pretty decent new season of "Futurama" that seems to have totally flown under the radar.  I thought I'd take a post to talk about all three.

"King of the Hill" returns after a sixteen year break, and there have been some major changes.  The characters have all aged in real time, so Hank (Mike Judge) and Peggy (Kathy Najimy) are now retirees and Bobby (Pamela Adlon) is twenty-one and running a Japanese-German fusion restaurant.  On top of that, the Hills have been living in Saudi Arabia for over a decade for Hank's work, and are just now returning to a vastly changed Arlen, Texas.  This means that the dynamics of the show have changed, with the generational divide now as prominent as the cultural one.  And yes, the cultural divide is still in play.  There's a whole episode where Hank has an existential crisis over the fact that he enjoys soccer.      

The show doesn't look quite the same - the switch to digital has taken some of the hand-drawn imperfections out of the animation, similar to "The Simpsons."  It also doesn't sound quite the same, with several recasts and some of the actors having noticeably aged.   Johnny Hardwick passed away after voicing Dale for some of the episodes, so Toby Huss fills in for the rest.  However, the important parts are still there.  World-weary Hank has to deal with plenty of new aggravations about modern life while adjusting to retirement.  Peggy continues to mangle foreign languages and struggles with keeping her inner busybody in check.  Bobby is doing great, but still has to deal with his childhood bully and is still nursing a crush on Connie (Lauren Tom), who is now a university student.  

"South Park" has been going strong for over twenty years now, despite taking a few years off here and there.  Not much has changed since the late 2000s, when I was last regularly watching, as far as I can tell.  However, after a 2024 that only offered the "End of Obesity" special, we got a full season in 2025, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not pulling their punches.  After years of only indirect criticisms and fairly mild lampooning of Donald Trump, the season premiere came out swinging.  There was no mistaking that MAGA and the Trump administration were the primary targets, with Trump himself in a relationship with Satan, and JD Vance rejiggered into Tattoo from "Fantasy Island."  There is also gratuitous nudity, deepfaking, and a talking penis.  Subsequent episodes tackle ICE, Charlie Kirk, Labubus, Brendan Carr, Peter Thiel, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

I appreciate that Trey Parker and Matt Stone are fighting the good fight while much of the news media feels like it's in retreat, but aside from the shock value I didn't get much out of these episodes.  "South Park" and its edgelord tactics were never really to my tastes, and I was only ever a regular viewer for a few seasons when I was pretty much watching Comedy Central 24/7.  I watched this newest batch of episodes to keep up with the discourse, and "South Park" is pretty much the same as it always was, just with updated targets.  The method of mockery hasn't changed, and the characters haven't evolved at all.  The episodes with Satan in a relationship with Trump recycle some of the same jokes from the episodes with Satan and Saddam Hussein.  And I get that that's the point, but it still feels old hat.   

Finally, I think it's worth noting that "Futurama" just wrapped up its second season on Hulu, and proved that it's still the nerdiest cartoon currently running.  Sure, "Rick and Morty" may have taken the animated science-fiction sitcom to new and disturbing places, but "Futurama" devoted an entire episode, "The Numberland Gap," to incredibly geeky math jokes.  It even brought Georg Cantor along for the ride.  There have been a few minor developments in the "Futurama" status quo - Amy (Lauren Tom) and Kif (Maurice LaMarche) are now raising three kids, and Fry (Billy West) and Leela (Katey Sagal)  are in a long term relationship, but otherwise the Planet Express gang seems to be doing well.  There were some very mediocre seasons over the years, since "Futurama" has been bouncing between platforms and revived multiple times, but this year was one of the good ones.  

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And Now, "The Naked Gun"

My relationship with the original Abrams/Zucker Brothers "Naked Gun" movies has never been great.  I saw bits and pieces of them many times over the years, but mostly at an age where I didn't get most of the jokes.  I always thought of them as very raunchy movies for adults, probably because they were the only comedies I saw broadcast on television that got away with a certain level of sexual innuendo.  What I found more interesting was that these movies, along with the Mel Brooks comedies and other parody films, all took place in this absurd cartoon universe where the rules of reality didn't apply.  You could have wild, elaborate sight gags where luggage came alive, a squad car could drive through anything, and you combed the desert with literal combs.  

This kind of humor has fallen out of favor as the parody film has lost popularity.  I think the "Austin Powers" movies were the last to really do this joke-a-minute, off the wall style well.  So it was a nice surprise to see so many of the old gags and goofs and cartoon props used extensively in the new "The Naked Gun," where Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Leslie Nielsen's character from the original films.  A giant claw machine claw is used to pluck a crashed car out of a river.  There's a running gag where officers in the police station keep being handed larger and larger cups of coffee.  Drebin makes his first appearance in disguise as a pint-sized schoolgirl, and then proceeds to foil a bank robbery by beating up all the criminals while wearing the schoolgirl outfit.  All the humor is extremely silly, with a lot of puns, a lot of ridiculous sight gags, and a lot of Liam Neeson keeping a stony expression while doing wacky things.

I went back and watched a few of the other Abrams/Zucker Brothers films, including the original "The Naked Gun," and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were all like that.  Some of the jokes have aged badly, but on the whole these older parody films are much more lighthearted and cartoonish than I remember.  The humor is all very juvenile, "MAD Magazine" level naughtiness, but very earnestly so.  The reboot manages to capture and update that sensibility just about right.  You've got the return of the "this looks like people having sex, but it's something totally innocent" sequence.  You've got the extremely stupid acronyms.  Weird Al and Priscilla Presley have cameos.  There's an extended bit with a demonically possessed snowman.  At the same time, you can tell this is the work of Akiva Schaffer and the Lonely Island comedy group, with Drebin occasionally finding a moment to rant about Tivo settings and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."      

