*Disclaimer – My friend made this game – while there is a conflict of interest here, I do genuinely really like the game and feel confident in recommending it, regardless of my relationship with the creator. 

How does it feel to witness the rise of a bona fide auteur? To see Tarkovsky’s student film in its first showing, to read Toni Morrison’s master thesis, to listen to Radiohead while they were still On a Friday? I don’t know that exact feeling of seeing a keg of talent blow up into a fireworks display of mastery, but I can see the sparks in Dungeon Land. Yes, the game is flawed – the loading times are fairly long, the power imbalance between weapons is very noticeable, there’s not a whole lot of content in the game. But the core gameplay is impeccable – fast paced, satisfying, and fresh throughout every short run. In 15 minutes, you turn from a weak, powerless creature into a force of nature able to take down Lovecraftian horrors, but even in the endgame, being too reckless easily leads to your demise. This instant shot of gratification through the progression system and movement shooter gameplay is what has led to me coming back to this game time and time again to beat the game dozens of times and even try a few speedruns (my PB is 5:38). I’m absolutely fiending for the next update to this game, but more importantly, I believe in the creator’s ability to give a bright, vibrant fireworks show of proficiency in the future. 

Download Dungeon Land free on itch.io (https://oddmin8.itch.io/dungeonland)

“The robbery should have taken 10 minutes. 4 hours later, the bank was like a circus sideshow. 8 hours later, it was the hottest thing on live T.V. 12 hours later, it was history. And it’s all true.“

Robbers John Wojtowicz, Salvatore Naturile, and Robert Westenberg did make history, but so does Sidney Lumet in this luminous work, perfectly highlighting the struggles of everyone in a broken system that glorifies violence and fame while ignoring those that need help. Yet, despite this heavy subject matter, Dog Day Afternoon is constantly humorous and an easy watch throughout its runtime. This is a quintessential New York film – it wouldn’t work as well if it took place anywhere else. The humor works because this is exactly how New York reacted to the real life event – A bank robbery by a bi man to pay for his lover’s sex operation is just another afternoon in the Big Apple. 

Yes,all of this representation seems very ahead of its time for a film released in 1975. Nevertheless, Sidney Lumet always handles every character with the utmost respect; every character is portrayed in a supremely compassionate and humane manner. This is par for the course with Lumet, a director who from the start has been tackling important societal issues. From 12 Angry Men’s rallying cry against prejudice to Network’s sharp critique of the decline of journalism, it is clear throughout Dog Day Afternoon that Lumet is an incredibly empathetic director, and this empathy shines throughout the whole movie. Nobody is portrayed as a villain, everybody is only trying to get through this difficult situation. 

Despite how much the audience is rooting for the robbers to make it through unscathed by the end, their downfall is inevitable. It’s been written in history, it’s been the ticking time bomb the audience has been expecting since the movie started. Yet, the final sequence remains forever heartbreaking, devastating, agonizing. The jovial tone comes screeching to a halt as the audience is given a harsh reminder that anybody who fights the system will eventually be silenced. Dog Day Afternoon is simultaneously a harsh reminder that authority figures are not your friends, an astringent critique of media spreading misinformation for higher viewership, a deeply empathetic film to everyone’s everyday struggles, a riotous comedy, a roller coaster of emotions, Lumet’s magnum opus, and a watch that will stick with you for the rest of your life. 

The Barnes and Noble exclusive version of Demon Copperhead starts with an essay by Barbara Kingsolver titled “An Ethereal Visit”. In it, she talks about the catalyst for her writing the novel – a visit from famed (and long dead) author Charles Dickens. She talks about the residual hurt she felt while in Dickens’s study, about the pain she felt Dickens “never fully exorcised” after a troubled childhood. From the start, Demon Copperhead was written to be a novel about the suffering inflicted onto those who have no control over their lives and how that pain lingers not just in individuals but the area that they reside in too. “‘Look to the child’”, Dickens tells Kingsolver. She listens, and for the next 500 or so pages, we experience a couple decades through the eyes of Demon, a wide-eyed, spunky boy hardened through the trials and tribulations of the American foster care system.

“‘Anybody will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose”, Demon says in the first chapter of the book. From the opening pages of the novel, Demon Copperhead has an admittance of defeat. Through the course of the winding plot, nobody escapes the fate given to them from being born into a poor family in Appalachia. This is an area cursed with the blood of the young, where children are forced into a broken foster care system and escape their pain through the very drugs that thrust them away from their parents in the first place. This overwhelmingly depressing portrait that Demon Copperhead paints is what the novel is most often criticized for – The Boston Globe’s Lorraine Berry argues that “[Kingsolver’s] characters wallow in dark hollows with little light, condemned to forever repeat the horrific mistakes of previous generations. She makes the people of Appalachia into objects of pity, but in doing so, also intimates that falling into drug abuse, rejecting education, and ‘clinging’ to their ways are moral choices.”

But to view the novel as simple poverty porn is to ignore the beating, resilient heart at the center of it – right after his statement, Demon continues: “You want to think it’s not over till the last page”. Despite the circumstances of his birth, he continues to hold onto hope that things will get better – in this way, Demon Copperhead is a remarkably optimistic story about hope as a necessity for survival. Throughout the seven circles of hell Demon goes around, one throwaway phrase from his neighbor Mr. Peggot acts as a lens with which we can view the events of the novel through  – “a man can get used to about anything, except hanging by the neck”. The misery is not the point, the strength Demon displays to keep moving on despite it all is. 

