End of the year 2024 Movie Journal

End of the Year 2024 Movie Journal

Not in NYC this time, but watching a bunch of movies I won't have time to review. Part of year's end catch-up and final 2024 releases. Just trying to keep track of my end-of-year movie-watching.

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GLADIATOR II (Ridley Scott 2024). Surprisingly pleasant and mildly entertaining to watch this remake of his own film starring Russell Crowe of 24 years ago. The giant monkeys and flooded Colosseum filled with sharks come early. As everybody says, Denzel steals the dhow, but not quite as flamboyantly as people say. Paul Mescal is fine but he's a bit too good an actor to be doing stuff like this, only it will make him A-List, I supppose. Metacritic rating: 64%.

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CRY-BABY (John Waters 1990). "John Waters' musical ode to the teen rebel genre is infectious and gleefully camp, providing star Johnny Depp with the perfect vehicle in which to lampoon his pin-up image." "The best words to describe this film are corny, comedic, and classic." Think I saw this with my mother at the Senator Theater, where all Waters' more 'mainstream' flicks premiered. It looks ugly to me now but you can pleasurably watch the crowd scenes and dancing over and over on your laptop if you want to. This is when Johnny Depp was in his heyday and got paid a disproportionate paycheck and it was Waters' biggest production yet, total cost $12 million. Metacritic rating: 63%.

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MARIA (Pablo Larraín 2024). A bomb at the box office, making $500K and costing $20 million to make. A lagubrious, slow-moving piece. But Anjelina is splendid in it (if not being maybe really interesting, but that's not her fault). She seems convincingly grand, and is really singing, not just lip-synching; the huge Paris apartament is uniquely impressive; and Ed Lachman's cinematography makes the whole thing worth watching, which it may seem anyway if you watched JACKIE and SPENCER, the earlier two in Larraín's grand dames trilogy, and are a completist. The saddest thing is learning Maria Callas is largely forgotten now. Metacritic rating: 61%.

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GOOD ONE (India Donaldson 2024). A gay teen girl about to enter college, poised and wise beyond her years puts up with her dad and his best friend's sexism on a summer camping trip to the Catskills (gorgeously shot). Sundance first film seems to have the same origins as Julia Loktev's THE LONELIEST PLANET (NYFF, 2011; I mention other parallels). It lacks the bite, but compensates in relaxed style and authentic feel. Found it on NYT #2 film critic Alissa Wilkinson's kind of cool Ten Best list (as#8). On multiple platforms. Metacritic rating: 87%.

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THE REMARKABLE LIFE OF IBELIN (Benjamin Ree 2024). Also on Wilkinson's list (#9). A doc about how gaming can for some have an immense positive impact. "Ibelin" was a Norwegian boy, Mats Steen, born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), who died at 25, and unknown to his parents was a known and beloved figure as Ibelin in the World of Warcraft guild Starlight. The way Ree exhumes/recreates this world and dramatizes it and the blog Mats kept is itself remarkable. My mind was blown and I cried. From Sundance, then ND/NF, now on Netflix. Metacritic rating: 78%.

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A DIFFERENT MAN (Aaron Shimberg 2024). Got attention from Sundance, Berlin, and ND/NF for its plot gimmick of a badly facially deformed man with neurofibromatosis (Sebastian Stan in heavy prsthenics) who is miserable, then gets a special treatment that makes him look normal but isn't happy then either. Contrast with "Oswald" (Adam Pearson, who really has neurofibromatosis, a British actor), same problem, but he's happy and highly functional. With its many ideas but very little clear focus, the film winds up seeming rather a mess. If you watch it, it should be for the performances. Metacritric rating: 78%.

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FEMME ( Sam H. Freeman, Ng Choon Ping 2024) On John Waters' 10-best list, and here is his comment: "A twisted S&M love affair between a black drag queen (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) and a white rough-trade gay-basher (George MacKay) that gives new meaning to sexual role-playing. Butch? Femme? It’s all drag when it comes down to being a 'top' or 'bottom.' Each man kills the thing he loves, indeed." Kind of confusing, but disturbing and intense. Metacritic rating: 69%.

