Highlight Reel: The Best of Everything I Read (and Watched) This Winter

An excellent season for reading, a mid season for TV, a prolific season for film.

Mar 22, 2024

Hello and welcome to our second recommendation guide! Temperatures have risen (mostly) above freezing, the narcissus flowers have returned to city parks, and Manhattan’s squirrels have returned to harassing me for snacks in the middle of the sidewalk. It’s officially spring!

To usher in the new season, I thought I’d start by taking a look back at all the wonderful books I read and movies and TV series I watched over the winter. I’ll crown a few favorites from each category, and provide a full reading/watching list at the end of each section. As always, my comments and messages are open, so I’d love to hear about your favorites of the season, or what you’re most looking forward to in spring!

Reading

When I introduced my favorite books last month, I wrote about the Alienated Young Woman’s less common counterpart, the Not-So-Alienated Young Woman. Like the protagonist of Mina Seçkin’s The Four Humors, the Not-So-Alienated Young Woman is a protagonist experiencing her bildungsroman emotionally isolated, but not physically, leaving space for less traditional (or at least less nuclear) family and cultural structures. So, while the genre isn’t entirely new to me, I spent a lot of time with the Not-So-Alienated Young Woman this winter.

In Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s Candelaria, three sisters—all in various stages of alienated young womanhood—reunite in the midst of a zombie apocalypse as their aging grandmother makes a raucous attempt to save the world. Meanwhile, Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident is the story of a young woman attempting to find her place in mid-recession Ireland, but it’s also a story about found family, the cost of emotional intimacy, and crash landing into the real world. (If you enjoy Sally Rooney’s fiction but wish it was as clever as her essays, this one should sit well.) Both are simultaneously tragic and funny and play with classic tropes of this genre to explore the boundaries of what the contemporary young woman’s bildungsroman can be.

Gold Star: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (2022)

I’m late to the party on this one, which it feels like must have been recommended to me a dozen times before I actually picked it up in January. Though it’s a brief read—only about 240 pages—I think I would have felt compelled to finish it all in one weekend even if it were four times as long. In Our Wives Under the Sea—which is somehow Armfield’s debut, though her prose feels like reading a long-venerated literary giant—Leah and Miri, a married couple living in England, attempt to reconnect after one of them returns from a mysterious deep sea exploration that has left her with permanent physical and mental changes. The perspectives shift between Leah, stranded at the bottom of the ocean for months before her return, and Miri as she attempts to care for her wife, uncover the mystery behind her condition, and work through her own buried grief. This novel is devastating and horrifying and by the same token, fascinating and gorgeous.

Honorable Mentions: All’s Well by Mona Awad (2020), Come & Get It by Kiley Reid (2024), and Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (2022)

Spoiler alert! All three of these are featured heavily in an upcoming review, so I won’t talk about them extensively here. Until then, I’ll just say that I could not put any of these down. Vladimir is a mesmerizing debut from Jonas, and if you enjoyed Awad and Reid’s buzzy debuts (Bunny and Such a Fun Age, respectively), All’s Well and Come & Get It make wildly impressive follow-ups.

Full Reading List:
Candelaria by Melissa Lozada-Oliva (2023)
Heartburn by Nora Ephron (1983)
Happy Place by Emily Henry (2023)
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue (2023)
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (2022)
All’s Well by Mona Awad (2020)
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (2021)
Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez (2024)
Mrs. S by K Patrick (2023)
Come & Get It by Kiley Reid (2024)
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas (2022)

TV

What hath Big Little Lies wrought? Since the first season premiered in 2017, the Limited Series Industrial Complex has never been the same. And yes, that initial boom brought us Sharp Objects and Mare of Easttown, but it also brought us Nine Perfect Strangers. This winter, the limited series dominated my TV viewing experience, and that experience was much more Strangers than Mare. Seven years on, we may have taken the limited series—or at least this genre of it—as far as it can go.

It’s not that either series I watched this winter—Lulu Wang’s Expats on Prime Video or Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans on FX (technically an anthology)—was bad, per se. In fact, one of them was often good! But they are plagued by the weight of their predecessors. Expats is a wonderfully intriguing premise anchored by solid performances (including an impressive breakout from Ji-young Yoo), but it never quite narrows its focus enough to live up to its potential. And you know how I feel about Feud. But this is bigger than either of these two shows. How long must we write teleplays entirely predicated on making Nicole Kidman (or whoever says yes when she politely declines) suffer the worst psychological damage possible? Everyone, put the pens down until we’ve figured it out.

Anyway. Onto some shows I enjoyed.

