The year is kicking off with what’s becoming a loose tradition: a documentary about a renowned ‘90s athlete that aims to shade in a more complete picture. This time around, it’s Tiger, a two-part HBO Sports documentary about golf superstar Tiger Woods. Like The Last Dance, which chronicled Michael Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls while reflecting on his entire career, Tiger attempts to complicate the prevailing narrative of a legend defined by his meteoric rise and equally steep fall. 

Even if you didn’t know golf, you probably knew about Tiger Woods. If you came of age in the ‘90s or early aughts, it was impossible to not know about the man who brought raucous, Michael Jordan-levels of celebrity to golf — a sport so traditionally restrained that Adam Sandler was able to make a hit comedy where the only real joke was “what if a golfer got real pissed off all the time?” 

Tiger Woods was a phenomenon. He had the sort of generational talent that becomes synonymous with a sport while simultaneously redefining what’s possible — despite (or because of) the fact he was so different from what came before. It also might be why Tiger Woods’ fame as a golfer was equally matched by his notoriety as gossip fodder, as his addictions and indiscretions piled up for a fall as ravenously chronicled as his rise. 

Throughout most of its roughly three-hour runtime, Tiger feels like a Behind the Music special narrowly focused on Tiger’s life: directors Matthew Heineman and Matthew Hamachek are very interested in Woods’ early years as a child prodigy and the complicated relationship the golfer had with his controlling father. It’s against this backdrop that Tiger holds the golfer’s entire career and public life up for scrutiny: it portrays his unprecedented successes as owed in part to the arguably abusive upbringing his father gave him and his descent into painkiller addiction and infidelity as the response of a man who was lost after his father died. 

For the most part, Tiger is successful at humanizing the person behind the headlines, even if it works at a remove. Woods himself mostly appears in archival footage, with the exception of a brief surprise appearance at the end of the film. His story is mostly told by the people who were around him at the heights of his renown: friends, rivals, journalists, and lovers form a motley crew of people caught up in the hurricane of his fame. It’s a good exploration of the casual dehumanization that’s part and parcel of modern celebrity, but at the same time, the film is so limited in scope that it can’t quite escape the lurid fascination it’s ostensibly critiquing. This is especially true in its second part, which veers into sensationalism by treating Woods’ sex scandal — the second widest-known thing about him — as a suspense narrative.

Much like The Last Dance, Tiger almost hits the mark. But the production is hindered by its subject’s involvement. Woods didn’t let anyone get too close to home, which means Tiger is missing the insight you can get with a strong critical lens. Both compensate for this by focusing on the phenomenon of fame over the men themselves. These are stories less about people and more about culture in a way that’s wholly unique to professional sports. 

Athletes make for a good measuring stick of our cultural biases because their existence tends to raise certain possibly uncomfortable questions: how much agency do we afford them? How much do we fixate on their perceived moral failings? How much pushback do we give when they don’t stick to sports? Race is an inextricable part of these stories, too. Black athletes make millions for executives and entertain fans — which leads both groups to a strange feeling of ownership over them. It manifests as a benevolent frenzy when they are performing, and it can be terrifyingly hostile when they are not. 

For Woods, that sense of public ownership manifested itself in the continual headlines in the early 2000s about his bad behavior. He wasn’t punished by the public just because of a salacious tabloid culture; he was punished because people felt like he tarnished the lily-white image of professional golf. He stepped out of line. It’s not hard to make the leap to other unfairly maligned athletes: Colin Kaepernick overstepped when he protested police brutality; Serena Williams has been raked over the coals for not being “sportsmanlike enough,” which is code for, ironically, what happens when a woman behaves like one of her male colleagues. Some people who like the Lakers hate that LeBron James is vocal about current events. These biases aren’t new, and they’re not going anywhere. They’re a part of how we tell our pop culture stories, bad-faith arguments that often dictate how these stories are framed in our memory. 

Yet the first draft of a celebrity narrative is rarely an accurate one. It’s a managed story, carefully orchestrated by publicists and corporate interests. Star power means money, and money must be protected — yet celebrity also dictates that famous people appear relatable, that the wider public be privy to some aspects of their personal lives. And thus, infamy is sticky. If you’re Tiger Woods, the headlines can be hard to shake. 

