Honestly putting together these lists has made me feel pretty good. I knew there were 6 shows guaranteed to be in my Top 10 and had trouble cutting the long list down to just 10. A bit of a bounce back year for movies as well, a few excellent blockbusters, some really smaller personal films I wish did better, and my movies 11-20 (you can see on my full list on my Letterboxd page) are all pretty good and I least considered putting them in my top 10.
TV Shows:
10. House of the Dragon
I considered a few different shows for this spot (for the record they were The Boys, The Dropout, The Bear, and Stranger Things) but in the end I went with the show whose highest points won me over more than most. I found the multiple time jumps and recastings confusing at times but there were many times the show felt like it would reach close to the highs of Game of Thrones. I would say most of those came when Paddy Considine’s decaying King Viserys was onscreen.
9. Winning Time
Not a perfect show but one every single week I looked forward to watching and one where I was basically consistently entertained. The Showtime Lakers are one of the great historical teams of all time and this show really captures the absolute joy of watching them play basketball but watching them exist off the court. Some of the liberties it takes with the stories annoy me, especially changing box scores for games I can look up, but man when it turns some of the greatest icons in sports history, Magic, Kareem, Pat Riley, etc… into compelling tv characters, I’m willing to forgive a lot.
8. Barry
Bill Hader remains one of my favorites and Barry continues to be an amazing showcase for him as a performer, writer and director. Just a really cool show, it continues to get darker and take risks/reinvent itself and I’m really looking forward to what they try next.
7. The White Lotus
Maybe the most deranged show on television. Mike White has an incredible ability to write characters that are extremely annoying but you want to keep watching anyway. These shows rarely have traditionally sympathetic characters and yet you are somehow invested in their stories. This is an incredible combination of the writing and performances, with to my mind the standout performances in the 2nd season being Meghann Fahy and Aubrey Plaza.
6. Atlanta
A strange year for Atlanta, one of the greatest shows of the past decade has ended and it seemed to go away without as much ceremony as you would hope/expect. Most of this probably stems from an extremely experimental 3rd season where half the episodes were almost Twilight Zone-esque stories that had nothing to do with the main cast. Generally, I greatly enjoyed those episodes but thought there were some diminishing returns by the end. When the main cast came together though, magic consistently happened. Then by the time came back for the 4th season, which aired in the same year, people didn’t have enough time to get excited about the final season of a show that had just aired, but excited they should have been. The 4th season was Atlanta operating like the unique treasure it was. Weird stories with the best cast on TV, a standalone episode about the fictional origins of The Goofy Movie, and a finale that for most of its runtime could have been any random episode of Atlanta.
5. We Own This City
Basically, a spiritual successor to The Wire, which is extremely high standards but it lives up to it. Simon creates shows that educate you, make you angry, but most importantly keep you entertained and engaged like no other. This show also features an absolutely legendary performance by Jon Bernthal as Wayne Jenkins, an absolutely horrifying, hilarious, human and captivating man.
4. Andor
As someone who grew up absolutely loving Star Wars, I felt pretty close to sick of it. The Disney era has been a huge disappointment, with a couple of fun movies, one solid show in the Mandalorian and besides that a wreck of disappointment especially in the last few years. The way this year started with Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan, which felt like cheap fan fiction that only existed to satisfy the needs of Disney+, I was just about ready to give up. I then began watching Andor and couldn’t believe it, Star Wars could actually still be great, and great in a way that it had never been great before. Andor is a spy story, it is a prison break story, it’s a heist story and it’s the story of the making of a revolution in the world of Star Wars and it’s all brilliant. Tony Gilroy doesn’t come to Star Wars from the perspective of a fan and as a result rekindled my fandom like no one else could have.
3. The Righteous Gemstones
The funniest show on television. Danny McBride’s shows will likely always find a way in my top 10 lists when they air and Gemstones has a chance to become my favorite. The entire cast is excellent, with Patterson as Judy and Goggins as Uncle Baby Billy being my personal favorites, but I loved how the world of the show grew bigger this season and its ambition grew as well with some incredible set pieces.
2. Better Cal Saul
Another brilliant show from the crew down in Albuquerque and another landing stuck. BCS as a premise sounded insane and seemed destined to never live up to Breaking Bad. Somehow though the show that not only lived up to Breaking Bad but in some ways surpassed it. There were many reasons they ended up pulling it off were but the primary two were Odenkirk showed himself to be an actor beyond anyone’s imagination and the show built a character in Kim Wexler, played brilliantly by Rhea Seehorn, that served as the emotional backbone. The final season was a one that dove into the show’s origins, some of the themes of the opening season, a deeper dive into the opening flashforward that began every season and finally by going back into the place it all started with some scenes with Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. It’s ending served as a capstone for the entire project and is one of the greatest accomplishment in TV history.
