The spoiler that made Together my first Australian #1

Here we are on my final post that puts a bow on 2025 by taking a deeper dive into my #1 and how it came to reach that height. Some years my #1 inspires me to write about a larger, related topic that delves into my ranking history, but this year, the movie itself contains a ton of things I still want to write about. So I'll use this space to do so.

Up front, though: Because I mentioned spoilers in the subject of this post, I should tell you that I won't be properly spoiling Together until the fourth of these four segments. Things get progressively more spoiler-y through the segments, so if you haven't seen the movie and you sense yourself starting to get exposed to things you don't want to be exposed to, you can bow out then. 

My first Australian #1

Usually when I get the email that contains the nominees for this year's Australian Film Critics Association awards, which mostly focus on films with a strong Australian connection (they do have one "international" category so they can include something like One Battle After Another), it's a bunch of fringe nominees indeed. Yes an Elvis sometimes sneaks its way in there, but this list is usually comprised of films made by, but also only seen by, Australians. I've heard of these movies because I live in Australia, but most outside Australia won't know them from a hole in the ground.

That email has not yet come out this year, but it when it does, I suspect it will include my #1 movie of the year. 

You wouldn't know Michael Shanks' Together was Australian on the surface of it. The stars, Alison Brie and Dave Franco, are both American, and though the film never specifies its location, everyone else in the movie speaks with an American accent. The only real settings are an urban area (for a very short time at the beginning) and a rural area (for the rest of the movie).

But the keen observer will note Australian actor Damon Herriman as essentially the only other prominent actor in the cast. While him being Australian does not, of course, limit him to appearing in Australian movies -- Herriman was also Charles Manson in Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- it does make you wonder if, indeed, it might have been shot in his home country.

Well Shanks is also Australian, and I would assume most of the crew are as well, because it doesn't make sense to import Americans to do jobs Australians can do perfectly well. So it's also shot here, and I discovered recently that one of the producers is a neighbor of mine in the town where I live, and also friends on Facebook with some of my friends. (Hi Mike Cowap, if you're reading this. I don't know you but I hope to meet you sometime soon.)

Needless to say, I've never had an Australian #1 before. While this movie is not "Australian" in the sense of being set in Australia within its own world, it's a full-on Australian production, and that definintely counts. 

Because I've got a lot of other things to write about here, I won't go through and figure out how high an Australian movie has gotten previously in my rankings, but another one that was produced here but set in America -- the aforementioned Elvis -- did make my top ten a few years ago. In terms of movies actually set in Australia, Sweet Country was a top 20 movie for me in 2017. 

Does this mean I'm finally embracing the country that has been my home for going on 13 years now? That wouldn't really be an accurate conclusion. I mean, the fact that this movie hails from Australia is very much extra-textual to the movie. But I do appreciate the symbolic value of it, and hopefully my next Australian #1 will even take place here. 

Dave Franco equals his big brother

James Franco has fallen on hard times, to put it mildly, but he'll always have a place in my personal cinematic history in that he was the star of one of my past #1 movies, 2010's 127 Hours. That means I've got his name in a spreadsheet where I track people to see if they might eventually appear in more than one. 

Fifteen years later, Dave Franco has now achieved the same thing. Barring a big comeback from James that might only result from a very sincere apology tour, Dave seems like the only one who will have the chance to ever appear in another.

I don't specifically have a lot to say about this, but I did think it was worth making a quick mention in a post where I am touting Together's feats.

Body dysmorphia goes back-to-back

I don't know if you remember when I wrote this post last year after naming The Substance my #1 of 2024, but the premise of that post was that a horror movie had gone back-to-back with my #1 of 2023, Skinamarink, which was quite a surprise since I had never previously named a horror movie as my #1. I then went on to try to explore if The Substance was "really" a horror movie or if it was just body horror. Yes I considered that distinction pretty carefully. 

Well now, in the space of just a little more than two years, if you count January of 2024 and January of 2026 as bracketing that period, horror has gone from a #1 underdog to a #1 favorite. This is the third straight year you could describe my #1 as horror. I mean, Together is more definitely a horror than The Substance.

But even more so, it is a body horror, and even more so, it is a body horror in which body dysmorphia is a prominent theme. 

Some of the discussions of the body dysmorphia get into my next section where the real spoilers start, so let me get into the other similarities I noticed with The Substance that suggest I am definitely predisposed to this sort of movie:

1) Both movies have essentially three actors, with all other parts barely even being speaking roles.

2) In both movies, there is a central dynamic between two characters, and a third supporting character who acts on them as a catalyst. 

3) In both movies, those two characters are concerned about things that are happening physically to their bodies. 

4) Both movies feature some sort of physical monstrosity, but that's all I'll say about that at the moment. 

Let's stop dancing around it and go on to the next and final section ...

The final shot of Together that blew my mind

SPOILER ALERT.

So when anyone asks me why this seemingly ordinary horror movie became my #1 of the year, and they don't care about having it spoiled, the experience I'm about to recount with the movie is what I'll point them to. Hello, you, if you are reading now and this describes you. 

So just to clearly establish where we are in the story ... 

Millie (Brie) and Tim (Franco), who have been dating for years and living in the city, move to the country so she can take up a teaching job. His attempts to succeed as a musician have basically failed, and he's belatedly accepted her proposal, made in front of all their friends, to live together? get married? it's not entirely clear. What's clear is he did initially botch the acceptance of the proposal, leading to considerable awkwardness in the moment. Obviously there's something about taking his relationship with Millie any further that is scaring him. 

After moving to the country, Tim and Millie are on a hike and they fall into a hole in the ground where they come into contact with a mysterious force that causes their bodies to start to fuse together. We already know this force is pretty dangerous as we see what happened to two dogs who drank the same water that Tim and Millie drank. We also know there are some other hikers who were reported missing in this area. We'll meet them later.

Tim has shown commitment jitters the whole time, and won't have sex with Millie, which makes her somewhat more receptive to the friendliness/flitrations of a senior teacher at the school, Jamie (Herriman), who we later learn is gay so Tim actually didn't have anything to worry about. But Tim gets jealous anyway. 

The worse problem, though, is the steady attempts of their biology to fuse together, which once happens while they're having sex, and other times when they're sleeping. It gets so bad that their bodies are literally pulled together as if by unseen forces. The force is so powerful that it sends them into a bit of a trance, leading to a memorable scene of Tim in the shower and Millie against a frosted glass door. 

Eventually it seems like one of them will have to sacrifice themselves to save the other. They both try to do it, which is a touching indication of how much they actually do love each other. But then, to prevent Millie from dying of what should be a fatal knife wound, Tim decides to just let their bodies merge. This is accompanied by the great needle drop of "2 Become 1" by the Spice Girls, which we earlier learned was Millie's favorite band. Yes, this movie has a sense of humor, and we start to see the bodies fuse beyond the point of no return. We already saw this happen earlier with the hikers, so we know it doesn't end well. 

What seems like it will just be a button is Millie's parents later arriving at the house for a Sunday lunch, one she's mentioned twice previously in the narrative. I think we're meant to assume it's the first time they've been to the couple's new country home. After they've rung the bell, we're bracing ourselves for what deformed freak is going to answer the door. After all, we saw both the dogs and the hikers that previously fused together into an unspeakable monstrosity.

The person who answers the door is:

A non-binary person, who says to their parents, casually, "Hey."

Roll credits. 

This is not Alison Brie. This is not Dave Franco. This is a different actor, and a different person entirely. 

Suddenly I realized that this movie was operating as an allegory for coming out as a trans person. 

And then I started to backtrack.

