The Anderson Tapes (1972)

Sidney Lumet's The Anderson Tapes is a satire of the surveillance state, perhaps more in conversation with Lumet’s own 1976 satire of television, Network, than with its more obvious companions, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) or Brian De Palma's Blowout (1981). 

Coppola’s version of the surveillance state, for example, is one of terror and darkness, a descent into madness brought on by the panopticon. Lumet’s version is much, much lighter. He sees all of this collecting of audio and video as so much wasted manpower, so much squandered money, and so much ill-spent time. Six people in a room talking about a video tape and trying to gain information about what's happening between a 90-year-old man and his son when nothing at all is happening! Lumet’s movie thinks the police state is absurd—like Kafka but comic. 

I think this comic quality is relatively hard to see from the perspective of 2025—and so Lumet's film feels weird from this vantage. We are used to thinking of surveillance as an evil, malicious, signifier of unstoppable state power. (The key 2025 example is, I suppose, Edgar Wright's The Running Man.) In The Anderson Tapes, though, all this recording is petty and stupid, and the agencies aren’t talking to one another, and no one knows anything about anything, even though everything is being recorded. The key to this is the truly insane sequence where the cops jump from roof to roof in act three, and the hilarious scene a bit later in which they try to talk to one another on walkie-talkies but can’t get a signal. The robbery is, of course, uncovered by a HAM radio—not any of the new surveillance devices from the 70s. In fact, even that discovery is nearly hampered by the bureaucracy at the telephone switchboard. (If you doubt my argument here look again at the film’s finale, in which all the agencies are obliged to erase their recordings.) 

All of this is to say that The Anderson Tapes works as a thriller (I watched it as part of a Criterion Channel series called 70s Thrillers), but it’s more of a scathing satire than it is anything else: a mockery of the 1970s surveillance state and the grotesque waste it involves.

Plainclothes (2025)

Plainclothes is baffling. Carmen Emmi has made a movie about the closet and the virtues of coming out of the closet in the year of our lord 2025? Why? Who is this for? 

Tom Blyth is quite good in this, but the direction and screenplay are very bad. And I am truly confused by the photography decisions. The images consistently—in the middle of scenes—switch to a grainy VHS version of the same shot. I think this is supposed to be a kind of visual cue for the main character’s anxiety, but it never felt like that while watching the movie. 

The other truly baffling choice is to tell the story in two different time sequences. The movie begins and ends at a New Year’s Eve party and then basically everything else is a very long flashback that moves in more-or-less sequential order. But the movie would have made a great deal more sense if it actually just moved in sequence without the consistent jumps to the party in the present. Instead, the viewer spends nearly a third of the movie’s running time trying to figure out what’s going on. And the tension of the party itself—which should actually be very, very high—feels like just another episode in this man’s anxious everyday life. 

 The real issue, though, is the subject matter. I fail to understand how the very important issues surrounding men who have sex with men in the 1990s (this film is interested in homophobia, AIDS, cruising, and the closet) relate to 2025. It's not that that wasn't an important period; it was. But this is a movie that's interested in moralizing about that time period, and in telling a story about a man working through those issues. In this way, Plainclothes refuses almost completely to relate to issues facing men who have sex with men in the present day, and the issues of the 1990s feel almost completely irrelevant.

At least there was this man to stare at:

Dylan O'Brien Double Feature (Including One with Double Dylans)

Twinless, directed by and starring James Sweeney is very funny and also creepy and strange and a bit troubling. I liked it. 

Dylan O’Brien gives a stellar performance. 

The more I think about it the smarter I think this screenplay is. In many ways it’s structured like other romantic comedies, but I think Sweeney just goes about all of this in a really, really smart way. It’s a very clever bit of writing. Like, compared to other recent gay romantic comedies, this is head and shoulders above the desperately generic Things like This, which even Joey Pollari couldn’t save. 

Another thing to say about Twinless, and one of the reasons I liked it so much, is that it is really unapologetically gay. It has a sensibility to it that is gay in its very construction and point of view rather than being simply a story about a gay man. I appreciated this a great deal. It feels very rare right now.

I really really wish this Esteban Arango's Ponyboi were better, but it’s mired in a kind of overly sentimental Sundance vibe that takes itself way too seriously and insistently stresses its own self importance. 

This movie is also way too slow, with long sections of neon-lit slow-motion fantasies that don’t work and undermine the gritty realism for which the screenplay is actually aiming. The movie can't decide on its own tone, really, and so we get dreamy, colorful, neon fantasy (like the poster) and then we contrast that with serious crime film.

Dylan O’Brien is predictably wonderful in this—he understands what he’s doing perfectly, giving us a villain who’s also a sort of comic buffoon who we want to care about even though he’s an unredeemable idiot asshole. 

I loved Indya Moore, too. She shines in her one scene, a sequence that actually makes very little sense in the film’s narrative structure but which works very well because of Moore’s assured and confident performance.

Miguel Gomes's Grand Tour

Gomes's brilliant film exists in three time periods simultaneously. 

