Annual Roundup: Paper Editions
In 2024 I started taking a different approach to my annual roundup: I printed ’em on paper, for friends, like an animal. I just wanted something less ephemeral.
But all is not lost! You can view the PDF online or use it to print your own. The page order only makes sense if you print and fold it, but it’s still workable online-only.
Instructions:
- Download a roundup: 2025, 2024 (if you want to read online you can stop here)
- Print it. Print double-sided, and opt to flip the pages over the short edge.
- Keeping the pages in order, cut the stack in half the long way (red line):
- Take this whole stack and put it on top of the other stack:
- Fold the book over left to right. If you’ve done it correctly this should be the front cover (or first page if you decide to put a cover on it):
- Staple or stitch the binding if you want, tell me what you love or hate if you want :)
Fri, Apr 3, 2026
What are the odds a graphic novel beloved by our family gets made and then shelved and then resurrected and then comes out and it’s quite different from the graphic novel but just as beloved by all of us? SLIM, that’s what the chances are! And yet here we are. An absolute delight.
A very worthy and overdue addition to the raunchy high school comedy pantheon. Kinda a lesbian Fight Club (concept?) Mean Girls (tone?) Heathers (body count?!) Booksmart (humor?) mashup.
From the great Park Chan-wook, a neo-noir mystery romance, and like all his movies (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) just gorgeous to look at.
M. Night Shyamalan has had such in interesting career arc. Came onto the scene with the acclamied blockbuster The Sixth Sense and then each of his next six movies were worst than the last, starting with Unbreakable (which was pretty good) and hitting rock bottom with The Last Airbender. But then he somehow pulled the plane out of the nosedive and has made some decent ones, and this one’s such a good high-concept ride.
An absolute sweetheart of a movie. About a sentient seashell! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during that pitch meeting.
A home invasion movie with an alien twist, very little dialog, so it’s really just a great excuse to watch Kaitlyn Dever act the heck out of it.
Somehow Amelia and I dragged each other to see this despite neither of us being psyched for such a buttnumbathon—some kind of weird mutual bootstrapping—but as soon as it was over we turned to each other “wow that was actually great!”
I really love the dynamism Spider-verse brought to animation and this is such a fun and surprisingly poignant example, with Puss grappling with mortality and even panic attacks.
Another epic of butt-numbing proportions but the action! The dancing! The brothers-in-arms! The epic sweep! The CGI tiger! A contender for favorite movie of the year.
Low-key delightful rom-com. Loved our leads. Sometimes there’s no more to say than that.
Twisty little relationship thriller in the woods, I always love when Maika Monroe adds more bullet points to this section of her résumé (The Guest, It Follows, Watcher)
How do you make a sequel to a movie that’s in the running for both my favorite animated movie and my favorite superhero movie? Like this, that’s how!
Favorite horror movie of the year, don’t miss it. Unless you don’t watch horror. In that case you probably definitely want to miss it.
Pour one out for one of the greats, canceled after three seasons, but fear not it ends pretty well (even though they wanted three more seasons 😭). Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult are incredible in this off-kilter bawdy rauchy rollicking comedy/romance/court intrigue/period piece. The laughs and the shocks! For a stretch of season three I worried a bit that they’d lost their way but my fears were misfounded, what a finish.
I try not to list shows in multiple years but I’m gonna make an exception for my favorite show. Season two was just as great as season one, even though they broaden the horizons. If I haven’t convinced you to watch this yet there’s nothing for it, and the show has since caught fire so doesn’t need my endless shilling, but you’ll almost certainly hear it from me when season three drops nonetheless :)
I wonder how Fleetwood Mac feels about this show? Didn’t seem like a thing I’d be into but it’s deeply watchable and really feels like it captures a time well, even though I was a little too young then to have any right to that opinion.
This superhero spinoff of the The Boys needs every kind of content warning but while I could never recommend The Boys because it’s just sooo misanthropic (lordy I hate myself for being addicted to it) this show has much more heart so I’m gonna go out on a limb and put it here. Your. Mileage. May. VARY.
A wonderful adaptation of the Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman book. Michael Sheen and David Tennant are pitch-perfect as the lifelong angel/demon friends grappling with various apocalypsi.
Delightful entry into the kindness HoF, and a form of reality show? Everyone is in on this hoax jury trial except for ONE GUY. And James Marsden is in it playing himself (is he the most underrated actor of his generation? I think maybe). Anyway, it’s a treat and I won’t ruin it if you haven’t seen it.
Riveted from the jump, I’m a sucker for a good sports narrative, and Anya Taylor-Joy is perfect. I just loved watching her carve her way up (and down!) through the ranks. The stakes always feel so high, and outcomes uncertain. Plus the costume and set design, good lord.
Wildly imaginative animated show about a handful of people marooned on a very alien planet. The creativity that went into the ecosystem is so frickin’ cool and watching the characters grapple with it is so engaging. There’s also a surprising “ugh this fucking guy” element to one of the aliens but I won’t say more than that.