However, I think what really makes it all work is the cast.  I wasn't initially onboard with Liam Neeson as the new Frank Drebin, even after his work in "The Lego Movie."  The role was too incongruous with my image of Neeson as a serious actor who made a lot of brainless action movies.  However, it turns out his comic timing is great, he's willing to go to embarrassing lengths for a laugh, and his serious actor persona is part of the joke.    After all, Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor too, before "Airplane!"  Even better than Neeson is the participation of Pamela Anderson, who finds exactly the right tone and commits beautifully to the comedic madness.  She and Neeson make a very cute couple.  The supporting cast is also filled with stalwart performers who can keep a straight face - Paul Walter Hauser, Danny Houston, and CCH Pounder.   

Finally, is the movie funny?  Well, that's a difficult question for a reviewer with a notoriously terrible sense of humor.  I didn't laugh much at the new "Naked Gun," but I found it extremely entertaining and I left my screening in a good mood.  I don't think this kind of movie will ever be for me, but I like it better than the manchild antics of the Frat Pack, or the tiresome tedium of most romantic comedy/action/spy/whatever movies that I'm supposed to be the target audience for.  I don't know that I need a sequel, but maybe they could spin off the demonically possessed snowman?  

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My 2025 Youtube Playlist

I apparently skipped doing this feature in 2024, which means you're getting a bumper crop this time.

My yearly Youtube playlist is mostly made up of media ephemera that's difficult to categorize, and the only thing they really have in common is a strong musical element.  Still, I think they're worth taking a look at and writing about.  This batch contains some real obscurities, including music videos, promotional material, song numbers, and even a fanedit.  Here we go

The Disney Sunday Night Movie - "The Disney Sunday Night Movie" was an anthology series that ran on ABC from 1986 to 1988, featuring a mix of made for television movies, Disney classics, and occasional promos for other Disney projects.  This is where some real Disney obscurities like "Fuzzbucket," "Fluppy Dogs," and "Splash, Too" originally aired.  I've included the version of the opening sequence that I remember from 1986, which remains prepended to my VHS recording of "Robin Hood" in perpetuity.  

#1 Spice - So, Zohran Mamdani had a rap career in the 2010s as Young Cardamom.  No, I'm not making this up.  Here he is with Hussein Abdul Bar (HAB) on a track featured in the Disney film, "Queen of Katwe," which happened to be directed by Mamdani's mother, the great Mira Nair.  Mamdani also produced and curated the soundtrack for the film.

Handlebars - This has a good claim to being one of the most influential fanedits (fanvids? fanworks?) ever made, when you're talking about Western fandoms anyway.  Created by Flummery (Margie and Seah), "Handlebars" is a profile of the Tenth Doctor from "Doctor Who," set to "Handlebars" by Flobots.  The escalation is fantastic, and as many people have pointed out, this video was made before the Time Lord Victorious stuff happened, making it very prescient.  The video premiered at Vividcon in 2008.  

Ask DNA - Here's the opening sequence of "Cowboy Bebop: Knockin' On Heaven's Door," featuring jawdropping animation by BONES co-founder Toshihiro Kawamoto.  Kawamoto was the character designer and animation director for both the series and the movie, and is one of the key creatives responsible for the way "Cowboy Bebop" looks.  "Ask DNA" was composed by Yoko Kanno and is performed by the Seatbelts, featuring Raj Ramayya's vocals. 

Across the Universe - The Fiona Apple cover of the Beatles track was released as part of the "Pleasantville" soundtrack in 1998.  The accompanying music video was directed by Apple's then-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson and features an extended version of the scene from the movie where the local townsfolk destroy the local diner.  And Anderson ensures that it looks gorgeous.

Dr. Demento's 20th Anniversary - In 1994, Comedy Central aired the full Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary Show, featuring all our favorite novelty songs being performed by people who I'm delighted to discover are real human beings.  There's Tiny Tim, Benny Bell, and "Weird Al" Yankovic of course.  But did you ever think you'd see a live performance of "Monster Mash" with Bobby Boris Picket or "The Purple People Eater" with Sheb Wooley?  As a Demento admirer, finding this was like unearthing buried treasure.

I'm Just Ken - This song remains one of the greatest things to have come out of the "Barbie" movie.  Here's the Christmas version with Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson.  And here's the GWAR cover.  

Real Cats Drink Milk and Block City - Here are two of Al Jarnow's many, many animated shorts that he made for "Sesame Street" over four decades.  These two in particular are stop motion pieces from the early 1980s that are among the earliest pieces of media I ever remember seeing.  The music is by Jonathan Larson, and according to Jarnow's notes from  his website, the cat featured in "Real Cats Drink Milk" is named Banana. 

The Annotated Colbert Finale - Thank goodness for Slate for still having a copy of the closing sing-along of the final episode of "The Colbert Report" from 2014 still hanging around on their channel.  And it provides such helpful annotations too.  Yes, that's Henry Kissinger, George Lucas, and Cookie Monster among the notable celebrities who agreed to participate in one of the most bizarre sendoffs any fake late night pundit has ever received.  Whatever Colbert is cooking up for this final episode of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," he has a lot to live up to.

