Another Day in "Paradise"

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

Dan Fogelman's new series for Hulu is combining several different kinds of stories.  The President of the United States, Cal Bradford (James Marsden), is mysteriously killed in the premiere, and the head of his Secret Service, Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) has to figure out who did it.  Suspects include the president's lover Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall), a billionaire advisor, Samantha "Sinatra" Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), secret service agents Pace (Jon Beavers) and Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom), and briefly Collins himself.  So that's a murder mystery and a White House drama to start with.  

Of course, this is Dan Fogelman reuniting with Sterling K. Brown, whose last collaboration was the beloved weepie "This is Us."  So, as you might expect, we also get plenty of family drama here.  Collins is parenting teenage daughter Presley (Aliyah Maston) and son James (Percy Daggs IV) in the absence of his wife Teri (Euka Okuma).  President Bradford is estranged from his wife Jessica (Cassidy Freeman), has a disapproving father, Kane (Gerald McRaney), and a teenage son, Jeremy (Charlie Evans), he struggles to connect to.  We learn that characters like Sinatra and Pace are driven by awful traumas in their pasts.  "Paradise" is structured similarly to "Lost," with much of the story told through flashbacks.  President Bradford may die in the first episode, but James Marsden does excellent work throughout the series, including the finale.

Final warning for spoilers here.  "Paradise" is also a dystopian story, about a community that escaped a global cataclysm by relocating to an elaborate bunker city.  Building this city required great economic, political, and personal cost, including a lot of secrets and lies to keep the peace.  So on top of everything else, "Paradise" is also a science-fiction allegory and conspiracy thriller.  We're often operating in the same thematic space as shows like "Fallout" or "Silo" - and the concepts require no less suspension of disbelief - but with much more grounded characters.  A major theme is the heavy mental and emotional toll of doing unthinkable things to ensure the survival of a chosen few.  It's very clever how the show has been structured to get viewers who might not be receptive to this kind of genre show to take a chance on "Paradise" through the murder mystery hook.       

Dan Fogelman's work has long been one of my blind spots, since most of his shows aired on network television after I stopped paying attention to network television.  What I noticed immediately about "Paradise" was the level of the acting talent involved - Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, James Marsden, and more are given the space to deliver complex, thoughtful performances.  There is some very potent melodrama here, and the focus of the show is always on the personalities and relationships rather than spectacle.  The reason why "Paradise" is able to be all these different things simultaneously is because in the end it's a character drama.  Episodes spotlight one character at a time, going through their histories and showing us what makes them tick.  So when we get to the big effects-heavy, action-heavy showstopper late in the season, it makes it that much more impactful.  Also, if you're frustrated about dystopian shows always skipping over the big cataclysmic disaster, "Paradise" does an excellent job with its apocalypse.

If you're not a fan of melodrama, "Paradise" may not be for you.  The show does have a tendency to rely on familiar tropes and some silly action movie logic, which the terrific cast can't always compensate for.  The needle drops are also  incredibly corny, even though it's set up that President Bradford likes terrible '80s pop music.  Yes, we get a sad version of a certain Phil Collins song as a major musical motif, and it's simultaneously awful and great.  However, I have the highest respect for the creators for leaning into that impulse and committing to every creative decision.  "Paradise" never feels like it's flailing, delivering satisfying emotional endpoints for nearly every storyline by the end of the season.  We do find out who killed President Bradford in the last episode.  So if a second season doesn't happen, I can still happily recommend this as an eight-part miniseries.  And unlike a lot of eight-part narratives we've seen recently, this one ends exactly where it should.         

 

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The 2024-2025 Television I Didn't Watch

In advance of my 2024-2025 television top ten list (I use the Emmy eligibility calendar), I want to talk about some of the shows I didn't watch this year, for various reasons.  There are far, far more shows being produced there than anyone can possibly keep up with, so this is not an exhaustive list.  The titles discussed below are only the most high profile ones that I want to talk about why I skipped.  I reserve the right to revisit these choices in the future, though I still haven't seen anything from last year's list.

English Teacher - Despite lots of good press, I'm sorry to say that it came down to me just not finding the clips of the show I saw very funny or engaging.  Brian Jordan Alvarez created and stars in a Hulu comedy where he plays a gay high school English teacher trying to survive workplace tensions, culture clashes, and the generation gap.  I have heard nice things about the main character being very fallible and imperfect and having to examine his own privilege regularly.  It's just not for me. 

Your Friends & Neighbors - The new Jon Hamm Apple TV+ series initially piqued my interest when I heard it being compared to one of my favorite obscure 1960s movies, "The Swimmer."  It's about a recent divorcee trying to keep up appearances, who turns to crime, starts breaking into his neighbors' houses, and uncovers a lot of secrets.  I'm thrilled that Hamm has a regular TV gig again, but this looks much more focused on the criminal aspect than I hoped.  Killer title sequence though. 

Dying For Sex - I tend to enjoy Michelle Williams in just about anything, but an FX miniseries about a terminally ill woman who decides to end her marriage so she can go on a journey of sexual discovery?  Why does so much media about older women involve this particular life choice lately?  Is this a common fantasy?  It's not often that I feel that I'm too young or not at the right state of life for a show, but maybe this is one of those times.  I'll circle back around in a few years to see if anything has changed. 

MobLand - This is the one that I'm the most likely to give in and watch at some point, because I keep paying for Paramount+ every year for the "Star Trek" shows, and there's just not much else on the service.  A Guy Ritchie series about Pierce Brosnan heading a crime family that includes Tom Hardy and Helen Mirren sounds great.  I liked Ritche's last series,"The Gentlemen."  Alas, this one just looks drab and humorless.  And it's a prequel to "Ray Donovan"?  Do I need to watch that first?  

Mid-Century Modern - It's "Golden Girls" with the gays, including Nathan Lane and Matt Bomer, plus Linda Lavin in her last role playing Lane's mother is right up my alley.  And the guest star list for the first season is fabulous.  However, I have the same problem with this show that I do with a lot of other traditional sitcoms, which is that I keep forgetting they exist.  They simply aren't major priorities for me, so I don't carve out time for them.  Maybe I'll get to this one after I finish "Brooklyn 99."

Rivals - Why is this British series about angry business people on Disney+?  It stars David Tennant and Alex Hassell as media figures who hate each other, so I'm immediately curious, but it also smacks of someone trying to make their own "Succession," which makes me want to keep my distance.  I don't find shows about terrible people trying to destroy each other entertaining, which is why I never watched "Succession" in the first place.  Excellent reviews though, so kudos to everyone involved.   

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story - I was tempted, but I stayed away from the Ryan Murphy produced "Dahmer" series," and I ultimately stayed away from the Menendez brothers series for similar reasons.  There's way too much salacious content being added to these shows that appears to have no basis in reality.  Artists do what artists do, but the media treatment of the Menendez case was exploitative from the start, and everything about this just feels in bad taste. 