It’s also rare that pop culture affords the notorious a careful reappraisal. Lately, the stars of ‘90s gossip headlines are getting a better rap than most, sitting at the confluence of an industry in dire need of content and an audience voracious for new stories about the heroes they grew up with. Though it’s imperfect, Tiger can serve as a reminder that the easy stories aren’t necessarily the ones we should be telling. In truth, we should meet our heroes — and think about who the villains really are, too.

Much has been made of Search Party as a uniquely millennial show, like it’s a brunch line you can watch other people stand in. It’s true that the HBO Max comedy — initially about finding a missing acquaintance — is absolutely drenched in the iconography of privileged millennials; their world is Instagram-friendly and the characters are all in a self-serving relationship with New York City. But it’s also a show with a uniquely online worldview: where everything, no matter how remote, is happening to you, personally, all the time. 

The new season of Search Party, which premiered last week, starts in a wildly different place than the series began. Unbeknownst to her friends, protagonist Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat) is being held hostage by an obsessed fan, imprisoned in his basement. Her friends, on the other hand, are frankly too busy to notice she’s gone missing. They’re dealing with a rush of newfound notoriety after literally getting away with murder, which happened in the show’s first season. (Later seasons have chronicled that fallout.) The very public trial in season 3 has granted Dory and her friends — her ex Drew (John Reynolds), and her best friends Elliott (John Early) and Portia (Meredith Hagner) — a degree of fame they’ve never had before, and this latest crop of episodes shows them getting used to it. 

For Portia and Elliott, this notoriety is all they’ve ever wanted, and they happily use it to sell themselves: the former for a role in the film adaptation of their ordeal, the latter as a conservative pundit. Drew, wracked with self-pity, leaves the city in an attempt to live in obscurity. Dory, on the other hand, languishes alone. It’s a pretty good joke to pin a protagonist’s survival on her hopelessly narcissistic friends. 

Despite this season leaning more into the show’s thriller aspects, Search Party is still resolutely a comedy that keeps its knives out for its subjects — the coddled, internet-ruined millennials who love to post. While most of the show’s plot is concerned with IRL actions like going places and talking to people, its allure is closely related to the thrill of posting and the intoxicating effect of being able to mythologize yourself in the eyes of a growing number of followers. 

But the posting life is a dangerous one. Search Party, among other things, is a slow-motion horror story about how the millennial snake eats its own tail. Fundamentally, it’s a show about what happens when we believe the lies we tell about ourselves and then what happens when those same lies expand outward and make contact with an impressionable public. 

In its scenes that take place in the basement of a deranged fan, Search Party becomes a series about what happens when other people take the lies you told about yourself as gospel truths — about the suffocating vacuum that’s left when you realize people stopped caring about what’s real a long time ago. At the heart of it all is Sief: poster-turned-influencer-turned-monster, acquitted by the public but damned by her own conscience. She’s also imprisoned by the sort of parasocial relationship she first formed with her missing classmate and then encouraged others to build with her. 

It’s worth noting that Dory doesn’t actually post much throughout Search Party. Even so, the reductive optics of social media are still how she and her friends interact with the world: everything is a place to be seen or not be seen; there are names to tag along with the constant negotiation between their occupations and their ambitions. 

None of this is terribly different from the way upwardly mobile young people have navigated New York City in popular culture — you could say similar things about Sex and the City — but Search Party focuses its satire on how quickly millennial life has proven that a lifestyle of consumption can quickly become consumed itself. 

We didn’t go to the movies much this year, but the movies still came to us. While the convenience of home viewing can’t match the experience of watching a spectacle in the dark with others, the other joy of movies — talking about them — is easier than ever, thanks to our connected world. And 2020’s pandemic sidelined a lot of big blockbusters, leaving smaller, more interesting movies to take center stage. As silver linings go, this one isn’t that bad. 

Here, in no particular order, are ten incredible movies from a year where movies still rallied to offer experiences that were provocative, compelling, and fun. 

The Assistant

One of the best films made in response to the crimes of Harvey Weinstein and the subsequent #MeToo movement, The Assistant follows an assistant (Julia Garner) who works at an unnamed movie production company in New York City for one long, miserable day. Looming over everything is the powerful, predatory boss — never shown or heard except over the phone — whom everyone accommodates and protects. The Assistant is essential, difficult filmmaking, and a quiet, unblinking condemnation of the ways abuse is allowed to persist. 

Bill & Ted Face the Music

The biggest surprise of the year was a third Bill & Ted movie, and it was a joyous one in a year short on things to feel good about. Ironically, it starts with disappointment: Bill and Ted (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) have somehow not yet written the song that will unite the world, the one promised by Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They’re out of time now, and if they don’t deliver, the world’s going to end.

