2025 Pop Culture Favorites

It’s been a great year for TV, movies, and music. And we are highlighting some of the best, including KPop Demon Hunters, Sinners, and Severance. We’ll also talk about some things you might have missed. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:15Linda Holmes?

  Hi there, it's Linda Holmes. Before we start the show, we're marking Giving Tuesday this week. NPR celebrates this global day of generosity every year, but we've never had a year quite like this one before. You've probably heard by now that federal funding for public media was eliminated as of October 1st. That means NPR is now operating without federal support for the first time in our history, more than 50 years. It's a big change and a big challenge, but it's one that we can overcome together. So we hope you'll take a moment to think about what you love about Pop Culture Happy Hour. Maybe we've helped you find a new show you love, or made you think differently about the movie you just saw, or kept you in good company while you're on a walk or getting ready for work.

• 0:59Linda Holmes?

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• 1:42Linda Holmes?

  It's a simple, recurring donation that gets you perks to NPR's podcasts and bonus episodes of Pop Culture Happy Hour, where you can get a peek behind the scenes of our show. Join us at plus.npr.org. Thanks again for your support, and let's get on with the show.

• 2:01Linda Holmes?

  Every December, we like to set aside some time to talk about some of our favorite cultural moments of the year. And this year's highlights include K-pop, Demon Hunters, Sinners, and Severance.

• 2:12Stephen Thompson?

  They might be funny, moving, unforgettable. The point is that we experienced them, and we're still thinking about them. I'm Stephen Thompson.

• 2:21Linda Holmes?

  And I'm Linda Holmes. And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about our favorite things from 2025.

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• 3:49Linda Holmes?

  Joining us are our co-hosts Glen Weldon. Hello, Glenn. Hey, friend. And Aisha Harris. Hello, Ayesha. Hello, Lynda. All right, we've got the whole group. So I think everybody here knows what favorite things are, so let's jump right in. Stephen, I'm going to start with you. You did not go obscure with your first pick.

• 4:10Stephen Thompson?

  I did not go obscure with my first pick. One of my favorite pop culture phenomena, like actual phenomena of 2025, was the movie K-pop Demon Hunters, which blew up on Netflix over the summer, dominated the pop charts well into the fall. And for those who haven't seen it, it's about a K-pop girl group called Huntrix, whose members are also demon hunters, as you might have guessed from the title. Their world gets more complicated when a demonic K-pop boy band called the Saja Boys show up with their own insidious earworms. The songs in this movie are outstanding across the board. There is not a dud in the bunch, and most of them are amazing.

• 4:51Stephen Thompson?

  But the movie also keeps teasing a big performance at the end that needs to somehow transcend every song that's come before it. It's the kind of promise movies sometimes make and then do not deliver on. And here it is a whole subplot in the movie. Huntrix is trying to write a diss track that is going to defeat the Saja Boys once and for all. And the negativity of that song runs counter to what the group stands for. There's friction along the way, the group breaks apart, and then everything culminates in one last performance. And I cannot tell you, the first time I watched this movie, I've seen it four times, how much I assumed that the climactic performance would be of Golden,

• 5:35Stephen Thompson?

  the anthem that has become one of this year's biggest hits, because the song is triumphant, it's positive, it's their signature song. But then Huntrix plays a different song, a new song called "What It Sounds Like."

• 5:48Speaker 04

  Why did I cover up the colors stuck inside my head? I should've let the jagged edges meet the light instead. Show me what's underneath, I'll find your harmony. The song we couldn't write, this is what it sounds like.

• 6:08Stephen Thompson?

  They could have just gone back and rehashed something we'd already heard. Instead, they unlock something new and generate a fresh emotional payoff in the process. This song, to me, it's like Shaun White at the Olympics, learning he's already won gold and deciding to put on the best show of his life anyway. And K-pop Demon Hunters was already terrific. Seeing it stick the perfect landing gave me one of my favorite pop culture moments of 2025. That is what it sounds like from K-pop Demon Hunters. It's on Netflix.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I hear what you're saying, Stephen, but do not sleep on the line. Let the jagged edges meet the light instead. That's, that's great. I mean, I had the experience a lot of people had with this. I told my husband, hey, do you want to check out this K-pop Demon Hunters thing that a lot of people are talking about? And the look on his face at the title alone. He sat down on that couch, his arms were literally folded. He had, what my mom used to say, he had such a puss on him. And he was like, 10 minutes, we're giving this 10 minutes.

• 7:08Stephen Thompson?

  Oh, that's all you need. You need eight.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  And we hit 10 minutes and he's not telling me to turn it off. And then we hit Soda Pop, the song Soda Pop, and I look over and he's doing the shoulders. It is literally viral in the sense that it takes over its host. It is, as you say, a phenomenon.