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"Drop" and "Death of a Unicorn"

I couldn't stop thinking about the new Blumhouse thriller "Drop," but not for the reasons you might think.  Meghann Fahy stars as Violet, a single mom and domestic abuse survivor who goes out on a first date with photographer Henry (Brendan Sklenar), who she's been messaging on a dating app.  Their date keeps being interrupted by alerts on Violet's phone from a stranger - who is suddenly in Violet's house and threatening to harm her young son (Jacob Robinson) unless Violet does exactly what he says.

There is something about Meghann Fahy and Brendan Sklenar onscreen together that pings as very female-media-coded in a way that most movies in this genre don't.  Specifically, "Drop" often displayed the aesthetics of an older breed of Lifetime made-for-TV movie.  Fahy's not an actress I'm familiar with, but it didn't surprise me that she got her start in soaps, or that Sklenar recently appeared as the blandly hunky ex in last year's Blake Lively melodrama, "It Ends With Us."  The target audience for "Drop" seems to be midwestern white moms.  I specify white, because I have never seen a whiter post-1980s film set in Chicago.  Seriously, the only minorities are the African-American bartender, a barely glimpsed onscreen therapy patient, and the gayest gay waiter I've seen in years.  Was this on purpose?  Was director Christopher Landon aware of what he was doing?  The possibilities haunt me.

The fact that I was thinking about these sorts of details and not about the likelihood of this kind of situation ever happening to me tells you what I think about how effective "Drop" is as a thriller.  Sadly, the title only incidentally refers to anybody plummeting from great heights.  Instead, poor Violet is being harassed by a series of iPhone AirDrops that her blackmailer uses to communicate with her.  "Drop" is a great looking movie that does a lot of fun things with the various text messages from the blackmailer, and features a beautiful restaurant in a skyscraper, Palate, as its primary location.  However, the characters are paper thin, a lot of the plotting makes no sense, and the action beats are so tropey and silly that it completely took me out of the film.  If the tone were campier, the dialogue zippier, and the romance less Instagrammable, this might have worked better.   Well - I'm being meaner than I should. Fahy does a perfectly fine job, and original films are rare enough as it is.  However, it's really hard to call "Drop" original, because it's so generic and borderline campy in all the wrong ways.   

On to "Death of a Unicorn," a film with better actors and worse special effects.  I wasn't expecting much out of this movie, since it came and went from theaters very quickly, and there was no real discussion of it among the movie nerds whatsoever.  Like "Drop," this movie also feels like a genre flick making a play for female audiences, though in this case it's a creature feature instead of a thriller.  Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega star as lawyer Elliot Kintner and his college-aged daughter Ridley.  They're headed for the remote home of the Leopolds - father Odell (Richard E. Grant), mother Belinda (Téa Leoni), and son Shepard (Will Poulter) -  who head a pharma company, so Elliot can close a deal to do more lucrative work for them.  And en route, Eliot hits a unicorn with the rental car.

After watching the trailer, I was expecting "Death of a Unicorn" to be very satirical, like "The Menu," or any of the other recent films about rich people being terrible.  While "Death of a Unicorn" does belong in that category, the movie I kept finding myself making comparisons to was "Cocaine Bear."  A significant chunk of this movie is a very broad horror-comedy where the characters are getting killed off left and right by big monsters, often in absurd and gruesome ways.  The buildup to the carnage does have plenty to say about respecting nature and the privileged being terrible, but the writing is on the weak side, and it takes forever for things to escalate.  Still you can't put Grant, Leoni, Poulter, and Anthony Carrigan (as a put-upon butler) in a movie together and not walk away with a few genuine laughs.  Unfortunately, this leaves Selena Gomez to play it straight as our lead, and Paul Rudd is in the absolutely thankless role of '90s dad who cares about his job and financial security.  They're good enough actors to pull through, but it's by the skin of their teeth.

First time writer/director Alex Scharfman has some great ideas, and I appreciate that he really goes for it with the CGI fantasy creatures in this film, despite clearly only having a limited budget.  The most impressive thing about "Death of a Unicorn" may be its $15 million price tag.  I feel the film got its act together by the finale well enough that I'd recommend it as a fun piece of silly horror comedy, especially for younger viewers.  It's got glaring flaws, but it's good enough that I hope Scharfman gets more chances in the future to improve on this. 

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"Say Nothing" on The Troubles

There was very little fanfare last year around the release of "Say Nothing," an FX miniseries based on Patrick Radden Keefe's book about the lives of Irish Republican Army (IRA) members during The Troubles.  This is a piece of history that I know very little about, and I think having almost no preconceived notions about the politics of the conflicts helped me take the show at face value.  "Say Nothing" is a complex, wonderfully human drama, and among the best things I watched in 2024.

The central characters are the Price sisters, who we follow in two different time periods.  Dolours (Lola Petticrew in the '70s, Maxine Peake in the present) is the more daring one, and Marian (Hazel Doupe in the '70s, Helen Behan in the present) is loyal to a fault.  They grow up as persecuted Catholics in Northern Ireland, become radicalized in their teens, and eventually join up with the IRA in the hopes of reunifying Ireland.  Initially the girls are involved in bank robberies for funds, but then become part of bombing campaigns and hunger strikes in the 1970s.  In parallel, we learn about other IRA members like Brendan Hughes (Anthony Boyle) and Gerry Adams (Josh Finan).  Adams becomes a prominent Irish politician who is still alive at the time of writing, so every episode where he's depicted ends with a pointed disclaimer about him denying ever being part of the IRA.

"Say Nothing" is largely sympathetic to the Price sisters, showing their tumultuous backgrounds and family history of fierce resistance to British rule.  However, crucially, it is not sympathetic to other members of the IRA or the aims of the organization as a whole.  The first episode shows us the upsetting abduction of a woman named Jean McConville (Judith Roddy) from her home, in front of her children.  Eventually we learn that Jean is one of the Disappeared, a victim of IRA groups who secretly abducted and murdered civilians they believed to be spies.  Jean's disappearance becomes a big part of the show's final episodes, where Dolours struggles with whether to share the information she has.  Her story is revealed to be one of embitterment and disillusionment, and much of the series is framed by interviews with IRA members trying to deal with and atone for their past actions.  

The show's creators clearly play fast and loose with the truth, and they invent or greatly embellish some events, but the effectiveness of "Say Nothing" comes from the way these events are framed as the regrets of their aging, haunted participants.  There are so many secrets being kept by all the characters that even if what is being depicted isn't true, the actual truth seems likely to be even worse.  Every episode is packed with incidence, covering months or even years.  One episode is devoted to the sisters' time in prison and their agonizing hunger strike, which drags out over six months.  Another shows the entirety of the relationship that the girls have with another IRA member, the troubled Joe Lynskey (Adam Best).  It never feels like a second is being wasted.

