It took me a good 3 years to fully appreciate Once I Was An Eagle. I also wrote it off as inaccessible (though I could understand why people were so enamored with it), but I came back to it after Short Movie came out and it blew me away. I've probably listened to it now more times than any of her other records.

Maybe not the *best* episode of Season 3, but Doppelgangland is the one I revisit most. I don't think I'll ever not find it hilarious. Lovers Walk is also excellent, and Helpless is very underrated.

Yeah, it's so disorienting that I thought it had to be a dream sequence. I think it's deliberately set up to feel that way, especially with the shock reveal after the big moment, and it's a brilliant move. Instead of the dread building up to the big moment, the buildup of dread follows it as the scene just keeps…

I'm glad Riley Keough seems to be good in this. It seems like she's carving out a really promising career for herself. She was excellent in The Girlfriend Experience and she seems to be making a lot of good movie choices — Fury Road, American Honey, that really good-looking upcoming horror movie It Comes At Night AND…

I just meant if you were very specifically forewarned (as in "Close your eyes when you hear this line of dialogue and don't open them until the people next to you have screamed") you could probably avoid it, but otherwise it's so sudden and out of nowhere that you really can't.

It's so effective because it plays dirty. It doesn't give you any warning or build up like most jump scares, and it's obviously not any kind of fake out. Unless you've been forewarned in specific detail, you can't avoid it and by the time you're able to close your eyes it's already over. It's genius.

"Oh, you're yelling at me."

Is she not planning to publish elsewhere? I understand and support the gesture but I wonder if there isn't something counterintuitive about a form of protest that removes the voices we need from the shelves, leaving more room for the Milos of the world. The principle behind the move is sound, but it seems like the end…

I think Tahani and (silent) Jason were the ones who started the garbage initiative, so yeah, it was Bad Place people flying while the humans picked up trash.

Everything about Janet as a character and D'Arcy Carden's performance is just perfect. Just reading the words "Bad Janet" makes me laugh. Everything about Janet is just gold and I will shout it from the rooftops.

I'm not "accepting fiction as reality". But most movies, this one included, are all meant to be based IN reality, because otherwise there's nothing for the audience to cling to? Horror movies scare people by placing scary things into a reality they can recognize and relate to. Movies don't need to represent reality…

Could you elaborate on that at all? I don't mind spoilers. The premise and everything I know about it just seems very "crazy guy is scary because he's crazy" (obviously a reductive take, but I'm sure you get my point).

Any comment on the way this movie portrays mental illness as a villainous trait or is that just considered an inherent part of its B-Movie style?

A movie doesn't need to be a documentary to portray mental illness realistically and respectfully. Being a work of fiction doesn't excuse it for trafficking in dangerous stereotypes. Pop culture shapes a lot of people's opinions on a lot of things more than most consciously realize.

"and the Christmas episode that augments a gritty story about teen homelessness with a subplot about an angel played by singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield"

I am the exact same way! I LOVE cheese when it's melted on/in something (or in the case of goat cheese, at least served as part of a warm dish) but I can't stand cold/solid/raw cheese at all. People who just eat cheese on crackers or on its own in chunks baffle and disgust me.

Damn it, I'll say it: I preferred Don't Breathe to Green Room. I liked both, but I wanted to like the latter so much more than I did. Everything that I was told about the sustained white-knuckle tension and brutality of Green Room turned out to be far truer of Don't Breathe, even if (or maybe because) it's definitely…

I mean, it's obviously a glaring omission, due to how dominant it was in the cultural conversation this year and its prominent place on almost every other year-end list out there. But I don't think it was a conscious contrarian decision (that doesn't really seem to be this site's usual MO, especially with music). I…

Doesn't this site use a ballot system when developing their top lists? I don't think anybody had an actual say in Lemonade's position (or lack thereof) on this list, it just didn't rank high enough on enough people's individual lists to make the cut, which is pretty understandable.

Pssst