End of year movie journal, cont'd

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REMEMBER THE NIGHT (Mitchell Leison 1939). Watched this Christmastime rom-com about love and forgiveness penned by Preston Sturges on a tip from Mike D'Angelo, and it's a winner - though for me, the ending with the heroine's rigorous self-sacrifice doesn't satisfy. NYC assistant DA Fred MacMurray gets prior-convicted jewel thief Barbara Stanwyck out on bail and her trial postponed for the holidays, winds up inviting her to his family in Indiana, and they fall in love. Jack (MacMurray) is ready to make any sacrifice, but Lee (Stanwyck) is too hard on herself to allow that. The uplift and the holiday wholesomeness of Jack's loving family must be our compensation here. In an introduction to a 2005 Sturges retro at Film Forum, Manohla Dargis wrote that Stanwhck's character is "one of those classic screen types rehabilitated by love." See also Wikipedia.

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BIRDER (Nate Dushku 2023). A sort of bad, creepy, less cinematic version of Giraudie's many times better STRANGER BY THE LAKE (NYFF 2013). Watched following the reference on ESQUIRE'S "Best Sex Movies" list. Honestly you don't want to see this movie. Shooting from the POV of the gay sex-cruiser-kliller removes all suspense and interest.

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RENALDO AND CLARA (Bob Dylan 1978). All this talk about Bob Dylan inspired by the upcoming James Mangold film starring Timothée Challamet inspired this watch. You don't want to watch this either. Just a lot of footage of Bob and Joan et al. mucking about patched together randomly. No wonder I didn't watch any movies the next day and spent the day reading instead. It might have been useful for Timmy to watch it though, and no doubt he did.

Continued... (details later)

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BABYGIRL (Halina Reijn 2024). The brilliant new film of a 50-something woman CEO (Nicole Kidman) involved in a highly risky and risqué affair with a young intern (Harris Dickinson). Antonio Banderas as her husband, a dreamboat who doesn't make her come anymore. Kidman got the Best Actress award at Venice. My Christmas Day choice, and it didn't disappoint. What is fresh is the way the dom/sub roles are fluid all the time. Both actors took a lot of risks, and they pay off. I prepared for this far in advance by watching Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (for Kidman in a very sexy role 25 years ago) and various films and TV series with Harris Dickinson in them.

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METROPOLITAN (Whit Stillman 1989) The first of his films about upper class Americans focuses on young ones going to debutante balls and after parties around Christmas. Oscar nom for the screenplay. The talk is a revelation. It reminded me of Jane Austen - not because it's retro, but because the young people speak in intelligent, well-formed sentences. Tom Townsend, a redhead who's low on funds, is the central character who becomes in demand because of a shortage of male escorts.

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LAST DAYS OF DISCO (Whit Stillman 1998) The third in what became a "trilogy" focuses on a similar crowd, older. I could look at Chloe Sevigny as she is in this picture all day. Depicts what it was like in the Eighties in NYC to have an entry job, live in a railroad apartment, and spent your free time at an exclusive disco like Studio 54. Whitman's regular Chris Eigeman plays a club manager who sees very shady mohney dealings at the place.

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BARCELONA (Whit Stillmen 1994) Taylor Nichols and Chris Eigeman, two of the main actors from METROPOLITAN, some years later, now as "UHB" (Urban Haute Bourgeoisie, term inventred in METROPOLITAN) are cousins working, sparring, and flirting with women in Spain. Stillman has said this was better received becasuse not perceiverd as "snobbish" and instead "about a club we're all not getting into—the European club."