I recognized a couple of faces in the cast, like Maxine Peake, Roy Kinnear as a British police official, and Laura Donnelly playing one of Jean's daughters as an adult, but I like that I was totally unfamiliar with most of the actors, which helped the degree of immersion considerably.  Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe are fantastic through and through as the Price sisters.  It's so easy to become invested in their reckless career as revolutionaries, especially when their early capers involve things like dressing up as nuns to stick up a bank.  The deeper and deeper they get into the morally troubling territory, with ever more terrible consequences, the more compelling the performances get.  Eventually the POV shifts from the younger versions of the Price sisters to the older ones, but both versions are important in the narrative the whole way through.    

 

The material gets pretty dark here, so I'll warn that this clearly isn't a show for everyone.  If it sounds like something you would enjoy, however, "Say Nothing" has my strongest recommendations.  

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"Freaky Tales" Pays Homage

I love how many movies there have been set in and around Oakland, California over the past few years.  Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck  have chosen to cash in their "Captain Marvel" blank check to make an anthology film of strange, freaky little urban legends set in Oakland, in 1987.  Though it takes some influences from movies like "Creepshow," "Heavy Metal," and "Scanners," "Freaky Tales: isn't properly a horror or science-fiction movie.  Instead, it takes place in a very hyperstylized comic-book universe, where reality can get warped.  Characters keep spotting a mysterious green light that appears when something is about to get wild - from a wronged man using psychic powers to punish some scumbag murderers, to a pair of newbie female rappers about to throw down against a pro.

Each story is from a different genre and spotlights different subcultures, but all four take place adjacent to each other, roughly at the same time.  In the first, a group of punks defend the Gilman, a beloved East Bay music club, against attacks by neo-Nazis.  The leads are youngsters Travis (Angus Cloud), and Tina (Ji-Young Yoo), whose romance blossoms as the hostilities heat up.  Next, comes the showdown between the rap duo Danger Zone, featuring best friends Barbie (Dominique Thorne) and Entice (Normani), and West Coast hip-hip legend Too $hort (DeMario Symba Driver).  Third is the tale of a debt collector named Clint (Pedro Pascal), who intends to quit the sordid business until his wife Grace (Natalia Dominguez) becomes a victim of a revenge plot gone wrong.  Finally, beloved Golden State Warriors basketball player Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis) is obliged to take matters into his own hands when he's targeted in a robbery orchestrated by a crooked cop (Ben Mendelsohn).  This involves an extended action sequence with a katana and throwing stars.        

I love how "Freaky Tales" looks, with its comics-inspired framing devices, stylized characters and some old fashioned special effects.  Even the titles have been tweaked to add VHS artefacts.  The basketball game in the last story is done with traditional animation clips and the action showdowns are wildly over-the-top, Grindhouse-style clashes that are a whole lot of fun to watch.   It's a little surprising to spot actors like Pedro Pascal and Ben Mendelsohn in this movie - not to mention the old guy playing the sage video store clerk - but they're all clearly enjoying themselves.  Mendelsohn is so good at playing a real mustache-twirling villain who we all know is going to get it in the end.  And that end is suitably epic in a very '80s way.  Jay Ellis as Sleepy Floyd, however, is the one most likely to show up on T-shirts in the future.  In short, for a fan of 80s B-movies, there are a lot of nostalgic joys to be had.  I don't know what a mainstream audience is going to think, but this movie has all the earmarks of a future cult favorite.       

"Freaky Tales" was shot on location in the East Bay for the most part, and uses real people and events for additional authenticity.  The real Sleepy Floyd and Too $hort make cameo appearances, along with several Bay Area landmarks.  At the same time, there are some touches that highlight that this is an idealized fantasy of the past, a vision of the way things might have been if attitudes had been a little different.  The four segments are of varying quality, and there are some significant ups and downs and rough spots with the plotting.    The debt collector story in particular feels fragmentary and not thought through enough.  Still, the spirit of the enterprise won me over, and there are so many little moments that made me downright gleeful.  This is so clearly a love letter to this place and time and community - and no surprise that Oakland is Ryan Fleck's hometown.  

This is an 80s throwback, but at the same time "Freaky Tales" feels like an original - or at least the kind of film that doesn't come around too often anymore.

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I Heart "Ironheart"

"Ironheart" was hastily dumped on Disney+ a few weeks ago, premiering its six episodes over just two weeks.  And it in no way deserved this treatment.  Created by Chinaka Hodge, the series is about Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), the young genius who built her own Iron Man-style armor.  She was introduced in "Wakanda Forever" a few years ago as an American university student.  However, in the opening scene of "Ironheart," Riri is expelled from MIT after one lab mishap too many, and goes home to Chicago to stay with her mother Ronnie (Anji White).  

Riri has sky-high ambitions, but coming from a working class background, she'll need to find her own way forward.  In order to make some easy cash, she ends up falling in with Parker Robbins, a charming villain known as the Hood (Anthony Ramos), and his gang of talented criminals.  She also makes the acquaintance of an oddball black market arms dealer, Joe (Alden Ehrenreich), and attracts the attention of other sinister forces.  It emerges that Riri is still grieving the deaths of her beloved stepfather Gary (LaRoyce Hawkins) and her best friend Natalie (Lyric Ross), who were killed in a drive-by shooting.  Eric André, Shea Couleé, and Sacha Baron Cohen show up in roles that I will not spoil, except to say that this may be the best use of Sacha Baron Cohen in years.       

"Ironheart" is chaotic and juggling too many ideas, but it's also a refreshingly different entry for the MCU.  Riri Williams is a genius like Tony Stark, but she's also prone to making terrible choices like Tony Stark, and suffers for those choices.  Every time she does something brilliant, she tends to do something equally dunderheaded, like trusting the wrong person or taking the easy way out.  Riri could be a hero, but by the end of "Ironheart" she seems just as likely to become a villain, and it's her own fault.  I really enjoy Dominique Thorne in the role, who keeps Riri a compelling and sympathetic presence throughout.  The creators crucially give her a family life and a history that feel very genuine, and there's an attention to the way she talks and dresses and interacts with others that grounds her in an emphatically African-American milieu before all the genre elements start coming into play.     

The supporting cast boasts a deep bench of acting talent.  Lyric Ross as Natalie stands out for her bright personality and skill at banter.  I also like Anji White as supportive Ronnie and Alden Ehrenreich as the schlubby paranoiac Joe.  However, I'm not sold on Anthony Ramos as The Hood.  He's  very generic and the various pieces of his origin don't quite fit together.  I suspect that there were multiple versions of The Hood that ended up all being combined in the end, with poor results.  Or it might just be my indifference to Ramos, who I've seen in enough major projects to know that he doesn't work for me in roles like this.  Fortunately, he's not the only villain in the show; the others are significantly more effective.

