2010-2015 YouTube was home to some of the most idiotic people to walk the earth.
Anyway, this is a much more effective way of surveying an internet phenomenon than any conventional talking head doc that I’ve seen. It’s sort of a video essay comprised of original YouTube content, but it feels more experimental and plays as impressionistic aggregate.
Swiss Family Robinson (Ken Annakin, 1960): 2.5/5
The type of Hollywood showboaty production of days gone by. Racism, misogyny, cruelty to animals, colonialism, toxic masculinity. It’s all here!
Young Washington (Jon Erwin, 2026): 0.5/5
George Washington: “What are we going to do Ben
”Ben Franklin: “I don’t know George…” He pauses. “But whatever it is, we’ll do it together.”
And then they revolutioned… AMERICAN REVOLUTIONED! 
Queen Bee (Ranald MacDougall, 1955): 3/5
People used to go to the movies to be terrified by Joan Crawford in this country.
rewatched Nine to Five (Colin Higgins, 1980): 3.5/5
In a time of downright diabolical evil, we have lost an angel. And we will not see her likes again. No one could embody everything great about this country like Dolly Rebecca Parton. And losing her now, when America is being engulfed by wanton cruelty, stings badly. So it seemed fitting to revisit this film, which became an improbable box office smash due to its casting of three formidable iconic women, its humorous tackling of serious gender and workplace issues, and of course Dolly’s monster hit song, perhaps the last great anthem of the worker’s plight this culture has produced. The plot is unhinged, but the monstrousness of Danny Coleman’s Franklin Hart is such that the farce is warranted. Watching this movie in the Trump Era is both dispiriting and also cathartic. But the film’s greatest pleasure may be in seeing Dolly almost steal the movie from brilliant and far more experienced actors.
Queen Bee (Ranald MacDougall, 1955): 3/5
People used to go to the movies to be terrified by Joan Crawford in this country.
rewatched Nine to Five (Colin Higgins, 1980): 3.5/5
In a time of downright diabolical evil, we have lost an angel. And we will not see her likes again. No one could embody everything great about this country like Dolly Rebecca Parton. And losing her now, when America is being engulfed by wanton cruelty, stings badly. So it seemed fitting to revisit this film, which became an improbable box office smash due to its casting of three formidable iconic women, its humorous tackling of serious gender and workplace issues, and of course Dolly’s monster hit song, perhaps the last great anthem of the worker’s plight this culture has produced. The plot is unhinged, but the monstrousness of Danny Coleman’s Franklin Hart is such that the farce is warranted. Watching this movie in the Trump Era is both dispiriting and also cathartic. But the film’s greatest pleasure may be in seeing Dolly almost steal the movie from brilliant and far more experienced actors.
RIP Dolly Rebecca Parton.
The Shipping News (Annie Proulx, 1996)
I love a book that takes place at the edge of civilization because it tends to make people act strangely, like they’re about to tip into barbarism at any moment. Such is the case with this book about a sad sack who ends up moving with his aunt to a tiny town in Newfoundland filled with some of the oddest balls you’ll come across in literature. Their struggles to barely keep it together are hysterical.
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