If you saw my Top 10 list for 2023, you’d notice it was published in July – a full 6 months after the calendar year ended. Here, I’m sliding in a week past that previous record. The reasons remain the same: work, family, and the simple fact there is so much to see and so much of it not quite feasible to see until well into the next year. So here we are.
Many films I’m sure are great but I never got around to: Anora, The Brutalist, Challengers, All We Imagine As Light, The Substance, Nickel Boys, etc. There are many. Hopefully one day I will see them.
But the beauty of writing this nearly 6 months into 2025 is that I know what really stuck with me. First, a some acknowledgment of films that didn’t quite make the cut but still had much to offer.
A FITTING FINISH: Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl
This film holds my favorite sight gag of the entire year: an alliterative sentence of a penguin doing prison pipe pull-ups. And then it follows my second favorite sight gag: that same effortlessly cool penguin, Feathers McGraw himself, sweating literal beads of sweat. There’s definitely a nostalgia button being hit here, bringing back a villain from the Wrong Trousers film I first saw over 20 years ago, a short housing one of the greatest chases in animation history. But no corners are cut. The puns are as plentiful as ever. Gromit’s face remains relentlessly elastic. And it all builds to a clever, rousing finale. My four-year-old found the gnomes utterly terrifying once they went evil (“Dada I don’t like this movie“), only to continue watching from the kitchen, inching further and further back to her sleeping bag before asking to watch it all over again.
ANXIOUSLY ANIMATED: Inside Out 2
Last June, at the tail-end of an incredible trip to Costa Rica, I convinced my wife that we should see a movie in San Jose in the Cine Magaly. Of all the (not very accessible) options, I figured we would see Inside Out 2, or, as the marquee called it, Intensa Mente 2. The dialogue would be in English and the subtitles in Spanish. Surely I could use my two years of high school Spanish from 20 years ago and match it with a little bit of understandable dialogue – what could possibly go wrong?
Needless to say, I deeply overestimated my Spanish. But even as I pieced the story together visually, it was hard not to feel the sequelitis running through the film’s veins, like it was working overtime to assure me that yes, there is enough story worth telling and no, this is not some kind of studio cash grab. It’s a simliar structure to the first film. It adds several more characters. There’s also two memorable voices missing (Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling) because Disney didn’t want to pay up. So it all feels like it’s tumbling towards something new while being strangely handcuffed by the Mouse Powers That Be. I definitely enjoyed some of the weirder bits (the 8-bit character in Deep Memory) and the impressive puns (The Sarchasm). Anxiety (Maya Hawke) and Envy (Ayo Edebiri) add perfectly-cast voices to the mess the characters create.
But by far the best part of this film – and the thing that transcended whatever language barriers or lack of access I was dealing with throughout – is the very real way it shows a manifestation of an anxiety attack. You can feel Riley working through it, trying desperately to keep it all together. And you can see how all the emotions are furiously trying to keep her from spinning out of control. It’s the high point of the film and worth revisiting.
A WEIRDER DRONE: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
A tweet that has stuck with me over the past year is Drew McWeeny’s observation that every drone shot is like the cinematic version of a throat clearing. Whenever I see it in films or TV these days, that’s all I can think about. A story going “uh, um…” as it leads to its next thought. So for a film that’s been in Development Hell for literal decades, with screenplay after screenplay being considered and scrapped, it’s no surprise the opening minutes of this film are littered with drone shots. It’s as if Burton himself isn’t sure how he wants to get into the story after being away from the Beetlejuice universe for so long.
But for a movie with such a long development line, this could have been so much safer. There are tantalizing story lines set up that go absolutely nowhere – you can’t just bring Monica Bellucci in and discard her like that! – and not all the jokes hit. The Jeffrey Jones running gag definitely went meaner and longer than necessary.
But the best part is undoubtedly the really weird shit like Willem DaFoe’s undead cop, a true example of an actor Understanding The Assignment and having an absolute blast doing it. The legacy sequel has really held no juice for me. I have to be convinced to care somehow. And if it can’t tell a story that makes sense – the less we say about the ending, the better – it can at least give us a few more shades of bizarre humor.