There were clearly a lot of ambitions behind "Ironheart," going by the caliber of the talent involved and the expensive looking production.  With such a large cast and so many connections to different parts of the MCU, it feels like a miracle that the show actually coheres as well as it does.  It takes a few episodes for the show's different priorities to all get sorted out, but once they do "Ironheart" is actually one of the better MCU shows.  I think it helps that while Riri Williams is definitely living in the MCU, she's not on the familiar hero path, at least not yet.  Her story is playing more like "Agatha" or "Loki" than "Miss Marvel" right now, and that's exciting.

Unfortunately, it looks like the support for "Ironheart" at Marvel has disappeared, probably due to the current political climate.  It's an awful shame, because Riri Williams has a lot of potential, and her show gets a lot of things right that previous MCU series like "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" didn't.  I hope that this isn't the last we see of Riri and this group of characters, but I'm grateful that they got a chance at the spotlight in any case.

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"Novocaine" and "Neighborhood Watch"

We've seen a lot of Jack Quaid in the first third of 2025, with "Companion," "Novocaine," and "Neighborhood Watch" all being released within a few weeks of each other - the last premiering on VOD.  Notably, all of these titles are original IP, while most of Quaid's notable work up to this point has been in franchises - "The Boys," "Scream,"  "Star Trek: Lower Decks," and the recent animated "Superman" series.  I take it as a good sign that he's taking some risks, and that the studios are starting to look at him as a leading man.  We really need more leading men in his age range that aren't immediately synonymous with superheroes, so I'm rooting for him.  I like Quaid as an everyman type, especially since he's got a decent amount of range, can do comedy, and has played villains a few times.  So, with that in mind, let's look at his two most recent films where he has a starring role, "Novocaine" and "Neighborhood Watch."   

"Novocaine," from directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, is a self-aware action comedy that has a unique take on the unstoppable one-man-army character.  Quaid plays Nathan Cain, a man with a condition that causes him not to feel pain.  This means he lives a solitary, carefully controlled lifestyle where he subsists on a liquid diet and sets timers to go to the bathroom, for fear that he'll accidentally harm himself if he takes even minor risks.  However, after a date with a coworker, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), he gains the confidence to start breaking out his shell.  And when Sherry is taken hostage by bank robbers, led by a sadistic criminal (Ray Nicholson), Nathan decides to use his inability to feel pain to thwart the baddies and rescue her himself.  Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, and Jacob Batalon also get involved in various supporting roles I won't spoil.

 

I really like the first half of "Novocaine," where we actually spend enough time with Nathan and Sherry to get to know them and to get invested in their relationship, which not enough films do.  The actors' chemistry is good enough that I would have been happy if "Novocaine" had just been a romantic-comedy without any of the chases and fisticuffs.  However, the action sequences are good - very inventive and absurd.  It's incredibly cringey to watch some of the fights, where Nathan is doing horribly damaging things to his body, but persists because he can't feel a thing.  I would not recommend this film to those who are sensitive to blood and gore, even if a lot of it is played for laughs.  The filmmakers do a pretty decent job of putting together absolutely ridiculous scenarios, like one of the robbers booby trapping his house with elaborate weaponry, while also snarking on the usual tropes of mindless action films.  We get something closer to real-world consequences for the carnage than usual, at the end of the film, which I appreciate.

As for Jack Quaid as an action hero, he does a good job.  A lot of the comedy is based on his panicky reactions to being in common action movie situations, or sight gags involving his total nonchalance at being grievously injured.  He's definitely better at the comedy than the action, which distinguishes him from most of the male leads who have been showing up in this genre lately.  Now, what I haven't seen Jack Quaid in too often are straight dramatic roles, so I was especially curious about his appearance in "Neighborhood Watch," where he plays a paranoid schizophrenic named Simon, trying to save a kidnapped girl.  He shares top billing with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Ed Deerman, a retired security guard who lives next door to Simon and his sister Dee Dee (Malin Akerman).  Simon insists he saw a girl being forced into a van, but he suffers from visual and auditory hallucinations, and nobody believes him.  However, after multiple attempts he's able to convince Ed to help him.        

I'm worried that "Neighborhood Watch" is going to be overlooked, because it's a smaller indie film that hasn't gotten much buzz and only middling reviews.  However, I found it very enjoyable.  Directed by Duncan Skiles and written by Sean Farley, it's a very grounded, occasionally very sobering story of a pair of mismatched losers who struggle in their daily lives and unexpectedly bond over this fool's errand.  We're operating in the realm of neo-noir, with the action set in and around a college town in Alabama.  Simon can't find work because of his history in institutions and his constant battles with his symptoms.  Aging Ed can't let go of his old role as a security professional - the closest he ever got to being a real cop -  and the kidnapping gives him an excuse to use some of his acquired investigative skills.  And intiially, Nathan and Ed are both terrible at being detectives.  They don't fool anybody, get called out immediately by almost everyone they meet, get beaten up, threatened, and are warned off multiple times by the actual police.    

From the trailers, I originally expected "Neighborhood Watch" to be more comedic, similar to something like "The Kid Detective."  While "Neighborhood Watch" does have some wryly funny moments in it, I was happy to discover how much of the film is played straight.  Simon's delusions in particular are always deeply unnerving, and his meltdowns and outburst are never treated as laughing matters.  This is the first underdog story I've watched in a while where the leads actually feel properly downtrodden and out of their depths.  Morgan and Quaid both turn in strong performances - Quaid gets the showier part, but Morgan comes off better, and they pair together well.  And a few overly convenient little plot beats aside, I liked the way that "Neighborhood Watch" came together in the end.      

As idiosyncratic little indie movies go, this one is a keeper.

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"Doctor Who," Year Two (Or Fifteen, Or Forty-One)

Ncuti Gatwa's second year as The Doctor improves on the first.  This is typical for the show, but in this case, I feel that it wasn't just a matter of the actor settling into the role or the creative team figuring out how to best write for a new cast.  It also felt like it took a full season for Russell T. Davies and company to stop remaking and referencing their greatest hits from the 2005-2010 seasons, and embrace moving "Doctor Who" forward.  We still get plenty of old characters coming back, and even a few direct sequels to some classic episodes, but this season felt ready to be different.  Well, to try to be different.

There's a new companion, a dedicated nurse named Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) who isn't interested in being a companion.  She's very much a classic sidekick character, and I appreciate that there's not as much narrative focus on her as there was with some of the prior companions.  Belinda is never backgrounded or spoken down to, but sometimes the show needs her to be a damsel in distress or someone for the Doctor to explain things to, and she's really good at being those things and still a competent professional woman without feeling inconsistent.  I hope Sethu gets to flesh out Belinda more in future seasons, because the messy finale leaves her in a rough spot.  More on that later.