• 7:21Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, I'm glad you picked this song because if I'm going to be honest, I thought the Sajid Boys' songs, for the most part, were better than Hunter's.

• 7:29Stephen Thompson?

  You're allowed to feel that way.

• 7:31Aisha Harris?

  Golden is fine. It was number one for a long time on the Billboard charts. But like, anyone could have done that. And what it sounds like is, to me, the song that like, that's the Hunter's song that I would be a huge fan of if this was a real, actual band, which is technically not. I support this pick. Love it, love it, love it.

• 7:49Linda Holmes?

  All right. Thank you very much, Stephen Thompson. That is K-pop Demon Hunters, and the song is What It Sounds Like. Thank you very much, buddy. Aisha, we are going to you. What is your offering?

• 8:04Linda Holmes?

  From, I'm just gonna say right now, one of my very favorite movies of the year.

• 8:07Aisha Harris?

  Hmm, yes. So, Steven, you said you saw K-pop Demon Hunters four times. I'm not quite up there with you, but I did see Sinners three times in the theaters within an eight to nine day period. And I saw it in multiple formats. And, look, there's so many things I could say about this movie. I loved it. So many things have already been said. Just as much as this is a triumph of cinema, it's a triumph of marketing. And the thing I loved most, besides the movie itself, is the fact that Ryan Coogler did an entire pitch for the Sinners formats to get people into theaters. Now, I saw this pitch work in real time. Now, you may recall, he did a tenish-minute video where he is describing

• 8:50Aisha Harris?

  all the different aspect ratios and formats that he has shot in on previous films and then that he shot in for here for Sinners. He describes super eight, 60 millimeter. It's like a college class. He's the professor. Is like very distinctive East Bay Oakland drawl accent while nerding the heck out about all the different ways that he loves film and the way he shoots things. He talks about how he shot this on ultra-panavision 70 millimeter in IMAX. He's talking about how to consider buying the tickets, like what you should look for.

• 9:22Speaker 07

  So when you guys go to buy your tickets, depending on where you live, it's gonna be a lot of options available to you, alright? There's one aspect ratio, that ultra-panavision 276 ratio. That's gonna be the most widely available format to see the film the whole time in that ratio without the aspect ratio is changing at all. If you live close to an IMAX theater, you choose to buy an IMAX ticket.

• 9:41Aisha Harris?

  So I talked to my dad. And my dad and his wife love to go to the movies all the time. And he's always asking me for suggestions. And I was like, you gotta see Sinners. He's like, oh yeah, we're gonna go see it. I asked him like, oh, so the local theater, like what are they showing? He's like, I think that's just like the regular. I was like, no, you have to see it in IMAX. He's like, I don't know. The closest theater, it looks like it's like an hour away. I'm like, Yeah, but you know, you're close to retirement. You've got time, you can do it. And then I sent him this video and he watched it and he's like, we bought our tickets for this afternoon, we're going. He calls me after the movie, him and his wife call me from the parking lot and they're like, oh my goodness, Ayesha, we loved it, we're so happy. Thank you for telling us to go see it in IMAX. It worked, man. Ryan Coogler's pitch worked on my dad.

• 10:26Aisha Harris?

  I'm sure it worked on a lot of people. Again, it's just this amazing moment of the mainstream culture coming into contact with just the average moviegoer who probably doesn't know anything about these types of things. And he's able to explain it clearly, concisely. For the little cinema nerd in me, it was such a warming moment and I love the fact that it worked and it got people to go to the theaters. And in a time when people are not going to theaters, this is an argument for it. Yeah, Ryan Coogler's pitch for all those Sinners formats, that is one of my favorite things of this year that I think will go down in marketing history, in cinema history. It is amazing.

• 11:03Stephen Thompson?

  Part of what I have loved about the whole Sinners phenomenon is that it's just a reminder that audiences are just dying for new stories told in new ways. And like, it's interesting, kind of the weird parallels between Sinners and K-pop Demon Hunters, including just their deployment of music and the way they're like sucking people into music they might not have otherwise heard.

• 11:28Aisha Harris?

  Sucking, that's a very good analogy or use of metaphor there, considering vampires, vampires.

• 11:34Stephen Thompson?

  See what I did? I didn't even know I was doing it.

• 11:38Stephen Thompson?

  But like, both of those films, now, you know, obviously K-pop Demon Hunters is gonna have a zillion sequels, we're never gonna hear the end of it, but both of those were new franchises. They weren't just sequels, they weren't existing IP. And like, they were two of the biggest, most authentic phenomena of the year and I just love that and they're both so good.

• 11:56Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 11:58Linda Holmes?

