"Not the Best" Films of 2024

 It's that time again...

Every January, I post this list of my favorite films from the previous year.  I make no claims that these films are indisputably the finest and most artistically successful films released in 2024. For starters, these are my favorite films, chosen based on my preferences, tastes and limitations as a viewer. (I've written many times previously about my own sensory issues which tend to make loud or frenetically edited movies difficult for me.  One highly acclaimed 2024 film will be conspicuously absent from the list, due to a pivotal scene that was so overwhelming for me, it made me want to flee the theater.)

I pass this list on every year to readers in the hopes that they, too, will find joy in - and be pleasantly challenged by - the films I've loved. And, if not, well...chacun à son goùt as the French say.

As the title of this blog clearly indicates, I am a part-time cinephile, not a professional critic. This means I see around half (or slightly less) films in a year than would a professional critic. This year's total was 102 - not bad, but not quite my all-time high. So here's an overview of this films you won't see here - and the reasons why:

Limited or missed opportunities: 

These are the ones I just didn't get around to. Maybe they had a short run in the theater while I was busy or preoccupied and haven't yet arrived on streaming. Or, in a few cases, I just had no real interest in seeing them. They include: A Complete Unknown, Babygirl, Blitz, Dune: Part Two, Flow; Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Outrun, Queer, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot.

The Ones I Couldn't Finish:

Sometimes I start a film on streaming, but I don't get to the end of it.  It might be because I'm distracted and have too many other things on my mind to give the film my full attention. Other times, it's because the movie itself just doesn't pique my interest. Sometimes I revisit those movies (as I did with a certain film that is ranked highly on the list below). Sometimes, I never come back to them.  This year's false starts include: Between the Temples, Bird, Close Your Eyes, Kinds of Kindness, La Chimera

The Ones I Couldn't See Till 2025:

A standard qualification for this list is that the film must have been in general release in Chicago for the first time during the calendar year being discussed. Some of the films in this year's list are considered to be 2023 films, but they weren't available to watch where I live till 2024. (That is, apart from film festival screenings, which don't count as general release.) 

Conversely, there are several 2024 films which have only just opened in the Chicago area - or will open soon - which will be considered for my 2025 list. These include: All We Imagine as Light, The Brutalist, The Girl with the Needle, Hard Truths, The Last Showgirl, Nickel Boys, The Room Next Door, Vermiglio.

The good news here is movies were fantastic in 2024! So fantastic, in fact, that I expanded my list from the usual 10 films to honor an even dozen. Plus, I came up with a hefty list of honorable mentions.  

The bad news (for people who don't like to read subtitles, anyway) is that my list is unusually heavy on international films this year, and quite light on mainstream and/or American films.  Be assured, that's not calculated snobbery on my part, just the way it all shook out.

In reverse order of preference:

12. Chicken for Linda! (Directed by Chiara Malta and Sebastien Laudenbach)

This French-language animated film tells the kind of story that adjectives like 'heartwarming' were coined to describe.  Linda's mother accuses her of losing a precious ring she received from Linda's late father. When the truth comes out (their cat swallowed it), the mother asks Linda what she can do to make it up to her. Linda requests her father's favorite meal: chicken with peppers. So Mom sets out to get a chicken, but the grocery stores are closed due to a worker's strike. Her urgent quest to find a chicken for Linda's apology dinner eventually brings a whole community together and heals family wounds in the process. The animation itself is admittedly sub-Pixar in quality, but the film's heart and humor are irresistible.

Where to stream: Chicken for Linda!

11.Conclave (directed by Edward Berger)

Conclave makes spiky, suspenseful drama out of the machinations behind the election of a new pope. Impeccably acted (particularly by Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini) and expertly edited, it ratchets the tension up by degrees as new revelations about each papal candidate come to light and ballot after ballot fails to produce a successor. This film has been dubbed as 'pulpy' and compared to 'a good airport novel' by more than one reviewer, and they aren't wrong. But its final, startling plot twist is a sly nod towards the call for greater inclusion and tolerance in the church, and it accords Conclave a greater seriousness than we might have expected.

Where to stream: Conclave

10. The Old Oak (directed by Ken Loach)

This is reported to be the final film for Ken  Loach, the now 88-year-old British filmmaker who has consistently demonstrated a heart for people struggling on the margins of society. (See Kes, I Daniel Blake, and Sorry We Missed You, among others.)  Here a pub owner in an economically depressed neighborhood befriends and helps a family of Syrian refugees over the pointed objections of his rather less tolerant customers.  Loach accords compassion and forgiveness to all his characters; ultimately no one is entirely saintly or villainous, even when some behave far better than others.  The penultimate sequence brings everyone together in a show of compassion that may well move you to tears. 

Where to stream: The Old Oak

9. Megalopolis (directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

Francis Ford Coppola's long promised epic is kind of a mess. But it's a glorious (and gloriously nutty) mess, overflowing with imagination, ambition, and a breathtaking visual beauty.  And any filmmaker who can pull all that off at the age of 85 deserves some kind of accolades.

Megalopolis is set in the near future in New Rome, a city that strongly resembles New York.  It sets up a battle for the soul of the city between an innovative, forward-thinking architect, Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) and Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who envisions the city transformed into something tawdry, commercial and Vegas-eque. Things get complicated when Catiline falls in love with the mayor's daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) while his own former lover, a television reporter named Wow Platinum (played with deadpan relish by Aubrey Plaza) marries a very rich older man (Jon Voight). There are allusions to events from ancient Roman history throughout, as well as glancing references to The Fountainhead.