And finally here's They Might Be Giants, appearing on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson in 1990 to play us out with Birdhouse in Your Soul.

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My Favorite John Carpenter Film

Some films take a while to find their audiences, and some directors aren't appreciated until they've essentially retired.  So it is with the 1982 version of "The Thing" and its director, John Carpenter.   Audiences at the time were looking for optimism and affirmation, and were not in the mood for a bleak, paranoid horror thriller set in Antarctica.  However, in the years since, "The Thing" has gone from box office bomb to cult favorite to one of the undisputed horror classics.

I want to talk about the special effects up front.  Rob Bottin put himself in the hospital for exhaustion due to his extraordinary efforts to bring the creatures of "The Thing" to life.  Though initially criticized as too gruesome, his work set the bar for prosthetics and practical effects for the next decade.  It's hard to describe film without just eventually reciting a litany of violent horrors, each building upon the last.  There's the head that removes itself from a corpse, grows spider leads and runs away.  There's the torso that suddenly grows teeth and bites a guy's arms off.  Then you've got the blood testing and the dogs and the flamethrower scenes, all of them horrifically spectacular thanks to Bottin and his team.  The impact of the monster effects has lessened over time, but the amount of work and effort that went into them is still visible in every bloody frame.  One of the many poor decisions that doomed the 2011 remake/prequel of "The Thing" was using CGI effects instead of practical ones.  

Much of what makes "The Thing" so effective is its simplicity.  You have twelve men in an isolated research outpost who are attacked and killed one by one by an alien being.  You barely know anything about them except their last names and occupations, and the monster could be impersonating any of them.  Aside from Kurt Russell as the lead, the cast is made up of career character actors, including Keith David, Wilford Brimly, and Charles Hallahan.  It's easy to forget they're actors as the bodies pile up and we realize that nobody is safe.  John Carpenter was wary of stepping on the toes of the Howard Hawks adaptation of the same material, "The Thing From Another World," so the story was stripped down to the basics, with a focus on the bare mechanics of survival and the paranoia of dealing with the doppelgangers.  We are shown where the alien came from, but nearly everything else about it is a mystery.  The climate is inhospitable and the monster is clever.  The action and suspense are pushed to the forefront, and a happy ending is not in the cards.

Long before I saw "The Thing" I saw its influence on other media.  So many movies and shows about doppelgangers, isolated standoffs, implacable contagions, and creepy crawlies have been trying to capture that same sense of dread and disaster.  The echoes of "The Thing" are everywhere, from other horror movies like Daniel Espinosa's "Life," to Quentin Tarantino's snowbound western, "The Hateful Eight" - which also borrowed the Ennio Morricone score for "The Thing" for good measure.  The gory excess of the alien transformations broke some boundaries, but what really lingered in the cultural consciousness was the nihilism of facing a monster that could only be defeated through the cold obliteration of every living thing we see in the movie.  John Carpenter would return to Lovecraftian cosmic horror several times over the course of his career, but never with as much impact.  

Carpenter is often described as a genre filmmaker, which is fair, as he gave us classics in several different ones - action-comedy, horror, satire, and science-fiction.  If I hadn't written about "The Thing," my next choice would have been "Starman," another film about an alien on Earth that is a complete tonal 180 from "The Thing."  Most of his films were dismissed as B-movies and schlock upon initial release, but are well loved decades on.  And Carpenter did have his share of hits, helping to ensure that he had a long and fascinating career that included tiny indie projects and major studio films.  "The Thing" was one of the studio films, which gave him the resources to create a nightmare vision of grotesquery on a scale that had never been seen before.  And frankly, nobody has really matched it since.

What I've Seen - John Carpenter

Dark Star (1974)

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Halloween (1978)

The Fog (1980)

Escape from New York (1981)

The Thing (1982)

Christine (1983)

Starman (1984)

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Prince of Darkness (1987)

They Live (1988)

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

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The Nostalgia Documentaries

I've noticed that several of the prominent documentaries I've watched over the last few months fall into a specific category, and seem to be targeting the same audience.  These are documentaries that spotlight performers and entertainers who became prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, with narratives that largely serve as retrospectives of their careers.  This includes "Pee-Wee as Himself," "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie," and "Devo."  Though biographical documentaries have always been common, lately it feels like everyone from that era is getting one.  Over the past few years we've had documentaries about Val Kilmer, Anthony Bourdain, Sly Stone, Christopher Reeves, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Jim Henson, John Candy and multiple Beatles tributes.  Plenty more are on their way soon.

Now, some of these documentaries are very good.  "Pee-Wee as Himself" stands out as one of the best, not only because it reveals Paul Reubens' private life and struggles as a persecuted gay man in the 1980s, but also because of the adversarial relationship that Reubens had with the documentarian Matt Wolf, which is on display in their interviews.  However, most of the others follow a similar pattern of either having the documentary subject reminisce about their life and career, hopefully offering an entertaining personal account of what it was like to live through their successes and failures, or if they're deceased, piecing together this information through interviews with their friends and family.  There are a few that fall into the category of exposes or tell-alls, like the Martha Stewart and Bill Cosby documentaries, but these are fairly rare.  

Instead, most of the nostalgia-centered docs are all about evoking good feelings and providing an excuse to traipse down memory lane.  I've been fascinated with some of these, because these celebrities come from an era where I was aware enough to understand who they were, but often too young to really grasp the historical context in which they existed.  "Cheech & Chong's Last Movie," for instance, did an excellent job of not just getting across who Cheech and Chong were in their heyday, but the counterculture of the '70s that they were a part of.  I also like the framing device of the two old stoners going on one last imaginary road trip together, occasionally picking up other interviewees as their passengers.   Alternately, I have a much harder time with music documentaries like "Becoming Led Zeppelin" and "Pavements" because music culture remains ever elusive for me.  I think you have to be an existing fan to really appreciate what they're doing. 