Where the last season was very concerned with more spectacle and providing an easy entry point for new viewers, this year gets into some older lore and fanservice.  However, it also tries some new ideas like a literal cartoon villain in "Lux," a story centering on a Lagos barbershop in "The Story & The Engine," and the self-explanatory "The Interstellar Song Contest" with a cameo from Graham Norton.  It's less successful at paying off the ongoing storylines and mysteries that have been brewing since last year - namely the pantheon of evil gods, Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) and her secrets, and all the teases about a former companion, Susan (Carole Ann Ford).  "Doctor Who" has always had a terrible habit of building up to big anti-climaxes, and this season is particularly rife with them.  

I don't think it's spoiling too much  to reveal that Ruby Sunday returns for a few episodes in a supporting role, along with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and some other established friends.  Jonah Hauer-King, Alan Cumming, and Archie Panjabi guest star as various villains and allies.  The main event, however, remains Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor, who is so clearly the best possible actor for the job that I really can't imagine these last two seasons working with anybody else in the role.  He is absolutely the only reason why some of these episodes work at all, with their rushed exposition and making-it-up-as-we-go-along story logic.  I enjoyed most of the individual episodes this year, and a few like "Lux" and "Lucky Day" may even be all timers, but the season-long narratives are badly put together, and some of the creative choices are downright disappointing.

I've gotten used  to the flimsiness of most modern "Doctor Who" stories over the years, accepting the repetitiveness and arbitrariness of the storytelling as part of being a show aimed at children and families.  However, after twenty years of modern "Who," it's become apparent how far behind other fantasy and science-fiction television the show has fallen in the streaming age, and it's not just a matter of the production values.  The show can go bigger, but its format, formulas, and status as a legacy IP means that it rarely goes deeper.  Thus, it is rarely as compelling as I feel it could be, and ends up wasting an awful lot of promising material and audience goodwill.

Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor is trying very hard to be something new, and I love him for it, but he is never going to live up to his full potential with the show around him the way that it is, juggling all these competing interests, with everyone always feeling like they're one foot out the door, and the other foot somewhere in the past.  Wherever "Doctor Who" goes from here, it's best if it gets a real creative overhaul to help it break out of its latest creative funk.   Because though I'm willing to keep watching, the amount of times it's hit the reset button in recent years, only to fall back on bad habits, has gotten awfully concerning.

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Rank 'Em: The Phase Five Marvel Movies

The release of "Thunderbolts*" means the end of Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  It has not been a good one for Marvel, and I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about some of the franchise's more systemic issues as we go.  I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to rank the Disney+ shows of this phase, since it'll require catching up on a few programs I don't have much interest in.   

Watch out for all the spoilers ahead.

1. Thunderbolts* - I just posted a full review a few days ago, so I won't say too much here.  However, what I appreciate the most about "Thunderbolts" is that it's venturing into some new territory for Marvel.  We've seen plenty of takes on antiheroes, big team-ups, and evil Superman figures before, but approaching all of this from a mental health angle is something novel, and very effective.  The Void and his Hiroshima shadows and shame boxes are horrifying on a level I've never seen in the MCU before - and how he's defeated is absolutely perfect.  

2. Deadpool & Wolverine - This is the closest to a pure comedy as any MCU film has ever gotten, and it's definitely the first R-rating.  The results couldn't have been better.  Sure, the plot is just an excuse to be juvenile, super nerdy, and nostalgic for FOX media of yore, but the movie is really good at being all of those things, and wildly entertaining to boot.  Some commentators seem aghast that Ryan Reynolds and Shawn Levy now have a blank check at Marvel, but frankly I'm thrilled that the MCU is getting a shot of new energy from these guys right when it needs it the most.  

3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - Farewell James Gunn.  I'm glad that you got to leave on your own terms after the firing and rehiring drama that happened in 2018.  The movie was delayed, but ended up being worth the wait.  I was cool on the first two "Guardians" films, but connected to the third, where Rocket Racoon takes center stage.  There's such a boundless creativity on display, and a real sense of weirdo vision to the film that is easy to appreciate, even if Gunn's tastes don't really align with mine.  If this is goodbye to this corner of the MCU, then it went out on a high note.        

4. The Marvels - This is not a bad movie.  There are a lot of things that I like in it, particularly Iman Vellani's Ms. Marvel and a new use for alien cats.  Unfortunately, Monica Rambeau still doesn't have much of a personality.  Honestly, Carol Danvers doesn't either, and the less said about the villain Dar-Benn the better.  Still, I like this considerably more than "Captain Marvel," and the low box office performance reflects the changing attitudes of the audience toward the MCU more than anything else.  If this had been released a few years earliers, it would have done at least as well as…

5. Captain America: Brave New World - I didn't bother writing a full review for this.  While it's perfectly watchable, it's also perfectly disposable.  I like Anthony Mackie as Cap, I like Danny Ramirez as the new Falcon, and watching Harrison Ford return to the White House was diverting.  Not much else of interest is going on though.  There was clearly some trouble behind the scenes, as evidenced by the multiple delays, title changes, muddled script, and whatever happened with Tim Blake Nelson's character.  At least this was better than "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," though not by much.  

6. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania - Boy is this movie depressing.  The first "Ant-Man" is one of the better solo superhero movies in the entire MCU, and it's just been steadily downhill from there.  "Quantumania" has my vote for the absolute worst film of the entire franchise.  It's awful as an "Ant-Man" film, taking place in a fantasy world that totally negates the fun of the Ant-Man powers.  Most of the plot involves setting up a villain for later movies who had to be scrapped.  MODOK happened.  Bill Murray happened.  The more I think about this movie, the worse it gets.

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Your 2025 Emmy Nominees

I watch too much television.  However, even I don't watch enough television to be able to give any informed opinion on how the Emmy races will shake out.  Who gets picked for what doesn't make sense to me and never will.  However, I've seen half of the Outstanding Comedy Series nominees, three of the five Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, and all but one of the Outstanding Drama Series nominees (sorry "Slow Horses").  And that means I do have some opinions on how well the Television Academy did putting the nominations together, at least.

Generally, there's always a lot of politicking and a small number of shows getting the lion's share of the nominations, because people can't watch everything.  However, one thing that's improved has been the unfortunate inertia of some long-running shows getting kudos every year for mediocre seasons.  This is a practice that seems to be slowly going away.  The final season of "A Handmaid's Tale" got one nomination in a very minor category after racking up the trophies for years.  Not much attention is going to former favorites like "Yellowjackets," or "Squid Game" either.