Of course, this isn’t to say Demon Copperhead is all sunshine and rainbows – it is a story about the overwhelmingly negative effects of big pharma, specifically the sins of the Sackler family, a story about the people we ignore to keep our delusions of Americana alive. To say that the overarching plot of the novel practically just functions as a vehicle to take Demon from one unfortunate event to another wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, though this would be a little like saying Frankenstein is a slasher and the plot of the novel is a vehicle to get from one kill to another. This is perhaps why critic Jessa Crispin of The Telegraph argues “Beset by earnestness, Demon Copperhead breaks the most important rule of working in the Dickensian mode: you must show the reader a good time … Demon Copperhead is only sad and glum, with every bad thing that happened in the original cranked up a bit”. 

To say this, however, is to overlook Demon Copperhead’s greatest scenes, the rare, sparse sparks of joy that Demon experiences, where all the brokenness within him and the systems around him disappear into the background and he can live in the moment – scenes like Demon and his role model Fast Forward talking and taking drugs under the moonlight, Demon learning to further his innate artistic abilities under the tutelage of his hippie art teacher, Demon working up the courage to ask out his charmingly debilitating crush. These are the memories that hurt him the most to reminisce about but are also the ones that keep him moving forward when he’s at his absolute worst. And that’s to say nothing of American football, the source of Demon’s most vibrant memories and his most vivid pain. 

Kingsolver has never believed in the American project – her first book, The Bean Trees, is about, among many other things, Native American parental rights and the failure of the U.S. to protect them. There’s a clear through line between The Bean Trees to her controversial 9/11 essays to Demon Copperhead, which essentially acts as her thesis statement on the state of America. Never is this more clear than in her depiction of football, simultaneously an incisive critique of the permanent damage the sport causes and the pure euphoria it creates in its players that have nothing else to live for. Our dreams are ultimately what suffocate us but are also what keep us breathing and Demon Copperhead is Kingsolver grappling with this contradiction, this dilemma at the roots of our country – how do we reconcile the inherent savage ruthlessness of the American Dream with our innate human nature to be caring and empathetic? 

Demon Copperhead isn’t perfect (no piece of literature has been since Hamlet), but its potent mix of misery and magic positions it as a contender for the 21st century Great American Novel. It is no more a piece of misery lit than other novels given the title of GAN (think The Catcher in the Rye or The Grapes of Wrath), perhaps because to be a classic is to confront the dark parts of human nature, and to focus purely on the misfortune of Demon is to miss the forest for the trees. Through what Goodreads reviewer Emily May derogatorily calls “every single hillbilly tragedy trope [combined] into one life story”, it tells a beautiful, messy story of those cut on the shards of a shattered American Dream, the indomitable human spirit in the face of all the cards being stacked against you, and hope as a necessity for survival in a broken world. 

Chungking Express, renowned Hong Kong director Wong-Kar Wai’s breakout hit, opens with beautiful shots of the district Tsim Sha Tsui, showing just how fast everything and everyone moves in the gorgeous neon lit city. There’s nearly something moving in the film, from background characters to the camera, which makes the moments where it slows down so much more special – and the only thing this city slows down for is romance. 

Fallen Angels is a companion piece to Chungking Express, releasing just a year later. Where Chungking Express is almost cloyingly sweet, Fallen Angels is dark, shot entirely at nighttime, where the warmth of the sun can’t mask just how lonely the characters are. Where Chungking Express uses repetition of songs to show the nature of falling in love, Fallen Angels uses it to show the unrelenting pain of heartbreak, how the smallest things remind us of the person we used to love. 

So, what are these movies about? They certainly both have plots – Chungking Express is split into two halves, both stories about policemen falling in love; Fallen Angels is also split into two halves, one following an assassin, the other following a mute prison escapee. But the plot doesn’t really matter, they are both about the vibes. The warm, neon glows, the catchy music to drown out the noise, the messy, chaotic, stunning camerawork, every aspect of Chungking Express is chosen to meticulously create the perfect breakup movie. Because no matter how much it hurts, no matter how much you may be lost, you’ll be okay, you’ll learn to love again. In a short 103 minutes, Wong-Kar Wai will heal your shattered heart. 

Fallen Angels gets to the same destination through a different route. While Chungking Express might get there through pure escapism, hurtling you into a bustling city with no time to be left alone with your thoughts, Fallen Angels is slower, more contemplative, more reflective. It’s okay to cry in the bar, to have a midnight meal at McDonald’s, to make that nighttime motorcycle run when your feelings become too much to bear. Even in this dystopian, dark city, you’ll learn to love again. In an even shorter runtime than Chungking Express, Fallen Angels will, at just 98 minutes, heal your shattered heart. Apart, Chungking Express and Fallen Angels are masterpieces, both profoundly beautiful in their technical aspects, but together? Watching Chungking Express and Fallen Angels back to back creates the strongest anthology film of all time, creating a 200 minute epic about love and loneliness, misery and magic, light and dark. Let it wash over you, get lost in the TV glow, spend a restless night with this Wong-Kar Wai masterwork and let yourself heal.

Three sweaty faces. This is the opening shot of Challengers, the most inventive pop film since Everything Everywhere All At Once. These people are revealed to be Tashi Donaldson, Patrick Zweig, and Art Donaldson, all prestigious tennis players past their primes who have been in a complicated love triangle and/or throuple for the past 13 years. The film starts with a tennis match between Patrick and Art in a 2019 Challenger event, and quite honestly, I did not care one bit at this point. Then, after a few points scored later, the film rolls back to 2006 and this is where the greatness reveals itself. 

