Pop Culture Happy Hour - 2025 Pop Culture Favorites

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

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 for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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 to, 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. We're so grateful to

the listeners who have already stepped up to donate like Patrick from Indiana, who says, My biggest sense of loyalty and appreciation goes to Linda, Aisha, Stephen, and Glenn at PCHH. They are all the best. And I love how they have helped. the show evolve in format, broadened voices, and persisted with integrity, wishing you all the fortitude to keep it going. Well, that is very touching, Patrick. You, if I may say, are the best. Thank you so much. Thank you to everyone else who supported NPR this year. You know I'm going to say this, but you are what's making us happy this week and every week. If you haven't yet, please make your Giving Tuesday gift right now by signing up for NPR Plus. 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. 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. They might be funny, moving, unforgettable. The point is that we experienced the and we're still thinking about them. I'm Stephen Thompson. And I'm Linda Holmes.

And today on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're talking about our favorite things from 2025. Joining us are our co-host, Glenn Weldon. Hello, Glenn. Hey, friend. And Aisha Harris. Hello, Aisha. Hello, Linda.

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? 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. 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 disc 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, 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 Huntricks plays a different song, a new song called What It Sounds Like. Why did I cover up the color stuck inside my head?

I should have let the jagged edges meet the light instead. Show me what's underneath. I'll find your harmony. The song we couldn't write. 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 Sean 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. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, Stephen, but do not sleep in the line. Let the jagged edges meet the light instead. 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's such a puss on him. And he was like 10 minutes. We're giving this 10 minutes.

Oh, that's all you need. You need eight. 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. Yeah, I'm glad you picked this song. Because if I'm going to be honest, I thought the Saja Boys' songs, for the most part, were better than Huntricks.

You're allowed to feel that way. Golden is fine. It was number one for a long time in 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, love it.

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 from, I'm just going to. say right now, one of my very favorite movies of the year.

Yeah. So, Stephen, 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, the same. the movie itself is the fact that Ryan Cougler did an entire pitch for the Cynor's formats to get people into theaters. Now, I saw this pitch work in real time. Now, you may recall he did a 10-ish-minute video where he is describing all the different aspect ratios and formats that

he has shot in on previous films and then that he shot in for here for Cinners. He describes Super 8, 60mm. It's like a college class. He's the professor. It's 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 70mmeter in IMAX. He's talking about how to consider buying the tickets, like what you should look for. So when you guys are going to buy your tickets depending on where you live, it's going to be a lot of options available to you,

all right? There's one aspect ratio, that Ultra Panavision 276 ratio. That's going to be the most widely available format to see the film the whole time in that ratio without the aspect ratio is changing it all. If you live close to an IMAX theater, you choose to buy IMAX ticket. 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 got to see sinners. He's like, oh, yeah, we're going to 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 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 Cooghue's pitch worked on my dad. 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 moviegover 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 centers 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 a is amazing. 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. Sucking. That's a very good analogy or use of metaphor. they're considering vampires, vampires. See what I did? I didn't even know I was doing it. But like both of those films, obviously, Cape Op. Even Hunters is going to have a zillion sequels.

We're never going to 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.

Yes, yes. All right. Very, very good. Thank you, Ayesha, for naming Ryan Cookew. Flores 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?

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 Scort, 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, and puny humans as he does in this clip. Here, Galactus is voiced by Ralph Inneson. 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 bar. We could have gotten up, bah, clever little bugs. It's giving a little bit of John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. It's that. It's channeling that. Red brain. 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 Guns' Superman this year, too. He says things like God. 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 are 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 decades trying to apologize for that and complicated and make it relevant and make it, God forbid, cool or try to anyway. And these two movies this summer both said, what have we stopped apologizing for the goofiness, for the cornyness, for the cheesiness? What if we stopped chasing cool and just capture 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. But if they're fun, they're fun. If they're fun, they're fun. And it's nowhere near the first time where the last time we're going to 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. I love this. 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. Any opportunity. So that is Galactus from Fantastic Four First Steps. And I would venture to say also Superman. Yep. Aisha, 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. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So Severin Season 2, what happened? I don't really know. Let's be real. I watched it. I'm not entirely sure what exactly happened. The show is far more opaque and deliberately paced than it is like clarifying. Off into a fault. Of course, this is the Apple TV series where you have people who decided to sever themselves and they have. have inies and outies. The inies 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. And it's great. Aisha has just explained everything I understand about severance also. I was going to say, this is a perfect distillation of what I

know about this show. Okay, good. What I did love and the only character I fully understood what was happening in every moment was Mr. Milchick. played by Tramel Tillman. The moment I'm specifically pointing out here is the moment of choreography and merriment in the season two finale. And now, lady and gentlemen of MDR, may I introduce choreography and merriment.

Of course, this is the moment where Mark, played by Adam Scott, has just completed the vague cold harbor task that has been the basis of my, of the show's drama. And so Mr. Milchick is going to celebrate with a marching band routine. 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. But that marching band, pure gold. Pure gold for Mel Tellman, when he won an Emmy. So all is well with the world. 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. 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. 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 it. I also loved seeing him show up in the Mission Impossible movie this summer. He was the best part, the best part. 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. Thank you. So that was the season two finale of course. in Merriment with Mr. Milchick. 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 Sterlin 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 muck-raking 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.

And one of the things I love about this show is that the Ethan Hawk performance is so specific and so funny. It's incredibly affecting, but it's also so. 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 looks poorly. And he walks into a convenience store. And he says to the woman working behind the counter this. I'll give you a thousand for those shades this had in a brief makeup tutorial. It's such a great moment.