New in the Outstanding Comedy race are "Nobody Wants This," "Shrinking," and "The Studio," the last of which garnered a massive 23 nominations.  I expected "The Studio" to do well, because Hollywood loves to navel gaze.  The show is not for me, but I appreciate that it's giving the "Entourage" crowd something to root for.  "Nobody Wants This" feels a little slight, but acceptable, and I continue to have no interest in watching "Shrinking."  Returning nominees include "Abbott Elementary," "The Bear," "Hacks," "Only Murders in the Building," and the last season of "What We Do in the Shadows."

Over in drama, new contenders include "Paradise," "The Pitt," and "The Diplomat," which I would have pegged as a comedy.  "The Diplomat," like "Shrinking," got acting nods for its first season and is getting a series nomination for its second season, which is a good sign that the Academy is making an effort to award consistency over just chasing the fastest out of the gate.  "Paradise" seems like an odd pick until you remember that its creator, Dan Fogelman, also created Academy favorite "This is Us."  Returning nominees include "Andor," "The Last of Us," "Severance," "Slow Horses," and "The White Lotus."

"The Penguin" showed up in Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, but will almost certainly be clobbered by "Adolescence."  Cristin Milioti has a good shot at taking home a trophy for playing Sofia Falcone though.  I'm surprised that the Menendez Brothers miniseries made it in after all the bad press, but the return of "Black Mirror" is very welcome.  And going by the acting nominations, it looks like "Presumed Innocent" just missed the cut. 

The acting awards are very Oscar-like in that several of the nominated lead actress performances were for shows that didn't get other big nominations.  We've got Uzo Aduba in "The Residence," Sharon Horgan for "Bad Sisters," Kathy Bates for "Matlock," Meghann Fahy for "Sirens," and Cate Blanchett for "Disclaimer."  On the actors' side, it's just Brian Tyree Henry for "Dope Thief" and Jake Gyllenhaal for "Presumed Innocent."  "White Lotus" continues its takeover of the Supporting Actor and Actress categories.  However, one new wrinkle is that the guest actor slots for comedy are dominated this year by "The Studio" and it's ridiculous.  Ron Howard got a nomination for being mean, even.  And I know Cynthia Erivo played quintuplets, but there were so many guest actresses who did better work on "Poker Face."  Come on.

 

I like digging into the less prominent categories to see where the also-rans managed to get some recognition.  "Somebody, Somewhere" got a surprise Supporting Actor nomination for Jeff Hiller and another for writing.  "Four Seasons" got an acting nomination for Colman Domingo.  "Say Nothing" got one major nod, for writing. "The Rehearsal" didn't make it into Outstanding Comedy, but did pick up both writing and directing nominations.  I found "Day of the Jackal," "Étoile," and "Pachinko" in the cinematography categories.  James Burrows got a directing nomination for "Mid-Century Modern," because it's James Burrows.  On that note, there are eighteen slots for the major directing categories, and this year it's exactly nine women and nine men.  That's worth celebrating.  

Amusingly, I've seen all the Best Television Movie nominees (a category that everyone seems to pretend doesn't exist) for the first time, which includes "Mountainhead," "Nonnas," "The Gorge," "Rebel Ridge," and the latest "Bridget Jones" movie.  I'm rooting for "Rebel Ridge."  Apparently there's also some drama going on over in the documentary categories - rule changes mean that docs that didn't get Oscar nominations can "double dip" and be considered for Emmys.  "Will & Harper," for instance, made the Oscar shortlist but didn't get a nomination, so it still got to be considered for the corresponding Emmy categories.

Finally, the most unexpected nomination definitely goes to the "Lazarus" anime making an appearance in the category honoring achievements in main title music.  I feel it's well deserved. 

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"Thunderbolts*" Hits the Mark

Okay, I was wrong about the stupid asterisk thing. I still think the antics with the title are silly and bothersome.

Anyway, "Thunderbolts*" is the best MCU movie since "Avengers: Endgame," though there hasn't been much competition.  It collects up an assortment of oddball villains and side characters from several other MCU projects, and shows how they become their own unlikely superhero team.  And while it's full of shameless callbacks, especially to the first "Avengers" movie, there are a lot of things that it does surprisingly well. 

Yeleva Belova (Florence Pugh), Natasha Romanov's younger adopted sister, is our lead character.  She's initially working as a mercenary for the very sketchy Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus), who is finally revealed in this movie to be the director of the CIA.  Valentina is being investigated for her involvement in a new supersoldier project called Sentry.  While she and her assistant Mel (Geraldine Vishwanathan) are busy getting rid of all the evidence, Yelena is sent to a remote facility to stop an infiltrator from stealing secrets.  However, it turns out Valentina has sent Yelena, John Walker aka US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) to the same place with the same orders, intending for them to kill each other, thus wrapping up loose ends.  There's also a strange amnesiac guy named Bob (Lewis Pullman) at the facility, who has no idea how he got there.  

You can probably work out most of the plot from there.  As the bickering antiheroes learn to work together to escape Valentina's hordes of murderous minions, they start to become a team.  Yelena's adoptive father Alexei aka the Crimson Guardian (David Harbour) gets involved.  So does a recently elected New York congressman, Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), who is doing his own investigation into Valentina's crimes.  This is one of the most interconnected MCU installments, but you really don't need much knowledge of anything except the first "Avengers" movie to follow the story.  The dialogue is rife with  ironic, self-aware banter, punctuated by a lot of spiffy action scenes.  All of the "Thunderbolts*" team members are fairly underpowered, low-level fighters, so their fights are pretty grounded, with a lot of hand-to-hand combat.  We get a nice car chase sequence, plenty of picturesque shootouts, and the final showdown happens in New York City.  

And if you think that this all sounds very rote and familiar so far, you're right.  What makes "Thunderbolts*" special is that the whole film turns out to be one big mental health allegory, and it's a good one.  From the very first frame, Yelena is depicted struggling with her emotional well-being, and as she's building her team she's also building a support network.  The big bad of the movie is referred to as "The Void," and has the most unnerving character design and power set I've seen in a superhero film in a long time.  It resembles nothing so much as depression incarnate, which several of the characters are dealing with to various degrees.  The movie is surprisingly dark at times, and the discussions of mental health, trauma, and loneliness are handled with refreshing seriousness.  It turns out to be very easy to root for the Thunderbolts because they're classic underdogs - criminals and losers and D-listers - who find themselves massively outgunned at every turn.  However, the much bigger obstacles are their own flaws, failures, and self-doubt. 

So our leads get to have full, interesting arcs in this movie, and come to personal and emotional resolutions that are immensely satisfying.  That's practically unheard of in an MCU film.  It's so gratifying that the filmmakers understand that Yelena winning a fight isn't nearly as compelling as Yelena making up with Alexei, or Yelena giving Bob a hug when he really needs one.  For all the one-liners and cynical quips, there's an earnestness and emotional honesty to these characters that I didn't expect.  Florence Pugh anchors the movie and reveals herself to be one of the best actors in the current MCU roster.  Julia Louis Dreyfus and David Harbour remain incredibly fun to watch every time they show up onscreen, and I can't help liking Sebastian Stan a little more as Bucky every time I see him.  Lewis Pullman is doing just fine, and I hope the rest of the team get more chances to build on their appearances here.  Alas, it seems you can't have a superhero team-up movie without a few characters feeling shortchanged.