But keeping track of the plot is more of a distraction than a necessity. Better to lose yourself in the grandiosity of Coppola’s vision. There are flourishes of magical realism (Catalina can freeze time just by shouting “Time, stop!”) and set pieces whose sheer elephantine grandeur is marvelous to behold (the event celebrating the marriage of Plaza and Voight being a particular highlight). It’s a movie best experienced rather than analyzed.

Where to stream: Megalopolis

8. Tuesday (directed by Daina O. Pusic)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives a stunning - and too little appreciated - dramatic performance as the mother of terminally ill teenage daughter (Lola Petticrew). Writer-director Daina Pusic presents their story as a magical realist allegory, with Death embodied in an enormous talking bird whom the daughter befriends and welcomes. Louis-Dreyfus, by contrast, is in denial and despair. Tuesday is not an easy film. It requires leaps of faith and a willingness to embrace unconventional modes of storytelling, but it more than rewards the effort.

Where to stream: Tuesday

7. A Real Pain (directed by Jesse Eisenberg)

You could not more perfectly cast the leads in this film than has director Jesse Eisenberg. His first stroke of brilliance was casting himself as David Kaplan, a stammering, neurotic, intensely serious man, always looking to avoid making a misstep or calling attention to himself. Opposite him, as his cousin Benji, Kieran Culkin is a joyous, open-hearted extrovert… until he isn’t. His occasional shifts into anger or despondency suggest a possible bi-polar disorder, hinted at but never expressly called out.

The cousins unite on a trip to Poland, part of a tour group made up largely from descendants of Holocaust survivors. Once close, their lives have drifted in different directions; David is the sober, responsible one with a family and a corporate job, while Benji has never really settled down. David comes to the trip with hopes of the two becoming close again, but the film is ultimately more realistic about the difficulties of recreating that bond.

A Real Pain is both serious and comic, sometimes in the same moment, and Eisenberg’s direction skillfully sustains that very delicate balance. He is particularly masterful at handling the sequence in which the group visits the Majdanek concentration camp, bringing those moments a hushed horror that puts everything and everyone else in the story into proper perspective.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out Culkin’s especially brilliant performance as Benji. He is the beating heart of the film, and I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t get an Oscar.

Where to stream: A Real Pain

6. The Substance (directed by Coralie Fargeat)

Bring a strong stomach to this one, and prepare for some over-the-top body horror, none of which is gratuitous. Coralie Fargeat’s audacious sci-fi thriller explores the complex relationships that women have with their bodies as they age, and the judgments passed on them by society in general and men in particular. 

Demi Moore plays a washed-up film star named Elizabeth Sparkle,  reduced to hosting a cheesy television exercise program from which she is fired on her 50th birthday. Her boss (an over-the-top Dennis Quaid, shot in purposely grotesque close-ups) makes no bones about the fact that her age is the reason for her termination. When she learns about a black market serum called The Substance which can reverse aging, it doesn’t take her long to sign up.  But the dirty secret of The Substance is that it doesn’t de-age you, but rather allows your body to produce a second, younger and more beautiful version of yourself. Elizabeth’s alter ego is an impossibly shapely and gorgeous twenty-something who dubs herself Sue (Margaret Qualley) and gets herself hired as the new host of Elizabeth’s old show.

The catch here is that each version of you can only exist for seven days at a time. The horror begins when Sue gets greedy for more youth and more men, and uses up part of Elizabeth’s share of The Substance, only to see Elizabeth aging at a far more accelerated pace.c From that point, the grossness of the situation only gets grosser. 

The Substance scores points for feminism - and has launched a welcome career renaissance for Moore - but it won’t be most viewers’ cup of tea, due to the exaggeratedly cartoonish tone and the aforementioned grossness. But it has a fire and anger that many women strongly relate to. Consider yourselves warned.

Where to stream: The Substance

5.  The Zone of Interest (directed by Jonathan Glazer)

Glazer's very loose adaptation of a Martin Amis novel is considerably better and more powerful than its source material. It trains a cool, detached eye on the daily life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hess and his family, living in domestic bliss just outside the notorious concentration camp. Muted screams, gunshots and other signals of distress and horror are just barely perceptible in the background while the Hess family continues to fuss over their garden and their vacation plans. Frau Hess and her friends casually pick through fur coats and jewelry seized from the camp residents and gush over their  appropriated treasures. Only once in the film is the Hess family bothered (or more accurately, inconvenienced) by the genocide taking place almost literally in their backyard; while swimming with his children in the nearby river, Hess is annoyed to find ashes from the crematorium polluting the water. 

To borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt, this is a film about the banality of evil. It manages to be properly horrifying without ever depicting the atrocities taking place just out of camera range.  Glazer has come to be one of my favorite directors. He’s made just four films in 24 years, all very different from each other, but each one original in concept and astonishingly good. 

4.  Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (directed by Radu Jude)

Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude makes films with long, unwieldly titles (in English translation, anyway - recent ones have included I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn). His films themselves, are less unwieldy than their titles - rambling, shaggy-dog stories of life in contemporary Romania - and often very funny after a dark, absurdist fashion.

