The Horror Movie That's Truly Worth the Hype: Shirley Li's culture picks include Barbarian, Elena

[Celerity]

Ferrante, and Pokémon Go.

THE ATLANTIC DAILY

Today’s special guest is the staff writer Shirley Li, who recently argued that The Crown is losing its shine and that the bonus tracks on Taylor Swift’s latest album, Midnights, are her best new songs. Shirley had her expectations mutilated by the horror movie Barbarian, will read anything by Elena Ferrante, and is still trying to catch ’em all in Pokémon Go.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/11/the-horror-movie-thats-truly-worth-the-hype/672180/

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"The kind of horror movie that takes your expectations, upends them, and then mutilates them," Shirley Li says of Barbarian. (20th Century Studios)

The Culture Survey: Shirley Li

The television show I’m most enjoying right now: The writer-director Tony Gilroy is doing wonders with Andor, the Disney+ drama about Diego Luna’s character from the Star Wars prequel, Rogue One. I’m a fan of the film, but I wasn’t sure whether a spin-off series charting the life of a doomed Rebel would hold my interest. As it turns out, the show has perhaps been the best live-action project the franchise has produced in a while—and maybe the best genre TV I’ve seen this year. It delivers both eye-popping visuals and nuanced storytelling about how people find purpose in an oppressive world, making it Star Wars at its most gripping and heartbreaking. [Related: Andor is Star Wars at its most mature]

My favorite blockbuster and favorite art movie:

Oh boy. I struggle so much with questions about my favorite anythings; my answers tend to change depending on my mood. At this moment, on an unusually chilly afternoon in Los Angeles with rain pouring outside my window, I’m reminded of—and therefore going with—Jurassic Park as my favorite blockbuster. Art-movie wise, Cléo From 5 to 7, Agnès Varda’s French New Wave film about a woman spending the two titular hours wandering around Paris waiting for her biopsy results, comes to mind. It’s a melancholy look at beauty and vanity and self-awareness and love, and it’s also the inspiration for the many, many attempts of mine to copy Corinne Marchand’s barely winged eyeliner look as Cléo. (It’s never worked out! Makeup mavens, please help.) [Related: The indefatigable spirit of Agnès Varda]

An author I will read anything by:

Elena Ferrante. Kazuo Ishiguro. Tom Perrotta. I really am terrible at favorite-anything questions! [Related: The radiant inner life of a robot]

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A good recommendation I recently received:

As my colleague David Sims noted in his review of the film, pretty much everyone has been recommending Barbarian, the solo directorial debut from Zach Cregger. It’s a twisted ride, the kind of horror movie that takes your expectations, upends them, and then mutilates them so completely, you can’t help but be awed by what you’re seeing.

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