  All right, very, very good. Thank you, Ayesha, for naming Ryan Coogler's format pitch for Sinners. Glenn, you are up with, I think, what is in some ways a very Glenn pick. What did you go with first?

• 12:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, my first pick is very specific. That's my favorite thing about this show that we do, which it's not just the thing, it's a very specific aspect of that thing. And in my case, it is the precise and very intentional way that in the film Fantastic Four: First Steps, the hemline of the purple squirt.

• 12:29Speaker 05

  Worn by the villain, a giant planet devouring cosmic being called Galactus, hits him at exactly the right spot on the leg, just above the knee. Now, how do I know that's the right spot? Because that's where it hits him in the comics. And that's representative of something bigger, of course, because it's not just about the hemline of that skirt. It's not just about the way his helmet is a big and very stupid looking tuning fork. It's not just the way he snarls insults at puny humans as he does in this clip here. Galactus is voiced by Ralph Ineson. Clever little bugs. Clever little bugs. That's perfect. The only thing I'm missing, the only thing I wish this movie could have found a way to work in is a "ba." We could have gotten a "ba, clever little bugs."

• 13:11Stephen Thompson?

  It's giving a little bit of John Travolta in Battlefield Earth.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  It's that, it's channeling that.

• 13:15Stephen Thompson?

  Red brain?

• 13:17Speaker 05

  Exactly. Because what we're talking about here is a willingness to embrace the comics, the source material and all their goofiness. It's in The Zeitgeist. You saw it in James Gunn's Superman this year, too. He says things like, "Golly, he is wearing red trunks that, yes, sure, it's been pointed out, I get it, they look like granny panties." Because they have to look like granny panties because they were originally meant to emulate a Circus Strongman outfit. They look like that for a very good reason. There is something elemental and iconic and clean about these characters. And I feel like filmmakers have spent the last couple of decades trying to apologize for that and complicate it and make it relevant and make it, God forbid, cool, or try to anyway. And these two movies this summer both said, "What if we stopped apologizing for the goofiness,

• 14:01Speaker 05

  for the corniness, for the cheesiness? What if we stopped chasing cool and just captured the stuff that caused these characters originally to imprint themselves on the public consciousness and we didn't get in the way?" Even though, Stephen, like, I get it, like, these are both very hoary old IPs.

• 14:17Stephen Thompson?

  But if they're fun, they're fun.

• 14:18Speaker 05

  If they're fun, they're fun. And it's nowhere near the first time or the last time we're gonna see films about these characters, but these films did what should have been impossible just by taking the material at its face. They made the material feel fresh.

• 14:29Linda Holmes?

  I love this.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 14:31Linda Holmes?

  I love a wardrobe choice. I love good philosophizing about superhero movies. I love this pick and I love any opportunity to hear Glenn do a voice. Let's face it.

• 14:42Linda Holmes?

  Any opportunity. So that is Galactus from Fantastic Four: First Steps, and I would venture to say also Superman.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 14:49Linda Holmes?

  Ayesha, we are going right back over to you for another pick. I don't want to put you on the spot, but here you are with another, I think, indelible moment of great style. Talk to me about this.

• 15:01Aisha Harris?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes. So Severance, season two, what happened? I don't really know. Let's be real. I watched it.

• 15:11Aisha Harris?

  I'm not entirely sure what exactly happened. The show is far more opaque and deliberately paced than it is like clarifying, often to a fault. Of course, this is the Apple TV series where you have people who decided to sever themselves and they have innies and outies. The innies work at Lumen, this sort of very sterile environment. We don't exactly know what they're doing. Then their outies live normal lives and things happen. And, you know, Adam Scott's there. It's great.

• 15:39Linda Holmes?

  Ayesha has just explained everything I understand about Severance also.

• 15:42Stephen Thompson?

  I was gonna say, this is a perfect distillation of what I know about this show.

• 15:46Aisha Harris?

  OK, good. What I did love, and the only character I fully understood what was happening in every moment, was Mr. Milchick, played by Tremell Tillman. The moment I'm specifically pointing out here is the moment of choreography and merriment in the season two finale.

• 16:03Speaker 08

  And now, ladies and gentlemen of MDR, may I introduce choreography and merriment?

• 16:14Aisha Harris?

  Of course, this is the moment where Mark, played by Adam Scott, has just completed the, you know, vague Cold Harbor task that has been the basis of much of the show's drama. And so Mr. Milchick is going to celebrate with a marching band routine.

• 16:35Aisha Harris?

