A seminal crime drama pairs Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger as police officers who must overcome racial prejudice and personal antagonisms to solve a murder in Mississippi. The film examines the complex legacy of racial tension in the US south, and gave Poitier one of his most famous lines: “They call me Mr.
Tibbs!”

–Andrew McDonald

Miles is a middle-aged 8th grade English teacher, a failed writer, and a man trying to recover from his divorce from a woman he still loves. In this bittersweet comedy, he takes his pal Jack on a wine tasting trip before Jack’s wedding; Jack’s lust for life upends Miles’s plans even as it throws him together with a waitress he’s had a crush on and forces him to see past… his self-sabotaging depression.

–Kristy Eldredge

This hilarious movie stars Tom Hanks and Shelley Long as a couple who need to find a house in a hurry. They have been living in the Manhattan apartment of her former husband (Alexander Godunov), but now he throws them out and they take the only place they can find - a country estate at a suspiciously low price. Sure, it needs a little work….All older houses needa little work. But Hanks…… begins to suspect something is seriously wrong when he slams the front door and it falls off its hinges.

–Bo

I don’t have even the slightest interest in figuring out what Euphoria is, because no high school coming-of-age show can better capture the quotidian tragedies, preoccupations, failures, and exuberance of teenage existence than Paul Feig and Judd Apatow’s 1999 comedy, which launched the careers of James Franco, Seth Rogen, Busy Philipps, Jason Segel, Martin Starr, and theperennially underrated Linda Cardellini.  

–Andrew McDonald

Nobody does failure like Cat Power. In her gorgeous, smoky contralto, she can transform shame and self-hatred into pure beauty, and she does, in this song. It’s from The Covers Record (2000).
 

–Anonymous

You always won, every time you played the game” — I challenge anyone to write a better lyric about feeling like a failure. Feeling bested by someone else on the regular is a theme many people can relate to, plus this song has a beautiful melody. 

–Anonymous

The Dublin rock band’s first release from their newest album, Skinty Fia is a tailor-made single: Written quickly on a whim in the closing moments of an otherwise fruitless recording session. With lyrics that explore issues of Irish cultural and political identity, it’s both catchy and contemplative, perfect for a stroll on a drizzly spring day.

–Andrew McDonald

A clever, captivating book by David Graeber (who died suddenly at the age of 59 in September of 2020) and David Wengrow, tackles the greatest of all failures: human society. Can a clearer, more nuanced, and radically shifted perspective of humanity’s deep past pave the way toward a better future for our species? The Davids ask big anthropological questions that allow for hope beyond the structural and institutional failures that define our
reality.
 
—Andrew McDonald

Was the US Civil War the result of diplomatic and policy failures established by a blundering generation of inept political actors, or was it an irrepressible conflict, a bloody moral consecration and a reckoning for a country founded on the heinous institution of slavery? (Psst! It’s both!) John Ashworth offers a crash course in the critical years from the Missouri Compromise to Secession, examining the lasting impact of the greatest structural failure the US has ever faced.
 
–Andrew McDonald

A struggling novelist travels the world to avoid an awkward wedding in this hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning novel full of “arresting lyricism and beauty”   

–Anonymous
 

Some old friends of mine released this album in 2014, and I admit that I only remembered it because of this month’s theme, but singles “Wild Enough” and “Last of a Kind” (which might have been on a TV show or something, because it seems to have a lot of Spotify plays) hold up as really good songs that will always remind me….ofall the romantic, disgusting little New York DIY spaces where I spent nights in my 20s. I miss them. But listening to Failure today, it’s clearly about how everything comes to an end. Even synth rock.

–Andrew McDonald