There are definitely some rough spots, and I suspect I would have liked the movie a bit better with the originally cast Steven Yeun and Ayo Edibiri.  Still, I'm looking forward to the next appearance of the Thunderbolts* in the upcoming "Avengers" movie. 

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My Favorite Victor Sjöström Film

Victor Sjöström  is one of the great silent film directors, who was successful both in his native Sweden, where he was one of the central figures of the early Swedish film industry, and in Hollywood, where he made several of his best films and was credited as Victor Seastrom.  In 1924, he directed the first film entirely produced by a newly formed studio called Metro Goldwyn Mayer, or MGM.  This was "He Who Gets Slapped," a psychological thriller starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer.      

 Victor Sjöström's films, particularly his American films, stand out from other silent films of the time for their rare emotional and psychological intensity.  He was very good at showcasing his actors' performances, possibly because he was an actor himself.  Here, he helps Lon Chaney to deliver one of his signature roles, the tragic clown who calls himself "He Who Gets Slapped," or simply "HE."  Based on a Russian stage play, with clear influences from the opera "Pagliacci," "He Who Gets Slapped" examines the history of a wronged man who has everything stolen from him, and decides to re-enact that humiliation every night in a circus act that largely consists of being slapped and abused by the other clowns to absurd extremes.  It's incredibly dark for a melodrama of this era, and I initially mistook it for a horror title, similar to Paul Leni's "The Man Who Laughs."  

The plotting is typical for melodrama, with our protagonist being swindled and persecuted by an evil Baron, and then falling in love with a fellow circus performer played by Shearer, before a heroic sacrifice leads to his last minute redemption.  However, the centerpiece of the film is the circus, with its white-painted clowns and ferocious animals.  There was never a more bleak and bitter depiction of a man's broken psyche, where the world has become an endless joke and his suffering is the punchline.  The clown act is mindlessly cruel, and all HE can do is smile and take it, as the crowds roar with laughter.  Sjostrom isn't shy about emphasizing the disturbing aspects of the farce, and Chaney ensures that the misery and despair of HE comes through in every frame.  Eventually HE is saved by the kindness of the female lead, and opportunity to overcome his oppressors, but the character is defined by his unrelenting sadness and grief.         

Lon Chaney, the "Man of a Thousand Faces," was famous for his ability to play sympathetic grotesques and other exaggerated characters through the skillful use of makeup.  "He Who Gets Slapped" came right between two of his most famous roles in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Phantom of the Opera."  Though nowhere near as iconic as those characters, HE is still a fantastic screen creation, a painted clown whose permagrin does nothing to hide his actual feelings and state of mind.  Trained in clowning by real circus clown George Davis, Chaney's performance is carefully layered so that it works in both the context of the circus act and the encompassing melodrama.   It's his ability to elicit so much pathos, despite the heavy makeup and clowning mannerisms, that makes the character work.  "He Who Gets Slapped" was an important role for Chaney, giving him some of the best reviews of his career, and greater visibility as a leading man.

A less well regarded director probably wouldn't have had the clout to make such a dark film, but Victor Sjöström had been well established in the Swedish film industry for over a decade at this point, known for his sterling dramas and character studies.  "He Who Gets Slapped" was the second of eight films he made in the Hollywood studio system, including "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Wind."  Though his Swedish films were more important for their innovations in editing, cinematography and special effects, I prefer his later ones which benefited from collaborations with Hollywood acting talent and larger studio budgets.  Alas, Sjöström was one of the directors who was not able to adapt when the talkies came in at the end of the 1920s, and he acted more than he directed for the rest of his career.  Memorably, his final screen appearance was in a film made by one of the many directors he inspired - Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries."         

What I've Seen - Victor Sjöström

Ingeborg Holm (1913)

A Man There Was (1917)

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918)

Karin Daughter of Ingmar (1920)

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Love's Crucible (1922)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

The Scarlet Letter (1926)

The Wind (1928)

Under the Red Robe (1937)

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And What Didn't Make My Top Ten Films of 2024

As a companion piece to my Top Ten list, every year I write a post to discuss some of the other major films that got a lot of positive attention. I find this exercise helpful in providing context for my own choices and how I feel about the year in film as a whole. It's also a lot of fun. Please note that I will not be writing about films listed among my honorable mentions, including "Dune: Part 2."

Let's start with the big award contenders.  This was a weird year for me, because I totally failed to connect with some of the big populist favorites.  "Conclave," for instance, struck me as a wildly contrived religious allegory with such ridiculous twists that I couldn't take it seriously.  The execution is fabulous on every level, and I adore everybody in the cast, but I was totally soured by the writing, especially the twist ending.  "Emilia Perez" is not as bad as its detractors are making out, but it was the wrong people making this film, and the incredibly tone deaf behavior of the cast and crew didn't help matters.  

"Wicked" was better than I was expecting, but it's just not very good as a film - a few too many technical problems, and a real drag of a second act.  I appreciate what James Mangold was trying to do with "A Complete Unknown," but I didn't think those intentions came across very well in the movie - and Timothee Chalamet's Dylan didn't do much for me.  "I'm Still Here" is a very good film about surviving a dictatorship, but without more background information for the non-Brazilians, I don't think it travels as well as its creators were hoping.  "Babygirl" is a daring piece of cinema, and I'm very happy that Halina Reijn and Nicole Kidman got to make it.  However, I found the trailer more compelling than the actual film.  And then we have "Sing, Sing" - Colman Domingo's performance is great, but the rest of the film doesn't live up to it.

Prominent foreign films include several excellent titles that I count as 2023 films - "Red Rooms," "Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World," "Evil Does Not Exist," and "Green Border."  However, I only liked "Evil Does Not Exist" enough that I would have considered it for last year's list.  To date, it's the only Ryusuke Hamaguchi film I've really liked.  "All We Imagine as Light" has been a big critical favorite, and I wish I liked it more than I did.  It's a lovely, intimate look at the lives of a group of Indian women, but too slight for my tastes.  I also didn't really get the "The Beast," Bertrand Bonello's genre-bending romance about past lives and existential terrors.  It all just felt overlong and overindulgent.  I've said my piece about "Flow" in previous posts - I'm glad it won an Oscar, but the movie is not for me.  