  This marching band routine, the hands down best moment of the season, dare I say, maybe the entire series so far, where he's celebrating this, there's like special lights, it kind of looks like a hype Williams music video from the 90s. There's a giant marching band and he's prancing around, looking like Carlton Banks. If Carlton Banks had gone to an HBCU and joined the marching band, he has a giant conductor's baton, he's working, he's got his suit on, he looks like a nerd, but he is getting down. And I just love this. It shows, yes, he may have shown some cracks in his complicity, but he is still going all in at the end of the day. He's not going to fully change. And then, of course, this leads into a big moment with the other characters, and it doesn't all end very well.

• 17:19Aisha Harris?

  But that marching band, pure gold, pure gold. Trelawney Tillman, he won an Emmy. So-

• 17:25Speaker 05

  Sure he did.

• 17:26Aisha Harris?

  All is well with the world.

• 17:27Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. That moment speaks so directly to the Milchick character. As inscrutable as he is, he remains that. I mean, yes, it's unlocking something about him, but he's a company man doing a company thing. But there's such an intensity and an anger that comes through, and it's kind of defiant, but we don't know if he's defying the company or if he's defying the Adam Scott character, saying, "You didn't win. You think you won, you didn't win." I don't know. It's such a great moment.

• 17:49Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I also really love the fact that this capitalizes on Tillman's charisma in a way that I think sometimes happens as people get into a show. They start to find more and more things in the actors that they can capitalize on. And to me, when I saw this go by, it was sort of a great distillation of the fact that as you employ an actor like that, you begin to understand how his physicality and his presence lends itself to kind of interactions with music. He's a very physically graceful guy. They've given him more and more to do, which I have really appreciated. I also loved seeing him show up in the Mission Impossible movie this summer.

• 18:34Aisha Harris?

  It was the best part, the best part.

• 18:36Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, which I thought was, in some ways, I find those movies somewhat inert at this point, usually until the last sequences. But I think his part in the middle really kind of wakes up that movie. So I love this year for him. I love this for him. I love this pick for us. I love everything about this. Great, amazing job.

• 18:54Aisha Harris?

  Thank you. So that was the season two finale of Choreography and Merriment with Mr. Milchick.

• 19:01Linda Holmes?

  All right. Thank you, Aisha Harris. All right. So the first of my picks that we're going to talk about comes from one of my favorite shows of the year, The Lowdown on FX. This was a show created by Sterling Harjo, who also created Reservation Dogs. And it stars Ethan Hawke as Lee Raybon, who is, he calls himself a truth-storian. He lives in Tulsa. And he is kind of a muckraking local journalist who works out of the back of a bookstore. And he likes to kind of dig around in local politics and local rich people and make trouble. And he's kind of constantly getting into it with different powerful and less powerful figures around town.

• 19:44Linda Holmes?

  And one of the things I love about this show is that the Ethan Hawke performance is so specific and so funny. It is incredibly affecting, but it's also so funny. And there's a moment in the second episode when he, Lee, has been in a fight and he has a big black eye. He is trying to cover up the fact that this fight has happened. He's trying to be able to go back out and function the same way, even though he, he looks poorly. And he walks into a convenience store and he says to the woman working behind the counter this.

• 20:21Speaker 09

  A thousand dollars for those shades this had in a brief makeup tutorial.

• 20:31Aisha Harris?

  Such a great moment.

• 20:32Linda Holmes?

  I think the way that he says, "in a brief makeup tutorial," is such comedic specificity, and it's something that I associate with my very favorite comedy writers of film and television, is that the voice of that character becomes unmistakable as his own. And I watch this show, and I expect to find out that this character has been developed in like 20 novels, right? And it is a character who is, I think, draws a lot of inspiration from, and there are direct references in the show to crime fiction. I think the year that Ethan Hawke had with this role and also his role in Blue Moon,

• 21:16Linda Holmes?

  which is the story of the lyricist Lorenz Hart, and these performances are about as different as performances can get from one guy who has one face and body, right? He is a celebrated actor. He has had a ton of success. He has made a ton of movies I love. And I think he is better right now and being used better and finding better work than ever in his career when taken together. This year was an amazing year for him. And this is really a pick that is about my love of this performance and my love of the humor

• 21:55Linda Holmes?

  in this show. So Lee Raybon getting his disguise together in the Lowdown on FX, which you can still find on Hulu and Disney+.

• 22:04Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, that moment also just is a really good distillation of how chaotic his character is in terms of like, a thousand dollars just for that? You don't have to, you don't have to pay that much. But like, throughout the entire show, he's just like throwing money around. Like, sometimes I'm like, yeah, that seems like a fair offer to give someone. And then other times like this, it's like, you could have said 500, and that would have been more than good.

• 22:27Linda Holmes?

  Well, he'll come into money, and then all of a sudden, he wants to spend a lot of money, and then he doesn't have any money. And it's, yeah, he is very chaotic. That is true. All right. So that is my pick. Stephen, we are going over to you for your next pick. This also, I will say, is from a show that is available on Hulu and Disney Plus. Tell me about it.