Back in this time, then teenagers Patrick and Art won the boys’ junior doubles title in the U.S. Open, where they then see Tashi dominating the women’s tournament and both fall deeply in love with her at first sight. They invite her to their hotel room, where she then offers her phone number to the person that wins the match, citing her motivation as wanting to see “some good fucking tennis”. After an intense match, Patrick wins and he and Tashi soon go off to Stanford to play college tennis. From this starting section, the brilliance of this film is palpable. The thematic threads of desire and jealousy are formed and the camerawork starts showing its enigmatic nature, every scene from conversations on the beach to intense tennis matches tries something unique with the form of cinema and even more shockingly, it works every single time in elevating the scenes. 

Right away, this short segment also establishes the relationship dynamics that the rest of the film follows. Patrick is more dominant, Art is more passive, Tashi only really cares about tennis, Tashi guides the two boys into making out and they maybe enjoy it a little more than they want to admit. Most so called “love triangles” only form two line segments with two men both desiring a girl or two girls both desiring a boy (I love the cishet dominated movie industry), but Challengers truly does make a love triangle, though it’s awfully difficult to figure out where the lines go. The three don’t know how to communicate their desires to each other, their respective wants slowly kill them inside, and the only way they know how to talk is through their secret language of hitting a ball with a racket. 

And this is what makes the film work as a sports narrative. Director Luca Guadagnino knows that normal tennis is pretty boring, in an interview he revealed that he doesn’t even like watching tennis. But by turning each game into a conversation, a tense battle to see whose desires are stronger, every single play is exhilarating, every set becomes a conclusion to a story, the emotional distance between the characters close for a brief few moments where they begin to understand each other. 

The age of mindless superhero movies dominating theaters is over – the biggest films of the year include Dune Part Two, a brilliant adaptation of the most influential science fiction novel ever; Civil War, a film that explores the ethics and importance of war journalism; and Monkey Man, a thrilling action debut from Dev Patel. Audiences are sick of stale, boring, toothless visual noise and have been turning to exciting cinematic works and a potential new golden age of cinema has begun. Go watch Challengers to show your support of these new developments, or if you just want to see some good fucking tennis. 

Castlevania II Belmont’s Revenge isn’t actually the second Castlevania game, but rather part of the strange tradition of keeping a separate number count for handheld entries during the Game Boy era – in reality, it’s approximately the 7th in the series. The first Castlevania game on the Game Boy, Castlevania The Adventure, is known for being a slow, unenjoyable, and generally horrendous entry in the saga, so Castlevania II’s general competence is shocking. This is 100% a real Castlevania game with all the satisfying whip cracking and unforgiving difficulty that comes with that lineage, though, to better accommodate the handheld format, some changes were made to the original format – the first 4 stages can be played through in any order, there’s only two subweapons, and there’s passwords for saving. With these changes, the Castlevania format translates to the Game Boy very effectively, and the game is now often considered one of the best on the console. Is it worth playing now? I don’t really think so – I think it’s the worst of what I consider to be the “good” classic Castlevania games (1,3,4,Bloodlines, Rondo of Blood, II), largely due to the limitations of the hardware it’s on. Plus, some of the BS of past titles returns – there’s one part in Dracula’s Castle that can just trap you in an infinite loop if you go the wrong way, which is deeply frustrating and just wastes time. But if you still hunger for more Castlevania after playing through the other classics, Belmont’s Revenge definitely scratches that itch, especially with the music composed by Hidehiro Funauchi that’s on par with the excellent standard the series has always strived for. Overall, it’s a fun enough time, though not really fun enough to warrant coming back to nowadays.

The Castlevania saga is one that has ubiquitous influence across the gaming industry even today, with it being part of an entire genre descriptor – Metroidvania. After a successful release on the Famicom in Japan, the first Castlevania game released in 1987 in North America for the NES and became an instant classic. The mix of precision platforming, satisfying action, some of the best music of the console generation, and a pastiche of gothic horror imagery instantly set it apart from its competitors at the time. The game tasks Simon Belmont, a vampire killer, with hunting down Dracula. He goes through 6 stages comprised of 3 smaller levels each, killing the bosses of each stage along the way, including Medusa, Frankenstein’s Monster, and Death. While it’s possible to get through with just Simon’s basic whip, he also has access to his iconic subweapons, from time stopping watches to enemy freezing holy water, which are all powered by hearts you find while playing through the stages. You’ll definitely need these, as the game is brutally difficult, with countless bottomless pits and spike traps and agile enemies around to give you a bad time.

Castlevania is kind enough to give you unlimited continues, but you have to start at the beginning of the stage you were in, which can be fairly annoying. What’s more annoying, though, is a game breaking bug that forces you to start from the very beginning on earlier cartridge versions of the game (known as PRG0 versions) – if enough objects are onscreen at once, the game can freeze and force you to reset. This is a massive problem, as the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, the easiest way to play the game now, chooses to emulate a PRG0 ROM instead of a fixed PRG1 one. This glitch is most common in the hallway before fighting Death and in the actual Death fight, unanimously considered the hardest stretch of the game, so make sure to make a save before that point if you’re playing the Anniversary Collection.

As for the actual game, the first 3 stages are impeccable – they perfectly escalate in difficulty while always being fair. They never expect any precision platforming or for you to have a specific subweapon or for you to grind out hearts by monotonously going back and forth between rooms. To play the first half of Castlevania is to understand the essence of it that puts it on “best games of all time” lists, or at least “best games on the NES” lists.