If I rewound 30 seconds -- in my mind only, since I saw this in the theater -- I realized that when Millie's parents got out of the car, they looked a little nervous but cautiously optimistic. It was not a look they'd have on their faces just from visiting their daughter's new home for the first time. It might be a look they'd have if they had been quarreling with her and this was an olive branch by both parties, but that's not something that was mentoned in the narrative. 

No, this is a look the parents would have if they were meeting their daughter for the first time after the daughter had come out either as non-binary or as a trans man. 

And this is what probably got me about that: One of my big emotional triggers is when a parent accepts their gay, trans or non-binary child. I can't explain exactly why this is an emotional trigger for me, because I don't have anyone in my family who can be described that way. But maybe it's just that as a parent, I hope I would do the same thing in their position, even if I were scared and even if I didn't fully understand. I would hope I would just love them unconditionally.

And it's unconditional love we see on the faces of Millie's parents, mixed in with their nervousness and cautious optimism.

So then I rewound a little further and remembered a line of dialogue earlier that told us what we were supposed to think about this visit by Millie's parents. It's the second time she mentioned it. In an argument with Tim, she said, "My parents are coming for lunch this weekend, and I don't think you should be here for that."

In other words, this alternate version of her should not be there. She was doubting she was ready to come out to them yet. 

We know she did eventually change her mind, and maybe "she" became a "they" when "two became one." Otherwise, Millie's parents would not have that look of nervousness and cautious optimism on their faces as they approached the house, ready to meet their daughter as a trans man or a non-binary person for the first time. 

On my second viewing, I couldn't map out everything perfectly. There's a subplot about Tim's recently deceased parents that seems like a red herring in terms of this interpretation of the movie. Unless ... unless you see this as a projection of the fact that Millie's parents might be "dead to her," in a sense, if they do not accept her new publicly presented identity. 

But I think that's because Together doesn't want this to be the only interpretation of the movie. On Filmspotting when talking about Weapons, Josh Larsen recently said that a school shooting metaphor was an "available" interpretation of the movie. I think Shanks and company also wanted the trans allegory to be an "available" interpretation of their movie, not the only one -- but with plenty of Easter eggs for those wanting to follow that interpretation to its logical ends. Such as:

1) There's a scene earlier in the film when a slightly possessed Tim, who is basically becoming sickened by his compulsion to be near Millie, arrives at her school to finally have sex with her. They run into a nearby available bathroom to do this, but of course, this is a school bathroom used by students, and we see a pair of young feet appear outside the cubicle, wondering what's going on inside there. When Millie emerges by herself, leaving Tim to remain hiding, we realize that this is a boys bathroom, and the senior teacher, Jamie, says to her, trying to put her transgression in context, "Miss Wilson, this is a bathroom for little boys." On the surface, yes, this is a problem because it suggests an inappropriate relationship between an adult and a child. But if you are already looking at this as a trans allegory, it's a moment of shame for Millie because she is trying to use a different bathroom from her biological gender assignment. 

2) Then there's Jamie. Is it a coincidence that Jamie has a name that could belong equally well to a man or a woman? I think it isn't. Part of the character's function in the story can be interpreted as trying to draw Millie out and show her it's okay to come out as trans. We are very much meant to believe this is a journey Jamie already went through, which is hidden within a plot about the cult that used to operate out of the cave where Tim and Millie drank that poisonous water.

3) In this allegory, Millie is the "real" character and Tim is an embodiment of the potential future version of herself. She's trying to get Tim to "commit" to being the forward-facing personality, and Tim's refusal to do so is the thing that saddens her so much. But it's really Millie who can't commit, and Tim is just the symbol of her struggle. Although Tim is not portrayed effeminately in any clear way -- remember, this is a Trojan horse interpretation built into this otherwise mainstream movie -- some of his costume choices and hairstyle choices read as androgynous, if you are looking for this. 

4) When both Tim and Millie try to save each other at the end, it could be interpreted as the character's flirtation with suicide. We know that a person with this sort of body dysmorphia, who does not believe they can come out as another gender becaue of how their loved ones will react, often considers suicide. So the decision to finally come out is akin to the choice not to go through with the suicide. So in a way, the new half of the personality has saved the original one from extinction. The character's journey is to realize that selecting to present yourself as a different gender, or no gender at all, does not mean that the world will view you as an unspeakable monstrosity. 

I could go on, but you get the idea. 

If you've seen the movie, and you either didn't see this, or saw it but didn't think it worked, or saw it and thought it worked within the context of the movie but you don't care about this as a mission for a movie, that's fine. You do you. I'll just say that for me, this was a revelatory way of sneaking in a hidden intepretation of a movie that doesn't demand to be dealt with, but is "available" if you want it.

It doesn't even matter that the hidden interpretation was about a trans person considering coming out. I know that could make it divisive to some viewers. What matters, to me, is that it's got a hidden interpretation at all. The fact that this hidden interpretation also has a socially forward function that I embrace, and that this can therefore be seen as an extremely happy ending, just makes it all the better in terms of my appreciation. 

And you know what? Maybe it isn't even the only hidden interpretation in Together. It's just the only one I happened to excavate. 

Movies that operate on multiple levels, with multiple available interpretations to different viewers, are always the best uses of the unique tool that is cinema. 

The fact that I didn't even realize it was doing it until the very final shot?

Well for me, that's something worth celebrating by making it my #1 of the year.

Someone for everyone

Here is the first of the two things I thought to blog about on Sunday night, the only of the two I decided was actually worth writing about. (It's debatable, at least on the topic of taste. You'll see what I mean in a moment.)

The best makeup Oscar win for The Substance (yes, here I am writing about The Substance again, even though I said I was putting it in my penalty box) has become an effective universal spoiler for the end of the movie. This happens sometimes and I guess is inevitable. Whereas if you win for best makeup for a movie about dwarves and elves, it's not such a surprise because everyone knew from the trailers there are dwarves and elves in the movie. Not so much for Monstro Elisasue, who was a surprise to all of us when we first saw The Substance. 

By necessity, that surprise no longer exists for anyone who watched the Oscars. I guess there comes a point where you've either seen the movie, or you're never gonna see it in its pure, unspoiled form.

While watching Scoot Cooper's Antlers -- a movie where a human being transforms into a wendigo, a Native American creature with the titular antlers -- my mind drifted back to the climactic transformation in The Substance. What can I say, The Substance, I just can't quit you. (Or maybe I'm doubling down because since the last time I wrote about it, a friend told me that he had hated it.)

And it got me thinking of another favorite, this time an old favorite, which I'll reveal in a moment. 

Although Elisabeth Sparkle's romantic life is a secondary consideration in The Substance -- she is more concerned with the love of the public than the love of a single romantic partner -- the subject is actually touched on in enough ways for us to consider it an underlying theme. 

The first potential romantic partner we get for her is someone she sort of dismisses out of hand before circling back to him. That's her awkward, balding, unattractive classmate who is nice but -- as my wife pointed out -- serves as an embodiment of the world's reaction to Elisabeth, because he continues commenting on her looks. He's played by Edward Hamilton-Clark, who looks like this:

(And thanks again, Stan, for having this movie so I can easily get this and the following two pictures.)

Of course, Elisabeth ends up standing up this man -- Fred by name -- not because of him, but because of herself. It's right before she's supposed to go out that she has her breakdown at the mirror and starts trying to scrub her face off. 

When Elisabeth is moonlighting as Sue, there's an unsurprising uptick in the caliber of men she's with -- at least in terms of looks if not character. Here is what the two guys we see her with, played by Oscar Lesage and Hugo Diego Garcia, look like:

The penultimate transformation for Elisabeth occurs while the second guy is in the house with her. It is implied though never stated -- this movie does not need to state anything when it can show us so much -- that the craggy, troll version of Elisabeth we have now will never be capable of a romantic relationship again. 

