My Memaw and My Mom

My Memaw passed away and I love her very very much.

Growing up with friends primarily in the Midwest, I didn’t hear a lot of people call their grandmother “Memaw,” which is by all accounts a silly word. Memaw’s real name was JoJean which is also a silly name. In her world Target was Tar-Je, Jezebel was Jezzie, my friend Pedro was Paco/Pancho/Padre and Buca di Beppo was never called the same name twice. She kept trying to get Benedict Cumberbatch’s name right, even to the point where she called me to say she tried to study his name in People.

Top 72 Films of 2014

There were a ton of great films last year. SO MANY GREAT FILMS. I saw 134 films that came out in 2014 and I liked, in one degree or another, 94 of them. There are still a ton of them I would like to see that I’ve missed including The Blue Room, Calvary, Coherence, The French Minister, Get On Up, Happy Valley, The Inbetweeners 2, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, Life of Crime, Love is Strange, A Master Builder, Miss Meadows, The Missing Picture, A Most Violent Year, The Mule, Norte the End of History, Omar, Particle Fever, Showrunners, The Skeleton Twins, Space Station 76, The Strange Little Cat, The Unknown Known, Vic and Flo Saw a Bear, Wetlands, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and Willow Creek.

There’s this joy that there are so many interesting films coming out. I’m now living in a city where more of them can be seen in some excellent theatres, but the world has changed where within a matter of months all of these films can be seen by anyone, not just those who live near an awesome art house. If you type in any of these films to Netflix, the odds are strong that they will be there or will be there soon. 

So even though all of these lists are a little bit silly, I still like to make mine for the fact that it can be a recommendation list for you. Is #34 that much better than #40? It was for me, but you may end up adoring #28 more than anything. This is what I loved last year and I hope that you too can find something exciting and stimulating and original and bonkers and sophisticated and a film that makes you too wave it to someone where they have to see it pronto.

Since I’m writing about so many films, I’m going to try to keep it brief until I get later in the list. I say that now…

#72

Leviathan

Destruction seems like something that will be inherently cinematic, but not every film is able to pull off the emotional weight of it. By the end of this film, you’re really able to feel the impact of all the consequences that these characters had control of and the ones they sadly didn’t.

#71

X-Men: Days of Future Past

The more superhero films we get, the more Hollywood can’t rely on the same old stories. This is a complicated and curious story full of worthy twists and a confidence to play around in this universe. My only complaint is that I wish it was longer to allow for even more emotional scenes between its characters.

Top TV Episodes of 2014

This is the fourth year writing these silly TV articles and they are some of my favorite things to work on every year. In the previous one, it’s just me ranting about a ton of great shows. This one is easily more fascinating each and every time. Why? It’s because my friends are fascinating.

Critic polls always are a great way to look at a year of art but they are limited by the fact they all are critics. That is what their perspective is. TV is a medium that everybody watches and has an opinion on. Since there are so many installments of a show and so much time is devoted towards the story and characters, everyone is a little bit of a critic as they decide whether they should keep going or not.

Every year I’ve increased the number of people I have writing in this because I’m greedy. I want to read more and more thoughts about what is exciting my friends. So this year I do have some excellent film critics, but I also have lawyers and news producers and video editors and actors and directors and students and marketing experts. I have people who work at a film festival. I have people who work in Spain. I have people who work in sports, in politics, in advertising, in publishing and for colleges and nursing homes and community resource centers for LGBTQ people. I have authors who write about cowboys and skeletons and fools. What connects them all—besides their regret about having me as a friend—is their love for art.

So without further ado, here are everyone’s Top TV Episodes of 2014!

The Americans – “Echo”

(Season Two, Episode 13)

By Nick Rogers

Editor’s note: There are spoilers for the dramatic reveal featured at the end of the second season in the second paragraph. If you don’t wish to be spoiled skip ahead.

The second-season finale of The Americans — cable’s best current series never nominated for a meaningful Emmy — climaxes with a long reveal. Perhaps it’s a tad too long for the usual badge-of-honor believability of the show, which follows Philip and Elizabeth, married undercover KGB agents undermining 1980s America from inside and played by the astonishingly versatile Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell.

Jared, a mortally wounded teen whom we thought cruelly orphaned by a rogue element, reveals that he killed his KGB-operative parents. He retaliated for their rejection of his decision to become a second-generation spy, made after a lithe, comely female KGB agent lured him. Later, we learn this insidious KGB initiative has its sights set on Philip and Elizabeth’s teenage daughter, Paige.

This atypical rush of exposition hardly matters when it so beautifully crystallizes the (sometimes overly) slow burn of themes that dominated the season’s other two best episodes: “Behind the Red Door,” in which Elizabeth demands Philip make love to her like his married alter ego “Clark” to destructive ends; and “New Car,” in which America’s unfettered confidence wilts Philip’s own greener-grass curiosity about iconic American culture.