good things 12.18.25
dyker lights, jessie buckley, the scene that almost wasn't
december is one giant run-on sentence of eating and drinking and socializing and being cold and trying to keep your head from falling off. mine is just barely hanging on by a string. but for the grace of god go i into another two weeks of this. here are some good things.
1. christmas lights in dyker heights
dyker heights is a brooklyn neighborhood full little brownstones and garish mansions with no backyards. it seems like the kind of place the rizzler and his family would live. every year, the streets flood with people who travel from all over the world to witness the spectacle of christmas lights and decorations that the people of dyker heights put on their mansions. this is such an enjoyable activity for insufferable critics like myself, and i hope the people of dyker heights had their windows closed as we walked by and eviscerated their homes. the official and uncontested best lights are the soft, multi-colored, old school bulbs. and the worst are the people who use projectors that splash fake scenes onto their home fronts. don’t even bother at that point!!!!
2. hamnet
i’m not really recommending this movie, more so declaring that i fulfilled my official duty in seeing it. there was a lot for me to love here: jessie buckley is magic, joe alwyn looked ugly, and we got to see paul mescal’s buttcrack. i thought it was a beautiful depiction of the resurrective power of art, the deeply human impulse to want our moms, the triumph of motherhood, and the loneliness of grief. but the execution was imperfect and if i’d been anywhere other than a theater, i probably would have turned it off about 30 mins in. it’s gratuitously sad, and i love sad shit. anyway, you could see this but maybe don’t.
3. “Jessie Buckley Became a Mother for ‘Hamnet.’ Then She Became One for Real.” (modern love)
i thought hamnet was going to be primarily about william shakespeare because, duh, but it’s really about his wife agnes, played by jessie buckley. i loved this modern love episode in which she reflects on the role and having a baby herself. she’s so smart and poetic and i hope she wins the oscar so we can all hear her speech.
4. rob reiner changing the ending of when harry met sally after meeting his wife
i was reading rob reiner’s obituary in the times and learned that in the original script, harry and sally were supposed to walk away from each other at the end rather than come back together. but then rob met his wife michelle during filming and decided that couldn’t be the ending. the best scene in cinematic history was almost never born! and amazing to learn that billy crystal improvised the iconic new year’s eve speech. as if i couldn’t love that movie any more. what happened to the reiners is too much to stomach. what a loss.
5. googling synonyms
all i do all day long is google “____ synonym” and i don’t know where i’d be without this capability.
6. while you were sleeping
underrated and under-appreciated christmas film. sandra bullock as “lucy” from chicago acting crazy and falling in love? what could be better! thank you to tastemaker marymargaret maloney for reminding me of it. one of the things i find most shocking about revisiting rom coms from the 90s is how everyone involved in the plot of the movie seems to be in their 40s. idk what this means or why i’m surprised by it but it feels worth commenting on.
nobody sent me any of their best things of the year besides kk. what gives??? thank god for her though. here are kk williams’s best things of 2025:
Best experience: Cowboy Carter
Best book: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Best things I’ve listened to: Amy Poehler and Olivia Dean
this is the last post of 2025! good things will be back in january.
in a world of joe alwyns, we need more bill pullmans