Here we spend a very long day with Angela (Ilinca Manolache) as she drives all over Bucharest interviewing injured workers for a  corporate 'safety at work' video, with the various interviewees taking full responsibility for their on-the-job injuries, even when it's obvious their employers and shoddy working conditions are more to blame. In between interviews, she records vitriolic, misogynist rants on TikTok using the persona of Andrew Tate, ostensibly as a twisted kind of stress relief. Scenes from a 1981 film Bucharest, about a female taxi driver, are intercut into the current-day story which give us some sense of how dramatically life in Romania has changed over the last 40-some years.

I Do Not Care... is freewheeling and funny, while at the same time vividly capturing the anxiety of a life spent struggling in the gig economy. Manolache's droll performance never wears thin, and if the references are occasionally a bit too parochial for American audiences, it hardly matters. The scenes breeze by so fast, you'll be on to something more accessible in mere minutes.

Where to stream: Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

3. The Beast (directed by Bertrand Bonello)

The Beast starts out as a romance set in Belle Epoque Paris between two people who are fatally drawn to one another at an upper-class soiree (Lea Seydoux and George McKay). But it evolves into a twisty, disorienting sci-fi epic over three different time periods in which the would-be lovers are reincarnated into entirely different versions of themselves. In a 2010 version of Los Angeles, Seydoux becomes a struggling actress while McKay is a vitriolic incel with a rabid internet following. Later the couple returns to Paris in the year 2044, now as estranged former lovers.

In the The Beast’s imagined future, AI has evolved to the point where a simple medical procedure can eliminate all of a person's inconvenient emotions; Seydoux's struggle over whether to submit to this induced emotional amnesia provides the running thread of tension throughout. On paper, this all sounds a little nuts, but in actual execution, The Beast is mind-bendingly seductive and adept at transitioning coherently among the various time periods.

This, by the way, is the film I had to start watching three times before I finally got engaged enough to finish it. I bailed on it twice because I just couldn't buy McKay as the kind of dashing, romantic figure who could make Lea Seydoux leave her husband. But as the film progresses to the other time periods, his casting makes complete sense.

Where to stream: The Beast

 

2. The Taste of Things (directed by Ahn Hung Tran)

Delicate, sensual and gorgeously photographed, The Taste of Things is a celebration of food, cooking, beauty and romance all at once.  Juliette Binoche plays a cook working for a celebrated French gourmand (Benoit Magimel) who is also her lover.  The opening scene alone is a wonder - thirty-plus minutes in which the camera glides around a busy kitchen as the main characters prepare a huge, elaborate meal. Vegetables are cleaned and chopped, meat is seared, butter sizzles in a pan, various dishes are ecstatically sampled - and every delightful minute of it commands our rapt attention. There's a swoony sensuality to the proceedings which permeates the entire film, particularly as the romance between Binoche and Magimel grows more serious. It's a love story between two people who court one another with exquisite tastes and flavors, and a celebration of the goodness in a simple meal prepared with patience and care.

Where to stream: The Taste of Things

1. Evil Does Not Exist (directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films have a quiet, graceful quality to which it is virtually impossible to do full justice in a review composed of mere words.  There is a patience in his approach to a story, a willingness to take time for quiet observation without rushing to make a point or form a judgment. He has an uncanny ability to appreciate a particular moment on its own terms rather than appropriate it for symbolic purposes. Many early scenes here are unspectacular at first glance (a father walking his daughter home from school, two men filling large jugs with water from a stream), but they are unhurried and mysteriously engrossing.

There is a story here, but it doesn't follow a predictable narrative arc. A corporate developer approaches an isolated, rural community with a proposal to build a "glamping" site. The company’s representatives who present their plan to the locals are shockingly unprepared to respond to their (very politely expressed) concerns about how the project will impact their land, safety, and water supply. Rather than take these concerns seriously, however, their bosses send them back to get the support of one local man.  Takumi, the man chosen for them to engage, is the father of a young girl and a steady, taciturn presence in the community. He does not scold them or argue with these corporate emissaries, but quietly and patiently takes them along with him on a typical day.

This is not a cliched "everybody learns and grows" story. One young corporate flunky may learn how to properly chop wood under Takumi's patient instruction. But he will fail to grasp a more important lesson: the natural world is not merely bucolic, nor is it to be packaged as a commodity. It can also be brutal, requiring caution and respect.

If you intuit a tragic ending from that statement, well... you're onto something. But be assured, this is no way a horror or revenge film. It's far too gentle and humane for that. Yet it does have a haunting quality, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. I've watched it twice in the last three months, and after writing all this, I feel like watching it yet another time.  It really does have that kind of power.

Where to stream: Evil Does Not Exist

A few more accolades:

Honorable Mention:  A Different Man, Anora, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, The End, Ghostlight, Green Border, His Three Daughters, Hit Man, Strange Darling, Woman of the Hour.

2024 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Challengers, Juror #2

Best Older Films I Saw for the First Time in 2024: The Breaking Point, Lair of the White Worm, The Long Good Friday, Missing, Sexy Beast, The Straight Story

2024 in Review: Prelude to a List

 

Later this week, I'll be posting my "Not the Best Films of 2024" list (so named because the list reflects my personal tastes and preferences, and I make no claims that it truly represent the greatest films of the year past.)

When I post this list each January, the reactions I receive are split into two distinct camps. In the smaller of those camps are responses from fellow film bloggers who are often even more obsessive about film than I am.  We'll go back and forth, comparing our lists and our relative rankings of the films on them. There will inevitably be debates over the inclusion or absence of a particular film from one or the other of our lists.