Fundamentally, there's nothing wrong with spending a few hours listening to Steve Martin or Lionel Richie tell stories about the good old days, but I do feel that some of these biographical documentaries get awfully indulgent, to the point where some of them are pretty obviously just vanity projects.  The more ambitious, hard-hitting historical documentaries are much more rigorous about their research, and often much more critical of their subjects.  I prefer the documentaries where the subject is deceased, because the filmmakers are often willing to paint a less flattering portrait, with more shadings and more nuances.  One of my favorite documentaries remains "Mr Best Fiend," Werner Herzog's wonderfully candid look at his tumultuous friendship with the Austrian actor and madman, Klaus Kinski.  

I love seeing extraordinary individuals getting the spotlight, and learning more about what was really going on behind the scenes for certain moments in pop culture, but I find myself raising my eyebrows more often lately when I learn who the subject of a new documentary is.  I'm not going to name specific names, but it often feels like if one documentary about a particular performer is successful, everyone in their cohort is suddenly next in line.  Frankly, not everyone needs a documentary, though in the vlogging age I suppose there's the material for anyone to make their own.

It's going to get very interesting in a few decades when we're all old enough to be nostalgic for any years where social media was active.  I guess I should just enjoy this era of nostalgia docs while it lasts.  

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2011-2012

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2011-2012 television season below, in no particular order.  And a few spoilers ahead, including that one episode of "Breaking Bad." 

Game of Thrones, "Blackwater" - The first real "Game of Thrones" battle episode feels positively small scale now, especially considering the way it was contrived to skip most of the expensive battle scenes because we stuck to Tyrion's limited POV.  But still, what an event!  Cersei gets to be maternal, Tyrion gets to be inspirational, and at this point getting so many disparate characters in kinda close proximity to each other was something to cheer about. 

Parks and Rec, "The Comeback Kid" - It's the one with the ice rink.  Leslie launches a comeback push for her city council campaign while Ben takes up claymation and Andy and April adopt a dog.  And all of this culminates in a trip across a slippery frozen arena, set to Gloria Estefan's "Get on Your Feet," that is one of the most hysterical things that "Parks and Rec" ever came up with.  By this point in the show's run, the laughs could come from anywhere.  And they did.

Breaking Bad, "Crawl Space" - The emotional lowpoint of the fourth season, where Walt gradually comes to learn how badly things are going with both his allies and his enemies.  The tension ratchets up as the danger grows and Walt's options shrink, until there seems to be only one way out.  The final shot where the axe drops is one of the best of the entire series run, capturing a chilling moment where Walter White seems to have gone over the edge at last.  

Community, "Remedial Chaos Theory" - Witness the birth of the darkest timeline.  This is truly an episode for the nerds who are willing to patiently sit through the first few cycles of the story, which are fairly similar to each other, in order to reach the chaotic joys of one-armed Jeff and evil Abed.  Stuffed with meme-worthy lines, references, and in-jokes, the episode breaks all the rules and is one of the best examples of the experimental side of "Community." 

Mad Men, "Commissions and Fees" - Jared Harris's performance as Lane Pryce was one of my favorite parts of "Mad Men."  This episode is his swan song, a bleak, wintry farewell that has some truly heartbreaking scenes and existentially unnerving imagery.  This is also very much a Don episode, where we watch him take care of business with the understanding that a few wrong moves will put him in the same boat as Lane.  And the Jaguar shade is legendary.  

Girls, "Pilot" - I didn't like "Girls" much from what little I saw of it, but I always appreciated the pilot episode, where we're introduced to the exasperating Hannah Horvath, who has a very long way to go on her path to maturity.  From the very beginning, her awfulness and her privilege are clear, but I was also struck by the candidness of how she's portrayed.  I was also relieved that the production values were better than Lena Dunham's feature, "Tiny Furniture."  

Sherlock, "A Scandal in Belgravia" - This episode set off a storm in the fandom about the sexuality of the characters and the show's treatment of the female characters.  This version of Irene Adler is incredibly sexual, self-contradictory, and ultimately a fantasy ideal of a love interest for Sherlock Holmes.  And there's nothing wrong with that in this context.  I still count this as one of the best episodes of the show - juvenile sure, but awfully entertaining.    

Louie, "New Jersey"/"Airport" - What I loved about "Louie" was Louis C.K.'s ability to capture very specific moods and tones.  In this case, a misadventure strands him far from home, forcing him to call up a friend for a ride in the middle of the night.  And this leads to one of the best things I've ever seen special guest star Chris Rock do, acting as the disappointed, responsible adult who lectures Louie all the way home on how he's too old to be acting this stupid.   

Doctor Who, "The Girl Who Waited" - The quality of "Doctor Who" was hit-or-miss in every era, but I stuck around for the occasional episodes like this, the ones that told time travel stories that really took advantage of the show's fantastic concepts and characters.  Here we meet an embittered version of Amy Pond who was forced to wait too long for her rescue - creating a moral dilemma for the Doctor and Rory as they try to find a way to resolve the situation.  