• 22:46Stephen Thompson?

  Well, I never got to talk about the TV show Dying for Sex when it came out in April. I wasn't on the panel when the show discussed it, but I did catch up with it a while later. And who buddy this show did me in? It is based on a podcast. It's about a woman named Molly who learns that she's dying of cancer and decides to blow up her life in pursuit of the sexual pleasure she never got to experience. And this show juggles a couple of extremely different tones because she's a newbie exploring kink cultures, mostly with strangers. That gives you a lot of opportunities for slapstick comedy.

• 23:28Stephen Thompson?

  And because she's dying and because so much of the story is about her best friend, who kind of takes on the role of her caretaker, you have huge swells of emotion that are woven into that. And the script is extremely careful in achieving the right balance in portraying the kink world without reducing people to cartoons. But where Dying for Sex really gets it right is in its cast. It stars Michelle Williams, who's basically always great. Her best friend is played by Jenny Slate, who finally gets a chance to showcase a fuller range of her acting chops. And then there is Molly's central love interest, who is played by the great and good Rob Delaney.

• 24:10Stephen Thompson?

  And their relationship, safe to say, is unlike most relationships that you would see in romantic comedies. It's kinky, it's funny, it's surprising and sweet, and it's complicated by the fact that she is dying. And their last scenes together are sex scenes that are also playful and conversational and sad and silly all at the same time. Now, to set up this clip, I will need to describe for you the tableau in a way that's safe for a family podcast. She's in bed under a blanket. Rob Delaney's character is also under said blanket. And his mostly naked underwear clad body in full Rob Delaney resplendence is dangling off the foot of the bed.

• 24:55Stephen Thompson?

  And in this exact moment, an unflappable attendant named Ernie walks into the room to take her vitals.

• 25:04Speaker 10

  Finger, bracelet. Your blood pressure is elevated and your leg looks [__] up.

• 25:13Stephen Thompson?

  You're killing me, Ernie.

• 25:15Speaker 10

  Uh huh.

• 25:17Stephen Thompson?

  Door closes, one beat later, from under the covers, muffled by the covers, Rob Delaney asks, you think he noticed? It's an episode with huge emotional weight attached because it's their last scenes together, but it's also so slapstick and silly and sweet at the same time. I loved this show. I was so pleased when so many of these actors, including Jenny Slate, including Rob Delaney, got Emmy nominations. They were so richly deserved. It's a fantastic show that's dying for sex on Hulu.

• 25:52Aisha Harris?

  I'm so glad you pointed this out because I loved this show. I feel like it kind of flew under the radar this year. And I can understand why because it is a very difficult subject matter. And I hope more people seek it out. It does have such a good, I think, payoff in the end, an emotional payoff. And Jenny Slate, oh my goodness, so, so good in that. So good. Yeah.

• 26:13Stephen Thompson?

  Everyone is so good in it.

• 26:14Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  All right, it's on my list. It's kind of shot its way to the top after your pitch, Stephen. Good job.

• 26:19Stephen Thompson?

  Awesome. I think you'll love it.

• 26:20Linda Holmes?

  I have not watched it because I know it's going to destroy me. So I am waiting until a time, sometime in the future, when I feel a bit stronger than I have felt at any time in 2025. But I love all these actors and I support you completely. All right, we are going to go over to Glenn. Glenn, give me your next pick.

• 26:38Speaker 05

  My second pick is Alexander Skarsgård's eyebrows in the show Murderbot. Skarsgård plays Sec Unit. That's an android providing security for a group of kind of hilariously hippie dippy scientists on a dangerous planet. What they don't know is that the android, it calls itself Murderbot, has hacked the module that makes it obey their commands. And it's achieved autonomy, right? But it can't let them know that. So it's hiding it. And all it wants to do is to be left alone, to watch its favorite TV shows. Relatable. But the scientists keep trying to bring it into the group, to talk to it about their feelings. And whenever that happens, the actor, right? He can't react.

• 27:22Speaker 05

  He can't have Sec Unit tip its hand. So the actor conveys dread and fear and anxiety with just these little facial micro-movements, like a panic in the eyes, a furrowed brow. It's perfect. And in this clip, you can, you can almost hear those eyebrows furrowing. A Sec Unit gets cornered by the team leader of the scientists, played by Noma Domeswini.

• 27:45Speaker 11

  My family didn't want me to go on this trip. At least half. Two of my spouses sat me down and told me that they thought that I was doing it to get some time away from my responsibilities.

• 27:56Speaker 05

  I need to check the munitions. They say representation matters, right? A Sec Unit represents all of us who have found ourselves drawn into deeply personal, one-sided conversations and just have desperately wanted to go check the munitions.