In the other camp are personal friends and acquaintances who tend to be more casual filmgoers. They love movies (most people do, I believe) and a few will take recommendations from my lists. Their reactions are generally polite, if not downright complimentary. But every year, at least one person in this group will tell me, with palpable indignation, "I've never heard of most of these movies!!"

I never quite know what to do with that response. My first instinct is to feel a little wounded. One of my great joys in life is uncover a lesser known, but wonderful, movie and recommend it to people who I think might enjoy as much as I do. When doing so seems to offend someone rather than gratify them, it confuses me and makes me a little sad.

So, in case you are one the people who wonders how I find out about such films, here's how it happens:

I've been obsessed with movies since childhood, and I seek out information about films from all over the world on a regular basis. I follow the press coverage of international film festivals (in Cannes, Venice, Berlin, New York and Toronto primarily) and have attended screenings at the Chicago International Film Festival for most of the last ten years. Since the COVID pandemic, the Sundance Festival has offered remote streaming of their films; I take advantage of that every year.

I read film reviews in the New York Times and the Guardian, and follow sites like Vulture, Indiewire and the  AV Club on a regular basis. I'm on the mailing lists for Chicago arthouse theaters like the Music Box and the Gene Siskel Film Center. I subscribe to streaming channels that focus on international and/or experimental and avant garde cinema (Criterion, MUBI). 

And, of course, I read other film blogs, usually written by people I've corresponded with for years. (Among them: Wonders in the Dark ( to which I have contributed to on occasion), DeFacto Film Reviews, This Island Rod).

As a result of all this activity, I keep a rather extensive list of films I want to watch - and then I watch as many of them as I can. 

In short, I put a lot of time and effort into following films from over the world because it is my passion! And I make my 'year's best' list every year in order to share that passion with others.

Lest I sound like too much of a snob, however, I have listed below all 99 of the 2024-released films I have seen to date (along with my personal rating of each, using a 4-star rating system). Please note that there are some very lowbrow Netflix romcoms and a few other entirely silly entries among the highfalutin' festival favorites...

A Different Man	***1/2
A Family Affair	**
A Real Pain	***1/2
All of Us Strangers	***
American Fiction	***
Anora	***
Babes	***
Back to Black	***
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice	**
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry	***1/2
Blink Twice	**1/2
Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes	***
Brats	***
Cabrini	***
Caligula: The Ultimate Cut	***
Challengers	**
Chicken for Linda!	***1/2
Civil War	**
Conclave	***1/2
Coup de Chance	*1/2
Daddio	***
Dahomey	***1/2
Didi	***
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World	****
Driveaway Dolls	***
Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes	***
Emilia Perez	***
Evil Does Not Exist	****
Faye: The Many Lives of Faye Dunaway	***
Firebrand	**1/2
Freud's Last Session	*1/2
Frida	***1/2
Ghostlight	***
Gladiator 2	***
God and Country	***
Good Grief	**
Green Border	****
Heretic	***
His Three Daughters	***
Hit Man	***1/2
If	***
Inside Out 2	***
It's Not Me	***1/2
Janet Planet	***
Jeanne DuBarry	**1/2
Joker: Folie a Deux	**1/2
Last Summer	***1/2
Late Night with the Devil	***
Lee	**1/2
Lonely Planet	**1/2
Love Lies Bleeding	***
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger	***1/2
Maria	***
Martha	***
MaXXXine	***
Megalopolis	***1/2
Memory	***
Merchant Ivory	***
My Old Ass	***
Nightbitch	**1/2
Oh Canada	***
Origin	***1/2
Our Little Secret	**
Perfect Days	***
Problemista	***
Rather	***
Red One	**
Remembering Gene Wilder	**1/2
Rumours	*
Sometimes I Think About Dying	**1/2
Saturday Night	**1/2
Scoop	***
Sorry Not Sorry	**1/2
Stormy	**1/2
Strange Darling	***1/2
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story	***
The Apprentice	***
The Beast	****
The Critic	**
The First Omen	***
The Great Lillian Hall	***
The Hypnosis	***
The Old Oak	****
The Substance	***1/2
The Taste of Things	****
The Truth vs. Alex Jones	***
The Zone of Interest	****
Thelma	***
Tuesday	***1/2
Unfrosted	**1/2
Wicked	***
Wicked Little Letters	**1/2
Wildcat	***
Will and Harper	***
Woman of the Hour	***

  Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara ***

  Juror # 2                                              **

  Nosferatu                                             **

2024 in Review: Big Dumb Fun

 

After a VERY long hiatus, I am back online, and looking back on the best and worst of film in 2024; this is the first in a series of posts about the year in film.

Welcome back, kids!

2024 has been a great year for movies - I'm already struggling to limit my still-to-come "year's best" list to just 12 entries... and I have at least 12 more potential candidates to watch!

But some of my favorite film experiences aren't so much deserving of critical accolades. They're just examples of what I lovingly call "Big Dumb Fun."  Here are a few you might want to indulge yourself in when you're just not up for a Serious Film:

Unfrosted

Jerry Seinfeld's goofy, highly fictionalized story of the invention of the Pop-Tart has a "throw  everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach. Unfortunately, no one took the time to edit out the stuff that didn't stick.