The second half, too, is perfect – perfect at escalating bullshit. Like a frog in slowly boiling water, you’ll be lured in by the flawless game design of the first three levels and think to yourself “might as well finish it” until you eventually end up on your 50^th try . The fourth stage is well thought out, at least until the boss – Frankenstein’s creature and his minion Igor. The creature doesn’t do much, but Igor jumps around and throws fireballs and is generally a prime example of bad enemy design in a game designed around precise, slow movement. The fifth stage features the hardest stretch I mentioned earlier – two axe knights throw projectiles at you while medusa heads constantly spawn and move sinusoidally across the screen, with 4 mistakes leading to your death. After this is the fight against Death, who spawns scythes that move all across the screen and do massive damage. To add insult to injury, even when you defeat Death, these scythes can kill you before you advance to the next level and send you back to the axe knight hallway. Some Castlevania fans will argue that this section isn’t that bad because you can use the holy water to cheese the knights and Death by keeping them frozen in place, unable to do anything as you wail on them with the power of God, but this is to argue that because a fundamentally broken part of the game can be countered by another fundamentally broken part of the game, they cancel out and make the game good again. The final stage has some more bullshit platforming and then you fight Dracula. But before you do, everyone suggests walking back and forth between screens to farm hearts so you have a greater chance at beating the unfair boss fight. The first phase of Dracula is fine, since he does the same attack over and over again, but it takes a comically long time to take him down. Then, he turns into a creature who jumps around and shoots fireballs at you (getting déjà vu here), but this is much, much worse than Igor because of how much bigger this monstrosity is. The best solution, once again, is to use the holy water so you can finally jump out of the boiling water.Does Castlevania deserve its status as a classic? Definitely – it was much better than most of its competitors and forced everyone else to step their game up. But now? I would suggest playing the modified Castlevania Simplified version or the Famicom Disk System easy mode before diving into the original, and even, then, future titles like Castlevania Bloodlines and Castlevania Rondo of Blood are far, far better designed.

3D World

I originally played this game on Wii U and couldn’t bring myself to finish it. However, this month, I played through it on the Switch version (where the characters move much faster) and just barely had the motivation to play through it. Overall? It’s so painfully boring – it has the design philosophy of New Super Mario Bros (which is the equivalent of AI slop). I had a few coherent thoughts during this (why do some levels have extra challenges for reaching the top of the flag if the cat powerup automatically climbs up to the top and can be held as an inventory item at all times? Why is the hub world so useless? Why do all the boss battles essentially amount to standing around for a while?), but the game doesn’t want you to think about it all that much, it’s just meaningless gratification over and over again. “It’s fun with friends!”, you might argue, but so is literally anything. The people are fun, not the game. The score might seem harsh, but this game is so deeply, profoundly artless. 

Bowser’s Fury

“You hate every Mario game!”, you might be saying after reading my Wonder and 3D World reviews. This definitely isn’t true, I just happened to have played two I don’t like this month – in fact, I love this series and want it to reach its true potential. And that’s precisely the reason why I really enjoyed my time with Bowser’s Fury. First off, the entire open world is interconnected – no loading times moving between zones. Second, the game allows you to store all the powerups you find to use later – this makes the powerups far more useful than they usually are in these games. Third, there’s no filler – most games are far, far too long and I really appreciate Bowser’s Fury for not wasting my time, unlike some other game it happens to be packaged with. Is it a perfect game? Obviously not – many of the Cat Shines rely on getting Bowser to destroy certain blocks, but the titular “Bowser’s Fury” only happens once every few minutes; the movement is very underdeveloped – no triple jumps or long jumps or any of the other sick tricks that Mario can usually do, and the final Bowser fight is as overwhelmingly stupid as ever. But even with all that being considered, Bowser’s Fury has more than any other Mario game in the past decade made me excited about the future of the franchise. 

Cafe owner Kato returns home to find that his television is displaying himself two minutes later back in the cafe. Future Kato tells present Kato where the guitar pick he’s looking for is, and then tells him to go downstairs to tell this to his past self. Thus starts Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020), a time travel story that is both infinitely clever and equally meticulous in its execution. Now, you might be wondering, how exactly did this future version of Kato first get there? Yet, that’s not what the movie is interested in – it’s not so much interested in the mechanics of time travel as it is the consequences of it. 

After we’re thrust right into this confusing world, Kato’s friends start coming over to investigate this strange phenomenon. It’s here that Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes reveals itself to be one of the funniest films of the 2020s. Every time a new mechanic of the time traveling is revealed, it’s used to great effect to create a hilarious punchline, all culminating in a finale that ties everything together to form an ingenious, riotous sequence that showcases an unparalleled sense of creativity from director Junta Yamaguchi.

The time travel is in increments of two minutes – the film doesn’t just say that, every single scene is timed to get this correct to the second. Everything from the script to the number of steps the actors take is determined by the script to get this level of precision and attention to detail that isn’t often seen in filmmaking. This is made all the more impressive by the one cut nature of the film, planting this in the “nagamawashi” subgenre popularized by 2017 film One Cut of the Dead – basically one shot, low budget Japanese films. Now, obviously, the film isn’t truly one take (it’s shot in 10 minute increments), but it’s edited so well that the cuts are truly imperceptible. Plus, the movie was made under $20,000! To create a film this special with so little is an incredible feat, and at just 71 minutes long, you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not watching Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes in the near future. 

I recently rewatched this wonderful film to show it to my extra wonderful bestie. As soon as it started, everything else melted away as my room filled with the warm glow of the projector light and our soft laughter. I wish I could stay in this short moment forever, but time cruelly keeps marching on. But, as films like Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes remind me, it’s not worth it to stress about the future when the present is right here, right now, with all the amazing people you get to revel in it with. In that moment, I was fully, wholly content being with her, and it’s these kinds of rare, perfect moments where everything somehow manages to be right in the universe for a few minutes that make life truly feel infinite. 