• 28:15Linda Holmes?

  I love it. We went from hemlines to eyebrows. What's next? A strong jaw for your next pick, Glenn? I don't know. This is great.

• 28:23Speaker 05

  Specificity, specificity in all things.

• 28:25Stephen Thompson?

  I appreciate, Glenn, your commitment to specificity.

• 28:28Linda Holmes?

  Yes. Yeah. And I will say, like, I have not seen Murderbot, but I am a big fan of Alexander Skarsgård, who I think, you know, has done so many interesting things in the last couple of years and is such an interestingly, I think, flexible actor in a number of different ways, I think. So I'm not surprised at all that this is your pick. And I appreciate it so much. That is Alexander Skarsgård and his eyebrows in Murderbot on Apple TV. All right. So my second pick, I think. The world got to know Uzo Aduba, much of the world, when she played Suzanne, also known as Crazy Eyes, on Orange is the New Black.

• 29:09Linda Holmes?

  Since then, she has appeared in an increasing variety of things, which is great. And in 2025, she was the lead of a show called The Residents on Netflix, which is a whodunit. It has some Knives Out-y feelings. It has some Agatha Christie feelings. It is a comic whodunit. She stars as Cordelia Cupp, who is an avid birder and also incredibly talented detective, who shows up in this fantastic, earth-toned browns and tans outfit with these kind of flowing pants and tried to solve the murder of one of the White House staff.

• 29:51Linda Holmes?

  And she immediately begins interrogating everybody. This all happens on the night of a big state dinner for Australians. So there are a bunch of Australian people and Kylie Minogue performing at this state dinner. But when she begins to interrogate people, she has exactly what you want from just an incredibly dry-humored detective interrogating people who have no idea how smart she is and how much they should not be trying to fool her. And at one point, she is interrogating the chef, who is played by Bronson Pinchot. And this is the exchange that they have at one point.

• 30:34Speaker 12

  Do you know who I am? No. You know, I have a reputation for solving unsolvable crimes. No. Now that you know I have a reputation for solving unsolvable crimes, does it make you feel any differently about any of the questions I've asked you?

• 30:49Linda Holmes?

  It is those kind of, she comes from a place of supreme confidence. And those scenes, whether she is interrogating somebody who is really bad or one of the many kind of not bad, but potentially somehow compromised people who work in the White House. The show, I think, was funny. It was really well-constructed. I was really disappointed that they didn't renew it for another season because I think you could have done multiple seasons of exploring different things. Randall Park is in this and they're as a part of law enforcement. They're wonderful together. I loved this show. It was exactly what I want to fill the gap between Knives Out movies. Yeah. This is the kind of thing that is right in my wheelhouse. I loved it. And I was so

• 31:34Linda Holmes?

  happy for her that she had such a terrific leading role that I think showcased work from her that is so different from some of the work that she first became really well-known for doing. So that is Uzo Aduba as Cordelia Cup in The Residence, which is on Netflix.

• 31:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I found that I was mourning this show twice without realizing. You mourn the show that gets canceled and you think, well, okay, so The Residence, the setup of a murder in the White House, that's a good premise for a show. Then you mourn Cordelia Cup, the character, right? Because they could have plugged that into anything forever. They still can, can't they?

• 32:12Linda Holmes?

  Murder at NASA, murder at the zoo, murderous, like, I mean, call me Netflix. I am here to write Murder at the Zoo, which is also, by the way, a residence. You wouldn't even have to change the title. It just happens to be the residence of the monkeys. I think we can do it. She's a birder and it would be right in her wheelhouse. Like, it would be perfect.

• 32:33Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 32:34Linda Holmes?

  All right. After the break, we've got more great movies and one of our favorite songs of the year. So do stick around.

• 32:41Speaker 00

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• 34:13Linda Holmes?

  Welcome back. All right, so I have got the next pick. Those who know me know that as soon as the trailer for the movie Fight or Flight dropped, I started getting very excited for reasons kind of unknown to myself. This is a movie in which Josh Hartnett, who I have found an increasingly interesting actor. Listen, long story short, he gets trapped on a plane. He's supposed to be finding an intelligence asset and safely escorting that asset to San Francisco on a very, very long flight of many, many hours. He is a trained assassin, basically, who gets on a plane full of trained assassins. So he has a series of fights and everybody's attacking him.

• 34:58Linda Holmes?

  And there's a little bit of everything. There's martial arts and then there's just like people trying to beat you up. And there's just like people who fight with guns. And when I saw it, I kind of said like half Sharknado and half John Wick. And I stand by that. And there is a moment in this movie when he is fighting a guy. He's sort of got the guy down and the guy won't stay down. And he is holding a laptop in his hands over this guy, telling him to just stay down. And it goes like this.