I think the way that he says at 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's 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, 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 his. this performance and my love of the humor in this show. So Lee Raybon getting his disguise together in The Lowdown on FX, which you can still find on Hulu and Disney Plus. 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 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. 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.

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,

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. And their relationship safe to say is unlike

most relationships that you would see in romantic comments. 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. And in this exact moment, an unflappable

attendant named Ernie walks into the room to take her vitals. Finger. Your blood pressure is elevated and your leg looks f***ed up. Really, me, Ernie. Uh-huh. 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. 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. Yeah. That's so good. Yeah. Everyone is so good in it. Yeah.

All right. It's on my list. It's kind of shut its way to the top after your pitch, Stephen. Good job. Awesome. I think you'll love it. 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. My second pick is Alexander Scarsgard's eyebrows. in the show MurderBot. Scarsguard 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. 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 panic in the eyes, a furrowed brow. It's perfect.

And in this clip, you can almost hear those eyebrows furrowing as sec unit gets cornered by the team leader. of the scientist, played by Noma Dumezwini. My family didn't want me to go on this trip. Please don't. Two of my spouses sat me down and told me that they thought that I was doing it to get some time away from those responsibilities. I need to check the unitions. 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 him desperately wanted to go check the munitions. 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. Specificity.

Specificity in all things. I appreciate, Glenn, your commitment to specificity. Yes. Yeah. And I will say, like, I have not seen Murder Brought, but I am a big fan of Alexander Scargeard, 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 Scarsgaard 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. 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 who-done-it. It has some Knives-Outy feelings. It has some Agatha Christie feelings. It is a comic.

Who-done it. She stars as Cordelia Cup, 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. And she immediately begins interrogating everybody. This all happens on the night of a big state dinner for Australia. 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. 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, doesn't make you feel any differently about any of the questions I've asked you?

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. This is the kind of thing that is right in my wheelhouse. I loved it. And I was so

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. 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 show. Then you mourn Cordelia Cup, the character, right? Because they could have plugged them into anything forever. They still

can. Can't they? Murder at NASA. Murder at the zoo. Murder at the zoo. 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. Absolutely. All right. After the break, we've got more great movies and one of our favorite songs of the year. So do stick around. 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. 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. When I saw it, I kind of said like half Shark Nato and half John Wick. And I stand by that.

And there is a moment in this movie when he is fighting a guy. He 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. Now, because the guy will not stay down, he's forced to hit him with the laptop and he hits him so hard that 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 love this movie. I appreciate you. You reminded 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-L plane.

He was in the bear. He's a little bit of a heart-nett. Edicants, I think, going on. Linda, you didn't have me. Then you brought me in with Toad Venom. So, congratulations. 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. Well, this is a hard, hard left turn from the silliness of fight or flight. Sorry about that.

But it's a scene from the great movie, Sorry Baby. This was written directed by and stars Ava 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 post-Winstein era have given us like lots of stories about women who are dealing with harassment, assault, 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 was also where she was sexually assaulted 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 Acky's character, Liddy, 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, Liddy'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 Liddy's daughter. And she's just talking to her. And she says, among many other things, she says this. to her. I'm sorry that bad things are going to happen to you. I hope they don't. If I can ever stop something for being bad, let me know.

But sometimes bad stuff just happened. 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 all the things that I understand parents want to say or adults want to say to children who have no idea. 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 going to 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. And I'm tearing up just thinking about this 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 Ava Victor has in store for us. This movie is at the very, very top of my watching cue 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. Ooh, on a plane.

Yeah, I think did some pretty big crying on said plane and has come back like you need to see it. I will have seen it probably by the time this episode airs. I mean, it doesn't sound like it has any toad venom, but okay. I'll do a double feature of this in Florida. No, this sounds wonderful. It sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for picking this. Aisha, 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. My final pick is The House in Pachchanog's No Other Choice. This is a film that comes out in some theaters December 25th. It's going to 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.

Oh, my goodness, yes. 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 E.B. Young 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 a 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. This house is just beautifully ugly.

And you can see how much work went into it, which is the point. Yeah, he loves this 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 Aisha, you've seen this movie.

Remember that staircase? That's a great staircase. Oh, my goodness. Yes, yes. 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, yes, it's about real estate. 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 and keeping 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, again, would I murder? No, I'm not going to, no, but I get it. But would I injure? Would I maim? Would I galoole? These are open questions. Yeah, great lengths. Yes. or maybe not, but yes. Would I at the very least alienate someone?

Would I be passive-aggressive, absolutely. Yes, yes. 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?

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 Bjerk and Eve Toomer and arrangers like Caroline Shaw, who's like the best arranger. She sings in more than a dozen languages. Her subject matter evokes women's saints. This is art, piled atop art, piled atop art. It's unbelievably audacious. But it's more than than that. And the moment that I picked

for this episode is from the second song on the record, which is called Relicia. 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 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.

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. It feels like an instant classic, but I'm still unpacking it. And it's just a perfect time of year to explain. experience and receive a record like this kind of just as you're coming up for air. It's so beautiful. That is Relicchio from Lux by the great Rosalia. 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 slash PCH. That brings us to the end of our show. Aisha Harris, Stephen Thompson, Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here for another year. Thank you. Thank you. We survived.

We did it. We did it. We did it. Oh, and this episode is produced by Liz Metzger and Mike Katzeth and edited by our show. 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.