A man in 1917 gets cold feet and flees his fiancée following the route of the Grand Tour: Rangoon, Singapore, Bangkok, Saigon, Manila, Osaka, Shanghai, and then up the Yangtze River. But while Edward travels, he encounters those cities in the present day, the cities’ current inhabitants showing us those vibrant cities now (sometimes in monochrome, sometimes in color). It’s a strikingly brilliant device, and it refuses to look at those cities through old early twentieth century orientalist modes of tourism. 

(Amazingly, Edward and Molly’s two journeys are narrated in Burmese, then Thai, then Vietnamese, Tagalog, Japanese, Mandarin. This is a film where all the English characters speak Portuguese as if that’s their native language, but sometimes carry on conversations in flawless French without even remarking on the difference. It’s very very clever.) 

 First as tragedy, then as farce. For the film’s second half (and if you’ve seen a Gomes film before, you were probably expecting this) we switch to Molly, as she chases her fiancé through these cities and finally up the Yangtze. Her story is completely different, and she has an extraordinarily different approach. Her trip also takes much, much, longer. 

This is fascinating from start to finish. It is (as some have noted) difficult to attach emotionally to the two central characters, but this is about cities and Asia and colonialism and life, not about story. It’s about the journey, as a self-help guru might say.

Sorry, Baby

Damn Sorry, Baby is good. It’s so fucking smart, and so sensitively, carefully made. It’s also very funny. (Although the other people in the theatre didn’t seem to laugh at the jokes as much as I did.) 

This is a film about sexual violence, but its focus (and this is fairly rare at the movies) is on the experience of the person who has survived the sexual violence. The way Eva Victor handles every part of this is just expertly crafted.

What I found especially wonderful about this was the portrait of the world that Victor has to offer us. It’s a world with dangers and injustices, certainly. And also small, stupid insensitivities and aggressions. But then, unobtrusively, surprisingly, there is gentleness and generosity, a squeeze of a hand, a sandwich with Calabrian chilis, a neighbor who knows how to start a fire.

Special shout out to Hettienne Park, whose small performance in this film is wonderful. She gives us an extraordinary moment of recognition in a courtroom sequence that felt almost overwhelming to watch. 

P.S. Lucas Hedges, I love you.

Mission: Impossible – the Final Reckoning

What to say about The Final Reckoning? 

The sound is cool. The sound, in fact, is the best part. There’s also a very good sequence on a Russian submarine. But mostly this is just soooo serious. Every line is delivered ponderously, as if we won’t know that the entirety of humanity, the lives of billions of people, perhaps the future of all life on this planet is at stake. 

Like… ok. But lighten up a bit. Everyone is so fucking intense in this. Also, this movie brings back Dead Reckoning Part One’s truly hilarious method of exposition, where four or more people (sometimes in completely different scenes and time sequences) tell us important plot information seamlessly. Instead of one voice, we get multiple! It makes no literal sense whatsoever, and it’s so funny.

As far as I am concerned, this was kind of a disaster.

28 Years Later... (2025)

Zombies are scary in general. They are living reminders of death, they are death on its way to kill you, stalking you, hunting you. (Which is, of course, what death is doing.) 

28 Years Later... has some good scares, too. The film’s main intertext is Hamlet, I think (despite all the clips of Olivier’s Henry V throughout the film). Not that 28 Years Later... is a revenge tale or a search for a murdered father, but the central character here has a mother whom he loves, as well as a stepfather and a missing father. More important is the memento mori aspect that is so essential to Hamlet: the respect for the dead and the reminder always that we too must die. This devotion to Hamlet (and Hamlet's stoicism) explains, too, the wry stoic quality that is essential to the way 28 Years Later… works. 

The Danny Boyle flourishes in this movie really make it sing, I think. I liked the “Jimmy” puzzle and I am very curious about the WWI references. I’ll wait for the sequel.

How to Train Your Dragon Redux

We probably didn’t need a "live-action" (i.e. mostly-CGI) remake of How to Train Your Dragon in the year of our lord 2025. The original three movies are already so good! Why mess with them? But it’s impossible to be mad at this new How to Train Your Dragon. The cast is great, the story still rocks, and there are so many lovely dragons. The whole thing is a bit more sentimental than I would have liked, but John Powell's new score is great. And Toothless continues to be the coolest dragon in the world. 

Some additional thoughts: 

1. I am so sick of movies in which parents refuse to listen to the young people in their lives. It’s almost unforgivable. Like… just listen. It can’t be that hard. 
2.  The 3D made this whole thing feel a bit like a ride. 
3.  This movie is in favor of a free Palestine.

F1 (2025)

Joseph Kosinski does it again. F1 is great. It hits every beat it needs to. The sound is amazing. The script is perfect Hollywood nonsense, but it cleverly avoids most of the worst traps. And this movie has Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon, so the acting is just fuckin stellar. All three are absolutely pitch perfect. Damson Idris is great in the Miles Teller part. Sarah Niles is wonderful. The whole thing just sings. 