Bill Lawrence left Ted Lasso after two seasons to focus on this show and it is evident in both places (I like how TL wrapped up, but our family is divided on that :). This one is more overtly about mental health, grief, and relationships but no less funny and almost certainly gonna find a spot in the kindness HoF too.
Gary Oldman oversees Slough House, the shabby branch of MI5 for disgraced agents. The plots are gripping, and Oldman turns in the best performance of an ascerbic genius since Hugh Laurie played Dr. House.
Modern day court intrigue of the highest order! Incredible performances and dialog, I don’t know if I’ve ever had more fun watching people I hate. I really had to muscle past that baseball scene in episode one. “Shakespearean” gets thrown around, but I’ll still say this gets “Most Shakespearean” in the drama category this year, and The Great takes in in the comedy category.
Only watched season one. An incredible season of television, but at the same time doesn’t make me hunger for more? It’s weird. Maybe because everyone is so deeply unlikeable. Dark stuff for sure, but so well done.
Cut from the same cloth as Lost. If you were into that, hard to imagine you won’t be into this!
Made me cry. More than once! Example above. Equal parts funny and touching with stakes that feel real. I also love that it really brought home to me the expressiveness of ASL in a way that hasn’t really hit me before.
The wildest ride of the year and I love the complicated and moving mother-daughter relationship at the core of it.
Very different feel from Knives Out but that’s a good thing. Not quite on the same level for me but still loved it.
I’m still a sucker for a well-done sports movie.
Beautifully shot and cut and good n’ twisty, I just love Edgar Wright’s 
Cast crushes it, Nicholas Hoult can do no wrong and I love everything about the dynamic between him, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Ralph Fiennes. Love the service worker/consumer dichotomy. And I think about that burger like weekly.
The Pinocchio story doesn’t usually do much for me but this one’s the best, and the artistry of this one is incredible.
The first one will always be iconic but even so this is the best Predator movie with one of the great action movie heroines.
I gotta admit the ending doesn’t really work for me but still definitely a good one.
Really fun, highlights include a great bit of physical comedy from Nicholas Cage and the Paddington 2 discussion.
My favorite thing I watched in 2022! Fantastic ensemble cast, centered around a world class chef who inherits the local Chicago family sandwich shop and tries to get a recalcitrant staff to adopt new practices and transform the place. Food, found family, tension, has it all! Lots of team-building carryover, reminiscent of sports shows or movies. The penultimate episode of season one captures the experience of a stress dream better than anything I’ve ever seen.
Delightful show about three friends who find themselves transported into a Planet of the Apes type situation, but with amphibians. Feels kinda young and episodic at times but the overarching story arcs, character arcs, and relationships are very satisfying.
Perhaps the twistedest and twistist thing on the list? A post-apocalpytic world where the remnants of humanity live inside a walled city to keep the cannibal giants at bay. Lots of action and gore, very imaginative, fun world-building. Most everyone will probably be able to find some badass or another to relate to, but don’t get attached.
Omg I put off watching this for so long because when am I ever in the mood for what I thought was going to be a bit of a slog of a docudrama but this was RIVETING. I’m glad I had no idea at the time how razor-close this disaster came to tipping over into mega-disaster. Also an incredible portrayal of how responsibility and accountability can go so wildly wrong when you’re under a regime that makes covering your ass paramount.
Linda Cardellini and Christina Applegate bring to life one of the great TV friendships amidst a backdrop of murder and suburban strife. Three seasons and done, done perfectly. And James Marsden should be a much bigger star.
I was definitely worried about this one because the first two seasons were such delights and season two ends in such a satisfying and emotional way, and season three might not capture quite those same heights but it’s still really good and a worthy final chapter.
One of the worst TV cancellations, on a huge cliffhanger, so you should know that going in. But also some of the most fun science fiction I’ve ever seen, while it lasted. Also Olan Rogers, creator and lead voice, just seems like such a wonderful human being.
Okay this is a cop show with all that entails and definitely hasn’t aged well in that regard and a few others but between Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins I’m not sure it’s legal to have this much charisma in one show.
More than any other show on this list I think this might have the biggest “I’m not used to anime” hurdle to get over, but along with Kipo and Ted Lasso and Knives Out this show deserves a spot in the kindness pantheon. Also has anyone ever had more fun animating action and psychic powers? I don’t think so.
A romantic comedy alternate history where gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard cross paths. Took me a minute to get into the mood, but it really hits its stride when Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) shows up.
Never would have guessed a show about the friendship between a caveman and a dinosaur and almost no dialog could be so captivating and often moving? Gorgeously animated. Heads up, violent.
A great guilty-pleasure adaptation of some great guilty-pleasure books. I think I binged this in two nights. Embarrassingly macho stuff but Alan Ritchson as Reacher seems beloved by both men and women I know so what the hell, I’m putting it in.
Take an intriguing concept–what if you could undergo a procedure such that your work life and personal life were completely isolated from each other in your head–and execute it flawlessly and you’ve got this show. The season finale was incredible, I can’t wait for more.