So they do what they always do: travel through time and space to try to find an easy way out, only to learn that there is so much love and joy to be found if you just commit to doing things the hard way, with the people you love by your side. 

Lovers Rock

The second film in Steve McQueen’s Small Axe collection now streaming on Amazon is perhaps its best — and also its smallest. Mostly set at a single party, Lovers Rock opens a window into a whole universe via a single extended dance scene, a moment of cinematic bliss unlike any other this year. Consider this a recommendation for all five Small Axe films, but treat this one as special: it’s 70 minutes of falling in love, and that’s the best feeling in the world. 

The Invisible Man

An incredible reinvention of a classic Universal monster, The Invisible Man turns the classic ‘30s film of a man gone mad with power after becoming invisible into a portrait of toxic masculinity. The remake portrays a woman’s (Elisabeth Moss) struggles to escape her controlling, abusive, tech-billionaire boyfriend (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and survive his elaborate campaign to gaslight her with his high-tech invisibility suit. Like the best horror, it leverages the frightening and fantastic to push on something terribly real. 

Birds of Prey

The only big, traditional superhero film we got this year was also the most refreshing. Birds of Prey is an action movie about the breakup between Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) and the Joker (unseen) and its messy, violent fallout. A lean, mean thrill ride with genuinely great action choreography (a rarity for big superhero movies!), Birds of Prey doubles down on something most action movies are surprisingly bad at: if you’re gonna have a fight scene, why not make it look really damn cool? 

First Cow

While the title delivers on its premise — there is a cow, and it is featured prominently —  First Cow is also one of the finest explorations of a friendship you’ll see in a movie this year. A chef, Cookie (John Magaro), and King-Lu, a Chinese immigrant on the run (Orion Lee), form an unlikely bond over a business opportunity: stealing milk from the first and only cow in the Oregon Territory. What starts as a partnership of convenience becomes a gradual expression of care, one that makes First Cow an irresistibly tender and warm cinematic achievement. 

La Llorona

A horror film where the real terror is in contemplating what isn’t shown, La Llorona wrestles with a real-life nightmare by way of a thinly veiled fictional stand-in: the genocide of the Maya Ixil by a brutal Guatemalan dictator. (Named Enrique Monteverde in the film, and Efraín Ríos Montt in real life.) When the former ruler and general (Julio Diaz) is acquitted for his war crimes on a technicality, his mansion becomes a haunted house, as unexplainable forces cry for justice. Masterfully crafted and deeply layered, La Llorona is cinema as remembrance, a film made to bring to light what we cannot — and should not — forget. 

Boys State

If you’ve never heard of Boys State, let me explain. It’s an annual summer program sponsored by the American Legion where high schoolers spend a week building a government from scratch. This documentary, which follows a number of boys attending a recent one in Texas, will make you wonder why.

An ingenious subject presented by smart filmmakers, Boys State is an exercise that examines the id of our political process; teenagers learn how to negotiate the difference between what they’ve been told about government and what actually succeeds, while they inadvertently replicate our nation’s many shortcomings. Boys State won’t fill you with hope, but it also won’t fill you with dread. It’s a movie about just how much work we have to do. 

Dick Johnson Is Dead

When filmmaker Kirsten Johnson learned that her father, Dick, was suffering from dementia, the two agreed to make the long goodbye the diagnosis left them with into a film — specifically, a film where they imagine all the ways Dick Johnson might die and what might be waiting for him after.

The film is less morbid than that description may seem. Dick Johnson Is Dead is an incredibly moving work of affection, a documentary about celebrating a loved one’s life while they’re still here to appreciate it. It’s about how remembering someone is a vital part of loving them.

Da 5 Bloods

During the Vietnam War, five soldiers nicknamed themselves Bloods and hid a chest full of gold deep in the jungles in which they fought. Only four made it back home; they never forgot that loot or the friend they buried with it. Da 5 Bloods is a revenge movie disguised as a treasure hunt. As the four remaining bloods return in the present day to claim their gold, their desire for vengeance drives them.

They’re angry at the country that asked them to fight for freedom while denying it from them, at the Vietnamese people whose world they destroyed in the service of that war, and at the very idea of America — the way it warps and twists you into new shapes in the battered name of democracy. Da 5 Bloods is Spike Lee’s opus about the wars we never stop fighting, even after the guns are put away. 