And, sure, it’s a retread of Maverick. I mean, yeah fine. It’s mostly about the same thing and it’s mostly a similar script, and the director’s the same, and it’s giving "older guy bucks the system and blesses the young people with his wisdom". But I didn’t care one bit. I saw this on a gigantic screen and it felt like I was on a ride the whole time, and this rocked. Great score, great soundtrack, great editing. I was into it.

(PS. Why did they sell this as F1: the Movie? That makes no sense to me.)

From the New York Times Top 100

 

William Tell (2024)

Nick Hamm's William Tell has no right to be as boring as it is. It's a shame, too: I love me a good medieval tale.

I think the real issue with this movie is that it’s, like, about politics and freedom, but in this movie there is no real sense of “the Swiss” as a nation or who the Hapsburg villains are or what the difference is between an “Austrian” and a “Swiss”. It’s all so general here, and it's not like anyone is visually different from anyone else. The scenery is gorgeous, of course—it may, indeed, be the movie's chief advantage. But I found it pretty difficult to identify with the struggle for “freedom” here. This is not helped by the complete lack of any geographical specificity whatsoever. For example, it takes no time for anyone to get anywhere in this movie. Little titles pop up at the beginning. We’re in x city or y town. Fine. But where is that in relation to where these troops are garrisoned? What on earth is happening? 

Also… William Tell purports to be an anti-war film—the central character legitimately has war trauma and considers deeply whether or not he should go to war again—but, like almost all anti-war films, William Tell is a pro-war film after all, delighting in violence and celebrating its clever execution (but only, of course, when the “good” people are violence’s perpetrators). 

The boredom is the worst part though. That’s the cardinal sin. One can forgive everything else, but this is boring.

On Swift Horses (2024)

Sigh. Everyone in On Swift Horses is pretty, and the movie itself is pretty, as well. But this is one of those candy coated mid-century tales where a whole bunch of actors born after 1990 who can't imagine what it might have been like to live in the middle of the twentieth century dress up and play people they don't understand at all. No one involved in this seems to understand much about life in the 1950s, and they didn't help me understand the period any better either.

This has a few good moments that feel true—some flashes of good acting and a few good lines of dialogue—but mostly what happens in this movie is just a whole bunch of stuff that you already thought about the period. And the people in the movie behave just the way you'd expect them to behave. And no one surprises anyone, so nothing will surprise a viewer. I was quite bored, despite the purported sensitivity with which the filmmakers approached the material.

Jacob Elordi is good in this only fleetingly. One gets the sense once or twice in the film's two hours of a boyishness, a need to be loved. But mostly he plays it wrong. Diego Calva is a different story. He approaches his character with a wildness that seems at odd with the director's vision but worked for me. Daisy Edgar-Jones... I'm afraid I just didn't believe her for a second.

One of the things that frustrates me about these twenty-first century retellings of the mid-twentieth century is that they aren't interested in the feel of prejudice, of hiding, of rejection, of a disinterest in the family. So it's oh-so-sad that "people like us" can't xyz, can't hold hands in public, aren't free to love who we want, or whatever, but films like On Swift Horses approach that idea as a fact rather than an experience of the world. I find this approach vaguely condescending. It's just all so facile. None of the people is a real person with real thoughts or desires or fears. Everyone is an idea of a person who might have lived back there in the bad old days of the past. Part of the problem is that the whole thing is a kind of chamber piece; all of the scenes are with one or two people, and no one ever really interacts with contemporary society. No one in the movie interacts with a cop or a sergeant or a bartender or a coworker or even a homophobe, really. There are two or three hustlers with lines in the movie—and these characters work to portray the "gay world" as a dangerous milieu of betrayal and violence. In On Swift Horses it isn't mainstream society that is treacherous and violent, it's the underground world of nightclubs, bars, seedy casinos, and the closet. No one in this movie ever meets anyone in the real world: no employers, no realtors, no local paperboys, no nosy neighbors. In this way the movie is never about people who live in the real world. It's always just about people and their interpersonal dramas. The characters in On Swift Horses aren't fighting the world; they are fighting only themselves.

Oscar Nominations 2024: 11 of 11 (with Final Predictions)

Final predictions for 2024 after our last three movies of the year:

A Different Man

1 nomination

• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Aaron Schimberg

Cast: Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, Renate Reinsve, Miles G. Jackson, Patrick Wang, Neal Davidson

Not to be confused with Better Man, the Robbie-Williams-as-a-chimpanzee biopic, although I've been confusing their titles until today and probably will continue to confuse their titles. One is nominated for makeup and one for visual effects. But... I didn’t get A Different Man. I think it's badly directed. I spent most of this movie unsure how I felt and as though I had absolutely no access to what was going on with the central character. For me this was a huge problem, because the movie is about the protagonist, but it's never on his side. In fact, I would say that the entire film operates through a vague hostility toward its protagonist, rather like the terrible off-Broadway play that they're rehearsing within the movie. Exemplifying this problem—and contributing to it—is that the score is all wrong for this movie. Umberto Smerilli has given A Different Man a kind of haunting horror-score that builds tension insistently. Except that I think the movie wants to be a comedy. I’m very puzzled. I want to add to all of this that I think Coralie Fargeat's The Substance covers many of the same themes as A Different Man, with perhaps a similar outlook on those themes. And The Substance is a more enjoyable film than this—and I say that as someone who wasn't crazy about that movie either.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #85 out of 99

