A remarkable challenge to Iran’s theocracy, this Cannes Award-winning film not surprising earned director Mohammad Rasoulof an eight-year prison sentence. The first half was a compelling political drama, intertwined with family dynamics and believable characters. The second half went off the rails, so much so that streaming it on two separate nights we felt we were watching different films.
A stylish espionage caper with fine performances by Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender that disguised the holes in the plot. I.e., I had no idea what happened by the end and wondered if the film, by Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp, was satirizing the genre. Put six very flawed spies around a table and see if you can guess who did it, without really knowing what “it” is.
Year after year I say it wasn’t a great year for movies, and the fact that I can’t find ten titles for this list reinforce that view for 2024. On the other hand, the industry’s policy of withholding prestige films until December makes it hard to catch up with everything, and there are two possible nominees, The Brutalist and The Seed and the Sacred Fig, that are still on our to-watch list.
1. Green Border. This documentary-like story of refugees trying to reach Europe made you feel and made you think like no other movie this year. The characters were vivid and compelling, their plight all too realistic, the plot unceasingly gripping.
2. A Complete Unknown. Great music, Timothee Chalamet’s Dylan, supporting work by Monica Barbara and Elle Fanning all combined to make this the most enjoyable film of the year.
3. The Apprentice. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong’s Oscar-worthy performances unfortunately captured the Donald Trump we now know too well and a New York of ’70s we still remember.
4. Emilia Perez. An inventively audacious film that is gentle, sweet, violent and thought-provoking, all at once, with top performances by four leading ladies. And music.
5. The Bikeriders. A portrait of a time and place and subset of people, redneck South, with the great Jodi Comer setting the tone.
6. Sing Sing. A feel-good play within a play by Colman Domingo and actual prisoners.
7. Evil Does Not Exist. A moody, ambiguous, elegiac look at Japanese culture and man’s relationship with nature by the auteur Hamaguchi.
8. A Real Pain. Jesse Eisenberg, not Kieran Culkin, is the standout in this very personal story.
9. Anora. The first half hour aside, Sean Baker’s film was funny, sad and original, amazingly acted and deftly directed. Why not in the top five? That first half hour.
The characters in this Zambian movie about family might as well have been guinea fowl, so little did I relate to them. I waited in vain for a plot. The lead actress was good, but she didn’t relate either.
Unremitting footage of Israeli bulldozers knocking down Palestinian homes made a depressing, discouraging point if not compelling cinema. All honor to the Palestinian-Israeli filmmakers who bravely documented the cruel destruction of a defenseless West Bank village, humanizing the Palestinians with their goats and chickens and dehumanizing the Israeli soldiers with their uniforms and tanks. Rather than offer even a sliver of hope, the movie left us with our knowledge of how much worse the Palestinians’ plight has since become.
Oh, for those simpler times, when we could think terrorists were Bad and Israelis were Good. It’s hard to watch this movie about the Munich Olympics without the overlay of Israel’s current genocide of Palestinians and realizing that no progress has been made in this conflict over the last 50 years. As a study of journalistic enterprise and ethics, the film raises ever relevant questions: is the journalist’s duty to report or to help; when is it okay to defy the authorities; when does the urge to be first fudge normal cautions to get the story right? Watching this back-to-back with Saturday Night drove home the complexity of putting on a TV show, with the added factor that this story was real.
Jason Reitman took every actual or apocryphal or imagined crisis in the month or two leading up to SNL’s premiere and packed them into the 90 minutes before showtime. The result is an absurdist scrapbook more than a movie. Still, there are plenty of jokes and it’s fun to see actors impersonate Chevy Chase, John Belushi, et starry al.
A day before the official awards, and still not having seen all the contenders, notably The Brutalist and the Documentary Features, here for the public record are my choices:
Best Picture: A Complete Unknown. Not a perfect movie in a class with last year’s winner, Oppenheimer, this film took on a difficult challenge and produced the most fun we had this year in a theater, which these days counts for a lot. Like many, I had my own ideas of Bob Dylan’s music and story but was completely won over by Timothee Chalamet’s bravura performance.
Best Actor: Chalamet’s visit to a Hibbing, MN high school while researching his character spoke volumes, but it pales in comparison to Colman Domingo’s immersion in federal prison with actual convicts to pull off Sing Sing. Plus, he’s older and Chalamet, also wonderful as Willy Wonka, will get more shots at the Oscar.
Best Actress: Karla Sofia Gascon. Can we separate art from the artist? She gave two powerful performances in one body. Going outside the nominations I would choose Jodie Comer, the British actress who convincingly transformed herself into white trash with spirit and carried the underrated Bikeriders.
Supporting Actor: Jeremy Strong, hands down for his chilling portrayal of Roy Cohn, who raises then is dumped by the young Donald Trump. As an aside, I couldn’t stand Kieran Culkin’s character and think he had too big a role to be considered “supporting.”
Supporting Actress: Monica Barbaro won my heart with her looks, her acting and her uncanny Joan Baez voice. “Don’t Think Twice” brought tears down my cheek. Outside the slate I would give a nod to Jamie Lee Curtis in The Last Showgirl, for her sympathetic daring as an aging stripper.
Best Director: An unusual three-way tie among Sean Baker (Anora), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez) and James Mangold (A Complete Unknown).
Original Screenplay: Probably A Real Pain, although I haven’t seen three of the nominees.
Adapted Screenplay: No award. All of the nominees depended more on directing, acting and cinematography than their script.
International Feature: While saving room for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, I want to mention Green Border, the most powerful and best made movie I saw last year. It played like a documentary with compelling characters and not a false note.
Somehow there is no tension and little emotion in the story of a former Congressman in Rio being “disappeared” by the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1975. 25- and 40-year-later codas add nothing to the drama but appear inserted to honor the true-life events the film is based on. Fernanda Torres is rightly receiving award nominations for playing the mother who has to hold everything together, but even her performance, and the movie as a whole, pales in comparison to Argentina 1985 from 2022. I did like the portrayal of Brazilian family life and the daughter who reminded us of our exchange student Camila.
A crowd pleaser from Peru with handsome leads and beautiful cuisine. We know where the story is going pretty much every step of the way, but that makes it no less enjoyable. Ditto for the fact that the tale is a total fantasy: who is ever rescued from poverty by starting a restaurant?
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