• 35:39Linda Holmes?

  Now, because the guy will not stay down, he's forced to hit him with the laptop. And he hits him so hard that, as you can hear, the computer restarts. I don't know why, but I found this the funniest sound design moment of the year, maybe. And this is where this movie really shines. There's Toad Venom. This movie has nothing and everything to say for itself. That sound effect of the computer restarting when he whacked him with the laptop made me laugh so hard in the theater. Oh, my gosh, it made me so happy. I loved this movie.

• 36:17Aisha Harris?

  I appreciate you reminding me that this movie exists because I still have not caught up with it. But I'm fully on the Josh Hartnett train, plane, I guess. Post-trap. Post-trap. Come on, give me all the traps. Give me Trap on a Plane. Give me Josh Hartnett on a Plane. Like, yep.

• 36:33Linda Holmes?

  He was in The Bear. He's, he's a little bit of a heart nettesance, I think, going on.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Linda, you didn't have me, then you brought me with Toad Venom, so congratulations.

• 36:42Linda Holmes?

  Oh, yeah. This is one of the most purely successful movies of the year to me because it is exactly what it is supposed to be. So, yeah, anyway, that is Fight or Flight, which is available on Paramount Plus, and you can rent it, and it's all over the place. Okay. Aisha Harris, we are going to you for your final pick. Tell me all about it.

• 37:01Aisha Harris?

  Well, this is a hard, hard left turn from the solemus of Fight or Flight.

• 37:05Linda Holmes?

  Sorry about that.

• 37:06Aisha Harris?

  But it's a scene from the great movie Sorry, Baby. This was written, directed by and stars Eva Victor. And I think this is probably one of my favorites, if not my favorite, feature debut of the year. So, the Me Too slash, like, post Weinstein era have given us, like, lots of stories about women who are dealing with harassment, assaults, usually from men in very high positions of power. Many of these movies and TV shows have done this with varying degrees of quality and effectiveness. Sorry, Baby, to me, is probably one of the best attempts to wrestle with this. Basically, Victor plays Agnes, who's a newly minted professor at a liberal arts college, the same college where she received her graduate degree. And the school is also where she was sexually assaulted

• 37:51Aisha Harris?

  by a professor and a mentor of hers. And it's about way more than just that, although it is about her dealing with that and coping with that and grasping with that. It's also about her relationship with Naomi Aki's character, Lyddie, who's like her closest friend and peer, who is in the same program and was her confidant after the assault occurred. So they go way back, they're very close. But now we're, you know, a few years past that. Lyddie's partnered up, she has an infant daughter, and Agnes has this moment with the infant while they're visiting her. And she has this moment, which gives the movie its name, where she's just, it's just her and Lyddie's daughter. And she's just talking to her. And she says, among many other things, she says this to her.

• 38:36Speaker 13

  I'm sorry that bad things are gonna happen to you. I hope they don't. If I can ever stop something from being bad, let me know. But sometimes bad stuff just happens.

• 38:48Aisha Harris?

  It is one of the most moving things I've seen all year. I do not have children, but what I think it does so well, it really gets at like all the things that I understand parents want to say, or adults want to say to children who have no idea like what is coming, what it means to be alive. Like, they're in this moment of just not knowing anything. And Agnes is both projecting sort of everything that's happened to her and her knowledge of the future and being like, yeah, bad things are gonna happen to you. That sucks, but also I'm here for you. And this movie is both about, not just about coping with those things, but like how you find ways to deal with them and the people in your lives who are important.

• 39:31Aisha Harris?

  And I'm tearing up just thinking about the scene. But it's just like, it's so beautiful. And it just captures so well just the uncertainty and the sadness of living, but also the joy of living and being able to have people who will support you when things get tough. And this is not like a spoiler. If you haven't seen the movie, absolutely go see it because it's not really a movie you can spoil. It's just a movie you experience. And what an experience it is. I just cannot wait to see what else Eva Victor has in store for us.

• 40:04Stephen Thompson?

  This movie is at the very, very top of my watching queue because it's arguably my partner's favorite movie of the year. And she has talked about this over and over again. She discovered it on a plane.

• 40:15Aisha Harris?

  Ooh, on a plane.

• 40:17Stephen Thompson?

  Yeah, I think did some pretty big crying.

• 40:20Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Stephen Thompson?

  On said plane.

• 40:23Aisha Harris?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Stephen Thompson?

  And has come back like you need to see it. I will have seen it probably by the time this episode airs.

• 40:29Aisha Harris?

  I mean, it doesn't sound like it has any toad venom, but okay.

• 40:35Stephen Thompson?

  I'll do a double feature of this.

• 40:37Aisha Harris?

