Boy Movies #54

The second annual Boy Movies "gift guide"

Welcome back to Boy Movies, or to Boy Movies for the first time.

Merch update

After the success of last week’s poll gauging interest for potential Boy Movies merch (obsessed with whoever voted no five minutes after the issue went live; if you’re reading this lmk if you want to get married or something, I love being negged) aka BY POPULAR DEMAND, I am thrilled to announce that Boy Movies stickers are now available for purchase. They come in a sheet of six, all designed by the great Sarah Turbin, who has once again outdone herself. I think they’re stunningly gorgeous, and perfect for sticking on telephone poles and bar bathroom doors and skateboards and stuff like that. We only printed 40, and who knows if we’ll be making more, so get ‘em while you can. You can buy them here, but only if you promise not to rat us out to Mattel or Neon. Happy holidays!!!

me when you buy Boy Movies stickers

And now, time for the show

Welcome to the 2023 Boy Movies “gift guide.” (Last year’s gift guide is still great imho.) I’m obsessed with reading gift guides despite finding them generally unhelpful. The Strategist is one of the biggest proponents of the fascinatingly preposterous gift guide — they’re always like, “Buy Joe Biden’s book for your uncle who loves gardening.” Okay??? I’m not here to do that. I’m not even here to tell you what to buy, because I barely know what to buy my loved ones. But I do love recommending movies, and everyone knows the holidays are for not showering, sitting your ass down on your mom’s couch, and watching two to three movies in an afternoon. There’s no rhyme or reason to the guide this year, just a mishmash of boy movies that I think are neat, though I did sort them by genre for your convenience. ENJOY!

ACTION AND/OR THRILLER

Hypnotic

This Robert Rodriguez-directed, Ben Affleck-starring “mystery” “thriller” (???) is easily the most batshit insane movie I watched all year. I don’t even want to say more lest I risk spoiling it… I guess if I had to describe it in a few words I would say “Inception, but somehow dumber.” To be watched during that useless week between Christmas and New Year’s, when time is fake and your brain is oozing out of your ears.

Nobody

Bob Odenkirk beating the shit out of dudes and getting the shit beaten out of him in return. Better Call Saul is a show for women, but this is our friend Bob at peak boy. Watch with a man in your life who has trouble opening up emotionally. I hear this is a problem many of your dads have.

Fast Five

If you’re going to check out any of the Fast and Furious movies, it might as well be the best one. Brother, Dom and Brian drag a safe through the streets of Rio — that’s cinema. The good news is that after this you can just jump right to this year’s Fast X, which is, for some reason, basically a direct sequel to Fast Five. 

Déjà Vu

Denzel Washington and Tony Scott were one of the most important actor-director duos of all time — let’s start there. Déjà Vu has everything: time travel, romance, Val Kilmer. Kind of a dad movie, in that dads love Denzel, but just weird enough to be a boy movie that you can watch with anyone.

COMEDY

Just Friends

If you want a boy Christmas movie, your options are basically Just Friends or Die Hard. Die Hard is about violence and terrorism, and Just Friends is kind of also about this: the violence of when a relatively normal fat kid grows up and gets hot. I guess this movie is “offensive,” but what mid-2000s bro comedy isn’t?

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

My recent brush with Beatlemania has reminded me of how good Walk Hard is. It’s easily the best of This Kind of movie, up there with Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. It’s very boy to parody, but Walk Hard was prescient: Yeah, it was made in Walk the Line’s image, but every music biopic since has continued to follow the stupid formula that Walk Hard made fun of. The Beatles scene is iconic, but don’t sleep on the original songs, which are better than they have any right to be.

Airheads

“The film was both a critical and commercial disappointment,” reads the Airheads Wikipedia page. Rude. Rude! It’s Brendan Fraser, it’s Steve Buscemi, it’s Adam Sandler looking hot. I don’t know what else to say. He wears crop tops. Watch with your besties and bask in the extremely ‘90s comedy.

After Hours

If you’re still feeling Scorsese fever, I recommend After Hours over the ones you and everyone you know has already seen a million times, like The Departed or Goodfellas. A deep cut by Scorsese standards, it follows one night in the life of a guy who gets punished for being horny. And Scorsese was right to punish him.

DRAMA

The Holdovers

I haven’t gotten to write about The Holdovers here yet, which Daniela and I saw a screening of before it came out (brag). I remember watching trailers for this movie and thinking “is this just straight Dead Poets Society?” and it kind of is, but that’s not a bad thing. It has a sweet, gentle rhythm, and a sense of sleepy sadness that makes it perfect for this time of year, despite director Alexander Payne’s prickly response to it being deemed “cozy.” He’s just mad because “cozy” is a word most often associated with girl movies. This, though, has all the elements of a boy movie: a troubled teen bonding with his equally troubled teacher, academia, Paul Giamatti. This would be a good movie to watch with your grandma, if you have the kind of grandma who enjoys watching movies. I don’t, but maybe you do!

Humboldt County

Have you ever wanted to see Jeremy Strong and Chris Messina acting out the events of Brokeback Mountain on a weed farm? If so, this indie charmer from 2008 enough is the only movie in existence that will scratch that particular itch. Here’s a fancam if you need more convincing.

Jackie Brown

Even Tarantino’s girl movies are boy movies. This is his opus, I think? Everyone’s drop dead gorgeous here, especially Pam Grier and Robert De Niro. This isn’t a Christmas movie at all, but I watched it for the first time during holiday break last year, which to me makes them inextricable.

The Long Goodbye

Who’s ever been hotter on screen than ‘70s-era Elliott Gould? This is a boy movie because it’s about a cig-smoking detective hanging out with a mysterious and sexy lady. It’s a girl movie because the cig-smoking detective’s main problem in life is that his picky cat won’t eat a new brand of cat food.