Black Mirror, "15 Million Merits" - Finally, the episode that began my obsession with "Black Mirror," back when it was a Channel Four production.  I accidentally stumbled across a pirated version on Youtube, and thought it was a web series.  I didn't know who Daniel Kaluuya was, or Jessica Brown-Findlay, and I'd never heard of Charlie Brooker.  I just knew that the episode was one of the most effective pieces of science-fiction I'd seen in ages, and I wanted more.  

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About That "Dexter: Resurrection"

Spoilers for "Dexter" and "Dexter: New Blood" ahead.

The original "Dexter" series aired on Showtime back when I had no access to premium cable television.  I only watched the first few seasons, which I liked, but nothing after the fourth season - the one with the Trinity Killer.  However, I definitely got wind of the franchise's ups and downs over the years - the botched ending of the series with Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) becoming an Alaskan lumberjack, the 2021 sequel miniseries, "Dexter: New Blood" that tried to give him a more dignified exit, and finally last year's "Dexter: Original Sin" prequel show.  I didn't watch any of these, but I was finally persuaded by good reviews to give the latest entry in the "Dexter" saga, "Dexter: Resurrection," a fair shot.  And I'm thrilled that I did.

I had absolutely no trouble getting up to speed with what Dexter Morgan has been up to for the past ten years, which comes down to trying his best to stop being a serial killer.  In "Resurrection," however, he's back to bad habits.  Dexter goes to New York City to help his now adult son Harrison (Jack Alcott), who has gotten himself mixed up in a murder.   Inevitably, Dexter becomes an active killer again, despite becoming friends with his new landlord Blessing (Ntare Gumo Mbaho Mwine), and despite the warnings of Dexter's deceased father Harry (James Remar), who hangs around as a personification of his conscience.  Unfortunately, Dexter's ex-pal Angel (David Zayas), is also in town intent on proving that Dexter is a murderer once and for all.  He's helping the detective in charge of investigating Harrison, Claudette Wallace (Kadia Saraf).  Dexter also inadvertently stumbles into a peculiar group run by the billionaire Leon Prater (Peter Dinklange) and his formidable henchwoman Charley (Uma Thurman). 

"Dexter: Resurrection" feels like a series reset to get the main character back to his original status quo, but to the credit of returning showrunner Clyde Phillips, it does a good job of showing how Dexter naturally arrives at this point, and emphasizes that he has changed over the years.  This ten-episode first season spends a lot of time helping Dexter process all the drama and upheaval he's been through, and getting his priorities straightened out.  He wants to be a good Dad.  He wants to be more human and connect to other people.  At the same time, the show treats the audience to a ton of new kills, new serial killer rivals, callbacks, fanservice, and guest stars galore.  This is easily the most star-studded "Dexter" project to date, with Peter Dinklange absolutely stealing the show every time he's onscreen.  I am sorely tempted to write a spoiler post for this season, just so I can gush over some of the other performances, but I'll leave you to discover those for yourselves.

One very good choice was cutting down the complications in Dexter's life so Harrison is his main concern.  They have an interesting relationship to watch, and Jack Alcott has no trouble shouldering the plot for long stretches, thankfully.  I also like the move to a New York setting, which puts Dexter out of his element, but creates all kinds of new opportunities for culture clashes and new character dynamics.  Dexter's past is always on his mind, and sometimes in his face in the form of Angel, but being in New York gives him a chance to shed some old baggage and sort out what he actually wants moving forward.  Dexter's snarky internal monologues were always a fun part of the show, and here they're snarkier and more entertaining than ever.    

And really, that's what caught me the most off guard about "Dexter: Resurrection."  It is so much more fun than I remember the original "Dexter" being.  The macabre, winking opening sequence may be gone, but that same toothsome verve keeps rearing its head throughout this season, which features all kinds of wild twists, loads of black humor, and cheerfully implausible things happening in every episode.  Sure, you could nitpick the plot holes, or you could suspend disbelief and just enjoy watching Dexter outsmart his adversaries with improbable smarts and foresight, narrowly getting away again and again.  And unlike a lot of other sequel series and legasequel series, the formula still works great here.  I hope to see more of Dexter Morgan and friends soon.

  

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About That "F1" Movie

I will preface the following remarks with the disclaimer that I know almost nothing about auto racing, race cars, or what distinguishes Formula One from any other type of racing.  I know that it's not a casual sport, with most of the cars and teams being sponsored by major auto manufacturers with deep pockets.  And fortunately, this is pretty much all you need to know going into "F1," aka "F1 the Movie."

Joseph Kosinski has proven that the success of "Top Gun: Maverick" wasn't a fluke, and he's done it by making a film that establishes a pretty clear pattern of how Kosinski makes a hit.  You make a movie in a nearly extinct action sub-genre, put an aging movie star at its center, have the story be about passing the torch and one last shot at glory, and pretty the whole thing up with cutting edge movie effects to amp up the spectacle.  It's not just a matter of putting Brad Pitt into an F1 racing movie, but boiling all the tropes of racing movies down to their most basic forms and presenting them in a shiny new package.  The version of F1 we see depicted onscreen is very idealized - women and minorities are conspicuously represented - as the U.S. Air Force was in "Top Gun: Maverick," with any political or cultural barriers to entry only vaguely alluded to.  And since the movie couldn't have been made without the participation of the FIA, the governing body of F1, that's no surprise.