It's a bit lumpy and lazy, with some gags that utterly fail to land. Most of Melissa McCarthy's dialogue feels like placeholder lines from an early draft of the script that the writers never got around to replacing with actual jokes.  Amy Schumer is badly miscast as the cereal heiress Marjorie Post, a role which cries out for an actress who can deliver moneyed elegance and sharp comic timing in the same moment. Sigourney Weaver or Gwyneth Paltrow would have knocked it out of the park. 

However...

When the gags DO work (and many of them do), Unfrosted is laugh-out-loud funny. When Jon Hamm and John Slattery show up as their Mad Men characters to deliver a sex-saturated advertising pitch for the new breakfast pastry, the film briefly soars into the comedy stratosphere. A funeral for a Kellogg's executive provides some dark fun in the form of a special graveside ritual performed by the Rice Krispies trio of Snap, Crackle and Pop. I won't reveal which famous British actor emerges from Tony the Tiger's costume, but his deadly serious approach to the role is a giddy delight.

There's certainly plenty of talent on hand. In addition to the aforementioned stars, Jim Gaffigan plays a major role, and various small parts and cameos are filled by SNL and Veep alumni, among others. They all look like they're having a great time, even when the audience might not be. But ultimately, it's hard not to love the all-cast dance number that plays over the closing credits.

The First Omen

I can't say that I've kept up with The Omen franchise over the years, but this much I remember: Damien, Satan's creepy little spawn, was born to a mother who died while giving birth to him. When the son of Lee Remick and Gregory Peck arrived stillborn, a nun working on the maternity ward helpfully suggested they swap in Damien for Remick's baby while she slept. And if you thought that nun was acting out of innocent benevolence, this film will set you straight.

Forty-eight years after Richard Donner's genuinely terrifying horror classic, The First Omen gives us Damien's somewhat less terrifying origin story.  It begins with the journey of an idealistic young American nun (Nell Tiger Free) sent to serve in a Roman orphanage.  She's very serious and devoted to her calling, at least until she bonds with an orphan girl who has visions of 'evil things.' Lots of very bad, very creepy things happen for which there is no obvious explanation.  It's all very tense and atmospheric (good work by director Arkasha Stevenson), even if it takes a very long time for the pieces of the puzzle to fall, more or less logically, into place. (Slight spoiler: the Catholic Church is ALL up in it!) Old pros like Sonia Braga, Charles Dance and Bill Nighy fill out the cast with welcome flourishes of gravitas.

The First Omen segues seamlessly into the 1976 film. I watched them back-to-back on Hulu just before Halloween this year, and found that the final scene of the new film matches the opening scene of the original to near perfection. I strongly suggest you do the same, although you'll now have to rent the original film on another streaming service like Amazon or Apple.

Gladiator II

Ridley Scott's sequel to his own 1999 hit, Gladiator, is the most fun I had at the movies all year. But I'm not entirely sure that was the intention.

There is every indication that Gladiator II takes itself fairly seriously, even if I can't. It plays fast and loose with Roman history. Well, with every kind of history, for that matter. In one scene, a character is shown sitting in a cafe while reading a newspaper; this takes place approximately 1200 years before the invention of the printing press and God knows how many years before cafes became a thing. It's comparable to Fred Flintstone having a TV.

Then there are the gladiator battles, many of which feature obviously computer-generated animals like sharks, baboons and a rhinoceros, none of which ever made an appearance in the Roman Colosseum in real life.  But honestly, those scenes are so crazy that they're just fun. When Paul Mescal grappled in hand-to-hand combat with the CGI baboons, I laughed harder than I had at anything in a comedy film all year. But it wasn't laughter born of derision - I was actually having a great time. A baboon would roar in Mescal's face, Mescal would fearlessly roar right back, and the baboon would freak out in fear - I mean, how can you NOT find that hilarious?  I got a pretty big laugh out of the gladiator who rode into the arena on the back of a charging rhino, too.

The best performances in Gladiator II are the devilish tongue-in-cheek turns by the supporting cast. Paul Mescal's gladiator and Pedro Pascal's general are played in earnest, while Denzel Washington underplays his scheming consul character with dry humor and deadly confidence. A pair of demented, ginger-haired co-emperor/brothers (Joseph Quinn and Fred Hechinger) and Tim McInnerny's corrupt, debt-ridden Senator Thraex provide the decadent comic relief. 

2023 in Review: Not Necessarily The Best Films of 2023

 

Yes, you read that title correctly.

I make no claims that what follows are the absolutely very best films of the years just ended. And here's why...

As the title of this blog says, I am a PART TIME cinephile, not a full-time professional film critic. To date, I have seen 105 of the films released in 2023 - which is a lot, but less than half of what a professional critic would see. Then again, as a highly selective amateur critic, I focus on seeing as many high-quality films as I can squeeze into a schedule that allows for other passions and pastimes. So this list isn't totally eccentric; you'll see a number of overlaps with other critics' lists. 

Also... to qualify for my list, a film must have been in general release for the first time in the Chicago area between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023, inclusive. (Film festival screenings don't count.) This means some 2023 films will be considered for my 2024 list; those include Memory, All of Us Strangers, Origin, The Taste of Things, and The Zone of Interest. This also means that some films generally considered to be 2022 releases were actually considered for this year’s list, and a few of them made the Honorable Mention list.

