"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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