Elton John: Never Too Late

1 nomination

• Original Song – "Never Too Late": Elton John (Rocketman, The Lion King, The Lion King, The Lion King) & Bernie Taupin (Rocketman) & Brandi Carlile & Andrew Watt (1st time nominees)

Director: R.J. Cutler, David Furnish

The problem with Elton John: Never Too Late is that we have all already seen Rocketman, and this hagiographical film doesn’t feel like new territory at all. in fact, this whole movie feels very PG, and very earnest about its toothlessness. It's as if it’s a movie made for families about a family—indeed it is a movie co-directed by David Furnish, who has been in a relationship with Elton John since the early 1990s. Elton’s husband, kids, nephew, and mother, all make appearances. The entire operation is all quite wholesome, and I mean that derogatorily if that isn’t quite clear. It makes for an uninteresting portrait of the singer, or at least certainly one that is a lot less interesting than the one in Rocketman. The film's bright spot for me is a section about Elton’s friendship with John Lennon, and it was cool to learn about how Lennon’s last appearance onstage (with Elton!) brought him and Yoko back together. Could this win the Original Song award? I think maybe it could.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Original Song

My rating: Unranked (I don't rank documentaries)

The Six Triple Eight

1 nomination

• Original Song – "The Journey": Diane Warren (Flamin' Hot, Tell It like a Woman, Four Good Days, The Life Ahead, Breakthrough, RBG, Marshall, The Hunting Ground, Beyond the Lights, Pearl Harbor, Music of the Heart, Armageddon, Con Air, Up Close & Personal, Mannequin)

Director: Tyler Perry

Cast: Ebony Obsidian, Kerry Washington, Milauna Jackson, Kylie Jefferson, Shanice Shantay, Sarah Jeffery, Pepi Sonuga, Moriah Brown, Jeanté Godlock, Gregg Sulkin, Donna Biscoe, Baadja-Lyne Odums, Susan Sarandon, Sam Waterston, Dean Norris

Here we are with the annual Diane Warren nomination. Usually Diane Warren manages to write a song for one of the worst movies of the year, but I gotta say: this isn't nearly as bad as I expected. The script is horrible, the politics are questionable, and the historiography is inaccurate, but The Six Triple Eight is not without its pleasures. My problem with this is that I am not interested in these candy-coated movies about segregation. Ever since The Help we have had these movies, and I hate the way they serve a kind of US nationalist project by making the argument that Black folks fought for the country and did amazing things in service of the nation. It’s just crazy to me that these films have no critique of that same nation; in fact, they wind up celebrating the nation. It’s so annoying to learn in a movie like The Six Triple Eight that racism isn’t actually a structural issue: there are so many good white folks; racism is just the result of a few (powerful) bad apples. I think this is one of the reasons I liked Nickel Boys so much—it’s about this same period of time, but it tries to get at what was going on in the country in a much more realistic way. The Six Triple Eight instead is a kind of highlight reel of this battalion, with so many overt fictionalizations (those salutes in the train station!) that the movie occasionally just feels absurd. Will Diane Warren win her Oscar this year? I hope she wins soon, honestly, because saving a slot in the nominations for her ever year is silly. Warren has been nominated ten of the last eleven years (2015-2025)—and another six times before that between 1988 and 2002.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #86 out of 99

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

This has been a very volatile Oscar season, and I have had to switch up many of my final predictions. Things keep changing, and it feels like even Best Picture is a toss-up, really...

Final Oscar Predictions:

Best Picture – Anora

Director – Sean Baker, Anora

Actor – Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Actress – Demi Moore, The Substance

Adapted Screenplay – Conclave

Original Screenplay – Anora

Supporting Actor – Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Supporting Actress – Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Film Editing – The Brutalist

Cinematography – Dune: Part Two

International Feature – I'm Still Here

Documentary Feature – Porcelain War

Production Design – Conclave

Original Score – The Brutalist

Costume Design – Wicked

Sound – A Complete Unknown

Animated Feature – The Wild Robot

Visual Effects – Dune: Part Two

Makeup & Hairstyling – The Substance

Original Song – "Never Too Late", Elton John: Never Too Late

Animated Short – Yuck!