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A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (James Mangold 2024) A very successful, sometimes thrilling, recreaton of Elijah Wald's Dylan Goes Electric, about the four years when Bob Dylan became famous and shocked diehard folk fans by going electric. Everybody performs their own songs: it's a totally dedicated ensemble picture and it makes you feel warm and happy, even though it ends with provocation: boos at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Seen Dec. 27, relased on Christmas Day. There is a lot of arguing over this among Dylan fans, of course, but what I think is the value of it is how it reawaakens interest in the older audience and arouses a new interest in the young who may naver even have heard of him.

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DON'T LOOK BACK (D.A. Pennebaker 1967) The classic documentary a about the young Bob Dylan on his 1965 tour in England with an entourage including manager Albert Grossman and Joan Baez. Ranked among the ten best documentaries of all time by BFI. I saw this back when it was new, and almost know it by heart by now but it's forever fresh. At the time, I knew virtually nothihg about Bob Dylan. This film arguably shows more facets of him than the new feature starring Chalamet. Note that Dylan made himself completely available for this. It doesn't show drug-taking, though, assuming there was that, and how could there jnot ahve been?

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NOSFERATU (Robert Eggers (2024) Eggers' gorgeous new recreation of the Dracula tale, with Lily-Rose Depp, Willem Dafoe, Nicholas Hoult, and Bill Skarsgård. Review pending. Christmas Day release watched on Dec. 30. This is probably the most beautiful horror movie I've ever seen, though it has it's very ugly moments of vampirish flesh-and-bone chomping. This may be Eggers' most mainstream film yet. Critical assessments, judging. by Metacritic, have gradually dropped for him: THE WITCH 84, THE LIGHTHOUSE 83, THE NORTHMAN 82, NOSFERATU 78.

Early January 2025:

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LOVE SONGS/LES CHANSONS D'AMOUR (Christophe Honoré (2007). On my own DVD. Though Manohla Dargis later called this an "odd, witty, touching film," noting how it evokes Godard and Truffaut, other American men around me at the press screening seemed to have no use for this and it felt like my secret pleaasure. The songs by Alex Baaupin are in a literate, wispy, very French style and it's shot in a gray, wintry Paris around the Bastille neighborhood. That and the plot line evoke a kind of sublime melancholy and a turn toward gayness. When his girlfriend dies Louis Garrel, in a prime early role, turns to a young gay lyçée boy (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), who has developed a crush on him, for solace. This was after MA MÈRE, REGULAR LOVERS, and DANS PARIS (the latter I saw 'dans Paris,' in Paris, too). LOVE SONGS was in Competition at Cannes and won the César for best musical film. Leprince-Ringuet, Garrel, and Léa Seydoux all cropped up again together in Honoré's LA BELLE PERSONNE the next year.

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NICKEL BOYS (RaMell Ross). See my revised review of this powerful reimagining of the Colson Whitehead novel. The POV shooting somewhat in a Terrence Malick manner can be questioned,many specific factual details of the novel are lost, but the effect is visceral and the San Francisco audience yesterday (Jan. 5, 2025) was on the edge of their seats. Metacritic rating: 91%. (This was in the pre-Oscar top ten but has dropped below.)

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BIRD (Andrea Arnold 2024). A teen girl wandering a slummy rural area between two parents, searching security that's lacking, naturalism winding up with a strong supernatural solution where a man called "Bird" (Franz Rogowski) turns out the be a giant bird, when needed, and a little bird carries a note up to a second floor window. There is another good role for Barry Keoghan as a multi-tattooed nutter who sells hallucigenic frog slime to fund his impulsive marriage, and some vivid non-actor kids. Arnold's sense of the danger of disorderly parents is here, and this was a tough, complex shoot for Arnold, but Peter Bradshaw's right when he says, "it’s a minor Arnold, with fluency and energy." I have wanted to see it since all the publicity from Cannes. Availble on Apple, Amazon and Fandango. But first see ARnold's important 2009 FISH TANK. Metacritic rating: 74%.