Then there were the eligible films that I just didn't get to, usually due to missed or limited opportunities. (And by “missed or limited opportunities", I mean they haven’t yet played in suburban theaters. Or sometimes they have, but I ran out of  either the time or the inclination to see them.) For 2023, these include: Fallen Leaves, Godzilla Minus One, Napoleon, Ferrari, The Iron Claw, Dream Scenario, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, and American Fiction.

I'm not a particularly academic or intellectual critic, and I chose the films on this list largely based on how much I thought about them after seeing them - and how badly I wanted to see them again. (In fact, I've watched six of the ten films at least twice so far.) 

Having said all that, here are my ten favorite movies of 2023.(I've provided information on where you can stream each of them; "the usual platforms" means Apple, Amazon, Google Play and Vudu.)

10. Linoleum (director Colin West)

It's nearly impossible for me to tell you why you must watch Linoleum without giving away its stunning and entirely surprising ending.  It starts as a gentle comedy about a bumbling, 1960s dad (Jim Gaffigan) who hosts a TV science show for kids but doesn't seem to get much respect at home. One day, as he is walking home, a red sports car literally drops out of the sky and crashes to the road near him, its driver appearing to be a younger version of himself. Later, when he's on camera with his show, two stagehands appear to clear off the set pieces - one of whom sports a very 21st century hoodie and man bun. Those are our first clues that Linoleum is playing with notions of  space, time and the unreliability of human memory. This unprepossessing little film turns out to be a lot more than you expect, and those stunning final moments are absolutely worth the ride.

Linoleum is available to stream on Hulu with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

9. A Compassionate Spy (director: Steve James)

This startling documentary proves an interesting companion piece to Oppenheimer, detailing how a young scientist working on the Manhattan Project (Ted Hall) shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia and evaded punishment.  Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself) combines dramatic recreations of episodes from Hall's life with narration by his feisty, unrepentant widow, Joan. This  approach may sound cheesy, but it actually works to underline the moral questions inevitably raised by Hall's actions. (He also shows footage of Ted himself confessing many years after the fact, but it's Joan's testimony that sticks in your memory.)

Nowhere do the dramatizations have more impact then in the passage where Joan tells us of her husband's tortured conscience and his plan to confess to his crimes in the hopes of saving Julius and Ethel Rosenberg from the electric chair. Joan didn't just talk him out of it; she forbade him to come forward in the strongest possible terms. This leads to a stunning dramatization of an actual moment from the Halls' life: on their way to a dinner party in upstate New York, they drive past Sing Sing prison at almost the precise moment that the Rosenbergs are executed there, a particularly haunting Mahler symphony playing on the car's radio as they pass.

Mrs. Hall is a challenging narrator, to the say the least. She's a proud old-school lefty who works forcefully to control the narrative around her husband's crime - and sometimes drifts into cloud cuckoo land. She brags about her activist daughter who "was a Maoist back when China was the good guys." ("And when precisely would that have been?" this reviewer wondered. recalling the devastating famine wrought by Mao's Great Leap Forward initiative, not to mention the chaos and violence that were instigated by his Cultural Revolution.)  I'm not sure who the good guys are in this particular story either. James doesn't answer that question for us, but gives us plenty to ponder instead.  It's a provocative and unsettling film.

A Compassionate Spy is available to stream on Hulu with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

8. Maestro (director Bradley Cooper)

To fully appreciate Maestro, you'll need to put your expectations aside. If you're looking for an in-depth history of Leonard Bernstein's contribution to music, this isn't it. Rather than is an impressionistic portrait of his complicated marriage to Felicia Monteleagre (beautifully played by Carey Mulligan). By 'impressionistic,' I mean you're going to get fleeting but significant glimpses of their relationship at various stages. And by “complicated,” I’m alluding to Bernstein’s many extramarital affairs, mainly with men.

I completely understand why this approach to the life of Leonard Bernstein is frustrating and unsatisfying to many viewers. But if you can accept Maestro on its own terms, it's an admirably accomplished piece of filmmaking. Bradley Cooper who wrote and directed, in addition to playing Bernstein, captures the heady combination of passion, talent and ego that drove him. With Mulligan, he creates a compelling and nuanced portrait of a marriage that endured - and sometimes thrived - albeit largely through compromise and capitulation on Felicia's part. It would be trite to simply observe that marriage to a genius is tough, but Maestro puts some real teeth into that assertion. 

Maestro is available to stream only on Netflix with a subscription.

7. May December (director: Todd Haynes)

A friend tells me she can't bring herself to watch May December. I assume her reluctance stems from the fact that Julianne Moore's character, Gracie Yoo, is obviously based on Mary Kay LeTourneau, the infamous pedophile who seduced a 13 year old boy, eventually having his baby while serving time for child molestation - and ultimately marrying him. 

I understand her reluctance. But May December isn't lurid, nor does it take any predictable or expected approach to the incendiary subject matter. When we first meet Gracie, she has been married to Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) for twenty years, the two of them settled in a Savannah, Georgia McMansion with a daughter in college and twins about to graduate high school. 

Natalie Portman arrives, playing a particularly vacuous actress cast as Gracie in an upcoming film. She prattles on about the 'very complex, very human' story she's about to perform and assures Gracie she wants her to "feel seen and known.' But it's all so much bullshit. The very point of Todd Haynes' acerbic take on this story is that people and situations like these are ultimately unknowable. Tabloids, TV shows, 'true crime' movies - none of the pop culture venues by which we peer at deviant behavior really gets to the heart of it. Gracie, as cannily played by the always brilliant Moore is slippery, almost shape-shifting. One minute she's a sweet, soft spoken, cake-baking Georgia housewife, the next a critical, passive-aggressive mother telling her daughter, "You're so brave to show your arms in that dress." At night, in bed next to Joe, she piteously sobs like a child over the slightest disappointments of her day. Then she's up early the next morning, rifle in hand, stalking quail in the early morning fog. 