I'm also certain that the racing itself doesn't remotely resemble what actually happens on a real Formula One race track.  Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a maverick racer-for-hire who is constantly using dangerous tricks and stratagems to gain an advantage.  He's recruited by an old racing teammate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), as a last ditch effort to save the floundering newbie APXGP team, which Ruben bankrolls.  The team's other primary driver is the talented, but green Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).  They also have the risk-averse Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia) as team principal, and F1's first female technical director, Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), in charge of the cars.  Sonny joins the team and promptly clashes with all of them, but also provokes them to do better.  We watch as they figure out how to work together over the course of an eventful season, chasing victory despite many defeats and setbacks.  There are injuries, disqualifications, ghosts of the past, and plenty of interpersonal frictions.  There's also a secret saboteur in the mix, naturally.  

The pieces of the movie are all very artificial and very familiar, but this isn't a bad thing.  All the old tropes work to the film's benefit, and "F1" turned out to be exactly what I wanted in a summer movie blockbuster.  The performances, the filmmaking, and the execution of all the predictable twists and turns are fantastic.  "F1" is absolutely the kind of movie that you want to see on the biggest screen possible to really immerse yourself in the experience of watching all those beautifully staged race sequences where the cars are barrelling down the track at unfathomable speeds.  There's a first person POV sequence in the last race that is downright breathtaking to behold, and DP Claudio Miranda should be up for every cinematography award in a few months.  The script is bare bones and the characters even moreso, but you buy that Sonny Hayes is getting away with all of this because it's Brad Pitt, looking as handsome and  charming as ever.  And Javier Bardem is a pro at making the implausible behind-the-scenes troubles seem plausible, because he's terribly convincing every time he announces that something else has gone wrong.

"F1" is a sports movie, but it's also a process movie.  What I appreciated the most was getting an up-close and detailed look at the cars and the racing, even if much of it was romanticized and cleaned up for the silver screen.  Half of what sells the racing is spending so much time with dedicated professionals behind the scenes who are obsessed with improving their race times by mere tenths of a second.  It's sitting in on strategy meetings, board meetings, and press conferences.  It's watching APXGP lose race after race, but learning a little bit more each time.  Kosinski embraces being a maximalist storyteller, and ensures that the sizable budget is well spent.  Unlike a lot of other movies this summer, you can see every dollar onscreen.  "F1" is also a long movie, but it earns its running time, and in the end the filmmakers earn the happy ending that could only happen in the movies.  

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Rank 'Em: "Mission: Impossible"

I'll start off with the caveat that I don't count myself as a "Mission: Impossible" fan.  I've seen most of the later movies only once apiece, and there are several I just flat out dislike.  However, when the series was good, it was good, and some of these entries definitely deserve a few kudos.  So here, from best to least, are my rankings of the "Mission: Impossible" movies:

1. Ghost Protocol (2011) - It's all set pieces.  And it's all set pieces orchestrated by Brad Bird, who is so great at balancing action and character and humor.  There's a playfulness to this installment that works so well for me, and helps to set the franchise apart from all the other spy franchises of the time.  And while Tom Cruise is indisputably the star, the team is great - Benji is promoted, Jeremy Renner's William Brandt makes a fun newbie, Paula Patton is a delight, and everybody gets their moment.  

2. Mission: Impossible (1996) - The franchise kickoff is very much a '90s Brian DePalma thriller, and barely feels of a piece with the rest of the series.  It's much more grounded, much more twisty, and doesn't care if the audience can keep up with it.  Still, it delivered the big set pieces as well as anybody.  This is also the "Mission: Impossible" movie where Tom Cruise's ego is the least on display, even though this is the first movie he produced.  I wish we'd gotten a few more entries like this one.  

3. Mission: Impossible III (2006) - After a nice long hiatus, this was a pleasant surprise.  J.J. Abrams isn't great in the director's chair, and the script has some groaners, but what distinguishes this movie is that it has one of the franchise's truly great villains: Owen Davian, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Also, Ethan Hunt' relationship with Julia is the only romantic relationship in the series that ever really worked for me, even if it still feels like Cruise is trying too hard to seem like a human being.  

4. Rogue Nation (2015) - The first of the Christopher McQuarrie directed films that set the formula for the rest of the series.  It feels like it was originally planned as a grand finale or a potential handoff point to another leading man, which might be why it comes across as so celebratory and satisfying.  Rebecca Ferguson makes her first appearance as Ilsa Faust, and the opera sequence is a franchise highlight.  This is also the last "Mission: Impossible" film where I felt the humor worked for me.

5. Fallout (2018) - Here's where I'm going to get in trouble.  I have absolutely no beef with the action sequences or the spycraft or the performances in "Fallout."  This is the one with Henry Cavill and his mustache as the main villain, and he is impeccable.  However, this is also the one where the attempts to sell Tom Cruise as a romantic lead were so grating that it completely took me out of the movie.  Some view this as the pinnacle of the franchise, but it's when I started looking for an escape hatch.  

6. Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - That title is just hilarious in retrospect.  I enjoy Hayley Attwell as the new love interest, but the movie is a bore whenever it's not in the middle of one of the action sequences.  Fortunately, the ones in this movie are pretty good, and especially the train crash.  However, I take exception to the AI doomsday plot, which is just badly written science-fiction that doesn't feel like part of this universe.  Audiences weren't pleased either, going by the box office.

7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - The motorcycle duel!  The gratuitous slow motion with doves!  Thandiwe Newton looking all winsome!  Bellerophon and Chimera!  It's the John Woo entry into the "Mission: Impossible" series, and it is goofy and ridiculous, and it presages a lot of the franchise's worst habits.  There's Cruise already showboating shamelessly in the opening sequence.  There's the gratuitous use of mask reveals.  I have a soft spot for this one, but I won't pretend it's any good.