Documentary Short – Incident

Live-action Short – Anuja

Oscar Nominations 2024: 10 of 11

And now for the remaining three movies nominated for visual effects:

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Wes Ball

Cast: Owen Teague, Freya Allen, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, William H. Macy, Eka Darville, Travis Jeffery, Lydia Peckham

This was pretty strong. It had lots of good surprises and the main character is great. But act two is kinda boring, I’m afraid, and I frequently felt ahead of our protagonist, Noa. Still, I had lots of fun, there was much good action, and the visual effects were very good. I am ok with them continuing to nominate the Planet of the Apes movies in this category—even if they don't win. Rise of the Planet of the Apes was nominated in 2012, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2015, and War for the Planet of the Apes in 2018. This movie doesn't really live up to the greatness of those three movies, but they were really good, so I can't be too mad. This had a lot to live up to, and if the pacing of Kingdom wasn't quite great, the effects were still absolutely top notch.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #57 out of 99

Alien: Romulus

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Fede Álvarez

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Aileen Wu, Spike Fearn, Robert Bobroczkyi, and a CGI version of Ian Holm voiced by Daniel Betts

I am not really into this kind of movie, but this works. It’s just so fucking gross. I know that's part of the appeal of this kind of horror—the fluids and the sheer disgust of it all—and I guess it's not for me. I also find the Alien universe’s interest in babies and pregnancy to be really nasty, as well. Like, as soon as one of the cast of characters in this film (played entirely by models, apparently) told us she was preggers I thought uh oh here we go: it’s Alien: Prometheus all over again. This movie’s third act is pretty great though. I was enjoying myself a lot... while also screaming about how nasty everything was. I felt gross for hours afterward. This is why I don’t watch stuff like this. Yuck. In other words, Alien: Romulus does what it promises it will do.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #73 out of 99

Better Man

1 nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Michael Gracey

Cast: Robbie Williams, Jonno Davies, Steve Pemberton, Raechelle Banno, Kate Mulvaney, Frazer Hadfield, Damon Herriman, Jake Simmance, Alison Steadman

This movie is a conventional musical biopic that is made insanely, amazingly unconventional—to the point of being deranged—by the fact that Robbie Williams, the musician in question, is portrayed for the entire length of the film as a chimpanzee. He is a very realistic looking chimpanzee, too! The effects are great. The musical numbers here are really the highlight, though. Gracey had a movie musical hit with The Greatest Showman, and this is just as much of a musical. “Rock DJ” is insanely good; it's a total blast. “She’s the One” is excellent too. In fact, the whole thing really works. The reason I didn't love this movie is that Better Man's plot is just so conventional. You've seen this story a hundred times. And this makes its overly long running time—140 minutes—very silly indeed. For me, the chimpanzee gimmick really doesn't run out of steam; it keeps working for the entirety of the movie's length. But the story the movie has to tell is not nearly as cool as the style in which it is told, and for the last twenty minutes of this film, I was impatient for it to end..

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #63 out of 99

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Oscar Nominations 2024: 9 of 11 (Animated Shorts)

This year's animated short films include some strange selections, but then again they always do!

Beurk! (Yuck!)

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Director: Loïc Espuche

Cast: Noé Chabbat, Katell Varvat, Enzo Desmedt, Camille Bouisson, Hugo Chauvel, Roman Freud, Mattias Marcussy, Mokhtar Camara, Olivia Chatain, Théo Costa-Marini, Jean-Pierre Darroussin

This is very cute. It's about two young people who kind of want to kiss one another even though every other kid thinks kissing is, well, yucky. Extra points for the way, in the world of this animated universe, the urge to kiss someone becomes immediately visible on a person’s face, and they have trouble hiding it. What I love about this is that the other person can be turned on (if you will) by the desire of the other. The young people and adults in this film feel a desire to kiss one another and then that desire can be seen instantly by everyone else. This makes for some very funny exchanges. Extra points for it all being hot pink and glittery.

Will win: Animated Short

Could win: N/A

My rating: #2 out of 5

Magic Candies (あめだま)

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Director: Nishio Daisuke

Cast: Haruto Shima, Hiroshi Iwaski, Sakiko Uran, Yoshifumi Hasegawa, Ikkei Watanabe, Kazuhiro Yamaji

This is really charming and cute. A magic world of words opens up to a lonely little boy when he purchases a little bag of candies that have him hallucinating. The animation is adorable, and the whole thing is very cute. It has a few surprises up its sleeve, too. I found this really touching. I especially love the way the animators drew the words themselves; the way that words take on life in this movie. Top marks. This is my favorite of the five films.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Short

My rating: #1 out of 5

In the Shadow of the Cypress

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Directors: Hosseini Molayemi, Shirin Sohani

Cast: N/A

This is beautifully animated, and it wonderfully captures visually what is happening with the characters internally. In the Shadow of the Cypress is a film about war trauma, about living with trauma and the way that trauma is material, the way it sits in the body or takes up space in the room. This film gorgeously offers the physical feeling of loss or desperation or need by making those feelings material on screen through visual representation. It's just lovely.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Short

My rating: #3 out of 5

Wander to Wonder

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Director: Nina Gantz

Cast: Neil Salvage, Toby Jones, Amanda Lawrence, Terence Dunn

This is a very strange little film about three tiny people who are performing as little miniature sasquatches in a kind of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood-type show for kids. Things take a strange turn, though, when the host leaves the three tinies on their own. Strange can be cool, of course, but I didn’t really understand this. It sure made me laugh, though. There’s a weirdo Shakespeare lover who has lost his mind in this, and I was into him and his level of crazy. But this is just a little too weird and the characters just a little too distant from human beings for my taste.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #4 out of 5