1. The Rehearsal
The most daring show on television and quite possibly the boldest one I’ve ever seen. Nathan Fielder takes some of the elements of Nathan For You and pushes it to extreme levels. By the time you get to the end of the show you are worried about what the broader implications of what Fielder has done here but when you start to question that it forces you to question much more, whether reality television is at all acceptable and whether child acting is too dangerous. While doing all this the show never stops being insanely funny.
Movies:
10. Confess, Fletch
Just a delightful way to spend 90 mins. Jon Hamm is excellent here as Fletch, a quasi PI/journalist, wrapped up in a murder/theft. He is effortlessly charming and funny and gets to drink with John Slattery again, I hope we can sign up for one every other year (the insane release strategy makes that unlikely).
9. Kimi
Potentially the only good movie that will ever be made about living during the peak of COVID-19. It does this by being a play on Rear Window and the other voyeuristic thrillers that inspired it, utilizing the isolation of COVID to its fullest extent. Probably not a surprise that Soderbergh the director of Contagion, a movie that predicts the ramifications of a global pandemic, is the one that nails telling a different type of story during this time.
8. TÁR
Cate Blanchett as composer Lydia Tár is the performance of the year. Just a full inhabiting of another human being that feels so alive. A fascinating portrait of today’s culture and the way a “great artist” both abuses their powers and the mechanisms that exist to punish them. The last stretch of the movie may go on a bit too long but it ends with an absolutely fantastic joke.
7. AmbuLAnce
Michael Bay decided to make a stripped-down character driven movie and the result is a heist movie with a 90-minute chase sequence and to me that is beautiful. Some of the most exciting sequences in any action movie I’ve seen in years, Bay seems to really understand how to use drones in an exciting way. By Bay standards a pretty compelling and grounded story with relatable characters along with a delightfully unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal performance.
6. Nope
Jordan Peele is one of the last filmmakers who seems to be allowed to make original movies on a giant scale. Nope is my favorite of his films yet, a riff on Spielberg that is entirely about the present but feels in its most exciting moments like I’m watching Jaws or at least something close.
5. Decision to Leave
An incredibly shot and engrossing noir. My personal introduction to Park Chan-wook was the extremely underrated and under-watched AMC miniseries Little Drummer Girl and this increased my fandom and desire to seek out his previous films tremendously. Tang Wei is absolutely captivating. Many filmmakers struggle to make smartphones into compelling entertainment, but this film understands both how they are practically used in our lives while also making it cinematically compelling.
4. Avatar: The Way of Water
James Cameron is once again the king of the world (that world might be the planet Pandora). Cameron’s long-awaited sequel seems him taking the story to Big Jim’s favorite place, the ocean, and what results is an overwhelming experience. Once the film arrives in the water the film reaches a new level and is so visually breathtaking you can not believe what you are seeing isn’t real. The story is anchored in cliches, in the same way many of Cameron’s works are, but few people better understand to utilize these cliches and archetypes to tell a great captivating story. My favorite character coming out of this movie is Payakan, the Tulkun (aka whale).
3. The Fabelmans
Spielberg tells his own story, and yet does so in a way that I still feel we will never fully know the truth. Here we might get the closest to it, and still it’s hard to know whether this is how he remembers, how he wishes he remembered it, or some combination there within. Some really great performances by Dano and Williams as his parents, who anchor the film and really the backbone of the story of their separation. At one point the film turns into what seems like a broad high-school bullying drama and I was worried momentarily it would lose me however it takes a few really surprising turns here anchored by Chloe East momentarily stealing the movie as “Sam’s” girlfriend. Also, the ending is maybe the happiest I’ve been leaving a movie all year.
2. The Banshees of Inisherin
An achingly funny and achingly bleak film. A story about loneliness, friendship, and the fucked-up nature of Ireland. It features multiple of the best performances of the year in the main quartet of Farrell, Gleeson, Condon, and Keoghan all delivering dimensions to characters that in the wrong hands might come off as one-note.
1. Top Gun: Maverick
Tom Cruise has long been my favorite movie star and this right here is a performance and a film that showcases exactly why. The long-delayed sequel to an extremely weird and almost plotless 80s sensation arrived and blew away everyone’s reasonable expectations. Why did it do this because Cruise willed it into being. He waited to make the movie until he was confident the film actually had a story that could work, he made sure what we saw on the screen were in his words, “real Gs and real speed”, he forced the studio to wait until it could be released in theaters for the world to see because that’s where this film deserved to be seen. I may be overrating this movie but when I walked out of seeing it, it felt like Tom Cruise had saved movies and was showing us a way forward and man that felt important. I hope we take that path.