 

8. The Final Reckoning (2025) -  I didn't like it.  I think it's good that we're done for now.  

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Getting "Inside the Actors Studio"

This is a late tribute to a television program that fell off of my radar some time ago.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was once the flagship program of the Bravo network, back when they were trying to be a more classy arts channel, before the "Real Housewives" era.  It quietly aired for 24 years and amassed 277 episodes.  I knew that the host, James Lipton had passed away in 2020, and I assumed that "Inside the Actors Studio" had ended as well.  However, I didn't know about the show's move to the Ovation Network in 2019, or the final season that featured interviews by a revolving collection of different hosts.  As far as I'm concerned, the show ended in 2018 after 22 seasons, with Lipton's final interview with Ted Danson.  

I watched a ton of "Inside the Actors Studio" in my college years.  It was one of a very few long form interview shows that survived on the air into the 2010s.  The other major one was "Charlie Rose," which ended in 2017.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was more fun, of course, because it featured well-known actors and other celebrities.  Its format was dictated by its origins as a seminar for the Actors Studio Drama School, of which Lipton was Dean Emeritus.  He sat with each interviewee on a stage and went through their whole career, from soup to nuts, intent on provoking thoughtful discussion, and treating acting (or directing or stand-up comedy) as serious artistic work.  Every episode ended with questions from the real students of the Actors Studio seated in the audience, and the famous Bernard Pivot questionnaire.  The show's detractors found it all stuffy and self-serious, but I loved that the interviews were put in an academic context, lending them an air of gravitas and importance that we didn't see anywhere else on television.

Of course, it was very easy to make fun of the show, and to make fun of James Lipton, who took it in stride and gamely played himself in many parodies and guest appearances on other programs over the years.  He became a beloved celebrity, who I was happy to see every time he popped up on "The Simpsons" or "Conan O'Brien."  His professorial persona was so theatrical and larger-than-life, it might have seemed ridiculous if it weren't backed up by those meticulously researched, thoughtfully conducted interviews with everyone from Roseanne to Steven Spielberg.  The comedian interviews were often my favorites, because it was a chance to see silly people like Robin Williams and Mike Meyers take a pause and give some serious, honest answers about their craft, if they were so inclined.  Mike Meyers did, and Robin Williams elected to perform a comedy set for ninety minutes, riling up the audience to the point where it took Lipton more than ten minutes to ask his first question.  Bravo replayed that episode a lot.  

I stopped watching "Inside the Actor's Studio" roughly around the time I stopped paying for cable television.  It was never appointment television for me, but rather a show I watched when the interviewee was someone that I recognized, or it happened to be on when I was channel surfing.  I feel like the show peaked around 2003, when it started doing the group interviews for the casts of television shows, and some stars like Tom Hanks and Val Kilmer started coming back around for second interviews.  The best interviews were with the performers and creatives who had a substantial body of work behind them, and some of the later shows were with interviewees who were only there because they were popular at the time.  Jennifer Lawrence famously turned down a chance for an interview in 2013, around the time the second "Hunger Games" film was released.      

In 2025 the show has largely fallen out of the cultural consciousness.  This was inevitable considering the age of the program, but it's likely also because it's one of those series that is not streaming anywhere officially and is thus difficult to access.  Amongst the data hoarders, it's one of the most commonly sought-after programs, and pirated versions of various interviews are constantly popping up on Youtube and other video platforms.  I'd love to be able to see some of the early episodes myself - a lot of those director interviews with the likes of Norman Jewison and Stanely Donen sure would have come in handy - but the full archive only seems to be available to students of the Actors Studio.   

And finally, yes, no, attention, stress, laughter, leaf blowers, unfuckingbelievable, screenwriter, apiarist, and "Welcome."  

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Watch Out for "Weapons"

Zach Cregger's new horror film "Weapons" is a very satisfying film to watch, even if you're not a horror film.  Telling a single story from multiple perspectives is a tricky proposition, but if it's done well, it's so much fun to watch all the pieces fall into place, and all the reveals and payoffs play out.  It also helps that "Weapons" has one of the best hooks for a horror movie that I've come across in a long time.  In the Pennsylvania town of Maybrook, we are told, seventeen children from the same third grade class mysteriously vanished in the middle of the night, all at the same time.  They simply got out of bed, ran out of their homes into the darkness, and disappeared.

The action picks up a month later, when the school reopens.  Starting with the missing children's teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), we follow the POVs of six different characters who are either investigating what happened, or inadvertently stumble across pieces of the truth about the disappearances.  Justine is drawing a lot of ire from angry and frightened parents, including Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the fathers.  She's also concerned about a child from her class who didn't disappear, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), who appears withdrawn and isolated.  Other major characters include Justine's policeman ex-boyfriend Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), the school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), Alex's eccentric Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), and a local drug addict and petty thief, James (Austin Abrams).  

"Weapons" had a fantastic teaser trailer that showcased the film's inciting incident, where the missing children are running through the darkened streets at 2:17 AM.  This is one of those rare cases where the movie is as good as the trailer, much better than I expected.  Zach Cregger does a great job of orchestrating his nightmare imagery, jump scares, and thrilling reveals to build on each other, leaving some parts of the story on cliffhangers that don't get resolved until later.  It's similar to how his first film "Barbarian" was put together, but "Weapons" is better written with a much more compelling group of characters.  It helps that the budget and the caliber of the acting talent have both gotten a boost.  However, the storytelling is the main event.  I love how multiple characters come to the same conclusions via different routes.  I love the use of jump cuts to get laughs.  I love that the real protagonist of the film isn't revealed until the last third of the film, and that the villains are as funny as they are terrifying.  And boy are there some potent terrors in this one!