But why should that be the case? The old saying is that there is someone out there for everyone. 

Even as Monstro Elisasue, she's still delicately trying to pierce various ear-like appendages on what passes as a head with earrings. She still fancies herself someone who can be beautiful.

So why couldn't she still hook up with this guy?

(It probably would have been best just to drop the mic there -- albeit feeling a slight bit of poor taste over the implied body shaming of people with birth defects -- but because some of my younger readers might not know who this is, I thought I had to tell you that this is Sloth from The Goonies, as played by John Matuszak.)

The streaming culprit has been identified

The only "Oscars homework" I did over the weekend was for pleasure. 

No, I didn't put in a last-minute viewing of any movies I might not have seen, in order to better make predictions about tonight's Oscars, or to feel myself more engaged in them.

Instead, I rewatched my favorite best picture nominee with my wife, which happened to be my #1 movie of last year.

And it looked great.

Yes, yet another post about The Substance on this blog, but I will probably retire the topic for a while now. I don't expect to talk about it much in the next piece, my annual "Oscar thoughts" piece, which will come many hours after the ceremony ends. Which is because for the first time in three years, the Oscars do not coincide with Labor Day here in Australia. That means I'm working today, and even after I finish work, I have two different sporting events to attend, one in which I'm just a spectator and one in which I'm participating. My 14-year-old has a basketball game at 6:05, and about a half-hour after that ends, I'll be playing tennis with my tennis partner. Then, sometime after 9 p.m. local time, I will finally watch the show.

Anyway, The Substance will come up in that post I'm sure, but possibly only in the context of Demi Moore winning, which I predict will happen. (And was reminded why she should win when I watched the film again.) After that, I'll probably put it in my personal penalty box for a while -- a term used by the hosts of Filmspotting when they've been talking about a particular movie too much. (This is my sixth post on The Audient to have gotten "the substance" as a content label.)

Before getting sidetracked, I said a few paragraphs ago that Coralie Fargeat's film looked great, and that's what I want to come back around to explain now.

A couple times in the past few weeks I have made mention of The Substance's pending arrival on my Australian streaming service Stan, and how I wasn't sure if I could watch it because the stream on Stan looked so shit. Of course, proper scientific testing ruled out Stan as the culprit, and seemed to rule in another culprit, Fetch, which is a sort of AppleTV-like product through which you play other streaming apps, such as Stan.

Wrong again.

On Thursday night I decided to do some further testing, as I really didn't want to have to hook up somebody's laptop to the TV through an HDMI cable in order to watch The Substance with my wife on Friday night. She had agreed to the viewing -- even to starting it just after 8 o'clock due to the length of the movie -- and this was my chance to get it right and make the experience involve as little pain as possible. Other than, that is, the pain, both physical and emotional, we would be seeing on screen.

So I took another stroll through my TV's various settings, both the TV itself and Fetch, and I just could not get a better idea of what to do. My 11-year-old was on the couch with me, and he put in his two cents as well. But not even the advanced technical knowledge of today's youngest generation could figure out the issue. 

Then I finally got the brainstorm that cracked the case: I needed to connect Fetch to a different HDMI port on my TV. HDMI 3 was available, as we only ever use it when the kids connect their Nintendo Switch to the TV, which they do less and less these days, as they are generally happy to just hold it in their hands. 

And suddenly, all of it -- Stan, Fetch and The Substance -- looked great. 

I do not, as of now, know why HDMI 2 looks so terrible and HDMI 1 and 3 look so great, but I also do not care. I just switched it to another port and voila, problem solved. That night I watched an old favorite, Shattered Glass, that was streaming on Stan, just to prove it was all better. And the movie looked good -- well, as good as a movie made in 2003, which was not particularly focused on looking good, could look.

I do know, now, that there is probably a setting I could tweak that relates to that HDMI port itself, a setting that is currently out of sync with the same setting on the other HDMI ports. But I have not bothered to figure that out yet.

The reason I know this is that HDMI 3 was once the red-headed stepchild of this TV's HDMI ports, because an incorrect setting in the aspect ratio was once cutting off some of the image on that port. For a long time I thought this was just a hardware error in the port, until one day I finally saw I could make an adjustment, and the port was back to performing at the same level as its brethren.

I know that HDMI 2 will someday be redeemed, but for now, it can just take a little break and sit in the corner to think about what it's done.

For a post posting on the actual day of the Oscars, I thought I should probably write a bit more about The Substance itself, so I will. However, as I was watching, I didn't know how I'd limit my thoughts to just a few. Things kept on popping up into my head, ways to name the piece, etc. I ultimately went with naming the piece after fixing the streaming issue, and I'll try to keep the rest of my thoughts fairly limited as well.

1) First, the rejected titles for this post, which I don't need to explicate at length, but you can probably imagine the things I might have said about the movie based on these titles. One was "The weirdest best picture nominee ever?" Which indeed, The Substance might be. It's crazy that a critical mass of people in the film community embraced this movie as a standard bearer for their brand. One was "A constant state of exhilaration," which was, indeed, the way I watched this movie. I think there was one other but I am forgetting it now.

2) On this viewing I particularly noticed some of the regular motifs that seem to be beyond the film's most obvious themes. One of my favorites was how Fargeat keeps going to insert shots of palm trees at night, which ends up being the final thing Elisabeth Sparkle lays her eyes on in this movie. They are at once an encapsulation of the glamor of a place like Los Angeles, and a sense of how it is distant, out of your reach. If you want to start spinning off into theories about this, it could be the idea that most of what's taking place in the film is a flashback, and the shots of the palm trees are what's occurring in Elisabeth's present tense as she confronts what happens to her at the end of the movie. This viewing convinced me that the movie is even more totally metaphor or totally fantasy even than I first thought.

3) If we are looking for more direct visual embodiments of the themes, I love the shot where Elisabeth sees the fly that landed in her former boss' glass of wine at their final dinner as colleagues. The fly is making strokes in the liquid at first, dutifully trying to escape from its watery death bed, until it inevitably consumes more sugary broth than it can handle and stops swimming. This is a world where you greedily drink in everything that is offered until it kills you, perhaps without even noticing that's about to happen.

4) The oppressive score stood out to me more on this viewing as well. The sort of harrowing metallic scratches that sound a bit like a biohazard alarm, those kind of sounds were the foundation of my now three-decade love affair with industrial music. (We're talking mostly Nine Inch Nails here, but I appreciate the imitators as well.)

5) Another rejected title for this post deserves its own separate entry. The title would have been something like "No problem with a big ending," because during the film, I realized that wild endings that don't work for everybody -- which is how my wife felt about this ending, despite saying she "really, really liked" the film -- don't seem to sidetrack me too much. I guess it depends on the circumstances, but I think both my #1 of 2018 and my #1 of 2020 -- First Reformed and I'm Thinking of Ending Things -- ended in ways that left some viewers perplexed, and may have ultimately turned them against the movie. For me, the ending of First Reformed is perfect, though I am a little less sold on both Ending Things and The Substance. With Charlie Kaufman's film, it's more "I love it despite the perplexing ending." With Fargeat's film, it's "I don't know if she needed to go that extra step" -- you'll know what I'm talking about if you've seen The Substance -- "but I'm glad she just decided to go all out." And this viewing made me sure I was glad. 

I actually think I had other things to say, but some of them have escaped my head. Besides, you know I love this movie. I thought it was important to let you know, though, that I may love it even more on the second viewing.

Because second viewings of favorite films do create some trepidation in us. What if it's not as good as I thought it was?