STING OPERATION: Hit Man – written and directed by Richard Linklater
A darling of the 2023 Venice Film Festival, many of my favorite film critics bemoaned a true crowd pleaser being gobbled up by Netflix’s cash and deprived of a proper theatrical release. When it finally arrived to the streamer, premiering in June of 2024, I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. The reality of this film is that, like many Richard Linklater films I’ve seen over the years, it can fall into an intellectual rut. What looked from the trailers like a blast of pop ended up being more of a singer-songwriter’s attempt at hitting it a little bigger, a little broader. Glen Powell continued his hot streak with this year, trying on some pretty playful personalities as the role-shifting Gary Johnson. And the chemistry between Powell and Adria Arjona could probably power at least a few small towns.
If you’ve heard about the iconic Notes scene in the final act, I can assure you it’s as clever and delightful and sexy as you’ve heard. It’s so sparkling that a) I couldn’t believe it had been done onscreen before and b) I forgot all the minor nitpicks that could possibly have come up (could he really type that quickly beforehand?). In the end, the tone takes another shift and truly commits to the bit, offering a real sting of commentary on how we’re all playing roles until we find just the right partner in crime.
BARK AND BITE ALIKE: Nightbitch
I’ve been a huge fan of Marielle Heller’s last two films, and the minute I heard about the synopsis, it felt like a perfect marriage of director and material. And, in many ways, it is. But it’s also a case where the material got warped to the interests of the director, and yielded a fascinating document.
This New Yorker article should be a companion piece alongside the film. You can definitely feel, with it’s intricate shifts and specific POV, like this is something deeply personal to Heller. Amy Adams gives a performance full of empathy and anger, the perfect actress to lead this story through. This could have just been a film about a woman reclaiming her life and her story. What elevates it even further is the way it allows the husband to come around and realize what he’s missed. Kids complicate everything, and they especially complicate a protagonist’s journey, when the two adults need to figure out what the new normal looks like. This progression away from the premise and towards some greater understanding makes the film shaggier, but it also makes it that much more meaningful. It’s a brave film. A brave actress helping a brave director tell a rather brave story. It’s not for everyone. It may never get its due. But I’m glad Heller got this out of her system in the way only she could.
SLIGHTLY SHORT-CIRCUITED: A Wild Robot
There is much to admire about this film. The voice cast, led by Lupita Nyong’o’s powerfully gentle work. The animation style in the way it feels messy in a very controlled manner, art bustling with chemical reactions. That it’s being directed by one of my favorite animation directors in Chris Sanders. So much to like! Even the trailer, with it’s remix of “What A Wonderful World” felt like it was designed in a secret lab to make me, and specifically me, cry all the tears.
But there’s a funky shape to this film that I suspect short-circuited the waterworks. The film makes you think that Brightbill’s moment of flying is the emotional climax. But there’s still an entire second half of a film to go. Which leads to an ending that feels a few scenes too long, blunting the emotional impact. This is the kind of film that makes you feel through 60% of it like it’s going to make you cry, living in your chest and threatening to break everything loose. But that ending, as it becomes increasingly protracted – the key deviation from the excellent Peter Brown book it’s based on – lets out so much of the steam it has built. Perhaps it’s trying to set up a sequel that may or may not be made. But it might also just not be able to fully trust its own story and splits the difference.
Movies are hard to make. Animation even harder and longer. There is still so much to celebrate about this fine film. I just wish it had a smoother landing in the home stretch.