Gold Star: The Terror, Season 1 (2018, AMC)

In the gold rush of period TV dramas, Tobias Menzies is doing all of the mining. He’s at peak form playing repressed commander James Fitzjames in The Terror, an adaptation of Dan Simmons’s 2007 novelization of the real-life lost Franklin expedition. Granted, The Terror and I had a rocky start—it took me a week to get through the first three episodes—but once I was locked in, I couldn’t stop watching. I struggle with whether this series was as effective a critique of British colonialism as it so wanted to be, but it does excellently what stories like Tom Hood’s “The Shadow of a Shade” have been grappling with since the Franklin expedition first disappeared: it imagines supernatural horror as the real-life consequence of imperial greed. We’re told early on that the men of The Terror are, in the words of Jared Harris’s Francis Crozier, “committing an act of hubris we may not survive,” but God, is it compelling to watch them not survive their hubris.

Honorable Mention: Manhunt (AppleTV, 2024)

I know I just lamented the emptiness of the 2024 limited series, but this show has everything: Maestro-level prosthetics reserved for one single cast member. A sad twink son. Patton Oswalt doing drama. I’ve spent equal time actually watching it and texting friends “Wait—the actor?” Granted, only three of the series’ seven episodes have dropped so far, but I’ve run through each of them twice just to relive actress-of-a-generation Lili Taylor’s delivery of the line, “You were his war wife, you decide.” Manhunt is beautiful and ridiculous and I am hand-engraving the inaugural Emmy for Best Supporting Asthma in a Limited or Anthology Series as I type this.

Full Watchlist:
Expats (Prime Video, 2024)
The Terror (AMC, 2018)
Feud: Capote vs. the Swans (FX, 2024)
30 Rock (NBC, 2006-2013) (My first time watching the series all the way through!)
Girls5Eva (Netflix, 2021-present) (Just the latest season—I’ve been watching and loving this since the first season premiered on Peacock. Renée Elise Goldsberry will EGOT.)
Manhunt (AppleTV, 2024)

Film

I spent quite a bit of time this winter getting acquainted with what I’m now calling the post-Aftersun renaissance of reflective parent-child media. Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper is the most straightforwardly similar—it follows Georgia, a 12-year-old living on her own after her mother’s death when her absentee father, Jason, turns up unexpectedly. Despite its tragicomic premise, Scrapper is much more lighthearted than Aftersun—where the latter is told by a grown woman reflecting on the end of her childhood, the former is told like a childhood dream pushing up against the real world. It was lovely, poignant, and anchored by two prodigious performances by Lola Campbell as Georgie and Harris Dickinson as Jason.

While I loved Scrapper, my parent-child favorites this winter were Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, in which a young, grieving boy named Mahito travels to another dimension in search of his stepmother, and A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature A Thousand and One, which follows a young mother and son living in a gentrifying Harlem and harboring a dangerous secret. In The Boy and the Heron, even traveling to another dimension cannot remove Mahito from the shadow of his grief. Miyazaki—at his peak for his final film—grapples with the feeling so deftly and subtly that it runs like a continual undercurrent through the film’s fantastical setting without ever overwhelming it. In A Thousand and One, A.V. Rockwell creates a gripping vision of a changing Harlem, utilizing real news events and soundbites to do so, but grounds it in a story so intimate that only its two protagonists can ever truly understand it. (Teyana Taylor is an absolute force of nature in this film, and though she’s been acting for years now, it made me excited about this next era of her career.) Each film barrels toward an inevitable—and no less devastating—conclusion.

I also spent some time with a sub-genre that is much less new to me, but which has had an amazing past year: the off-kilter rom-com. No one is doing it like Nicole Holofcener, except maybe Rebecca Miller, and thankfully, both directors returned to the screen last year after lengthy breaks. Finally ending the seven-year drought since Maggie’s Plan, Miller released She Came To Me, in which Peter Dinklage plays a neurotic, creatively blocked operetta composer whose marriage to his former therapist (Anne Hathaway doing some of her best work) is upended when he meets Katrina (Marisa Tomei, another standout), an emotionally volatile tugboat captain who becomes his latest muse. Like Maggie’s Plan, She Came to Me is the story of a love triangle where everyone is equal parts difficult to root for and irresistibly endearing. Once again, Miller has created a rom-com that’s as charming and funny as any classic without sacrificing its absurdity.

The equally delightful You Hurt My Feelings sees Holofcener reunite with previous collaborator Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars as Beth, a moderately successful writer whose incredibly functional relationship with her husband is thrown off course when she overhears him admitting he dislikes her upcoming novel. Louis-Dreyfus is expectedly brilliant as Beth, but this may just be the past year's best ensemble. Michaela Watkins and Jeannie Berlin make a pitch-perfect comedic trio with Louis-Dreyfus as Beth’s sister, Sarah, and their mother. Tobias Menzies and Arian Moayed are inspired, against-type choices as Beth and Sarah’s respective husbands, delightfully pathetic without ever verging into unlikability. (And yes, I did text everyone I knew, “guys. guys did you know tobias menzies also does rom-coms? guys… this is actually really big.” And yes, eventually a second person did watch it!)