In the case of The Substance, it was as good as I thought it was -- in fact, it was better than I thought it was. All that time I spent slightly fretting about whether a better 2024 movie would come along was wasted fretting, because it should have been evident to me that this was my #1 from the moment I saw it. In fact, I'm now wondering if it has a serious leg up on other films from this decade -- something I think of now that we are closer to the end of the 2020s than the beginning. 

And fortunately, I had an excellent stream of it on Stan to help confirm that. 

Okay, now it's really time for The Substance to go in the penalty box. 

Stan claims a best picture nominee as its own

Stan was cleared of any wrongdoing in "the great Eat Pray Love streaming scandal" of earlier this month, but that doesn't necessarily mean all is well with the Australian streamer.

Except this time, I'm attacking them only for a silly marketing thing and perhaps a bit of excess and unwarranted pride.

You may recall, in the ultimately incorrect discussion of whether Stan streamed its movies at a sufficient quality (the fault with the poor stream lay elsewhere), that one of the things that gave me pause about unsubscribing from the service was that The Substance, my #1 of 2024, was about to start streaming there, and I really wanted to show it to my wife. It wasn't necessarily The Substance specifically that gave me pause, but the reminder that Stan has a definite benefit to me in that some movies become available there that aren't available on my other streamers, and may not be for some time. It being the #1 of my previous year just made for a quite prominent and well-timed example of that phenomenon.

My wife and I may watch it this coming weekend, but in the meantime, I came across the funny ad you see above.

You can read the surrounding content from one of my progressive news outlets, Daily Kos, if you want. But then come back to the ad.

Stan is calling The Substance a "brand new film." (More on my family's private joke about that particular phrasing later in the post.)

It's not the same as calling it a "Stan original film," which would definitely be a bridge too far. But the ad is attempting to deceive on some level, to take credit for a movie by implying a certain ownership or a certain exclusive right to make this film available to the world.

The Substance may be "new" in the broader, geological sense, and I would not harp on that phrasing if they just called it a "new film." But "brand" is a doubling down, a sense of underscoring its newness and pushing it out to the maximum end of that parameter. Something that's "brand" new, as opposed to just new, is something that you could not have accessed or experienced in any other way before now.

Not only is this patently wrong -- The Substance was released in Australia in September, having debuted at least a month before that at MIFF specifically and possibly at other festivals around the country, not to be mention becoming available for rental a couple months after that -- but even many casual readers of this ad would know it was wrong. 

If Stan has chosen to market The Substance heavily, as they should, it's because they know their viewers want to see it, as they should. But those viewers are inclined to see it because they have heard raves about it, and the more switched on of them -- they don't even need to be that switched on -- would know the movie has been nominated for multiple Oscars, including the top prize, and has already won a Golden Globe for Demi Moore's performance in addition to receiving several other nominations there. If you are even more switched on, you might be aware of the other awards it has won or where it has received nominations -- though by this point you'd probably be switched on enough to have already seen it.

So essentially, many of the people this ad is being pitched to would know it was trying to dupe them on some level, and that's not really a great place for any ad to be.

I said I'd get back to "brand new."

Stan has a lot of radio ads here for its offerings, and in that case they're more likely to be promotions of TV series, which likely still sell much better to customers than movies. The phrase "brand new" almost always makes its way into that ad copy, but a while back, at least a year ago, I noticed something about this ad copy that I pointed out to my kids, and especially the younger one brings it up regularly and thinks it's funny. 

While most people in the world contract those two words when they say them, so the D gets dropped and it sounds more like "brannew," the Stan ad copy reader went to broadcasting school, so of course he has to say the D. Which never doesn't sound awkward. He makes it sound less awkward because he's a professional, but try saying this out loud to yourself right there where your sit, only quietly, so the people around you don't think you're crazy. There's no way to pronounce the D in "brand new" without tripping up on the sound you are required to make in the middle and having the whole thing come out in sort of a sputter, when everyone knows what you're saying if you just say "brannew." In fact, I'd argue that if you say the D, it kind of doesn't actually sound like what you're trying to say, so rare is it. 

So when we call back to this, we always over-emphasize the sputtering D in the middle, like "bran-D-D-D-dnew." It never ceases to make us laugh. 

One final bit about The Substance while I have you, instead of creating a superfluous separate post on the topic. Actually two short bits:

1) I haven't read all the available writing on The Substance -- in fact, I haven't read 1% of it. But in the stuff I have read, I have never seen mentioned its similarity to a short film Coralie Fargeat made in 2014 called Reality+. A friend mentioned this similarity to me a couple days ago. Here is the plot synopsis for Reality+: 

"In a near future, the brain chip 'Reality+' acts on your sensory perceptions and allows you to see yourself with the perfect physique you've always dreamed of. All the people equipped with the chip can see your new appearance and you can see theirs. But the chip can only be activated for 12h a day..."

I almost snort-laughed to see how similar this is to The Substance, even down to the equal timeshare of the two modes. I can't necessarily use this as evidence of Fargeat's excessive fixation, since it's not uncommon for a director to build out an idea from one of their short films into feature length. I do think it's funny how little the concept has been modified. I don't watch a lot of short films but I may need to seek this one out.

2) Speaking of writing about The Substance, I just now noticed how much extra material there is in The Substance's Wikipedia entry, kind of like the written equivalent of all the DVD extras we used to get that expanded on how the film was made. I may have to set aside some time to read this at some point ... maybe either just before or just after the upcoming viewing with my wife. 

Horror goes back-to-back -- or does it?

If there is anything stranger than a horror movie taking my #1 spot in 2023, it's a second horror movie taking my #1 spot in 2024 -- when no movie with that genre tag had ever accomplished that feat before.

But is The Substance really a horror movie?

Skinamarink was/is, there's no doubt about that. But is it possible for a movie that's discussed by almost everyone as body horror, to not actually be part of the larger genre assignment in which body horror is presumably a subset? 

I think it's not only possible, but probable. 

Now, we know that at least for the purposes of Golden Globes consideration, The Substance was considered a comedy. I've always thought it was useful that the Globes breaks down its nominees between drama and musical/comedy, since it broadens the number of types of film on which they can shine the light of praise, beyond the five films that might fit into a single category. The Substance almost certainly would not have been recognised if there were only one category.

We can be snooty and cast serious doubt on whether we should grant the Globes any legitimacy whatsoever, but they do provide a useful role in helping us understand how we should think about a movie like The Substance. Although it is not "ha ha" funny in more than a few individual moments -- I think of that great moment where the already gnarled version of Elizabeth Sparkle storms out of her apartment and tells her neighbor to fuck off -- there is no doubt Coralie Fargeat's film is wicked in its intentions, and is a full-on satire even if it not a full-on comedy.

That does leave space for horror, and believe me, IMDB does assign that category to it. In fact, The Substance has a ridiculous number of categories assigned to it, four of which include the word "horror." In order of how they're listed, these are:

Body Horror
Dark Comedy
Monster Horror
Psychological Horror
Drama
Horror 
Sci-Fi

We can't necessarily trust whoever assigns the categories in IMDB, but the number of genre assignments alone -- more than I have seen for any other film -- probably indicates why this movie was such a fabulous success for me. After all, I've gone on the record saying I wanted my #1 movie to push the limits of an easy genre association, and The Substance passes that test with flying colors.

And despite the mention of horror four times in those categories, I still wonder if it is actually a horror movie.

Let's consider what makes a movie a horror movie. I'll start with the most obvious two:

1) It attempts to scare you by establishing a sense of dread, a sense of not knowing what might happen but knowing it will be bad.

2) It attempts to then spring that scary thing on you with a suddenness that makes you jump, which is why we call it a jump scare. 

These primary two building blocks of a horror more are, I would argue, not even present in The Substance.