Beautiful Men

1 nomination

• Animated Short

Director: Nicolas Keppens

Cast: Peter Van den Begin, Peter De Graef, Tom Dewispelaere, Nayat Sari

This film is about three brothers who have gone to Turkey to get hair transplants. They're getting older, and they struggle with their relationships with one another, and they struggle with aging. Beautiful Men had some good laughs, but the story mostly left me cold. I guess male menopause is not really something to which I fully relate yet.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #5 out of 5

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Oscar Nominations 2024: 8 of 11

And now for the remaining three animated features, with thoughts on two non-nominated animated features at the bottom:

Inside Out 2

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Kelsey Mann

Cast: Amy Poehler, Maya Hawke, Kensington Tallman, Tony Hale, Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Ayo Edibiri, Liza Lapira, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Kyle MacLachlan, Diane Lane, Paul Walter Hauser 

Booooooo. I can't understand why we needed this film or why anyone liked it. Well, actually, no: I understand why people liked it, but I did not. This film repeats almost beat for beat the plot of the first Inside Out, and so I was, to put it mildly, completely bored. Worse yet, this movie purports to be about understanding teenagers, about exploring a teenager's emotional world, but it isn't about that. Instead, we don't follow the teenager at the center of the film or identify with her at all; we identify with a group of people trying to take care of that teenager, keep her out of trouble, make her happy, and turn her into a successful young person. In other words, the audience is asked to identify as her parents. The feelings that are supposedly the teenager's feelings are actually not hers at all; they're her parents'. I resent this bait and switch, and I am opposed to this movie; I think it's one of the worst of the year. 

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #95 out of 98

Vengeance Most Fowl

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Merlin Crossingham, Nick Park

Cast: Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel, Reece Shearsmith

Wallace & Gromit encounter AI. This is charming and cute, and it has some excellent jokes. That Gromit is the most lovable, expressive pup! He speaks no words but his cute little face says it all. This is a long-awaited new Wallace and Gromit feature, and we should all be glad we have it. I think this captures the magic of the previous W&G shorts and features, and the AI touch really makes things interesting. I also gotta say: I love that villainous penguin. He's so terrible but also so funny. Sweet, patient, longsuffering Gromit is the best thing in this, though. He's the star of the movie, but he's also... Well, listen. He's the mother we never had, the sister everybody would want. He's the friend that everybody deserves. Frankly, I don't know a better person. This can't win the Oscar. It's a strong year for animated films this year. But this is a worthy entry in the canon.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #53 out of 98

Memoir of a Snail

1 nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Adam Elliot

Cast: Sarah Snook, Jacki Weaver, Eric Bana, Dominique Pinon, Saxon Wright

I liked how sex positive this was—it's easily the most sex-positive of the five animated features, and maybe the most sex-positive of all the Oscar nominees this year—but mostly I thought Memoir of a Snail was rather dreary. It is an occasionally funny film, but overall this is a very depressing memoir. I was disappointed that this took the fifth Animated Feature slot, even though I expected it. The thing is, there were two other really wonderful animated features this year that got zero end-of-year press, and both were better than Inside Out 2 and Memoir of a Snail. Please go watch Mars Express and Chicken for Linda! The first is visually stunning with exquisite worldbuilding; Mars Express is a very smart movie about AI. It’s the kind of intelligent, generous, and humane exploration of AI that we need. But this movie is also a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants action–crime thriller that kept me guessing and surprised me constantly. It's great stuff; easily the second-best animated film of the year. The other movie I need to recommend is Chicken for Linda! This is absolutely beautiful while also very funny. It’s a madcap farce about dealing with death. And it’s a children’s movie that is actually from the perspective of the kids!—unlike so many US American animated films that purport to be about kids.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #79 out of 98

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Oscar Nominations 2024: 7 of 11

Another group with one of my top films of the year in it. See, the Academy did some things right:

The Seed of the Sacred Fig (دانه‌ی انجیر معابد)

1 nomination

• International Feature: Germany (The Teacher's Lounge, All Quiet on the Western Front, Never Look Away, Toni Erdmann, The White Ribbon, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, Downfall, Nowhere in Africa, Beyond Silence, Schtonk, The Nasty Girl)

Director: Mohammad Rasoulof

Cast: Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Setareh Maleki, Mahsa Rostami, Niousha Akhshi, Reza Akhlaghirad, Shiva Ordooie

This is one of the best movies of the year. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is not fucking around. This is a tense, extraordinary thriller about the present moment in Iran. This is a film invested in justice and truth and opposed to the theocratic regime in Iran. It stages really brilliantly the way that patriarchy as an ideology must insist upon controlling others, the way it damages the world, and the way patriarchy cleverly and insidiously frames everything as "for your own good" and "really doing this all for you" because those who are not "adult" (whatever that means) and "male" (they're happy to exclude people from this category as well) couldn't possibly make decisions for themselves and couldn't possibly understand the world that we all live in. Mohammad Rasoulof's film is not only tense and exciting and smart, it also analyzes this world and this ideology, taking it to its logical conclusion. The movie itself was made in secret and then smuggled out of Iran, but the film's editor—who, frankly, also deserves an Oscar nomination—has edited in smartphone footage of protests, police violence, forced disappearances, and killings that were taken by people in Iran living under this regime. Although the movie takes a slight turn toward melodrama and chase scenes by its final act, I can't say I minded at all. The movie already had me in its grip long before that.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #6 out of 98