Christopher Nolan’s success is the sort of paradox that would be at the center of a Christopher Nolan movie. His films — often characterized as puzzle boxes — are meticulous works that walk the line between indulgent labyrinths and satisfying spectacle. They’re brainier than any superhero movie would dare to be, but they still find comparable success. This blue chip status has made Nolan the patron saint of guys who say, “I like movies that make you think,” even if said thinking is just a question with an extremely clear answer — like “Was the Joker right?”

Nolan’s films occupy a unique space in pop culture. The director of The Dark Knight is one of the only filmmakers in Hollywood who is able to make an original nonfranchise film and have it be as big as The Dark Knight. This makes it fascinating when a movie like Tenet comes along because Tenet is a complete misfire that underlines how charmed the director’s career has been. 

Laid out on paper, though? Tenet sounds awesome. The film follows a man known only as The Protagonist (John David Washington), a CIA agent who finds himself on the hunt for an arms dealer with an unusual weapon: bullets that fire backward through time. It’s called “inversion,” and with the right hardware, it can be done to anything, including cars and people. 

Inversion is the hinge on which Tenet’s mind-bending twists pivot. Unfortunately, it’s quite poorly explained (“Don’t try to understand it,” one character says, helpfully), and while it leads to some great action — an early fight scene between an “inverted” character and a “normal” one absolutely rules — the obfuscated plot robs the movie’s showstoppers of badly needed momentum. These scenes are few and far between, anchored by characters who are more puzzle pieces than people. There’s very little to hold on to as you hope for something good to pop up in the movie’s 2.5-hour runtime. 

Some bright spots: Robert Pattinson, who plays the Protagonist’s handler, Neil, is tremendously fun to watch, even if he’s not in the film much. (He’ll make a great Batman.) Likewise, Elizabeth Debicki is terrific as a player in the movie’s espionage plot, but she’s mostly reduced to a damsel in distress. And the whole thing is set in remarkably drab locales; the film goes so many places but loves none of them.

That’s perhaps the biggest disappointment of Tenet: it wants to be an unusually clever spy film, but Nolan isn’t terribly invested in the fun of spy movies. You know: cool outfits, flashy gear, people pushed to their absolute limit and managing to wear it incredibly well. And because the mechanics of the film’s plot require a lot of explanation just to follow what people are doing in a scene, it’s very easy to miss why they’re doing it. This is a shame because the reason for all this time-warping and subterfuge is actually compelling as hell!

Just so we’re clear: I am pretty good at watching movies. I’ve put in my 10,000 hours, per Malcolm Gladwell’s absolutely airtight metrics, and that makes me an expert. Yet, I was still confused by the time the credits rolled. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the beautiful things about movies is how they can immerse us in stories that are bigger than us that defy easy comprehension. What unmoors me is the nature of my confusion.

Tenet is a film that explicitly encourages you to feel a thing and not think about it, but it  doesn’t offer any emotional anchors. It’s a disorientation that comes when you don’t feel you’re in the hands of someone with complete control over the narrative. You might be able to call some twists before they happen, but even if you do, it’s no more satisfying than a coin toss. Sure, you may have been right. But unless you had money on it, does it matter?

Tenet is an absolute mess of a movie that stumbles doing all of the things I like about Christopher Nolan films. Directors are allowed missteps, obviously — this one is even pretty humanizing — but the whole situation is complicated by the circumstances surrounding the film’s release. 

For months, Tenet was Hollywood’s last holdout, delayed three times in the hopes that it might somehow have a blockbuster release even as the COVID-19 pandemic showed absolutely no signs of abating and other studios pushed their releases into 2021. That means, in some ways, Tenet was seen as a foregone conclusion. It was an ambitious film from Christopher Nolan, the guy who turned a cerebral romp like Inception into legitimately popular culture; Tenet would offer the pleasures and profits his filmography is known for, with a fiercely loyal following buoying ticket sales even amid a pandemic. 

But now we know how the story ends. Tenet is now available to buy on-demand, and it earned very little at the box office when it was released over Labor Day weekend — even as it kept movie theaters open and hemorrhaging money. The movie business leveraged all of its goodwill and hype in the service of Keeping Movies Alive by worsening a public health emergency.

The quality of the movie does not change the immoral nature of a release strategy like this, but knowing Hollywood wanted me to risk getting terribly sick to see this goddamn mess? It’s insulting.