There are comic flourishes here and there, such as when Gracie stares ominously into her fridge and announces "I don't think we have enough hot dogs," while ominous music swells on the soundtrack.  Or the uncomfortable scene where Portman speaks to a group of high school students, in very inappropriate detail, about what it's like to shoot movie sex scenes.  But the non-ironic heart of the film lies in Joe's story line and Melton's fine, sensitive performance. Amidst all the evasive posturing by Moore’s and Portman's characters, it's Melton’s Joe who grapples with the truth of what happened between him and Gracie, and the disturbing possibility of his own exploitation and abuse.

Haynes (whose most brilliant prior work includes Safe, Far from Heaven and Carol) doesn't play to our expectations or make bold pronouncements about his characters' guilt or innocence, much as we might have wanted that. He plays around the edges of the story, teasing out small bits of information, but never giving us the full picture.  His approach is frustrating at times, but ultimately brilliant

May December is available to stream only on Netflix with a subscription.

6. Past Lives (director: Celine Song)

There is a quiet and gentle beauty to this film that accumulates tremendous emotional power as it proceeds.

Told in three distinct chapters, it follows the lives of two junior high school sweethearts in Korea, Hae-sung and Na-young, whose friendship is upended when the girl's family moves to Canada.  The two connect online as young adults (now played by Teo Yoo and Greta Lee), while she is studying playwriting in New York and he is serving in the Korean military; after some initial excitement, however, that connection eventually peters out. They finally reunite in person in New York where Na-young has changed her name to Nora and gotten married.

It's the accumulation of seemingly small but finely observed moments that make this film special. I can never forget the scene where they meet in Central Park for the first time in 20 years: his obvious nerves as he repeatedly tucks his shirt in and smooths his hair, her buoyant nonchalance as she greets him with a hug. It's a tiny bit of business, really. But the details were so perfectly calibrated and true that it brought tears to my eyes (and still does, even as I write this.)

Past Lives is about the transformation of a particular friendship over time, and much of it is framed in ways specific to Korean culture and the immigrant experience. But it also evokes universal truths about the ways we all evolve and change as we get older, and sometimes grow apart from people we once loved. As the characters themselves acknowledge in the final chapter, we are different people in different stages of our lives, but we can always remember and cherish who we used to be.  These observations seem almost trite when put in writing, but Song's lovely script and meticulously directed scenes give them power and resonance.

Past Lives is available to rent on the usual platforms.

5. Priscilla (director: Sofia Coppola)

Sofia Coppola is the cinematic poet of the loneliness in privileged lives, as she has demonstrated to perfection on films like Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and Somewhere.  Who better, then, to adapt Priscilla Presley's memoir Elvis and Me?

Here's what I wrote in an earlier post about Priscilla - I can't say it better now:

“Here, as in her earlier film, Marie Antoinette, Coppola is specifically concerned with the outwardly pretty but inwardly desolate life of a (too young) woman trapped in the gilded cage of her husband's royalty. (Yes there's a difference between being the King of France and the King of Rock and Roll, but I think the analogy stands.) 

I can clearly recall an interview given by Priscilla Presley around the time she published her memoir of life with Elvis. She was quietly insistent that the 'real Elvis' was a sweet and decent man. Coppola's depiction of their relationship lines up with that assessment even as it refuses to back off from the uncomfortable creepiness of it all. It's startling when Elvis' friends invite a wide-eyed, guileless 14-year old to meet Elvis at their home, even weirder when Elvis arranges to install the still teen-aged Priscilla in Graceland by setting up his father as her temporary guardian. He controls and dictates everything from her wardrobe choices to her friendships and even a Catholic school education; he also feeds her pills to help her sleep. Yet he demurely postpones the consummation of their relationship until she reaches legal age, and it isn't clear whether this is evidence of his innate chivalry or the result of frank discussions with his legal team.

Yet Elvis, as impressively portrayed by Jacob Elordi, comes off as an essentially well-intentioned man who got too rich and too famous too fast. There is genuine affection and decency in his portrayal, as well as unreasonable anger and startling dictatorial tendencies. His performance makes it all too easy to understand how Priscilla fell under his spell. He's seductive and terrifying in equal measure. 

For her part, Callie Spaeny as Priscilla makes the slow transition from wide-eyed innocence to thoroughly exhausted 28-year-old with seamless authenticity. It's an exquisitely measured performance through which we can always see Elvis as Priscilla must have seen him.”

As of 1/15/24, Priscilla is not yet available for streaming rentals, but can be purchased on the usual platforms.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon (director: Martin Scorsese)

If you read my earlier review, you might be surprised to see this ranked so highly. But despite my wish that the Osage point of view might have been articulated in a bit more detail, Killers of the Flower Moon remains, indisputably, a masterfully crafted and powerful experience.

