Highlight Reel: The Best of What I Read (and Watched) This Winter
Year 2 of the Winter Wrap-Up.
Alienated Young Woman publishes book recommendations, reading diaries, and semi-regular reviews of fiction, TV, and film. Subscribe for free to receive new recommendations in your inbox twice a month.
It’s my first full-circle post: last March, my fourth-ever Substack post was a selection of my favorite books, movies, and TV from the previous winter, spawning an ongoing series of seasonal wrap-ups.
A year in, I’m changing up the format. Since I’ve revived my monthly reading diaries, the end of each season now comes with fewer books that I haven’t already reviewed—at least briefly. So to avoid repetition, I’m choosing something I read recently enough to not have made any of my previous monthly roundups, and linking my existing reviews for earlier favorites. For the sake of brevity, I’m also keeping honorable mentions to just that, mentions, and dedicating more space to my gold star reviews.
This season, my film log is similarly complicated. I spent most of winter covering awards season, watching (and reviewing) as many Oscar contenders as possible and putting together my own ballot. While that yielded some unequivocal highlights, I’m trying to avoid rehashing those reviews here, which means my pool of contenders for the winter highlight is pretty much limited to what I’ve watched in the last month or so.
(TV is largely unaffected by these changes, although this winter, I did write about one of my seasonal low-lights—The Real Housewives of New York—for GO.)
READING
Gold Star: Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina (Berkley, 2023), plus Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Subverting both mystery thriller and supernatural horror, Sisters of the Lost Nation makes a home in the liminal spaces. Its characters shift between reservation and town, male and female, villain and pawn, real and imagined. Somewhere in this in-between space, 17-year-old Anna is impatient for the day she’ll be old enough to abandon her off-reservation high school, non-Native bullies, and tedious after-school job as a maid at the reservation’s casino. Then her younger sister, Grace, becomes the fourth girl to disappear from the casino this year, and Anna starts to wonder whether the stories of her youth were something more. There is something dark lingering beneath the reservation—and Anna may be the only one left who can see it. Inspired by the very real crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Sisters of the Lost Nation is tormenting, monumental, and impossible to put down.
Honorable Mentions:
It’s a nine-way tie! I’m on a hot streak right now, and I’m hoping to keep it going into the spring. (No spoilers, but we’re off to a good start).
The Stepdaughter by Caroline Blackwood (McNally Editions, originally published 1976)
Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe (Ecco, 2024)
Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky (Ecco, 2024)
Private Rites by Julia Armfield (Picador, 2024)
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue (Riverhead, 2024)
The Girls by John Bowen (McNally Editions, originally published 1986)
Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo (Ecco, 2022)
The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher (Ballantine, 2024)
The Glow by Jessie Baynor (Random House, 2023)
TV
Gold Star: The Righteous Gemstones (HBO, 2019-2025)
Does any working screenwriter see the American South with as much biting insight, as much nuanced tenderness as Danny McBride? The Righteous Gemstones (which, to clarify, I’ve been watching live for its full run, but re-watched last month ahead of the fourth and final season’s premiere) is McBride’s magnum opus. The Gemstones—a dysfunctional, corrupt, emotionally stunted, money-and-power-obsessed family of South Carolina televangelists, each competing to replace their aging patriarch (John Goodman)—are an indictment of the last hundred years of America’s thorny, near-inextricable relationship with evangelism who are also so persistently, unrelentingly goofy you forget to feel horrified.
At his career peak, McBride (and longtime collaborator Jody Hill) are churning out the comedy of a bygone television era, packed with near-constant jokes that couch their insight in gleefully dumb humor. To oversimplify everything they accomplish with the series, Gemstones is Veep in a megachurch, Succession through a fun-house mirror.
But it’s the sap—another McBride signature—that makes Gemstones. How else could we make it past seeing the family in all its ugly truth? The Gemstones live ridiculously lavish lives on the backs of their devoted parishioners, drive impoverished family members to psychotic breaks, and culturally, may have broken America, and we root for them all the same. They cannot quite fathom how to love anyone adequately, least of all each other. We still hope they’ll learn.1
Then, to open the show’s final season, Bradley Cooper appears as McBride’s living, breathing thesis statement: the Gemstones didn’t break America. They were always the dark strain running through it. It’s 1862, and Cooper is Elijah Gemstone the elder, a thief who murders a local minister and steals his identity, becoming a chaplain for the Confederate army. Men fighting for an evil cause die at his feet, and he has little comfort, much less counsel to offer. By the time a true epiphany comes for the first Gemstone—or any who came after—the chance to do good may have already passed. Is it worth it to try anyway?
Honorable Mention: Running Point (Netflix, 2025-present)
Full Watchlist
Laid (Peacock, 2025-present)
The Traitors, Season 3 (Peacock, 2023-present)
Running Point (Netflix, 2025-present)
Yellowjackets, Season 3 (Showtime, 2021-present)
The White Lotus, Season 3 (HBO, 2021-present)
The Righteous Gemstones (HBO, 2019-present)
FILM
Gold Star: Paddington in Peru (2025, dir. Dougal Wilson), plus Better Man, Nosferatu, and Nickel Boys
Does Paddington in Peru live up to its two near-universally beloved predecessors? Not really—and that’s okay. With a new director at the helm, an older, shuffled-around cast, and a setting on the other side of the globe, Paddington in Peru isn’t really trying to recreate the magic. Through Wilson’s lens, Paddington transitions from a beloved, Mr. Rogers-esque neighborhood fixture to a full-fledged action-adventure hero. He’s a bit Indiana Jones, a bit The Princess Bride, a bit Romancing the Stone. It’s a necessary change in pace; after all, when we revisit the Brown family after a seven-year hiatus, Paddington and his two human siblings are no longer children.