Much of the chatter that I've seen around "Weapons" so far has come from people trying to read hidden meanings into the film ("the real villain is alcoholism!"), and I think that's a result of the worldbuilding being as good as it is.  Without ever drawing too much attention to it, you can see the way that characters are separated by class and social strata, with hints of more complicated histories everywhere.  By using all these different POVs, you get to spend time in each of these characters' private worlds, and see how they think and react.  In the first part of the movie with Justine, notably, all the other POV characters appear, but some are on the edges of the frame, or not quite in her field of vision.  And as the movie goes on, it becomes clear how very important things can be overlooked by those who are only focused on what they want or care about.         

All the performances are good, but I want to single out Cary Christopher and Amy Madigan, who shoulder a significant amount of the film, and do a great job of it.  I'll refrain from being mean to a similar film from last year that "Weapons" reminds me of, but Amy Madigan's performance is exactly how the creepy/funny line should be handled in a film like this.  Aunt Gladys has surely secured her place in the horror movie pantheon.

Finally, despite the participation of so many kids, this is not a horror film for kids.  Many of the deaths are pretty upsetting, which I appreciate is warned for right up front.  However, there are no naked hijinks like there were in "Barbarian," and the ending is - well let's just say it's a little out of left field for a horror film, but in a good way.  I heartily recommend "Weapons" for all your scary movie needs.  It's easily the one I've enjoyed the most this summer.  

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Watching Trailers on Youtube

I went back and forth on whether I wanted to write this post, but I've already sunk way too much time into the research and data gathering to turn back now.  

So, I'm still under the likely misguided impression that if I interact with Youtube enough, I can make its algorithm work for me.  I can get it to understand what I want to watch and improve the quality and relevance of the recommendations and search results that it sends me.  How is this going?  Well, here's a brief example that I found telling.

One constant goal I've had with Youtube for years now is trying to get it to recommend new trailers for movies and TV shows.  I think that this is a fairly simple request, and Youtube has been under a lot of scrutiny lately to improve trailer search results because of the whole fake trailer kerfuffle from earlier in the year.  "Trailers" is definitely a content category on the site, and a "Trailer" button regularly appears on my Youtube front page next to "Podcasts," "Film Criticisms," and "Variety Shows."  I also run searches for trailers often enough that Youtube should have enough information to know what I'm looking for.

So, what happens when I open up Youtube on a random day and navigate to the "Trailers" category?

The first four displayed videos are trailers for upcoming films and shows.  Then there's a clip of "Promising Young Woman," a Red Letter Media review of a recent superhero film, a clip of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," two "Honest Trailer" spoofs, and a film essay on "Alien v. Predator," before the next trailer for an upcoming film.  Then come three more trailers, three commentary/reaction videos about trailers, and then three more trailers before the page refuses to load further results.  That's eleven actual trailers and nine videos that can broadly be called film/TV promotion, but not trailers.  There are also ads interspersed after every five or six displayed results.

I also searched "Trailers" to see what would come up.    The first twenty or so results are trailers for upcoming movies and TV shows, but often grouped into particular categories.  After the first six results (and three sponsored ads) I get three results that were "Popular in my area," then three "popular today" and even a "Previously Watched" category.  However, I'm not counting the multiple attempts to steer me towards the "Shorts" section of the site that is essentially Youtube doing TikTok.  The further down into the results I get, the more older trailers and non-trailers start coming up, including a "South Park" clip, reactions, "Honest Trailers," "Pitch Meeting," "SNL" parodies, and a random news alert.  I was appreciative that about half of the sponsored advertisements were actually trailers themselves, but these results still struck me as pretty dire.   

I expect better from Youtube, and I know they can do better, because there's another, less visible recommendation algorithm on the site.  If you click into any video on the site, a sidebar of similar videos will populate.  If you open a movie trailer, the accompanying sidebar videos have their own category buttons, including "Trailer."  What happens when you click on this "Trailer" button?  The first recommended video was for a new movie review from one of the Youtube channels I'm subscribed to.  Following that, I counted thirty-seven movie and TV trailers and one "Honest Trailers" video before the recommendations stopped loading.  And there wasn't an ad in sight.  Why weren't these the results on my front page?  

Well, the answer is sort of obvious, isn't it?  Once you start watching any video, Youtube wants you to keep watching videos, and will give you the more relevant recommendations at that point to keep you engaged.  The front page and searches want to push sponsored ads and channels that have longer content than the ones that publish official trailers, which rarely run more than three minutes a pop.  

The long and the short of it is that Youtube isn't very helpful to me for keeping up with recent trailers because it insists on focusing on the most popular hits, and then prioritizes showing me content that is popular in related categories.  It doesn't show me anything new until it hits a certain popularity threshold.  Trailers for independent and arthouse films often don't get enough views to hit that popularity threshold, so they require more specific searches.  You can sort search results by "new" to just get a listing of everything uploaded with certain keywords, but even here older results won't show up if they don't hit a certain view count.  

The one thing that I will commend Youtube for is that I no longer see any fake trailers or "trailer concepts," when they used to be all over my search results.  However, that just means that Youtube is perfectly capable of improving their results sitewide.  They just don't want to.      

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