25 – 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare

What is it? – 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare is  a recording of Japanese dream pop band Fishmans’ last concert, before frontman Shinji Sato tragically passed a few months later. 

Why? – 98.12.28 is the best live album of all time – the ephemeral, epic, transcendental. “Long Season – Live” might actually be the best song ever, give it a shot if you’re going on a 41 minute 31 second walk. 

LISTEN HERE – SPOTIFY

24 – Who’s Afraid of Modern Art

Why? – Jacob Geller is the best Youtuber currently working, with every single one of his videos covering vastly diverse topics before he puts it all together masterfully at the end, with my favorite of these being Who’s Afraid of Modern Art. There’s a common sentiment around modern art pieces such as “Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue” by Barnett Newman (shown above)- many who see them think “I could make that”. But in 30 minutes, Jacob Geller is able to convince you that not only are these pieces highly technical and require immense skill and dedication, but also that attempting to control the narrative on what art is is a tool used by fascist regimes to enforce their power. Other Geller videos are just as brilliant, but this is as tight as video essays get, taking an unpopular stance and arguing for it and its deeper implications until you, the viewer, have a wider perspective on art and the world as a whole in just a half hour. 

WATCH HERE – YOUTUBE

23 – Persona 3 Portable

What is it? – Persona 3 Portable is an alternative version of Persona 3 with lowered graphical fidelity and additional content made for the Playstation Portable. As much as the title would convince you otherwise, Persona 3 is the fourth entry in the series and is considered the start of modern Persona, games that are known for being half turn based JRPGs, half social life simulators.

Why? – “Memento Mori” – this is the phrase commonly associated with Persona 3, roughly translating to ‘Remember that you are mortal. Remember you will die.” But the game isn’t about death, not really. It’s moreso about coming to terms with your own mortality, about learning to live while knowing that it’s one day all going to end. Every single aspect of the game reflects this central theme – the characters shoot themselves in the head to summon their eponymous Personas (basically, monstrous manifestations of the self used to fight against the enemies of the game), the battle UI is the barrel of a gun, the opening video on the title screen spouts half powerful, half meaningless quotes like “Living is not breathing, but doing.” All this has caused Persona 3 to be known as an “emo” game, but I would argue it helps give your actions meaning in the game – Persona is a social life simulator/dungeon crawler JRPG, and the constant reminders of your mortality make sure you think hard about what to do on each day, for you only have a very limited amount of time to spend to level up your relationships with the vast cast or to study to do better in your academics or to go a few floors deeper in Tartarus. Whatever you do, remember that you are mortal. Remember that you will die. I prefer Portable over the console counterpart FES and the recent remake Reloaded because it has a female protagonist route and for its much improved quality of life features over FES, though some of the minor story changes made are very questionable. 

22 – Nathan For You

Why? – Nathan For You is a supremely ridiculous show – it follows Nathan Fielder “helping” small businesses by giving them his unique marketing ideas. These ideas, of course, are mostly nonsense – in one episode, Nathan helps a struggling electronics store by making them offer $1 TVs. The catch? The shoppers first had to come following the formal dress code, then had to crawl through a two foot tall door, then walk past a live alligator to get to the TVs. Why? So Nathan could go to Best Buy and buy all of their TVs through their price matching policy. These bonkers ideas are made even funnier by the fact that Nathan is always serious and never breaks character – and because the ideas work to bolster business a shocking amount of times. But in the later episodes, the show becomes more than a silly comedy show and turns into a profound exploration of the thin walls between fiction and reality through Nathan’s character, all building up to the astounding finale “Finding Frances”, where Nathan helps a Bill Gates impersonator find his high school sweetheart 50 years after they separated, turning into an intense, powerful meditation on love and regret.

21 – Us Against You

Why? – Us Against You is the sequel to Fredrik Backman’s novel Beartown, which centers around a hockey team in a small town. But while Beartown builds up to the terrible consequences of a society that idolizes its hockey players as superhuman, Us Against You captures the tragic reality of living in a rural town, about being in a place where the mood is entirely dictated by whether the high school team beat the rival team last night, about being in a place where natural beauty and unnatural hatred swirl around you in equal measure, about being outcast because you slightly, uncontrollably deviate from the status quo. But this isn’t a book bashing these kinds of communities – it also shows the powerful solidarity that comes from being so physically separated from everything else, it shows the beautiful moments of connection that form, it shows the collective reaction to tragedy in a town where everyone knows everyone. Us Against You isn’t an unnecessary sequel to a masterpiece, but rather Backman’s magnum opus, creating a patchwork of small vignettes that all come together to form a comprehensive portrait of a small town that highlights the supreme danger that comes with the eponymous mentality, because us against them doesn’t uplift us and crush them, but instead destroys us all. 

Prerequisites – Beartown

20 – Swing Girls

What is it? – Swing Girls follows the story of delinquent girls being forced to take over the school’s brass band after a major incident 

Why? – Swing Girls isn’t really on here for the quality of the film – it’s certainly good, but under normal circumstances, it would never end up on this list. But for me, it represents a few of the best days of my life –  the scorching heat of Texas, hours playing Wavelength in cramped vans, excitedly watching chunks of metal toss foam rings at the First Robotics World Championships, all with some of my favorite people ever. So really, any movie I watched with these people at this time probably would’ve made it on, but it helps that Swing Girls is really quite good on its own merits – watching the delinquent girls develop a passion for playing in a jazz band is oodles of fun and the final concert after all the buildup is quite possibly a top 10 movie scenes of all time contender. 

