Hello and happy almost-weekend!

Maybe not every Friday, but at least some Fridays, I'm going to be sending a recommendations letter like this one. I watch a lot of stuff, more than is medically advised, so I figured I should lend some of that horrible knowledge to you, subscriber. In this crazy mixed-up modern-day media world of ours, it can be hard to pick something to put on in the background while you scroll through Cynthia Nixon’s Reels on your phone. I mean, I hope you don’t do that in actual movie theaters, but while at home, put one of these things on, stick a hand down your pants Al Bundy-style (oppa Bundy Style—that’s good, right?), and get to exploring the trip to Ireland that Cynthia took this summer. God knows I have!

First off, if there’s anything from my 21 Best Movies of 2025 list that you haven’t seen yet, try to watch one of those if available. I swear they’re all good. If you don’t like whatever I painstakingly picked for you, then go to hell but also please keep subscribing thx thx thx. But other than those gorgeously curated selections, here are some full-length features you could go see, or watch on the toilet, over the next few days. 

Wake Up Dead Man (Netflix) 

This is the most obvious, even cheugiest, thing I could recommend this week. But here’s the thing: it is actually pretty good. I did not love the last Knives Out installment, Glass Onion, because it was too smug and reference-y and twitter-brained. The central puzzle-box mystery was well-constructed, but all the zeitgeisty humor surrounding it suggested that during the pandemic, writer-director Rian Johnson spent entirely too much time swimming around the internet, sifting the plankton of pop culture through his baleen. Wake Up Dead Man does way less of that, instead taking things kinda seriously as Johnson mulls over faith and decency in a world gone horribly cynical. 

Its greatest asset is Josh O’Connor, to whom I am wed. Well, okay, no, sorry for that dumb internet boyfriend joke. In truth I’ve found his cutesy sweaters and school-boy stylings a little cloying on this press cycle, but O’Connor is still darling and, most importantly, a truly wonderful actor. He’s staggeringly good in Wake Up Dead Man, playing a priest with a sorrowful past who is, genuinely, just trying to do the right thing while being met at seemingly every turn with selfishness and skepticism. Only Benoit Blanc, still played as a dandy from Neptune who has maybe escaped a mental institution, can help him save the day. Not everything lands equally well in the film, but the aggregate result of Johnson’s weird impulses and curiosities is rich and satisfying. I do wish that maybe there was a little sexual tension between the sad priest and Detective Inspector Blanc, but I don’t think any priests are gay in real life.