Let's talk about some of the trans-centered films, which got a lot of attention in 2024.  "I Saw the TV Glow" is a film I can appreciate for its depth of feeling and nightmare imagery, but the performances are so monotone and the mood is so depressive, it's a very difficult watch.  "The People's Joker" completely went over my head.  I didn't find it funny or insightful, and the no-budget production quality and amateur actors grated something awful.  The documentary "Queendom" ended up being my favorite trans film of the year. 

Box office winners that broke into the awards conversation included "Furiosa: A Mad Max Story," which I liked, but which suffered in comparison to "Fury Road," and for being a prequel.  The same can be said of "Nosferatu," which had some great atmosphere and performances, but often made me wish I was watching the older versions.  Then there's Alex Garland's "Civil War," which struck me as fundamentally a misfire with a few good moments - Jesse Plemmons' appearance is a contender for scene of the year.

There were several smaller films that had some really passionate champions.  "A Real Pain," which is about one very specific relationship, is very personal and very well made, but I liked other takes on this material better.  "The Wild Robot," is the best Dreamworks animated film I've seen in years, but I couldn't help noticing how tropey and formulaic it got in the last act.   "Megalopolis" is a miracle of a sort, but like Terry Gilliam's "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," it wasn't worth the effort.

Finally, films that just missed my honorable mentions include "Wildcat," "Daughters," and "¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!"  There were also several contenders for my "Plus One" spot, for movies I hadn't seen in time for last year's list.  Along with the aforementioned "Evil Does Not Exist," these were "Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person," and "The Monk and the Gun" - my first Bhutanese watch!

And that's my 2024 in film.

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My Top Ten Films of 2024

I'm throwing in the towel early this year.  Every year is a good year for movies, but the discourse around a lot of the major films got pretty toxic around awards season, and I'm ready to be done.  Also, with the downturn in the industry, it feels like distribution woes are worse than ever, and I'm probably not going to get ahold of the last few remaining titles on my to-watch list any time soon.  Foreign films are great, but I don't have much interest in chasing after them lately.    

A few caveats.  My criteria for eligibility require that a film must have been released in its own home country during 2024, so film festivals and other special screenings generally don't count. Picks are unranked and listed in no particular order, previously posted reviews are linked where available, and the "Plus One" spot is reserved for the best film of the previous year that I didn't manage to see in time for that previous list. And here we go.

Challengers - I have no interest in tennis, or most sports in general.  However, in "Challengers" the tennis is standing in for the sex, and the film's ever-evolving relationships involving Josh O'Connor, Zendaya, and Mike Faist make the tennis matches positively breathtaking to behold.  Luca Gudagnigno continues to direct the most sensual screen romances of anybody currently working, and we're lucky that he's such a prolific filmmaker.  I want to see all three of the lead actors working with him again as soon as humanly possible.  

Anora - The backlash against "Anora" was swift after it won the Best Picture Oscar.  Frankly, movies this rude, this anarchic, and this uncompromised do not usually win the big awards, no matter how deserving.  And "Anora" is deserving.  It refuses to be easily categorized, to stay in its own lane, or offer any easy answers.  What kept it in my list all year was that it felt like a film that couldn't be made at any other time than in 2024.  Also, it's so much fun to watch, and totally unpredictable the whole way through.   

Love Lies Bleeding - The new Rose Glass crime thriller is a scummy piece of work.  Everyone looks terrible, with the exception of Katy O'Brien playing a lesbian bodybuilder who is the new girl in town.  I've seen O'Brien in several other big films and shows over the past few years, but so far Glass is the only director who understands what to do with her, and the kind of role that really gives her a chance to shine.  Paired with an intense Kristen Stewart, O'Brien has no trouble anchoring one of the best movies of the year. 

The Substance - Many of the films on this list are very visceral, emotionally fraught, unsubtle genre films.  And there's no film that fits that description better this year than "The Substance," which brings back '80s body horror in a big way.  Even before the birth of Monstro Elisasue, "The Substance" is relentless in its pursuit of squirm-inducing sights and sounds and suggestions.  I'd call it Cronenbergian, but Coralie Fargeat has a far more playful sense of humor, and Demi Moore adds a star quality that is entirely singular.

Hard Truths - Marianne Jeanne Baptiste gave the best performance of the year.  Pansy is one of the most memorable, miserable screen creatures I have ever seen, and one of the most poignant once you realize that what she isn't saying - or shouting - is as important as what she is.  It never fails to amaze me how Mike Leigh's best movies function as empathy generators, showing that even the most horrible and impossible people can be deserving of love and sympathy.  And there's always another side to everybody's story.   

Nickel Boys - We consume more visual media with a first person POV than ever before, mostly thanks to gaming and livestreaming.  However, it feels like we're only beginning to explore the possibilities of the first person POV narratively.  That's why "Nickel Boys" made such an impression.  It found a way to transcend the gimmick, and get the viewer to inhabit the world of the title characters in a novel, meaningful way.  It doesn't work for everyone, unfortunately, but for me "Nickel Boys" was a valuable experience.

The Girl With the Needle - A Danish film made by a Swedish-Polish filmmaker, but the story feels universal in its wartime bleakness and depictions of casual cruelty.  The content is horrific, but I found the depiction of two women grappling with the most painful parts of motherhood as they try to survive in difficult times to be absolutely enthralling.  The lead actresses, Vic Carmen Sonne and Trine Dyrholm, both turn in difficult, psychologically complex performances.  Dyrholm's maternal monster is one I won't soon forget.     

The Seed of the Sacred Fig - A sobering look at one family's descent into paranoia and self-destruction, presented in contrast to the recent social upheaval in Iran.  I was especially impressed with the use of real social media posts during the demonstration sequences, emphasis on the thin line between the oppressors and the oppressed, and how quickly the situation escalates to dark extremes.  There were several good depictions of life under authoritarianism at the movies this year, and this one hit me the hardest.  

The Brutalist - I think I appreciate this one the most for its ambition, for wanting to make grand, sweeping statements about the American experience, and having the right people involved to pull it off.  Brady Corbet deserves plenty of credit for getting the film made, and refusing to compromise on the running time.  I liked the ambiguous ending just fine.  However, it's Adrien Brody's performance that's going to haunt me, and Lol Crawley's towering feats of cinematography that I won't be able to forget anytime soon.  

My Old Ass - Finally, the movie I had the best time with this year was this very personal, very offbeat, very nostalgic little existential dramedy about a girl's last summer before leaving home.  It's a summery, beautiful hangout film for long stretches of time, with delightful fantasy sequences, engaging conversations, and sweet moments of discovery.  The laughs and the heartache snuck up on me in the best way.  And while I understand why some of the LGBT folks raised eyebrows, I like that our heroine is still figuring herself out.   

Honorable Mentions:

Blink Twice

September 5

Small Things Like These

Kinds of Kindness

Rebel Ridge

Dune: Part 2

Ghostlight

Didi 

Young Woman and the Sea

Inside Out 2

Plus One - Chicken for Linda

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