19 – Catch-22

What is it? – Catch-22 is a satirical war novel following Yossarian, a bombardier who just wants to get out of World War II but is forced to keep flying missions. 

Why?  – When I first started Catch-22, I thought “this is shit”. The beginning is messy, taking its time to introduce its massive cast and start its comedic bits, all while being painfully elongated by the cyclical nature of every conversation. And really, these bits are stupid and not all that funny the first time they show up. But then, as the book progresses, you care more and more about these characters, each anecdote humanizing them further and further. And, magically, the bits become funnier and funnier each time they come up – the conclusion to the crab apple gag is maybe the funniest thing I’ve read ever, but after the rough beginning, nearly every page has immense comedic value. These jokes have literary value too – they serve to point out the absurdity of the situation the soldiers find themselves in, creating a tragic undertone that the novel conceals until its conclusion where it comes to the forefront for monumental emotional impact. Catch-22 is maybe the literary achievement of the past 70 years because of this – Joseph Heller juggles his book’s disparate tones masterfully in a way that few other authors could possibly do. An interviewer once told Joseph Heller that he had never written anything as good as Catch-22. He responded “Who has?” – a colossally arrogant statement from most writers, but Heller is the rare one that deserves to be this hubristic.

16 (Tie) – Hundreds of Beavers

What is it? – Hundreds of Beavers is a movie following an applejack salesman hunting down the eponymous large number of beavers through unorthodox methods

Why? – Hundreds of Beavers is the stupidest action comedy of all time, rivaled only by Kung Fu Hustle. 

16 (Tie) – Kung Fu Hustle 

What is it? – Kung Fu Hustle is a film that follows criminals Sing and Bone fighting against the legendary Axe Gang through recruiting kung fu masters 

Why? – Kung Fu Hustle is the stupidest action comedy of all time, rivaled only by Hundreds of Beavers.

16 (Tie) – The Jackbox Party Pack 7

What is it? – The Jackbox Party Pack 7 is the seventh entry in the Jackbox series of party games, becoming the most popular games in the genre because they’re controlled entirely via phones and can easily be played over voice chat, a lifesaver during the pandemic. 

Why? – The Jackbox Party Pack 7 has 4 excellent party games and The Devil and the Details, but this (and the past couple entries) are all on here because I cherish the times I’ve had experiencing them with my besties. There’s one more school year before we all go our separate paths in life – I’m not delusional enough to think that we’re never going to drift apart, but I am delusional enough to think that I can make the most out of every single day in the next nine months to assure that I’ll leave with no regrets.  And if I fail to do that? At least I have hundreds of hours of stupid, beautiful memories with all of you. If any of you are actually reading this – thank you for turning the hellscape of high school into a few supremely enjoyable years. I love you all. 

15 – Pokemon Trading Card Game Online

What is it? – Pokemon Trading Card Game Online is a now defunct way to play the Pokemon Trading Card Game online

Why? –  I played the Pokemon Trading Card Game competitively (albeit with budget off-meta decks) for years, so as much as I don’t really like PTCGO, it had to end up on the list as a placeholder for the actual physical card game. The worst thing that I can say about the game is that it gets kind of stale after a few years, but the tournaments are always so exhilarating – getting to play with your selection of 60 cards perfected over hours upon hours of practice and winning matches against others who’ve done the same is such a rush. Plus, even when you’re sick of standard play, stuff like drafts, extended, and pre-releases still capture the same spark of being a methodical, hyper competitive experience. I’ve drifted away from the game, but if you’re looking for a new hobby to pick up, you can’t go wrong with the Pokemon Trading Card Game – the community is super friendly, it’s super cheap to get into ($30 for a great entry level deck, when I was first playing, some single cards cost that much), and it’s the most accessible major card game (simple rules + much, much cheaper than the others). 

14 – One Piece

What is it? – One Piece is a long running manga series following captain Luffy and his crew of Straw Hat Pirates, who are looking for the mythical One Piece. What is the One Piece? Nobody knows, even after 1100 chapters and a few decades of publication. This entry is for chapters 1-596, or all the chapters before the timeskip in the series. 

Why? – One Piece is the greatest found family story of all time – the modern day odyssey following Luffy’s gang of Straw Hat Pirates is notorious for being really long (it’s currently well over 1000 chapters and “nearing” its conclusion), but through that length, the group becomes the most developed, tight knit group of characters in maybe anything ever. Everyone has a well defined relationship with everyone else on the crew, and part of the appeal of the series is the pure joy that comes from just seeing these hooligans mess around with each other. But when the unity of the crew is challenged? That’s when One Piece truly gets interesting – if every arc was as good as the two “rescue” type arcs, One Piece would legitimately be a top 5 contender on this list. Yet, even as it is, even with long stretches that aren’t as compelling as its peaks, One Piece’s character writing is strong enough to land it this absurdly high. 

12 (TIE) Neon Genesis Evangelion The End of Evangelion

What is it? – Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion is the ending to the single season anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, a show that uses the mecha genre to explore nihilism, depression, trauma, and grief

Why? – Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion, for most of the runtime, is every numb, sleepless night spent counting the ceiling tiles, every day spent thinking about the inevitable heat death of the Earth, every moment trapped in vicious cycles of self hatred. But after showing hundreds of thousands of frames of unimaginable horrors, of mankind bringing out their own destruction, of everything returning to nothing, it has the gall to say “it gets better”, that we have equal capabilities of creation and destruction, that we’ll make it through together, that it’s all worth it for the few sparks of connection we can create, ultimately creating the kind of life affirming film that’s changed thousands of lives for the better. As much as I love some other anime, the entire medium could’ve stopped doing anything after this film – The End of Evangelion is such a once in a millennium perfect storm of brutal self expression and sublime production that maybe we should’ve stopped trying after its release. 

