Best Of Lists

7 Best Things I Watched and Read in May

May was filled with some great pop culture!

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May started off with a bang, that being the TCM Classic Film Festival! TCMFF is one of my favorite times of year, and it gave me an opportunity to not just see old friends but to see an old film held in a vault for 90 years! I also made it out to see several new releases and read not one, but two books! You'll find it all below, and be sure to drop what you watched/read and enjoyed in the comments below! Always looking for more stuff to add to my lists.

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Anastasia (1956)

Everyone has their own process when it comes to tackling the TCM Classic Film Festival. I know people who prioritize exclusively stuff they haven't seen. In my case, I tend to go the opposite (I know!) and focus on stuff I have seen. In many instances, playing on the familiar is always successful and these are often films I've never seen on a big screen before. But with this year's festival I made time for two new discoveries and they were both worth it.

Director Anatole Litvak's 1956 exploration of the life of the Grand Duchess Anastasia was an opportunity for Hollywood to welcome back actress Ingrid Bergman. Bergman had become persona non grata, condemned by the Pope himself, after engaging in an affair and having a child out of wedlock with Roberto Rossellini. Playing on the fairy tale of a newly discovered Princess would be the key to viewer's hearts, and it was! The role nabbed Bergman an Academy Award. Do I think she deserved the Oscar for this.....no. (Also, this was the year of Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop. Just saying.) But I see why she got it.

The film itself is a lush examination of the Anna Anderson story. Ingrid Bergman shines as the mentally tormented Anna, on a path of self-discovery. Yul Brynner is good but there's zero chemistry between him and Bergman which makes the ending a bit flat. I also have to shout out Helen Hayes as the Grand Duchess, who is a total scene-stealer.

Letty Lynton (1932)

The story behind Letty Lynton is fascinating, and would take far more time than I have, so I recommend watching Izzy of Be Kind Rewind's video on it. In short, the movie was wrapped up in a copyright/plagiarism case that took 90 years to sort out. And while Warner Archive is releasing a, no doubt, beautiful Blu-ray version of it this month I'm so happy I got to see this for the first time on a big screen.

Joan Crawford plays the title character, a socialite who has engaged in a shipboard affair with a man who refuses to let her go. Letty escapes and meets Jerry Darrow (Robert Montgomery), and the two plan to wed. But Letty's old lover won't let her go so easily.

The movie's biggest claim to fame – outside of being inaccessible for nearly 100 years – is how it impacted fashion. Acclaimed designer Adrian crafted the "Letty Lynton" dress, alongside some other beautiful pieces, which became highly profitable for him. And Joan certainly looks beautiful in all the gowns here. It's a pre-Code film so the backs and necklines are plunging! But to me, what separates Letty Lynton from just being another good girl turned bad noir is the ending. I won't spoil it, as half the fun is watching it play out, but in just two years – by 1934 – that ending would have VASTLY violated the Hays Code. It's bold, it's funny, and it's a rare opportunity for Joan's usually tragic heroines to thrive at the end. The rest of the movie may seem standard, but that final sequence is anything but ordinary.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

I'm usually woefully behind on reading contemporary books. My Kindle has 65-odd "pages" of books so I spend a lot of time just randomly picking books to read. Almost a decade after its publication, I finally got to Kate Moore's utterly haunting examination of the women who worked for Radium Dial in the 1910s and 1920s.

This is one of the most terrifying books I've read. Moore certainly has a way of conveying the utter horror of radium poisoning, with many of these women losing teeth and parts of their jaw after spending months putting radium-soaked paintbrushes in their mouths! Let's just say the word "pus" is used a lot here!

At the same time, this is both a book that's as tragic as it is frustrating. A book that illustrates how, time and again, women are perceived as expendable. It's also a true testament to why workplace safety standards so important, something our current regime doesn't really seem to care about.

Beautiful, melancholy, scary, essential.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (2026)

The summer camp movie Wet Hot American Summer (2001) is a favorite of mine, and yet I haven't always loved what director David Wain has done since then. That's why Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass works so well, it's the Wain that gave me the wacky majestic of Christopher Meloni humping a refrigerator.

Zoey Deutch plays the wide-eyed Gail, who travels to Los Angeles to indulge in the one-pass every couple presumably gets to sleep with a celebrity. (Her fiancé has already used his...right in front of Gail.) So she's off to meet...Jon Hamm...and along the way she recruits a variety of chosen family including a down-on-his-luck paparazzo (Ken Marino), a wannabe CAA agent (Ben Wong), and John Slattery.

The movie is essentially Wizard of Oz and that's the genius of the movie, it's a wacky love letter to both Los Angeles and the Hollywood romantic fantasy we've all grown up on. There's a CAA theme song, just to show you both how hilarious and inside baseball the whole thing can be. The cast, though, is what sells it, particularly Slattery as the film's equivalent of the Cowardly Lion. He has such brilliant comedic timing! Every scene he has is a gem, especially a silent moment of him scrolling through a series of text messages to Hamm, all mostly left on read.

I Love Boosters (2026)

The latest from Boots Riley is a sly and outrageously fun story of collective bargaining and the perils of fast fashion. Keke Palmer leads a group of boosters who rob a high end story in order to resell the clothes. She catches the attention of the fashion designer whose store they're robbing, Christie Smith (Demi Moore), and from there all hell breaks loose.

This isn't my favorite of Riley's work – that still goes to 2018's Sorry to Bother You – but he knows how to tell a sharp satire of what's going on in today's world. The fashion and theft aside, a B-plot that takes center stage involves an Asian sweatshop trying to engage in collective bargaining. Everyone here is pitch perfect, particularly Palmer, Taylour Paige, Naomi Ackie and Poppy Liu, but even the smallest characters have time to shine. Lakeith Stanfield as an oral-sex performing demon from Hell is worthy of his own movie.

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

This not only became my favorite Robert Altman film, but might be the best thing I've watched all month. The story of a group of friends, all members of a James Dean fan club in the 1950s, who reunite in the 1970s is a heartbreaking, shockingly progressive story. I'd definitely recommend reading Willow Catelyn Maclay's essay on the movie, essential reading for a better comprehension of why the movie is iconic.

Everyone in this is pitch-perfect, starting with my queen, Sandy Dennis, an actress whose work I've been loving this year. Cher is great. She's Cher, after all. But it is in Karen Black's contemplative performance that is the scene-stealer. For a movie made in the 1980s to be so progressive – though not perfect, mind you – about trans lives is astounding. This movie kept me captivated, despite being filmed in just one location! It's a definitive 1980s text that we should be talking about more.

John Candy: A Life in Comedy by Paul Myers

For me, John Candy will always be the voice of Wilbur the albatross from Rescuers Down Under or Polka king Gus Polinski in Home Alone (both 1990). But outside of those roles, and his early death at the age of 43, I knew nothing about him. Paul Myers' book lays out the story of a guy who just seems so nice! Is this a salacious Hollywood tell-all? No. But Candy doesn't come off like that type of guy. There are hints of demons, specifically with Candy's penchant for alcohol, but the book is focused far more on his career than anything else. A solid biography about a true Hollywood charmer.

Drop what movies you watched and books you read in May in the comments below!

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