Paddington arrives in Peru searching for Aunt Lucy, who has vanished from her retirement home, but, as with his previous two films, he stumbles into cultural critique. This time, after 70 years in the public eye, he’s reckoning with his own trans-cultural adoption. He is the Brown family’s son, but he’s also a child twice-severed from his Indigenous culture (in this case, a tribe of Peruvian spectacled bears who steward an always-abundant orchard of marmalade oranges and lived in harmony with the Inca, but have been in hiding since the Spanish arrived some 500 years earlier). First rendered as a WWII allegory, the little bear’s story means something different now, and three films in, he can no longer ignore it
But Paddington also has a villain on his tail: tortured riverboat captain Hunter Cabot (Antonio Banderas at peak form, though not quite rivaling Hugh Grant’s Phoenix Buchanan). Like Paddington, he’s in search of the mythical orchard, and like Paddington, he’s haunted by his ancestors—except his are ghostly Spanish conquistadors, brought down by their own insatiable greed. With opposing ancestors beckoning, hero and villain alike are at a crossroads. Can Cabot repent for the sins of his forefathers? Can Paddington ever feel at home again? The only way out of the jungle—physical and metaphorical—is through.
Honorable Mention: Presence (2025, dir. Steven Soderbergh)
Plus: The Monkey (2025, dir. Oz Perkins)
Full Watchlist
Nosferatu (2024, dir. Robert Eggers)
Krampus (2015, dir. Michael Dougherty)
Between the Temples (2024, dir. Nathan Silver)
A Complete Unknown (2024, dir. James Mangold)
Nightbitch (2024, dir. Marielle Heller)
The Watchers (2024, dir. Ishana Night Shyamalan)
Mothers’ Instinct (2024, dir. Benoit Delhomme)
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011, dir. John Madden)
Black Swan (2010, dir. Darren Aronofsky)
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024, dir. Merlin Crossingham & Nick Park)
One of Them Days (2025, dir. Lawrence Lamont)
Better Man (2024, dir. Michael Gracey)
Babygirl (2024, dir. Halina Reijn)
Hard Truths (2024, dir. Mike Leigh)
You’re Cordially Invited (2025, dir. Nicholas Stoller)
Presence (2025, dir. Steven Soderbergh)
Companion (2025, dir. Drew Hancock)
The Last Showgirl (2024, dir. Gia Coppola)
Paddington in Peru (2025, dir. Dougal Wilson)
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025, dir. Michael Morris)
I’m Still Here (2024, dir. Walter Salles)
The Monkey (2025, dir. Oz Perkins)
Flow (2024, dir. Gints Zilbalodis)
Nickel Boys (2024, dir. RaMell Ross)
Last Breath (2025, dir. Alex Parkinson)
Sing Sing (2024, dir. Greg Kwedar)
The Brutalist (2024, dir. Brady Corbet)
Dune: Part Two (2024, dir. Denis Villenueve)
Belle (2013, dir. Amma Asante)
Mickey 17 (2025, dir. Bong-Joon Ho)
Opus (2025, dir. Mark Anthony Green)
Holland (2025, dir. Mimi Cave)
Next Up: My Spring Reading and Watchlist
Books
Indian Burial Ground by Nick Medina (Berkley, 2024)
Luminous by Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
The Lamb by Lucy Rose (W&N, 2025)
Sour Cherry by Natalie Theodoridou (Tin House, 2025)
Films
The Wedding Banquet (2025, dir. Andrew Ahn)
On Swift Horses (2025, dir. Daniel Minahan)
Sinners (2025, dir. Ryan Coogler)
Strange Days (1995, dir. Kathryn Bigelow)
TV
The Pitt (Max, 2025-present)
The Studio (AppleTV+, 2025-present)
Poker Face, Season 2 (Peacock, 2023-present)
Mid-Century Modern (Hulu, 2025-present)
Plus: An update on my 2025 reading list
Three months into the year, I’m officially halfway done! Here’s the breakdown:
Completed:
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue (Riverhead, 2024)
The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher (Ballantine, 2023)
Private Rites by Julia Armfield (Flatiron, 2024)
Sister Snake by Amanda Lee Koe (Ecco, 2024)
Poor Deer by Claire Oshetsky (Ecco, 2024)
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn (Zando, 2025)
To Be Read:
Ladies of The Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry van Dyke (McNally Editions, originally published 1965)
This Motherless Land by Nikki May (Mariner, 2024)
Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021)
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Riverhead, 2023)
Mona at Sea by Elizabeth Gonzalez James (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2021)
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters (Catapult, 2024)
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Collage by the author.
Honorable mention goes to the Season 2 finale, which may be the best single TV episode of the 2020s. This is true for many reasons, not the least of which is its surreal final scene, in which Jesse, Judy, and Kelvin, the three Gemstone siblings, lead a (completely out of left field) performance of “Some Broken Hearts Never Mend.” They’ve finally gotten what they wanted—to succeed their father as the church’s figureheads—and one of their first moves is to make the entire congregation watch their (completely sincere) choreographed performance of a secular, vaguely incestuous country anthem—and they’re just okay performers. The congregation loves it anyway. The scene closes on a shot of their father—the beloved preacher to whom they may never measure up—now in the wings instead of center stage as he sings along to the song’s final lyric: “My love for you will never die.” At the same time, across the country, hitmen carry out an elaborate revenge murder he’s orchestrated against the last people who wronged his children. Credits roll over the sounds of wolves eating the frozen corpse of Jesse’s rival pastor. The Gemstones don’t quite know how to love each other—but they’re trying to learn anyway.
especially curious to hear your thoughts on The Lamb, Sour Cherry (both on my tbr), and The Studio (I've watched the first few episodes and feelings are mixed for me so far!)