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The following podcast contains explicit language.

I'm Stephen McCaff, and this is the Slate Culture Gab Fest falling off the treadmill

vomiting edition. It's Wednesday, January 9th, 2013. On today's program, yes, it's that time of year again. It's the Slate Movie Club in which we talk about the URI movies with, of course, our own Dana Stevens, and then the biggest loser, the reality show in light of new obesity studies with Slate's own Dan Engber. And finally, the decline of the shopping mall, the unthinkable may have happened. Joining me today is Slate's movie critic, Dana Stevens. Hey, Dana. Hey, Steve. Joining us remotely is Slate's deputy editor Julia Turner. Hello, Julia. Hi, Steve. All right, well, there's only one sensible place to start with this next topic, and that's you, Dana Stevens. This is the grand tradition of the Slate movie club in which you and, you know, a small handful of other critics hash over in a series of posts the year in films. Tell me who are the critics this year, and then let's get right into what you made of this year in movies. Yes, this is a venerable slate tradition. It is actually my favorite work week of the year because it is a moment when I don't have to take in any new information. I don't have to go see any new movies. I can actually sit back and revisit and chew over and talk over with people that I'm longing to talk about movies with all year, but we don't get the chance because we're racing in and out of them and turning out copy about them. So this year I'm joined by Wesley Morris, who's the Pulitzer Prize winning former Boston Globe movie critic who just moved over to Grantland. Also by Keith Phipps, formerly of the AV Club, now freelancing here and there and happily writing with us. And Stephanie Zaharik, I mean, you can tell from all these stories, right, that criticism is in an odd state. Everybody's switching jobs, losing jobs, magazines closed down. Stephanie Zaharik wrote for Salon for many years. She then wrote for Movie Line and now she's freelancing all over the place. And there's some of my favorite critics and just people who I thought would engage in a really great conversation about the year's movies, which is now underway. Yeah, terrific. And I imagine that it's interesting, you know, it's kind of a, it's kind of a low-key maelstrom to be a movie critic on a week-to-week

basis for the, you know, 51 weeks of the year, right? And as you say, their movies are coming at you. You've got to see a whole bunch of them. It's a little bit of a blur. Right. It's like the tennis ball pitching machine, right? It's like standing in front of that, but the balls are movies. Right. And then you get to the end of the year and you and you have to

bulk out this list and then it's in trying to come up with those titles, those 10 titles or

number of titles, that you reckon whether it was a good year or a bad year. Suddenly the year

becomes a thing that you can step back from and see as a discrete object, right? And was this,

in your estimation, I'm picking up that it was an especially good year in movies. Maybe this is only from A.O. Scott, right? Who's insisting that it was, you know, a borderline magnificent one. Right. His list was 25 movies long, plus, you know, a bonus list at the end. And it really is just a personal taste thing. I mean, I think a lot of critics have said this is a year where I'm bursting at the seams. I don't know how to make this list.

I didn't feel that way about this year. Yeah, David, I think David Adelstein was the other one,

right? I had trouble coming up to 10 titles, all these ancillary ones he had to throw in there, but you don't agree.

Well, for me, there were a lot of big movies this year that didn't happen to be up my alley

that I may acknowledge the artistry or ambition of, but that just in the end didn't work for me.

And we've talked about them on the podcast, most of them. Django Unchained was one that seems to be crowning many top ten lists. And while there are many things to admire about it, that is nowhere near my top ten list. Beast of the Southern Wild is another one that I think is just one of those licorish movies you love it or you hate it. and none of us were able to get on board with Beasts of the Southern Wild here on the podcast. That's not on my list either. Then on the other hand, there were all these surprising movies. This wasn't on my list, but Magic Mike, I think, is a movie that we were all surprised by how much we loved it and how much it actually had to say and how much it stuck with us. Wouldn't you guys agree? Mm-hmm. Yeah wait, wait, wait, one second, Julie. Before we get to specific titles, movies are a creature of public mood, right? I mean, and one of the hard kind of paradoxes of being in the movie business, or at least challenges of being in the movie business is the pipeline is not that short, right? So you stuff it full of product and it comes out the other end,

you know, between one and three years later, and you sort of see what sticks. But retrospectively,

you can see what sticks. You can see what the public mood was really ready for in that particular

moment. I would say, and maybe I'm wrong, but we're in a funnally ambivalent moment for public mood, right? We're not

in a crash, we're not in a boom. We're sort of in this kind of waiting period in a way

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