Martin Scorsese turned 81 late last year. As he's grown older, his films are not only getting longer, but also plumbing ever deeper levels of moral urgency. (A trend that will likely continue with his next announced project, a film about Jesus.). Killers is, in some respects, just one more impressive entry in Scorsese's tales of white men behaving badly, yet there is a more potent sense of tragedy here than in most of his earlier films.  Nowhere is the film's broken heart more stunningly personified than in the performance of Lily Gladstone, as the Osage woman who marries and is betrayed by a foolish white man (Leonardo Di Caprio).

Killers of the Flower Moon is available to stream on Apple with a subscription or to rent on Google Play.

3. Barbie (director: Greta Gerwig)

I saw Barbie twice in the theater, and my memories of both showings are pure, pink-tinted joy, much like what Margot Robbie radiates in the photo above. (She's singing the Indigo Girls' classic Closer to Fine, which is also one of my favorite songs to belt out while behind the wheel of a car.)

Beneath its shiny, silly surface, Greta Gerwig's film actually has a lot to say about being an American female in the years since Barbie became our favorite doll. It's no accident that women and girls flocked to this movie, making it the box office hit of the year. It's not just a movie, it's a tribal experience of sisterhood. We came together in those packed cinemas to share the laughter of recognition. We’ve all had a "Weird Barbie" with raggedly shorn hair and a shitty Magic Marker make-up job. We’ve all longed for a world like “Barbie World” where we could achieve anything we wanted with the full, loving support of other women. And we’ve all felt the exhaustion and futility of the culturally imposed need to be unfailingly 'nice' and 'likable' that is so perfectly expressed by America Ferrara in a now famous monologue. That we get all this validation in a very funny movie fueled by non-stop product placement feels more like a joke the Mattel company wasn't quite in on than it does a craven cash grab.

And kudos to Ryan Gosling for his fully committed, good natured portrayal of Ken as a handsome doofus whose whole reason for being is simply 'to beach.'  You could complain that the guys get short shrift in this film, but that gloriously daffy "I'm Just Ken" production number is actually one its best, most memorable scenes.

Barbie is available to stream on Max with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

2. Oppenheimer (director: Christopher Nolan)

I'll be totally honest here. Oppenheimer is this high on my list because it's a three-hour movie that doesn't feel like a three-hour movie.  The first time I saw it, I was in a huge IMAX auditorium alongside a wheelchair-bound friend, which meant our seats were right up front, just below the enormous screen. I watched the whole three hours with my neck uncomfortably craned back and never minded. I was too engrossed in the drama, the stellar performances and the complicated moral questions around the deployment of the atomic bomb. And yes, I watched it a second time on streaming, and that second viewing went by as seemingly fast as the first. 

(My only complaint is that I got a little distracted by the number of well-known actors showing up in brief roles - hey it's Kenneth Branagh! Matthew Modine! Rami Malek! Jason Clarke! Gary Oldman!  I was very anxious for the final credits to confirm that I really had spotted British actor Tom Conti playing Albert Einstein - he hasn't been onscreen much in recent years.)

Seriously though… with Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan seamlessly integrates the many facets of a complex story about a complex man into a film both thrilling and intellectually stimulating. He is absolutely masterful when incorporating scientific information, giving us just enough for a high-level understanding of how the bomb works, but not so much that we’re baffled and constantly trying to keep up. Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer is mostly in his eyes. He's soft spoken and his body language is restrained, but you can see the curiosity or moral panic in his subtlest sweeping glances.

 Oppenheimer is available to rent on the usual platforms.

1. The Holdovers (director: Alexander Payne)

The Holdovers is not an unusual choice for the year's best film; it's topped a few other lists as well. But it feels like a specifically personal choice for me because so much of what I loved about it intersects with my own experience. In addition to being set in the the early 70s, the film is styled to deliberately evoke films of that decade, right down to old "R" rating header that precedes the story. Watching it made me feel like I was a teenager again, in the decade where my passion for film really exploded. It also features Paul Giamatti as a pedantic, fussbudgety Latin teacher which resonates with me - a straight-A student in Latin for all four years of high school. I actually understood many of the Latin phrases he used before he translated them.

Personal attachments aside, this is just a beautiful, sensitive, compassionate film about the unlikely alliances formed between wildly different people thrown together under uncomfortable circumstances. Paul Giamatti plays the cranky Latin instructor assigned to tend the handful of private academy students who are forced to remain at school over Christmas break. His charges eventually dwindle to just one, an insufferably snotty boy (Dominic Sessa ) whose apparent arrogance is a mask for deeper troubles. There is also the school cook, whose son was recently killed in Vietnam (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), grieving privately while brushing off too easily offered condolences.

Put all that in writing and it sounds hokey. But be assured, The Holdovers is no such thing. Nothing in the developing relationships between these characters ever feels forced or precious. Every one of them is recognizably, stubbornly human and real, and no conflict between them is ever resolved in a pat or predictable manner. This is a film I know I will come back to, time and time again, in the coming years just to bask in its humanity and intelligence. 

Alexander Payne, who previously - and memorably - directed Giamatti in Sideways, elicits an even greater performance from Giamatti this time. It's no exaggeration to call it a performance for the ages.  I dearly hope that he wins a well-deserved Oscar.

The Holdovers is available to stream on Peacock with a subscription. It can be purchased on the usual platforms, but rentals are not available as of 1/15/24.

Honorable Mention:  Showing Up, Earth Mama, The Quiet Girl,  BlackBerry, Anatomy of a Fall; A Thousand and One, R.M.N., Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Flora and Son.

2023 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Asteroid City, Poor Things, Saltburn