Movies are the ultimate medium of propaganda. The visceral audiovisual experience transfixes the audience on every perceptual level of sight and sound. Movies stimulate the senses and manipulate emotions with music and charismatic actors. Great actors furthermore create a sort of parasocial relationship with the audience. The best actors, directors, musicians, and special effects artists combine their talents to deliver the final product of a film. Propagandists choose (or influence the choice of) the filmmaking talent to ensure a certain message is conveyed to the audience.
TV Heaven, now a novel, was originally a screenplay that I wrote in 2012. I forget the precise impetus for the idea (about a magical town full of the greatest characters from television history), but I know I conceived of it while bored one day at work (at my old job, which ironically, involved watching television). The story was partially inspired by some of my favorite meta Hollywood movies, like The Truman Show, Pleasantville, Adaptation, Stranger Than Fiction, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Consider some of the classic great movies from the past, such as the monster movies of the 50s, the Spaghetti westerns of the 60s, the action thrillers of the 70s, and the horror slashers of the 80s. These movies were not great technically. Often the acting was mediocre, the ADR dialog was not synced, the lighting and color were off, and the special effects were cheap and cheesy. The monster was often a man in a suit—or a rubber shark that constantly malfunctioned. Yet the best King Kong is still the original from 1933, despite newer versions having much more realistic-looking giant apes. These movies are considered great despite their technical flaws because they were full of originality, creativity, and most of all vitality.
I’ve reviewed the best movies (horror, old, and new) I watched in 2025, so now it is time for television. I didn’t do a roundup of the TV shows I watched last year (because I watch more movies than TV), so this post includes shows I’ve watched over the past two years.
Tier 1: Television Masterpieces
The Rehearsal (season 2) Nathan Fielder continues to surprise and impress me. No one else has even thought of attempting something this ambitious on television before. Nathan spent two years learning how to fly a 737 airplane for a comedy show. Except it’s not really a comedy show, it’s more like a mass psychological experiment. Like Dostoevsky, Fielder uses his art form (reality TV and comedy) to unveil great truths about human nature and expose societal problems.
Anatomy of a Fall (2023) directed by Justine Triet A man dies after falling from his house in the French Alps, but afterward his wife is suspected of having been involved. What follows is an investigation and trial attempting to discover what really happened. But this is not a typical crime story or whodunit mystery. It is about uncertainty and the nature of truth, how difficult it is to know exactly what happened about anything. It is similar to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon in that respect. The writing and acting are phenomenal, especially the wife and her young son, who is the key witness in the trial. Though it makes the French legal system seem like a Kafkaesque nightmare.
The Northman (2022) directed by Robert Eggers A historically accurate Viking epic about revenge with fantastic visuals and elements of horror. It’s like a more realistic Game of Thrones. Far too many historical movies map our modern morality and ideology onto the characters, but this film doesn’t do that at all. You get a sense of what life might have actually been like for people at that time. As a result, the characters and their culture seem alien to us because of how different they think and act. Pre-Christianity, the pagan world was quite different. The film assumes the Norse gods and magic are real, which made for a more interesting story. It’s a shame this film didn’t do better at the box office because I would much rather Eggers make original movies like this than a remake like Nosferatu, which performed much better financially.
With 2025 winding down, it is time for my annual list of the best movies at least a decade old that I watched this past year. Once again, the list is somewhat random and arbitrary, based on the movies I happened to choose to watch (or re-watch) over the course of the past year. The films are sorted into five tiers and listed alphabetically within each tier. (In case you missed it, I made a separate list for the best horror movies I watched in 2025.)
Tier 1: Cinematic Masterpieces
The Conversation (1974) directed by Francis Ford Coppola I saw this movie years ago when I first started studying screenwriting and decided to watch all the greatest films from history. I remember being blown away by The Conversation at the time, but over the years I had forgotten the plot details, so I had been planning to re-watch it. The recent passing of Gene Hackman propelled me to do so—and I feel the same way as the first time around—that it is an absolute cinematic masterpiece. As the title implies, The Conversation is built entirely around a conversation that Hackman’s character (a surveillance technician) records. A gripping noir plot follows, with twists and turns, but equally fascinating is the psychological study of Hackman’s character, Harry Caul—a lonely man who devotes his life to perfecting his craft of audio surveillance and wiretapping—but as a result, he feels great guilt for the repercussions of what his clients do with his tapes, and he lives in constant paranoia of who might be listening to him.
“It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything.” — Oscar Wilde
One of my favorite parts of writing a piece of fiction is coming up with the title. I agree with Oscar Wilde: Naming a work of art is an art in itself and should always be treated as such. The name that is given to a work of art is massively influential on how that work is received. As a result, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the titles of my books (and the names of my characters, but that’s a topic for another day).
With 2024 winding down, it is time for my 9th annual list of the best movies at least a decade old that I watched this past year. Once again, the list is somewhat random and arbitrary, based on the movies I just so happen to choose to watch (or re-watch) over the course of the past year. (In case you missed it, I made a separate list for the best horror movies I watched in 2024.) As always, check JustWatch.com to see where the following films may be currently streaming.
The great screenwriter William Goldman had a famous quote about Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.” His full quote elaborated: “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” Goldman meant that, beforehand, nobody (neither the producers, studio executives, directors, actors, or critics) could accurately predict which movies would be breakout hits or which would be box office duds. There are always surprises in both directions: movies everyone thinks will succeed end up bombing, while surefire flops become smash hits. At least that’s the way the movie industry used to work. Now Hollywood thinks they know everything.
There is growing concern that the proliferation of generative AI will remove humans from the equation of creativity because eventually most art will be AI-generated images based on previous AI-generated images until all art is simulacra with no connection to reality. But in a way, this has already happened—before the invention of AI art.
T.Z. Barry 