Happy Friday!

Normally at the end of a week, I like to do a recommendations column, guiding you toward new movies and TV shows that I think are worth your attention. But I’m afraid that conditions have conspired to make that column rather impossible this week. It is late July, which is typically not a very fecund time for anything in the filmed arts. In TV world, we are almost as far away from the next Emmy nominations voting period as we can be, so a lot of the good stuff is being held. In theaters, looming blockbusters black out the sun. Particularly this year, as everything but the smallest of counter-programming efforts has scattered out of the way of The Odyssey. They were likely wise to do so, but it means we’re stuck with not much new to occupy us. 

At least for those of us on the east coast, this dearth of material coincides with what is shaping up to be one of the best weather weekends of the whole summer. It looks like it’s not going to be too bad in California, either, and quite nice in Seattle, and hot but manageable in Austin, and some thunderstorms ought to cool things off in Miami a little. So why don’t we all spend our weekend out in the world, enjoying the company of other people? 

Or, y’know, you could do what I’m doing, which is watching an old season of a show that you have overlooked or largely forgotten. For me that’s the Danny Beard season of Drag Race UK, which for whatever reason I hadn’t watched in full when it aired. I really do like Drag Race UK; it feels fresher, cleverer, and quainter (in a good way) than the American flagship.

On the more high-brow end of things, there’s a new Harry Dean Stanton collection on the Criterion Channel, if you wanted to watch Cool Hand Luke or Escape from New York. I’d also recommend Criterion’s “Odysseys” collection, which features Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, John Ford’s culturally iffy but otherwise magnificent The Searchers, and Nicholas Roeg’s grim and fascinating Australian classic Walkabout. The latter is maybe of particular relevance right now, because when you watch it, you can’t help but see what an influence Roeg had on Christopher Nolan. The Australian outback doesn’t, like, fold up into itself or anything, but the collage-like editing technique—flashes of silent imagery used as a motif—is something Nolan has used again and again. 

If you don’t want to watch anything, my dear friend (one must always use the word “dear” in instances such as this) Bobby Finger, host of the marvelous Who? Weekly podcast, published a novel last month called We Are Gathered Here Today. It’s a funny-wistful rumination on weddings and marriage. I finished it on a recent warm, sun-splashed Sunday afternoon and had a good little cry at the end. As is true of all three of Bobby’s novels, WAGHT quietly but wittily muses on the passing of time and the sometimes easy, sometimes hard-won wonder of human connection. Take it to a beach or a park or a corner of your backyard and enjoy. 

You could also spend your weekend trying to comprehend the existence of the following, trying to reconcile it with any lingering notion of a sane and moral world. 

Yes, David Ellison’s Paramount Pictures has decided it’s time for a Johnny Depp revival, because David Ellison’s Paramount Pictures is probably gonna do lots of unpleasant things in the coming years. Ti West—who recently made a porn-industry horror trilogy comprised of X, Pearl, and MaXXXine—has dusted off the Charles Dickens story of Christmas spirits helping an old man finally come out of the closet and turned it into a Depp vehicle. And not just any Depp vehicle; this is decidedly one of his kooky character parts. “The master of misfits,” the trailer calls him, referring to past roles like Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands, and of course Wine Monster. 

If you are subscribed to this newsletter, my hunch is that you are not exactly rooting for this comeback, but it seems like enough folks out in the world are. (Which, y’know, is plainly evident any time Depp is mentioned online and an army of freaks rushes to scream at anyone who speaks ill of him.) To prove that, Paramount sent a heavily be-costumed Depp to ComicCon in San Diego, where he greeted fans looking like this:

Are those not thoroughly miserable images? I don’t want to be hyperbolic and say something like, “RIP Culture: Whenever the lyre was invented - San Diego ComicCon 2026,” but yeesh. This is grim stuff. And now I’m forcing you to look at it. Hm. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. Apologies. Let’s cleanse the palate with something actually good. 

This is the trailer for a horror film called It Ends, which I saw last year as part of a festival jury thing, and has not left my head since. I say “horror” because there are some frightening parts, but mostly this is a poignant allegory for the aimlessness of a generation whose post-grad opportunities are rapidly shrinking. It’s a metaphor for the collapse of a dream, a process hastened by nightmare tech inventions and the callousness of a cruel elite. 

Writer-director Alexander Ullom, who is all of 27 or 28 years old, renders that despondency and dread as a never-ending car ride, four young people stuck in a Jeep on a mysterious highway for days, weeks, months, eventually years. It’s a chilling conceit, and one that makes clever use of a small budget. I was really taken with the invention of the film, and also pretty wrecked by its conclusion, which is terribly bitter and sweet in almost equal measure. The film is out in theaters next month and is well worth seeking out. 

Before we close out, I thought I would rather self-indulgently disclose—for my own therapeutic purposes—a recent obsession of mine. For an ultimately misguided period during my tenure at my old job, I took it upon myself to become a chronicler of YouTube celebrity. Not the whole of it, because that would be rather impossible, but one brighter subdivision of the platform that involved perky young vloggers, some from the US but even more from the UK. They were all amiable to varying degrees, telegenic youngsters making millions as they documented the increasingly rarefied routines of their lives and did stupid challenge videos.

One such vlogger was Joe Sugg, brother of Zoe Sugg, who was briefly the most popular YouTuber in all of Great Britain. Joe had worked as a roof thatcher before catching the online bug, and had an agreeably humble, humorous take on the wild world in which he suddenly found himself. I was quite charmed by him, and would check in on his life—or the version of life that he chose to share—from time to time over the years. Most thrilling of all was the run of weeks when he was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing (the UK’s version of Dancing with the Stars) and one could watch, in real time, as he and his dance partner, Dianne Buswell, fell in love. It was a more anodyne, parasocial social media-age version of the romantic comedy, and I felt genuine happiness for them when they finally confirmed that they were an item. And then I immediately felt stupid. 

Anyway, years tumbled on, I lost my interest in such YouTube personalities (as did most of their fans), and that was that. Or, it was until this week, when on a bored whim I decided to check in on Joe and Dianne and learned with some melancholy alarm that they had a child in March, and now much of their videos are chronicles of caring for a newborn in their spacious mansion outside of Brighton. Joe’s cheerful charm is intact, only now he is older and wiser and more content to be quiet at home with his family. 

I watched many of his recent vlogs in reverse chronological order, back to when the pregnancy was announced, feeling like a pathetic old voyeur but also sincerely glad that these two nice-seeming people have built such a cozy little existence for themselves. But it also made me sad? To dwell, like I did after finishing Bobby’s book, on the passage of time, while also feeling a bit envious of other people’s excitement. (And, sure, their money, too.) 

I dunno. It was a weird, dumb kind of feeling, one I stewed in for a few days this week before deciding (quite healthily, I think) to leave them alone again. I’m mentioning this silly little saga here to hold myself accountable—just as I am when I tell you that I’m currently four days twitter-free!—but also as a little signal flare to anyone reading this who also once knew who Joe Sugg was, but maybe wasn’t aware that he’s a dad now. Sigh. In the words of a gay ghost in Angels in America, the world has gotten so terribly, terribly old. 

Okay, that’s it. Enjoy your days off! I’m gonna go sit on the roof and watch the planes descending to LaGuardia. That’s something you could do, too.