Although Fargeat's film establishes a sense of eeriness, supported primarily through the facelessness of the company that provides Elizabeth the drug, nothing about what happens to Elizabeth Sparkle is supposed to be establishing a sense of dread. We might be discomfited by the grossness of it, but there are no things we can't see, hiding in the shadows, that might make the scenario more frightening. In fact, we are directly confronted with the things that happen to Elizabeth in so open a way that it is almost a case of over-sharing, while horror fundamentally relies on under-sharing.

Since there is nothing hiding in the shadows, there is nothing to jump out of those shadows. Therefore, no jump scares either.

Of course, to limit horror to those two basic components is to be rather reductive. I also, however, find it fairly useful in terms of deciding whether something is a horror movie or not. If you can think of any true horror movie that does not contain one or the other of these elements, I'd like to know what it is.

"Body horror," though, is absolutely an appropriate genre classification for The Substance, given how much body horror there is in this movie. Interestingly, this leads us to a distinction between the genre called "body horror" and the use of that phrase to describe something you specifically see within any movie. You can say that a movie contains body horror without actually being part of that genre. As a good example, there is body horror of a sort in the Deadpool movies in that the main character is always having awful things happen to his person. Yet you would not for a moment consider putting that as a genre tag on Deadpool & Wolverine. 

And yet if you were to say that The Substance contained body horror and yet was not part of the body horror genre, well that would be incorrect, now wouldn't it? I think it might have to do with the quantity of body horror. The Substance exceeds that standard by a country mile.

Then the question is, can a movie be in the body horror genre without being in the larger horror genre that surrounds it? 

I don't know if I have an answer to that, but then I can look back on the evidence of The Substance and how little effort it makes to "scare" us in the conventional ways that a standard horror movie scares us. Being a cautionary tale is not the same thing as being scary.

When it comes to the subject of body horror, you should always come back to David Cronenberg. The grandfather of body horror, the genre, includes body horror, the cinematic component, in almost every one of his films. Even A History of Violence has a knack for body horror -- remember seeing the close-up of that guy's face after Viggo Mortensen stomps it? 

Cronenberg's movie Existenz seems like a good example. Although I don't remember a lot of this movie, it is one of the first movies I think of when I think of the concept of body horror in the abstract. My memory of this film, though, is that it uses body horror more for the purposes of science fiction -- like The Matrix did -- than for anything that would truly be categorized as horror. And that provides a good template for what The Substance is, though in this case that primary genre might be satire.

Or it might be science fiction. Or it might be drama. Or it might be dark comedy. These are all possible genre associations for The Substance.

All these questions are to the good of Fargeat's movie. When trying to pick apart why a movie is my #1, our very inability to pigeonhole it is a strong asset in its favor. 

The only thing I know for sure -- and the only thing that really matters -- is that a really awesome movie has gone back-to-back with another really awesome movie.

I can't wait to see what awesome movie succeeds it in 2025. 

The style and substance of 2024

I didn't expect to set a ranking record in 2024.

Usually when you set a personal record on something -- say, a high score on a video game -- you have to have an exceptional go at it. You have to try really hard and narrowly avoid defeat on multiple occasions. The previous record was your record because it was hard to topple, but if you can get just the right set of circumstances to go your way, you can topple it.

Well, I never did anything like that in 2024. I never watched a stupid number of movies in a short time to try to goose my totals and get myself up into the range of setting a record. In fact, I was not conscious of any changes in my routine whatsoever. I guess the previous record was not so stalwart after all.

There are, however, two viable explanations for how I was able to surpass my previous record of 175 movies ranked, set in 2022, without a specific effort to do so:

1) I took four round-trip plane flights in 2024, two within my most recent trip, and two of them greater than eight hours in duration each way. I'm not sure if the first one really counts toward this effort, though, because it was back in April, when I doubt there were many if any movies from 2024 yet available on the plane. (Actually, I just checked, and I did watch Mean Girls on one of these flights.)

2) I rewatched a lot fewer movies in 2024 than I usually do. Those viewing hours have to go somewhere, and it's not like I'm going to allocate them to some non-screen-watching activity, now am I? And I don't do a lot of TV. 

This is not a record I wanted to set. As you may recall in the past, I've fretted about setting new viewing records, because I worry what it says about me and how I'm spending my finite time on this earth.

But as I was noticing the record was in range, I didn't shy away from it. In fact, I sort of leaned into it, in that there were a couple days in the past week where I watched two movies, up from my average of one per day. 

I guess I thought: "Well, I'm going to set the record anyway, why not set it in style?"

And also I thought: "There were a lot of good movies this year, and there are still more, always more, I need to see." 

In the end, I only eclipsed the total by two, ending up at 177. Which means that if I had only watched one movie on the days within the past week where I watched two, I wouldn't have beaten the record.

But who wants to tie a record, or come up short by one? Better to just set the new record and hope that it lasts for a decade. 

Before we get into talking about those movies, I need to get some business out of the way:

Here are the five films I'm most sorry about not appearing on this list. I feel a similar (low) level of disappointment for all of them, so don't read too much into the order. 

5. September 5 - In theory this was released in LA and New York before the end of December, but I didn't see it on any of my searches of local theaters when I was in LA.
4. Queer - This was lost when I skipped going in Maine last month, wanting to earn points with my wife for not insisting on going to the movies while visiting my own family. 
3. The End - I've had Joshua Oppenheimer's movie on my Letterboxd watchlist for like three years in a row, but it came out with such a whimper that I didn't even notice it as being one of my LA viewing options until near the end of that trip. Even there it was only playing at one single-screen theater.
2. Sing Sing - Yesterday I posted that this was going to be my final movie of 2024. It wasn't. I would have worked out my schedule to see this if I had realized earlier it was opening yesterday in Australia. 
1. Nightbitch - Love Marielle Heller, but her movie was only available on Hulu in the U.S. and I couldn't figure out how to make that work at our AirBnB.

Here are five other prominent films that I could have seen but just didn't:

5. Moana 2 - The timing meant I'd have to see it in the theater at a busy time of year in order to rank it, and I wasn't an ecstatic fan of the first so I just didn't make the time.
4. Mufasa: The Lion King - The comments for the other Disney movie at #5 can basically be copied and pasted here. 
3. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire - Kong: Skull Island made my top ten in 2017. That feels like a long time ago. 
2. Kraven: The Hunter - This had been on my watchlist since I thought it was supposed to come out last year, but it also came out at a difficult time of the year, and there just wasn't time.
1. Heretic - The most surprised not to have seen. Another critic reviewed it on ReelGood, so I didn't prioritize it in the theater, and then it never came down from that premium $19.99 rental price before my deadline. 

And finally, two movies I might have seen but intentionally skipped:

2. The Apprentice - I just didn't want to/couldn't watch a movie that made Donald Trump a sympathetic character. Even a small modicum of sympathy was too much. Not this close to the election.
1. Joker: Folie a Deux - I don't take a lot of stands on movies by not seeing them, but I was annoyed enough by the original Joker, and heard enough bad about this one, that I just decided not to reward the right-wingish Todd Phillips with any of my attention. 

Okay, now to highlight my top ten before revealing my whole list.

10. Nickel Boys - I have more a suspicion of the greatness of RaMell Ross' Nickel Boys than I have a certainty of it. The reason for my uncertainty lies in the circumstances of my viewing: jammed into a trip to Los Angeles, starting at nearly 11 p.m. after trailers, and following margaritas at dinner. Ross' film is the sort of demanding tone poem, which burns with indignation beneath its abstractions, that benefits from more ideal viewing conditions. Neither, however, can I dismiss what I saw before me: a story told from the perspective of two young Black men at the hands of a system of pernicious racial discrimination, at a reform school where they receive vastly different treatment from their white counterparts. Because the perspective is very specifically theirs -- all shots in the movie are POV shots from one of the two of them -- and not an omniscient perspective, it lacks the heavy-handedness that may seem part and parcel to this approach. Instead, this is the ultimate example of showing rather than telling, and the things Ross shows us are not limited to the characters' literal observations of the world around them, as they also include bits of ephemera from the time period, such as shots from space and other details that establish the time and place. I have never seen a movie quite like this, and even though I feel like I only half saw it, I think Nickel Boys is probably the most marvelous sort of challenge even under the best of circumstances. It also contains probably my favorite final shot of the year, one that contains an unlimited quantity of hope, much of it in direct contradiction to what we've just witnessed. I look forward to grappling with it again when my margarita count is zero. 

9. The Brutalist - The Brutalist is my most likely 2024 film to end up on my top ten of the decade, even though it is at "only" #9 this year. It has such fantastic materials -- materials being a primary subject of this architecture-themed film -- that it should endure very well in my memory, and in potential repeat viewings. (Though probably not a lot of repeat viewings, given the 3 hour and 35-minute running time.) In fact, the film I was most inclined to compare it to was There Will Be Blood, my #1 of 2007 and my #8 of the 2000s. In the first half of Brady Corbet's film, I was sure I was making way for a new #1 of 2024, and even started imagining what clever pun I would use in the subject of this post. ("A brutal 2024"? Would have been appropriate for a year where we elected Trump.) But I didn't appreciate the second half at the same level, maybe because of some bits that I thought were narrative non-starters -- or maybe it was the extra ten minutes tacked on to the intermission, as discussed here. Anyway, there's some exquisitely thrilling, epic filmmaking here from a director I would never have guessed capable of it (I was not a fan of Vox Lux), and Adrien Brody's performance in the lead role is outstanding. The Brutalist is the kind of vision you live in, and its long running time enables that. From that striking shot near the beginning of the upside down Statue of Liberty, Corbet announces the boldness of his intentions, and never lets up on that boldness. Given that we did elect Trump this year, that image may also be the year's most symbolic. 

8. Dune: Part Two - Every time I thought about sticking Dune: Part Two behind another film in this vicinity on my list, which would endanger its spot in my top ten, I thought about how the second Dune movie has parts that are undeniably dramatically flat. But then I'd think about the sheer grandeur and scope of Denis Villeneuve's epic filmmaking, and I'd know that it belonged on this hallowed ground, matching the feat of the first Dune and even increasing its spot in the rankings by one. (That's not comparing apples to apples in terms of the rest of the movies in those years, though.) This actually makes Villeneuve only the third four-timer in my top ten after he also achieved the feat with Sicario and Enemy. The sequel is of a piece with the original in everything except the part of the story that's covered, which I find more interesting in the first half of Frank Herbert's novel and in the first movie. But I might be even more impressed by the technique here, as I think of dozens of individual images and moments (the silently flying villains in jetpacks, Paul Atreides finally standing on the back of the worm) and just how spellbound I was. The latter scene even pushed me to the verge of spectacle tears, wrapped up in my favorite use of a Hans Zimmer score in some time. Add in the black and white Harkonnen homeworld and you've got a series that can give me as many sequels as it wants, because I know each new one will creatively stimulate its director, and in turn that director's audience. 

7. Civil War - Alex Garland made what seemed like the most timely and potentially prescient movie of 2024, and then the American people did the rest in allowing it to come true. Thankfully, due to the general sense of decorum of progressive voters, the worst possibilities depicted in Civil War have not yet come to pass, but this movie does create a frightening template of what the future could hold if Donald Trump is just the beginning of a form of inflated political rhetoric that could well last for decades. The director's always intense filmmaking style just gets a jolt of additional anxiety out of the sheer plausibility of what we're seeing here. And though some people considered this a bug not a feature, his unwillingness to clearly take a side in the fight -- there are indications where he stands if you look for them -- just makes it all the more effective a cautionary tale for whoever needs to see it. (Though unfortunately, not an effective enough cautionary tale for the election to go the other way.) Kirsten Dunst is a force to be reckoned with here, but the others who fill out the cast -- particularly fellow journalists played by Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Wagner Moura, but also supporting players like Jesse Plemons and Nick Offerman -- put personal faces on the ideas. A series of tense set pieces culminates in a climax of such apocalyptic sound and fury that I was basically left speechless, and knew this was going to make my top ten even with some minor complaints and nitpicks. (Oh yeah, and I loved the soundtrack.)

6. The People's Joker - I have never seen a movie like The People's Joker because there has never been a movie like The People's Joker. Anyone who has ever flagrantly used the trademarked intellectual property of a giant corporate behemoth has paid the price in terms of risk to their personal fortune long before the art in question ever saw the light of day. Vera Drew's film, on the other hand, not only made it to places people could see it despite Warner Brothers' unsurprising objection to depicting Batman as a predator who grooms young men, and many other Batman characters as gay or trans -- when she shouldn't have been able to use their likenesses at all -- but many critics hailed it as a triumphant cinematic experience, which it surely is. Drew's story of coming out as trans is told through these iconic figures set against DIY Gotham city backdrops that were shot in little distinct locations during the pandemic, and it's both a very funny and a very moving experience. Warner Brothers smartly loosened its grip on the legal apparatus that could have sunk The People's Joker, as someone somewhere had the good sense to acknowledge this obvious parody existed for the most earnest reasons possible, and does more good for their brand than harm. We are all reflections of what we see in our culture, and imagine ourselves limited to those options. But when someone reaches for more than what they were told they could have, and uses classic comic book characters to get her there, it does good for us all -- either in coping with our own similar issues, or better empathizing with others who find themselves in Drew's shoes.

5. The Coffee Table - There is no way to talk about The Coffee Table, and yet you have to talk about The Coffee Table, especially if you are naming it your fifth favorite film of the year. The reason you can't talk about The Coffee Table is that knowing what it's about ruins that important surprise, even though that surprise comes fairly early in the proceedings. There are also reasons why what it's about might prevent people from even watching it in the first place. Allow me just to say that Spanish director Caye Casas' film starts with an argument between a new father and mother over the purchase of a coffee table that he likes but she doesn't, which she has agreed to let him buy because he considers it his only contribution to their decor. The piece has gold nude sculptures as legs, but at least they are done in a sort of art deco style? In any case, this purchase leads to an unimaginable sequence of events where we in the audience are privy to certain information that only one other character knows, and the exquisite tension between what this character knows and what the others don't, but inevitably soon will, is both nearly intolerable and wickedly humorous in the darkest way you can imagine. No less than Stephen King has called this the darkest movie he's ever seen, but we are starting to get close to spoiler territory so I will veer off this track. All you need to know is that I have never seen a movie quite like this and I knew right away I was glad a) that such an original social drama? black comedy? what exactly is this? exists, but also b) that it is the only one of its kind. We don't need another Coffee Table, but this Coffee Table is a feat to behold that will not be forgotten by anyone who sees it. 

4. Emilia Perez - Every time I hear someone write or talk about Jacques Audiard's film, I also hear them drop the word "controversial." I haven't yet dug into what's considered most controversial and from what perspective. If it's controversial from a right-wing perspective, I don't want to hear it. If someone takes offense at the tone-deaf sex change operation number, or anything else that doesn't quite translate the trans experience, I get it. However, I think everything else about this film is marvelous, and it's part of a collection of films in my top ten whose likes I have never seen before. A musical about a Mexican drug lord who wants to live as a woman, in part to protect himself and his family, and in part because he's always seen himself as a woman? Make that she? And from Audiard, a consummately realistic director who makes serious social dramas about criminally adjacent people? Who's ever seen anything like that before? I was wowed by Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez giving great performances in the language of their heritage -- as I wrote about here -- but this movie really belongs to trans actress Karla Sofia Gascon, who plays both Emilia and her predecessor, Juan "Manitas" Del Monte. I really liked the songs and the energy of the project, to say nothing of the delicious narrative complications that develop after Emilia makes her decision. But it was when I realized it had me emotionally -- during that final scene between Emilia and Gomez's character -- that I knew this was one of my favorites of the year. 

3. Grand Theft Hamlet - And that makes four movies in a row that were completely and totally something I had never seen before. The highlight of my 2024 MIFF was this documentary, of sorts, in which two struggling British actors (Sam Crane and Mark Oosterveen) were playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto during COVID, and then wondered if they could make the game universe effectively a stage where they could ply their trade, even if for practice and personal connection only. In the course of trying to put on Hamlet, they collected other interested gamers from the international community -- acting experience preferred but not essential. Crane and Pinny Grylls' film takes place entirely within the game, as we hear their audio while we see their avatars attempt to stage a full run through, without getting blown away an inordinate number of times by other gamers who have no idea what they're up to. If it sounds funny, it is -- hilariously so at times. If it sounds poignant, it also is, as Oosterveen in particular is struggling with the isolation and the recent loss of his last living relative, leaving him desperate for a project that may be falling apart in front of him. The standards of profundity are met and exceeded on numerous occasions, with the small ticker of deaths of other characters in the game universe appearing at the bottom, a haunting echo of real-world pandemic mortality. Who would have ever guessed video game characters spouting soliloquys could contain so many of the different reasons we go to the movies. 

2. Wicked - Having zero exposure to this musical before seeing the movie -- I had heard "Defying Gravity" before, but no exposure beyond that -- was surely key to why I loved Wicked as much as I did. But more than that, it is just a perfectly executed cinematic gem with popular appeal and real substance, one that defiantly opposed the conventional wisdom to stage a musical within a single film, and came out leaving us waiting in anticipation for the conclusion of the story later this year. Although I have chosen a picture of the stellar Cynthia Erivo to accompany this blurb, and there is every reason to consider this her movie, I was most gobsmacked by the exquisite comedic fitness of Ariana Grande, a pop star I had spent the last decade utterly dismissing. Grande's background in acting was not known to me, and she therefore left me speechless at the fleetness and humor of her performance. The two together in that scene at the dance left me crying for one of the few times at the movies this year, and the only time in the theater, but the more dominant impression of this film is how it sent my spirits soaring with every impeccably staged number, and with that sweet spot between production design and digital effects that stop short of overwhelming the story. Wicked reminded me that I am, indeed, a fan of the movie musical at my core, but it's just so rare to find one carried off as successfully as this one. Jon M. Chu has now made my top ten twice as a director after Crazy Rich Asians, and because I forgot he also directed the less-successful In the Heights, I was equally gobsmacked about his capabilities as I was by those of Grande. One of only two five-star movies for me in 2024. 

1. The Substance - If Tom Cruise had Renee Zellweger at hello, Coralie Fargeat's The Substance had me from its virtuoso opening scene, involving the startling God's eye view of the lifecycle of Elizabeth Sparkle's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and then it proceeded to deliver me to the promised land for the remainder of the movie. Among its many miracles is that there are essentially three characters with any lines of spoken dialogue (and two of them are the same person), yet it runs for 2 hours and 20 minutes and never for a moment feels boring. Fargeat impressed with her style in Revenge, but who knew this masterwork of a satire of Hollywood, replete with significant quantities of body horror, was beating within her chest. The Substance is not only the most visually distinctive film of 2024, it also provides an incredible showcase for its three leads, specifically Demi Moore in a role that may one day be considered the finest work of her career. The Substance also finally brought me around to Margaret Qualley, for whom less dialogue is more, and reminded me of the grotesqueries in the arsenal of another actor whose last name begins with Q (Dennis Quaid). I have to acknowledge that some people found this movie anti-feminist rather than feminist, and have other issues with it like whether Fargeat's camera leers too much at Qualley or if it's just hitting the same note over and over. For me, her point was not to make a movie with a message so easy to dissect as "women good, men/Hollywood bad," and The Substance provides evidence to suggest all parties are complicit in the paradigm that requires aging actresses to submit their bodies to all manner of artificial adjustments, as likely to disfigure them as to convince us they're still "young." The truth is, when a movie spins my head this much with its technique and its wicked sense of humor, I don't care what the themes are because I'm just swept along in its visionary tide. I spent a couple months hoping a movie would come along to eclipse The Substance, then about a month feeling there was little chance I'd see something better. I didn't, and I embrace this #1 as I do any other. 

And lest they think they've escaped my elaborations on their significant lack of merit, here is my bottom five:

173. Mary - I'm not sure how I hoped a biblical story of the events surrounding Jesus' birth would be brought to the screen, but I can tell you this wasn't it. Complete with silly action scenes and a performance from Anthony Hopkins as Herod that leaves broken bits of chewed scenery in its wake. 

174. The Wages of Fear - Seeing this title in my bottom five of any list is enough to knock me off my chair, but usually this title would make me think of Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 version that I watched again in 2023 and dearly love. Going forward, I hope it almost never makes me of Julien Leclercq's inert 2024 remake, as lacking in tension as it is in soul. 

175. Imaginary - Mainstream horror movies, especially those from Blumhouse, are almost always passable and usually no worse than forgettable. Actually, I do sort of forget why I disliked Imaginary so much, but I think it happened around the time they went into that alternate dimension inside the house -- not something I would have expected or wanted from a movie about imaginary friends coming to life.

176. Space Cadet - I'm sorry, I just don't buy that a prospective candidate for the NASA astronaut program, who wears ridiculous clothing and calls everyone "dude," would a) be able to fake her way into the program and keep it secret despite her obvious mismatch with all the other candidates, or b) ever ever, and I mean EVER, walk in space. (Spoiler alert.) 

177. Longlegs - How do I hate thee, Longlegs? Let me count the ways. A friend of mine wrote a blurb on the Flickchart Blog year-end post in which she described the charm of Oz Perkins' movie as arising from its total preposterousness and failure to make sense in any given moment. I agree with those observations about the film but not with the idea that it leaves the film with any charm. Like, whatsoever. 

And here's the whole list!

1. The Substance
2. Wicked
3. Grand Theft Hamlet
4. Emilia Perez

5. The Coffee Table

6. The People's Joker

7. Civil War

8. Dune: Part Two

9. The Brutalist

10. Nickel Boys

11. The Bikeriders

12. It's What's Inside

13. Strange Darling

14. Conclave

15. Unfrosted

16. Frida

17. A Different Man

18. Love Lies Bleeding

19. Rebel Ridge

20. All We Imagine as Light

21. Daughters

22. Juror #2

23. Omni Loop

24. Problemista

25. Better Man

26. Anora

27. Suncoast

28. Ultraman: Rising

29. Will & Harper

30. Alien: Romulus

31. Here

32. Black Barbie

33. Hit Man

34. Kneecap

35. The Idea of You

36. Babes

37. Piece by Piece

38. Harold and the Purple Crayon

39. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

40. Goodrich

41. I Saw the TV Glow

42. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

43. Io Capitano

44. Joy

45. The Greatest Night in Pop

46. Thelma

47. The Critic

48. Ricky Stanicky

49. My Old Ass

50. The Dead Don't Hurt

51. Monkey Man

52. Road House

53. Mother, Couch!

54. Oddity

55. Free Time

56. Tuesday

57. Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person

58. A Quiet Place: Day One

59. Speak No Evil

60. Inside Out 2

61. Immaculate

62. Brats

63. Wolfs

64. The Outrun

65. Saturday Night

66. Woman of the Hour

67. Nosferatu

68. How to Have Sex

69. The Deliverance

70. Red One

71. Orion and the Dark

72. Survive

73. The Underdoggs

74. It Ends With Us

75. We Grown Now

76. Fancy Dance

77. Sasquatch Sunset

78. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

79. Force of Nature: The Dry 2

80. Skywalkers: A Love Story

81. Good One

82. Transformers One

83. Matt and Mara

84. Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

85. Outstanding: A Comedy Revolution

86. House of Spoils

87. Turtles All the Way Down

88. Jackpot!

89. A Real Pain

90. Red Rooms

91. Don't Move

92. Deadpool & Wolverine

93. Scoop

94. Damsel

95. Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver

96. The Instigators

97. Late Night With the Devil

98. Blink Twice

99. Hundreds of Beavers

100. Challengers

101. The Platform 2

102. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

103. Sting

104. Sonic the Hedgehog 3

105. I.S.S.

106. Just a Farmer

107. The Piano Lesson

108. We Live in Time

109. Lift

110. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

111. Slingshot

112. Time Cut

113. MaXXXine

114. Under Paris

115. The Fall Guy

116. Hot Frosty

117. Kinds of Kindness

118. AfrAId

119. The Wild Robot

120. Back to Black

121. Bob Marley: One Love

122. You'll Never Find Me

123. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

124. Shirley

125. Kill Me If You Dare

126. Trap

127. September Says

128. A Complete Unknown

129. Fly Me to the Moon

130. The Crow

131. The Kitchen

132. Am I OK?

133. Lee

134. A Family Affair

135. Role Play

136. Our Little Secret

137. Night Swim

138. The Exorcism

139. The Beautiful Game

140. Twisters

141. Atlas

142. Birdeater

143. Gladiator II

144. Salem's Lot

145. Borderlands

146. The 4:30 Movie

147. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

148. His Three Daughters

149. This is Me ... Now: A Love Story

150. The Balconettes

151. IF

152. Megalopolis

153. Upgraded

154. Tarot

155. Uglies

156. Arcadian

157. Mean Girls

158. Drive-Away Dolls

159. Trigger Warning

160. La Cocina

161. Blitz

162. Summer Camp

163. Argylle

164. Irish Wish

165. Spaceman

166. Madame Web

167. Mothers' Instinct

168. Brothers

169. Carry-On

170. The Watchers

171. Hellboy: The Crooked Man

172. Janet Planet

173. Mary

174. The Wages of Fear

175. Imaginary

176. Space Cadet

177. Longlegs

And finishing with ten more movies whose placement required a little more elaboration, I thought:

15. Unfrosted - There was a moment in this that made me laugh harder than I have at a movie in a couple years, and I thought that was worth top 15.

26. Anora - Is it wrong to say the middle dragged, the characters were not developed enough and the ending left me feeling bummed, but not in a good way?

31. Here - I think I gave extra points just for the gimmick.

41. I Saw the TV Glow - I will always remember being haunted by images from this film ... and wondering why Jane Schoenbrun could not stick the landing.

60. Inside Out 2 - I don't know, I just wasn't feeling it. No pun intended.

78. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - I love this world. I don't really love this movie.

95. Rebel Moon: Part 2 - The Scargiver - It was such an improvement from the first one (my bottom-ranked movie of last year) that I had to reward it.

100. Challengers - I guess I was just exhausted at the end. 

119. The Wild Robot - Am I dead inside, or is this movie not as good as everyone says?

128. A Complete Unknown - I never had any idea how close this was to ending.

Thanks for reading. As always, comments are welcome. And be sure to come back the next two days for two more 2024 wrap-up posts ... and then an informal one on the third day. 

Substantial

I haven't written very much about one of my favorite movies of the year, Coralie Fargeat's The Substance, but while riding home on the train today, I thought it was high time I should. 

At least extratextually, like in terms of the kind of phenomenon it is, if not so much about the movie itself.

(If you want to find my glowing review, go here.)

My train ride takes me past my favorite local cinema, The Sun in Yarraville, as the back wall of the building faces out directly on the train tracks, with only a parking lot in between. They use this back wall, smartly, to advertise to people on the train. 

But they don't just put up any old posters of any old movies that are playing there. For a long time, they had a large, horizontal advertisement up for The Hateful Eight -- like, years after its release -- because they would periodically still show it, due to retrofitting one of the auditoriums with a 70mm projector in order to play the film properly. In fact, they did such a good job that Quentin Tarantino, Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson all showed up there for a screening early on in the film's run, to take questions from the audience. I know some people who went to that, and in fact, some people who were going to go but didn't -- no one knew these three would be there until they got there -- and are still kicking themselves today for that choice. Heck, I think they might still show The Hateful Eight occasionally today. 

But when it's not something like that, usually it's something like the 72-hour James Bond marathon they had, at which I saw the final three Bond movies I needed to see to become a completist, just about exactly a year ago. 

Right now, the poster for The Substance is occupying its fair share of the available real estate, suggesting it is also a phenomenon in its own right, something they are proud to trumpet to the world.

This is significant because The Substance has been out for more than two months now. That's almost unheard of these days, even in Australia.

I say "even in Australia" because what I noticed when I first got here was that Cinema Nova in particular -- that was my local cinema where I used to live, and still a preferred cinema before they stopped accepting my critics' card -- would still be playing movies that came out four or even six months ago. But that was before the streaming revolution. That was before the shortened windows between theatrical and home release, which sometimes nowadays are as short as no time at all. As those two trends gathered steam, the release windows for all movies started to conform more to the standard thing you see in the U.S., where a movie is gone inside three weeks unless it's a real hit. And if it's a real hit, maybe it'll last five weeks.

The Substance shouldn't seem like it has any chance to be a real hit. It's an extreme body horror with a brand of satire that not everyone gets or appreciates. To stay in cinemas for two months, it should have to hit all the quadrants, as they say in Hollywood, and also be really acclaimed. 

The Substance has the acclaim part, despite some notable detractors. But that subject matter? Yeesh. It's a challenge. Could it be that Demi Moore is just that much of a draw? Do we miss her that much?

I don't think two months is the cap on this movie's run here, either. Yes the Sun only has a single 8:30 showing tomorrow night, which is Thursday -- which means it has survived another new release day and guaranteed itself at least one more week. But really, it's a hard R, so the afternoon showings are probably not super packed anyway. 

But the Sun is not the only place still showing it, not by a long stretch. Both Cinema Kino (the one downstairs from my old office) and the aforementioned Cinema Nova are still showing it. Kino has only one one additional show beyond the evening show, that at 3:50 in the afternoon, but Nova has it programmed five times a day -- impressive considering that the movie is two hours and 20 minutes long. Heck, the first show is at 10:25 a.m. just to get them all in.

As a reminder, this opened on September 19th. 

I can't explain its enduring popularity with what has to be a wide swath of the viewing public, but I'm glad for it. It means that when it ends the year very high on my chart, I won't be getting all the raised eyebrows people gave me when I elevated a horror movie they'd barely heard of, Skinamarink, all the way to my #1 spot last year.

Similarly, every time I hear a critic talk about how The Substance might actually be anti-feminist, given that it has these extended leering shots of Margaret Qualley in particular, and I start to feel the guilt of the male gaze, I am reminded a) that this is a female director, and b) that for crying out loud, this movie is still worth programming, in a business that is more reliant of its bottom line than it ever has been, an entire 69 days after its release. (Huh huh, huh huh.) It must be doing something right. 

Something about this wild and woolly shot of cinematic adrenaline, gross imagery and excoriating commentary about beauty standards and Hollywood has resonated with people. And I don't need to question it any more than that.