Pigen med Nålen (The Girl with the Needle)

1 nomination

• International Feature: Denmark (Flee, Another Round, Under the Sand, A War, The Hunt, A Royal Affair, In a Better World, After the Wedding, Memories of a Marriage, Pelle the Conqueror, Babette's Feast, Harry and the Butler, Paw, Qivitoq: the Mountain Wanderer)

Director: Magnus von Horn

Cast: Vic Carmen Sonne, Trine Dyrholm, Besir Zeciri, Ava Knox Martin, Joachim Fjelstrup, Tessa Hoder, Benedikte Hansen, Per Thiim Thim

I am honestly stunned that this movie was nominated for International Feature. Not that it isn't a good movie; it's a good movie. But it's a really rough watch. As I wrote in my earlier review of this movie, I loved the score of this, and I loved it's insanely expressionist visuals. I also adored the central performances—particularly Trine Dyrholm's—but this is a bleak, dark, terrifying post-war portrait, and it doesn't really see a way out of the terror it portrays. Like... is there any way a movie called The Girl with the Needle isn't about murdered infants? Because that is definitely what this is about. What Magnus von Horn does so well, though, is to create in addition a kind of wonderful visual puzzle, where we see things in a distorted way: faces overlap and begin to look like other faces, we hallucinate along with the main character as she drugs herself, the world of the film reflects the distortion already present in society. I certainly appreciated this; I'm just not sure there's much to enjoy, if you know what I mean. It's just a really strange choice for the Academy. I was surprised it made the December shortlist, and I'm surprised it made the list of nominees. Anyway, it has no chance of winning the Oscar, and I find its inclusion here really shocking.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #42 out of 98

Gladiator II

1 nomination

• Costume Design: Dave Crossman (Napoleon) & Janty Yates (Napoleon, Gladiator)

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington, Connie Nielsen, Fred Hechinger, Joseph Quinn, Matt Lucas, Derek Jacobi, Tim McInnerny, Lior Raz, Peter Mensah, Alexander Karim, Yuval Gonen

Although I thought this movie was sort of bland and generic—I thought the same about Ridley Scott's last movie, Napoleon, as well—all of its technical elements were fairly wonderful. I loved Harry Gregson-Williams' score; I loved the production design; I loved the costumes; I even loved the special effects (except for those fucking sharks in the naumachia). I also really enjoyed (most of) the acting. Fred Hechinger and Joseph Quinn were very good, and Denzel chewed the scenery in the most pleasurable way. The movie itself has lots of problems, but it isn't quite bad. It just doesn't really live up to the promise of a fun romp through the Roman empire. It's not quite fun enough, you know? But this costume design nomination is well deserved, and actually I'm a bit surprised this didn't land one or two more below-the-line nominations. It at least should have gotten more nominations—three—than Napoleon did last year. Not that it will win anything. It won't.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #59 out of 98

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Oscar Nominations 2024: 6 of 11

We've made it to the single-digit movies, and this is another group with one of my top films of the year in it:

Straume (Flow)

2 nominations

• International Feature: Latvia (1st time nominee)
• Animated Feature

Director: Gints Zilbalodis

Cast: N/A

The reason that every critics group said that Flow was the best animated film of the year is because it is the best animated film of the year. It's not going to win the Oscar, and that's just absurd, honestly. This movie is wonderful. It's a deeply moving, heartwarming, scary, and also quite funny odyssey as a cat experiences an apocalypse, an apparently worldwide flood that drowns everything. But this is not an adventure film so much as it is a film about working together, living together, being together. Flow also has wonderfully spiritual sequences. It's just exquisite. As for the nomination for International Feature, this is Latvia's first nomination, which is cool, but I am surprised by this nomination. A few years ago, when this award was called "Best Foreign Language Picture", Flow would have been disqualified for having no dialogue. Apparently that rule is out with the change in award title. I'm not mad, either way, because this movie is in my top ten for the year.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Animated Feature

My rating: #8 out of 97

September 5

1 nomination

• Original Screenplay: Moritz Binder & Alex David & Tim Fehlbaum

Director: Fehlbaum

Cast: John Magaro, Peter Sarsgaard, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch, Marcus Rutherford, Benjamin Walker, Georgina Rich, Zinedine Soualem, Cory Johnson, Rony Herman

This movie is tight and clever and absolutely never feels exploitative. Instead it feels really smart about the violence at its center despite the fact that this is a thriller about telling a good story via television news. I think my favorite part of this is how careful and intelligent it is. For one thing, the movie demonstrates that "terrorist" comes into being to describe these particular guerrillas in the 1970s, which is super interesting. September 5 also make the argument that this didn’t need to happen if these local Munich police had been better, if the Germans hadn’t also already attempted to commit genocide a mere thirty years prior, and if the Israeli government would have negotiated. It really puts this violence in context in a very smart way, I think. But this is also gripping drama, even though most of us probably know how it ends. The acting is really fucking fantastic too, and John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, and Leonie Benesch are absolutely great. I was very into this.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #27 out of 97