Prerequisites – Neon Genesis Evangelion (26 episodes)

12 (TIE) – Everything Everywhere All At Once

What is it? – Everything Everywhere All At Once is a story where a Chinese immigrant mom is sent on a journey of self discovery through seeing what other realities she could’ve lived in had she made different choices

Why? – Maybe I’m falling for the “If it makes you cry, it must be good” fallacy here, but Everything Everywhere All At Once is the only film that’s ever had me sobbing in the cinema. And as always for me, emotion trumps all. 

11 – Celeste

What is it? – Celeste is a 2018 indie platformer where you control Madeline, a trans woman with anxiety and depression, through the seemingly infinitely tall Celeste Mountain

Why? – Celeste is, arguably, a perfect video game. It takes an ancient genre – 2D platformers – and refines the basic movement until it’s pure bliss just to move, surrounds that with levels that are brutally difficult, but never unfair, and caps that off with a simple, stunning story about mental health and climbing your own symbolic mountain, whatever that may be.

10 – Hanagatami

Why? – Hanagatami is the film that catapulted Obayashi into the coveted spot of my favorite director – as much as House is my favorite movie of all time, it’s still frustrating that it’s the only work he’s known for in the west. Hanagatami caps off his thematic anti war trilogy, though it works perfectly as a standalone, and is an encapsulation of all his directorial eccentricities. It’s about the fleeting beauty of youth and the infinite cruelty of war; Obayashi knew that he was born to make this film, the idea of it was bouncing around his mind for four decades before he finally had his shot to make it, and it shows; this is the magnum opus of the best director and it’s every bit as perfect as it could be. 

9 – Berserk

What is it? – Berserk is a dark fantasy manga that’s been running since 1989, following swordsman Guts seeking revenge against a mysterious figure from his past. (This entry is for chapters 1-364 of Berserk. Yes, there have been more chapters released after author Miura’s death based on his notes, but 364 is a shockingly fitting ending for the series already.) 

Why?  -There’s not an undisputed best movie of all time, no undisputed best book of all time, no undisputed best album of all time. There is an undisputed best manga of all time – Berserk is simply just masterful enough that nobody will really argue with you if you say it’s the peak of what the medium has to offer- it’s the #1 on both Anilist and MyAnimeList for a reason. It’s the murkiest, grimiest, bleakest of dark fantasy; every fleeting moment of joy drifts away in the face of unimaginable horrors. But yet, it somehow finds hope in a world like this – even here, it gets better. And that status as the GOAT manga? It got there without even having an ending – mangaka Kentaro Miura was a once in a generation miracle that was far above anyone else in a field filled with the most brilliant artists in Japan, from the masterful paneling to the consistently jaw dropping art. May he forever rest in peace. 

8 – I Saw The TV Glow

What is it? – 2024 horror/coming of age film following the life of Owen, a kid entranced by the world of imaginary television show The Pink Opaque

Why? – A few months separated from my first viewing of I Saw The TV Glow, I’m still confident in calling it the film of the generation. 

7 – The Perks of Being A Wallflower

What is it? – 2012 film adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s classic coming of age novel following new student Charlie’s freshman year of high school (Yes, I have read the book, but I prefer the movie)

Why? – Yeah, sure, there are better coming of age films – Lady Bird, Eighth Grade, and The Edge of Seventeen all have tighter scripts than The Perks of Being A Wallflower’s messy, unfocused story. But this is the film I’ve seen and will keep watching before every school year because nothing quite makes me feel the soaring highs and disastrous lows of high school quite like this one – plus, that first bridge scene is absolutely magical, infinite even. 

6 – The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D

What is it? – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D is a remake of the classic 1998 N64 game, updating the graphics and adding some quality of life features but otherwise leaving the core game untouched

Why? – The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time is a really generic pick for “best video game”, it’s like saying Citizen Kane is your favorite movie, The Dark Side of the Moon your favorite album, the Mona Lisa your favorite painting. But yet, like the other pieces of art I mentioned, it’s absolutely earned its spot as a metric of quality for its medium, the only real problems being with the limitations of the hardware it was made for, i.e. an iffy control scheme and looking its age. The remake for the 3DS, then, fixes those issues and creates effectively a perfect video game. While the other 3D Zelda games nail certain aspects of their games more, from Majora’s Mask with its dark, moody atmosphere to Skyward Sword with its excellent dungeons to Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom with its engrossing open world exploration, none of them have the balance between every aspect – puzzles and atmosphere and dungeons and bosses and pacing and story – that makes Ocarina of Time 3D the quintessential Zelda game.  

