The Useless Critic 2.0

I haven't written a blog post on movies in probably a decade-ish, but since 2020 I've actively taken it upon myself (lol) to watch more films. The site Letterboxd has been an incredible help with that! I am by no means a huge film buff or cinephile - I like movies way more than TV series (the messy but also gay recent season of "Emily in Paris" aside) so I tend to watch them more than anything else. With all that being said, I watched 40+ films this year, which also proves I don't have much of a personal life. In no particular order, here are my favorites. And to get this out of the way, the worst films I watched were "Disenchanted" (disappointingly) and "The Poughkeepsie Tapes." NOTE: I still haven't watched a lot of films I've wanted to, like "Babylon," but I doubt I'll be able to get to them before the year ends. Womp womp.  NOTE NOTE: I am sure better lists exist! NOTE NOTE NOTE: Not all of these films came out in 2022...

"Eclectic one-man band" Tom Vek has been pretty prolific about creating music over the last few decades. And much to our benefit! You might not hear a lot about him these days at least stateside (unless you're Florence ) but rest assured he's still an extremely active guy. Case in point, I checked out his latest album, "Newer Symbols." As the name may imply, it's a reimagining of his 2020 album, "New Symbols." Reimagining or not though, this album (just a little more than 30 minutes) stands quite well on its own. Check out the 2022 version of "Washed Up on the Beach" - my personal favorite - here; I would urge you to check out this release if you like electronic music in any variety. It feels like some of his finest work I've heard; experimental yet approachable. Warm while still fairly cool. Some tracks don't quite land but on the whole it's a very good listen, one of my favorites of this past year.