While I wasn’t quite expecting it, the last entry on this list is Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls, which stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan (of holding down the mid-budget comedy fame) as two lesbian best friends whose spontaneous cross-country road trip is thrown a curveball when they find themselves inadvertently wrapped up in organized crime. This film has been in some phase of development for most of the last 20 years, and at various points had Selma Blair, Holly Hunter, Christina Applegate, and Chloë Sevigny each attached to star, but in this case, development hell may have been a blessing: Qualley and Viswanathan are absolutely perfect leads for this ensemble cast. If you love raunchy comedies, road trips, lesbians, or movies with cameos from everyone you’ve ever seen, this is the ideal way to spend 84 minutes.

Gold Star: Problemista (2024, Julio Torres)

Problemista was a slow burn, and not just because I’ve been waiting on it for so long. After a SAG-AFTRA strike-related delay, this film was finally released in theatres this March, a year after its debut at South by Southwest. But the film itself builds over its 98 minutes, taking the scenic route to a final scene that hit me like a train. Problemista is a delightful, funny, surrealist, poignant story about Alejandro (Torres), an aspiring toy designer who, through a series of unfortunate events, finds himself working for erratic recluse Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton at peak form) in a bid to save his work visa and avoid deportation. It also follows Alejandro’s mother, Dolores (Catalina Saavedra), a sculptor in El Salvador facing a creative blockage ahead of a major commission.

The entire ensemble—Torres, Swinton, Saavedra, RZA as Elizabeth’s late husband, Greta Lee as her nemesis, James Scully as Alejandro’s work rival, Larry Owens as the personification as Craigslist, and Isabella Rossellini as the narrator—are at their funniest, sharpest, and most heartbreaking for every minute of this film. I’ve been a fan of Julio Torres since his work as a writer, producer, and star of Los Espookys, and Problemista, his feature-length debut, far from disappoints.

Honorable Mention: Fancy Dance (2023, Erica Tremblay)

This is unequivocally the best movie I’ve seen so far this year, but I’ll leave you to read more about it from my full-length review! Fancy Dance is (finally, thankfully) coming to theaters and streaming on AppleTV+ later this year, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Full Watchlist:
May December (2023, Todd Haynes)
The Boy and the Heron (2023, Hayao Miyazaki)
Poor Things (2023, Yorgos Lanthimos)
The Iron Claw (2023, Sean Durkin)
She Came to Me (2023, Rebecca Miller)
Crazy Stupid Love (2011, Glenn Ficarra & John Requa)
American Fiction (2023, Cord Jefferson)
A Thousand and One (2023, A.V. Rockwell)
Scrapper (2023, Charlotte Regan)
You Hurt My Feelings (2023, Nicole Holofcener)
Maestro (2023, Bradley Cooper)
All of Us Strangers (2023, Andrew Haigh)
Lisa Frankenstein (2024, Zelda Williams)
The Color Purple (2023, Blitz Bazawule)
Joy Ride (2023, Adele Lim)
Girl (2023, Adura Onashile)
Fancy Dance (2023, Erica Tremblay)
Drive-Away Dolls (2024, Ethan Coen)
Problemista (2024, Julio Torres)

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Books:

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin (2023)
Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress (2022)
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly (2024)
Gunk Baby by Jamie Marina Lau (2021)

TV:

This Way Up (2019-2021, Hulu)
Apples Never Fall (2024, Peacock) (I cannot apologize for being who I am.)
Bad Sisters (2022-present, AppleTV)
Somebody Somewhere (2022-present, HBO)

Film:

Love Lies Bleeding (2024, Rose Glass)
Certain Women (2016, Kelly Reichardt)
The Zone of Interest (2023, Jonathan Glazer)
How to Have Sex (2023, Molly Manning Walker)

Special thanks (always) to Lillian (this time for The Terror), to my parents for being artists who had one child well into their 30s so I could truly appreciate the films of Nicole Holofcener, and to the staff of the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble for coordinating the “Unhinged” book display that—after causing much discourse—introduced me to Nightbitch and Gunk Baby.

Collage by the author.

In case you missed it…

In our last recommendation guide, we discussed all things Gothic literature—past, present, and future. In our first long-form review, we discussed Answered Prayers, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, and the dangers of a biopic that falls for its subject.

Reviews