5 – Mario Kart Wii

What is it? – Mario Kart Wii is the sixth and (at the time) most popular entry in the series, largely due to the colossal sales of the Wii and the added motion controls

Why? – I still remember my first time playing Mario Kart Wii vividly – it was at my elementary school’s after school program, where a Wii remote was thrust onto me by a friend. I had only been a spectator up to that point, but I reluctantly agreed to play the game. And everything else faded away, the only thing that mattered in that moment was getting to the end of Coconut Mall. I was absolutely terrible, I DNF’d and got 12th place (dead last), but from that moment, I was hooked. I’ve played hundreds of games since then, but nothing has quite flared up my competitive spirit like this stupid, unbalanced mess of an experience. Because yes, getting hit by dozens of items in the final lap is aggravating, some of the maps are awful, and there are only two competitively viable characters, but my heart still pounds every time I get the thundercloud and have to make a mad dash to pass it on, getting pummelled in the final lap is still as crushing as ever, and narrowly taking gold in spite of everything against you is euphoric. More than any other game, Mario Kart Wii makes me feel. And yes, on an objective level, it isn’t a particularly great game, but it’s always been in the edges of my kaleidoscopic memory, never important but always there; I am 7 and see a flash of an escape from my mundane existence, I am 9 and burning away the sweltering heat of the Japanese sun through a silly arcade racer, I am 10 and absolutely trouncing the kids at the after school program in a game that once so vexed me, I am 14 and playing something that reminds me of a time before everything became so complicated, I am 17 and boot up Mario Kart Wii for this article and I feel all the memories crashing into me and there’s no question any more what my favorite game is, since no other could possibly be so inexorably intertwined with who I am as a person. 

4 – House

What is it? – House is a Japanese horror/comedy film directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi, following seven girls sleeping over at a countryside house

Why? – House on the surface level is really, profoundly silly. In it, seven girls go to a house and get eaten by it. And sure, as a big Obayashi fan, I am annoyed at how this is his only well known and accessible film in the West (besides his excellent short Emotion that’s included on the House Criterion disc as a bonus feature). But watching House with friends is one of the great joys of life – that’s not the only reason House is my favorite film ever though. House isn’t just a fun horror comedy, it’s a look at how the ghosts of war still haunt Japan, it’s about growing up and losing who you are in the process, it’s an exploration of the artifice of cinema. I’ve seen a decent amount of flicks since I’m a “film critic”, but there’s no movie even remotely similar to House. It’s an absolute cinematic outlier, which is tragic for sure, but that just makes House all the more special. 

3 – Fahrenheit 451

What is it? – Fahrenheit 451 is a  1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury following a fireman tasked with destroying books, an illegal commodity in this future. But upon meeting his reader neighbor, he starts to question the entire world around him. 

Why? – I’m not particularly sure Fahrenheit 451 is even a good book, I haven’t read it in a long, long time. (UPDATE: Reread it, still a masterpiece) But what I can say is that it’s the book that changed my life the most because it got me back into reading. One day, the stars aligned and made me lose my phone before having to wait a few hours for my parents to pick me up. The only things I could possibly do were stare at the stained ceiling or read the book that I happened to have in my backpack, so I reluctantly started trudging through Fahrenheit 451. I’m very aware that this is a bizarre choice for a tech bro/film critic’s favorite novel – Bradbury is vehemently against much of what I believe in. But this, I feel, is literature’s greatest strength – it’s an artist’s unrestrained vision. More than any other medium, it feels the most personal, the most intimate – books aren’t just stories, they’re reflections of the author’s worldview. And for me, Fahrenheit 451 is the start of it all, it defibrillated my dead love of written word storytelling and brought it back with a vengeance – the most a piece of art can do for you is change who you fundamentally are as a person, and that’s exactly what Bradbury’s masterpiece did for me. 

2 – In Rainbows

What is it? – In Rainbows is renowned rock band Radiohead’s seventh studio album – it’s largely considered a return to their rock roots after a large stretch of more experimental projects

Why? – In Rainbows is a perfect album. It feels strange to say that – it feels underwhelming on first listen compared to other Radiohead projects – OK Computer is one of the most influential records in rock history, Kid A is one of the most audacious records in music history and has one of the best songs ever recorded in “How to Disappear Completely”, and A Moon Shaped Pool is a devastating portrait of a man who’s maybe lost the love of his life and the overwhelming loneliness that comes from that. In the face of some of the best albums of all time, what does In Rainbows even have to offer? It’s a complete record about being human. Yes, it’s awful sometimes – the unbearable emotional baggage of limerence, the terror of knowing that we are mortal and every day brings us one step closer to death, the pressure of being in a society that forces us to live as false versions of ourselves 24/7. But it’s also about the beauty of it all – the pure tranquility of the that one moment in “Reckoner” would be enough to land the album on the list, but In Rainbows is about all that is beautiful here on Earth – that particular song ends with the line “Dedicated to all human beings”. This is the one album that deserves to say that, only growing more and more life affirming after every listen. 

LISTEN HERE – SPOTIFY

1 – Emotion

What is it? –  E·MO·TION is Carly Rae Jepsen’s third studio album, having more of a 80s synthpop sound compared to the simpler bubble pop of her previous albums

Why? – Yes, I’m putting E·MO·TION at number 1 unironically. The top 4 were all fighting for the top spot for a while, but after seeing Carly Rae Jepsen live, the choice was easy.  It’s an overwhelmingly sincere album, filled with universally enjoyable, catchy, perfect bubble pop anthems and through this sincerity gives you permission to love it, through this sincerity makes you feel again, through this sincerity has the power to make you joyful, even on your worst days. You might start listening to E·MO·TION semi-ironically, but you will come back to it, you will start recognizing the musicality in it, you will start singing along, start listening to her entire discography, go deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole until you end up in a large crowd at a Carly concert, crying because you’re finally seeing the one artist who has the magical ability to help anyone find the missing puzzle pieces in their life, surrounded by people who’ve also let the vast voids in their existence be filled with corny girly pop. 

LISTEN HERE – SPOTIFY