  No, this sounds wonderful. It sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for picking this, Ayesha. Just that scene was very moving just to hear, to tell you the truth. All right, we are moving on to Glenn, your final pick. Tell me all about it.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  My final pick is The House in Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice. This is a film that comes out in some theaters December 25th. It's gonna have a much wider release in January and I can't wait for you to see it because hot take, this house is a character in the movie.

• 41:04Aisha Harris?

  Oh, my goodness, yes.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  Hand me my bullets. But it's also, it's not just a character. In a very real sense, it's the entire stakes because this film is about a man who works at a paper factory, played by Lee Byung-hung, and the lengths that the main character will go to hold on to everything he has, including this house. And who's living in the house he grew up in, but he's updated it a lot. And you can really tell that because the house seems like it's trapped between two different worlds. Its bones are what was called the French house style, which is very popular among hugely wealthy people in Korea in the 70s and 80s. It looks like classic, you know, European style housing. But it's got all these added brutalist elements of brick and exposed concretes and these big chunky balconies jutting out of it.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  This house is just beautifully ugly and you can see how much work went into it, which is the point. Yeah, he loves his family, yada, yada, yada, but that house. I mean, now, it's occurred to me that my fixation on this chunk of fictional real estate means I'm taking away precisely the opposite message I should be taking from this very sharply satirical anti-capitalist movie. Yeah, I'm guilty of that. And I'm not saying I would murder anyone for this house. But Ayesha, you've seen this movie. Remember that staircase? It's a great staircase.

• 42:22Aisha Harris?

  Oh, my goodness. Yes, yes. I, look, describing it as another character in a movie is absolutely right. I don't care how cliche that is. That's the point. But also, like, it's his childhood home. So.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 42:33Aisha Harris?

  Yes, it's about real estate, but also it's about the memories and this idea of generational wealth and being able to pass on, you know, real estate to within the family, keep it in the family. And so, you know, as a new homeowner myself, I kind of get it now. It's like, uh. Yeah, sure. Yeah, like, like, again, would I murder? No, I'm not gonna, no. But I get it.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  But would I injure? Would I maim? Would I galooly? These are open questions.

• 43:02Aisha Harris?

  Yeah, great lengths, yes. Murder, maybe not, but yes.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Would I, at the very least, alienate someone?

• 43:09Speaker 05

  Would I be passive aggressive? Absolutely.

• 43:11Aisha Harris?

  Yes, yes.

• 43:12Linda Holmes?

  No other choice, The Amazing House, that does not mean that we don't understand the meaning of the movie. I appreciate that, Glenn. I appreciate that deeply. All right, Stephen, we are closing it out with you. I have a feeling that you are going to send us out with some music. Is that correct?

• 43:28Stephen Thompson?

  That is correct. So the Spanish pop singer Rosalia had a huge breakthrough a few years ago. But for her new album Lux, she has crafted a palette that is just bigger and bolder and wilder in every way. She recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. She brought in guests like Bjork and Eve Tumer, and arrangers like Caroline Shaw, who's like the best arranger. She sings in more than a dozen languages. Her subject matter evokes women saints. This is art piled atop art piled atop art. It's unbelievably audacious, but it's more than that. And the moment that I picked for this episode is from the second song on the record, which is called Reliquia.

• 44:25Stephen Thompson?

  That is the moment when I realized I was listening to the album of the year. It was my first time listening to track two, because Lux has all these ingredients, all these contributors making bold, arty, ambitious, grand work. But then the result is just... Breathtaking. It's accessible. It lands emotional gut punches, whether or not you speak any of the languages she's deploying. It's somehow more than the sum of its parts, which feels impossible. And Lux just came out in November. This is not the kind of record that you can fully understand the first two or three or four times you hear it.

• 45:10Stephen Thompson?

  It feels like an instant classic, but I'm still unpacking it. And it's just a perfect time of year to experience and receive a record like this, kind of just as you're coming up for air. It's so beautiful. That is Relicia from Lux by the great Rosalia.

• 45:28Linda Holmes?

  Wow. You know, I have often said, there are two kinds of Stephen Thompson music. One is the kind that makes me think of football. The other is the kind that makes me think of being in a cave by myself when it's raining. And this is the second kind, and it's beautiful. And I don't mean that in any negative way at all. It's absolutely beautiful, and I appreciate your sharing it, buddy. Absolutely do. All right. We want to know about your favorite things from the year. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com/PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, Glen Weldon, thanks so much for being here for another year.

• 46:06Stephen Thompson?

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 46:07Linda Holmes?

  We survived. We did it.

• 46:09Stephen Thompson?

  We did it.

• 46:11Linda Holmes?

  Oh, and this episode is produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katz, and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. Great time to appreciate all of our producers. And Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.