9 weeks in 2020. 12 essays. Covid-19. — Hi. My name is John. This collection is possible because of the support of Medium subscribers. Thanks to them, I’m able to write weekly essays about pop culture, politics, and feelings. If you’d like to learn more, click here. Prologue: December 19th, 2021 When I first heard this joke, it was about a Jewish…

A few thoughts on Dr. Jordan Peterson — It’s too easy to make fun of Jordan Peterson. Peterson first became famous because he refused to use gender-neutral pronouns on the University of Toronto campus where he was teaching. It’s the polite thing to do. However, Peterson argued it was tyranny. No one could force him to say things…

Return to Mockingbird Lane — Rob Zombie’s big-screen adaptation of The Munsters isn’t soulless. There’s an alternate reality where a streamer hires hacks to turn the beloved ’60s sitcom into drab #content. …

‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’ is — surprisingly — good old-fashioned mayhem — I’m going to spoil Bodies Bodies Bodies, but just a small amount. A soup·çon, if you will. I just wanted to warn you if you’re the type who cares about such things. There are three men in the movie, and only one of the three survives, and he isn’t onscreen…

Les Nouveaux Misérables — Athena is a Molotov cocktail, a movie thrown in anger that bursts into flames when it smashes against its target. And there are multiple targets in this intense French-language political drama: racism, inequality, police brutality. Romain Gavras directs Athena with passion and impressive technical skills, the Netflix film is essentially…

And yet, I can’t stop watching — I don’t know if the American Dream was ever real, but I know my parents believed in it. My dad and mom made more money than their parents, who were hardworking and wanted their children to succeed. …

The stars look very different today — I watched six people walk out of my IMAX screening of the hypnotic new David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream. I tsked. Director Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream is an unexpectedly experimental, impressionistic look at the legendary English rock star’s career, relying on never-before-seen concert footage and interviews to tell Bowie’s story. …

On the gritty glamour of ‘All The President’s Men’ — The political thriller All The President’s Men tells the true story of two Washington Post reporters who uncovered a scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States. In the movie, these newspapermen did it by writing good old-fashioned pieces of honest American journalism. It didn’t…

Go Hamm — In the new comic caper Confess, Fletch, Jon Hamm plays I.M. Fletch, a dopey, retired investigative journalist wrongly accused of murder. It‘s Hamm’s best role since Don Draper, the flawed 60s ad agency hotshot in the critically acclaimed TV drama Mad Men. Smoothly directed by Greg Mottola, Confess, Fletch is…