My Favorite Performances of the Year

Wesley has been thinking a lot this week about what Rob Reiner gave us. Not the best movies. But our favorite ones. He wanted us to feel good. And for Wesley, no movie hit that pleasure center more than “When Harry Met Sally.” He watched it over and over as a teenager. It’s probably why he moved to New York. He wanted what they were having. This week, Wesley reflects on the impact Reiner had on his life, and shares a conversation he had on The Daily — involving a very extended appreciation of that famous diner scene. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

On today’s show, Wesley reveals his favorite film performances of the year — but his list is not an ordinary best-of list. He zeroes in on the specific details that make a performance great. Like, who did the best acting in a helmet this year? Who were the most convincing on-screen best friends? And who refused to play it safe? Find out in our first annual Cannonball Great Performers special. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

The world is different once an artist dies. The same goes for their music. Since D’Angelo’s death, Wesley keeps returning to “Black Messiah” — to him, a perfect final album. What makes an artist’s last record resonate with us long after they’re gone? Wesley invites his friend Alex Pappademas, a senior culture editor at GQ Magazine, to listen back to some last albums that have haunted them both. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Cannonball is off this week for the holiday. But I wanted to share something with you from our friends over at The Interview. It’s a conversation that my colleague David Marchese had awhile back with one of our biggest stars, Eddie Murphy. I've been thinking about it recently because there's a new documentary about Murphy that just came out on Netflix -- and I highly recommend this conversation as a kind of companion listen over your long weekend. Murphy reveals a surprising side of himself that I hadn’t heard before. Hope you enjoy it, and see you back here next week! Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Netflix has a hit in “The Perfect Neighbor,” a documentary attracting a lot of attention for both its subject and its form. Using police camera footage, the film shows the events leading up to the killing of a Black mother of four by her white neighbor. It’s unquestionably powerful and difficult viewing. But for Wesley and his fellow Times critic Parul Sehgal, it raises all kinds of moral and ethical questions. What does it mean to watch these events through the lens of the police officers involved? Is the movie the filmmakers thought they were making the one that the audience is actually receiving? And should we even be allowed to see this?Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Every December, Wesley’s hometown radio station, 88.5 WXPN, does some kind of end-of-year countdown, as voted on by listeners. This year, it’s the 885 greatest cover songs. This was exciting news for Wesley, who loves himself a good cover — and considers their near disappearance from pop music to be a kind of national tragedy. He talks all things covers with one of his favorite reinterpreters of music, the Grammy-nominated jazz singer Cécile McLorin-Salvant, who also happens to have done a cover that landed at No. 7 on the list he agonized over for WXPN. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

For Wesley, the most interesting thing about Taylor Swift’s latest album didn’t have much to do with the music. It was the critical response. Sure, there was plenty of enthusiasm. But there was also some exasperation and weariness. And to Wesley, that felt like a needed shift in pop music criticism. Which has gotten awfully nice lately. A little too nice.That idea — that pop music criticism has lost its edge — was explored in a recent New Yorker essay by Wesley’s buddy and fellow critic, Kelefa Sanneh. The two get together to trace the history of the form and think about what’s lost when critical punches are pulled.Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] our show on YouTube: youtube.com/@CannonballPodcastFor transcripts and more, visit: nytimes.com/cannonball Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson’s new movie, “The Smashing Machine,” sends him back to his natural habitat: the ring. But for the first time ever, Johnson finds himself in a role that grapples with what it means to move through the world in a body like his.Wesley talks to Sam Anderson, who recently spent a day with Johnson for a Times Magazine profile. They think about the line between artifice and reality — in Johnson’s performance, and in Sam’s effort to get to know one of the most famous people on earth. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Wesley Morris doesn’t go for cheap jump scares or gratuitous gore. Instead, his favorite horror movies fill him with a sense of dread. This Halloween, he invites film curator Eric Hynes to rewatch scenes from some of the scariest movies they’ve ever seen — some you’ll find in the horror section and some you won’t. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Wesley Morris didn’t love Lady Gaga’s new album “Mayhem.” Then Caryn Ganz, The Times’s pop music editor, took him to see Mayhem — the tour — on its final night at Madison Square Garden. It totally changed the way both of them think about Gaga and what she’s been up to all this time. In short: All hail Mother Monster. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.