Maria

1 nomination

• Cinematography: Edward Lachman (El Conde, Carol, Far from Heaven)

Director: Pablo Larraín

Cast: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Stephen Ashfield, Vincent Macaigne, Lydia Koniordu

I wrote in my initial thoughts on this movie, that it is overwrought and melodramatic and excessive, but that to me it seemed to get to something true after all. Everyone I've spoken to about this film, though, has found the film to be fairly bad. I kinda get it, but I didn't hate this. I love me some Angelina, and I adore Maria Callas, so I was bound to mostly like this, I guess. Ed Lachman definitely deserves his nomination here—his second in two years after not being nominated for twenty years!—and indeed the visuals really were the most stunning part of Maria.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #65 out of 97

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Oscar Nominations 2024: 5 of 11

This next group includes two of my favorite movies of the year:

Nickel Boys

2 nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Joslyn Barnes & RaMell Ross (1st time nominees)

Director: Ross

Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Jimmie Fails, Daveed Diggs, Craig Tate, Najah Bradley, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Luke Tennie, Bryant Tardy, Trey Perkins, Sean Tyrik, Gralen Bryant Banks

RaMell Ross’s film takes a little getting used to. It’s shot from a first-person perspective, and it also jumps around in time. Which is to say that I spent the first second or two of each shot—a good deal of the film—figuring out what I was watching. The overall effect is unsettling and mysterious—one just isn’t used to watching a film this way—and eventually this all had a hypnotic effect on me. The cinematography works like a spell on the viewer, and I began to feel a bit like I was in a dream or as if I was in the way it feels to remember something that one only half-remembers or wants to forget. Nickel Boys is emotionally powerful and smart. The sequences, especially, with the men long after they’ve left the prison, are deeply moving, and I thought Craig Tate gave us a wonderful performance in Older Chickie Pete. I fell hard for this and have moved it to my #1 for the year. It's just so ambitious and exciting and intriguing while also being smart and emotionally moving. The fact that this got nominated for Best Picture is a real win. I think it speaks very well of the Academy, honestly. I must admit that I am surprised that this isn't nominated in the Cinematography category, but who knows what those guys were thinking. I am also very, very puzzled that Nickel Boys is not on the Best Picture list for the Image Awards, which seems really strange. But this movie has run a very strange campaign, and the movie was only wide in theatres in late January. It feels to me like this should have done better in awards season all around. But, hey, a good movie is its own award, and this movie is great.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Adapted Screenplay

My rating: #1 out of 97

The Apprentice

2 nominations

• Actor: Sebastian Stan (1st time nominee)
• Supporting Actor: Jeremy Strong (1st time nominee)

Director: Ali Abassi

Cast: Stan, Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan, Catherine McNally, Charlie Carrick, Mark Rendal, Ben Sullivan

This is a really strange movie. Like Ali Abassi’s previous movie, Holy Spider, The Apprentice mainly follows a person whom we are supposed to understand as reprehensible. In this case it is a young Donald J. Trump, who will learn how to be evil, selfish, and petty from the American Republican bureaucrat and lawyer Roy Cohn. Well, no, DJT doesn’t learn how to be selfish and petty from Cohn, but he does learn some very important tactics related to blackmail and other villainies. He also adopts wholesale Cohn's three rules for life—attack attack attack, never admit wrongdoing, always claim victory. Sebastian Stan is honestly quite good in this, offering us a very human portrayal of a rather soulless individual, while the film goes about its business critiquing him. I was less impressed with Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn, which is much more subdued than the men played by James Woods in Citizen Cohn or Al Pacino in Angels in America, but who knows: maybe Strong’s Cohn is the more realistic of the three. (I haven’t seen either of the two famous Roy Cohn documentaries, Where's My Roy Cohn? or Bully. Coward. Victim., because I don’t like documentaries and I hate Roy Cohn.) Either way Cohn was an evil, horrible man. And The Apprentice outlines just how much of an influence he was on DJT. And overall I think this is actually an interesting film despite its awful subject matter and occasionally strange tone.

Will win: N/A

Could win: N/A

My rating: #60 out of 97

A Real Pain

2 nominations

• Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin (1st time nominee)
• Original Screenplay: Jesse Eisenberg (1st time nominee in this category)
  

Director: Eisenberg

Cast: Eisenberg, Culkin, Liza Sadovy, Daniel Oreskes, Will Sharpe, Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, Ellora Torchia

This is simple and sweet and very funny. I also found this deeply, profoundly moving with some really excellent performances. Kieran Culkin gives a great lead actor performance, for which he will win a supporting actor Oscar, but the acting is wonderful all around, and the movie is one of the best of the year. It's in my top ten, and it really ought to have made it into the Academy's top ten, too. Still, I'm glad Eisenberg got a screenplay nomination at least. It's well deserved. This movie is absolutely great.

Will win: Supporting Actor

Could win: N/A

My rating: #7 out of 97

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

3. The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight