Saturday, January 18, 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. 

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