A SLICE OF THE PIOUS: Conclave
Every Easter, I think about a tweet from a film critic who once said, “If church was like The Last Temptation of Christ, I would have gone a lot more.” So much of what held people back from seeing Scorsese’s classic back in the 80’s still holds true now: the assumption of depiction versus a more human, more relatable reality. I found Willem Dafoe’s Jesus so engrossing not because he was tip-toeing some kind of make-believe line of decency; instead, he had fears, doubts, and desires just like you’d expect from every 30-something male. It made him more relatable and thus all the more powerful a story.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to visit the Vatican, you don’t really see any of it up close. The only sense of movement the rest of the world sees – beyond the papal visit or speech – is white smoke from a chimney. Only then do we know change is on its way. What Conclave does so artfully and entertainingly is expose just how normal these gossiping gentlemen are. Deciding on the new pope is an enormously stressful experience for a man already doubting his own place in things, and few can communicate so much with their face alone quite like Ralph Fiennes. He is the moral center of the film just as much as he’s the canvas for which we can paint our own projections upon. Any film that has Stanley Tucci, Jon Lithgow, and an assortment of other perfectly-cast actors is going to keep me glued to the screen. The cinematography and production design work in concert to make the most intimate of conversations feel epic, like little verbal dances across a sprawling, immaculately-framed chessboard. All of it leads to a conclusion I found unexpected and moving in equal measure. Perhaps it’s fantasy to hope for a fairer world where the right pope for the moment is chosen. But Conclave reminds us that real change comes from all the things we cannot see.
A HUGH LEAP FOR HEROKIND: Deadpool + Wolverine
I didn’t have high hopes for this one. Six years is a long wait from the last sequel, even if a studio merger, COVID, and strikes complicated the timeline. I was not crazy about some of the people involved this time around. And my Marvel fatigue is an old t-shirt I retired to my closet years ago. It would take a lot to pull me back in, and the early trailers showing a greyish CGI hellscape didn’t do the trick.
There is still so much about this movie that doesn’t do it for me. Many of the jokes fall flat, especially in the juvenile attempts oriented around Deadpool’s nebulous sexuality. The mask allows Reynolds and the crew to ad-lib to their heart’s content, and that level of contentment is a whole layer of atmosphere above where I stand. And that’s okay! It doesn’t have to be for everyone. But, despite all these gimmicky warts, what brought me back in were two things: the connection to the early 2000’s Marvel and the indomitable, indefatigible acting energy of one Hugh Jackman.
Seeing Channing Tatum as a ridiculous version (that accent!) of Remy aka Gambit – an X-Men hero rumored for decades before finally getting a shot onscreen – instantly got me on the rooting side of the film. And having Elektra and Blade, the real OG’s in this Marvel universe that keeps getting rebooted, made it even sweeter. I don’t have any real connection to these characters. But it is fun to see Jennifer Garner and Wesley Snipes have their own kind of fun with revisiting the past. Everyone seems to be getting a kick out of this big-budget cosplay, and I’m not beyond enjoying it.
But Jackman commits so hard to his role, to so convincingly showing you the deep anguish Wolverine lives every second of every day with, that it warps the entire film to its own gravity. Anytime Deadpool’s side of things gets too far out into the quick quip realm, Jackman wrangles it with his voluminous forearms and twists it into something far more tolerable. The van fight is a clever use of tight space and powerful abilities, but it’s the monologue that precedes it, when Wolverine tears Deadpool an asshole and a half, that really pulled me in. Jackman believes this universe, this script, this character more than anyone possibly could. He doesn’t just sell it. He collects royalties by the second, with each micro shift of his brow, each mutton chop sweat drop.
The ending still makes absolutely no sense to me. It seems to undercut the entire emotional journey of the characters, regardless of how they both nearly died to save the world – or universe or branched timeline or whatever it is these days. But I don’t care: it’s just great to see people care about the things we once thought silly, and to be reminded of just how powerful they can be. Humor is a significant force. But commitment to the bit – that’s a superpower.
WHEN MISERY NEEDS COMPANY: Hard Truths
It took a Delta flight a couple months ago to finally catch up with this film, and I’m still digesting it. So much has been made about Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s stunning (and criminally overlooked) performance as Pansy, the most entertainingly miserable person you’ve seen onscreen in a while. Every little thing sets her off. The lines that are too long, the people wanting her parking spot, the strangers who dare look at her the wrong way. Pansy could probably find a way to complain about her own shadow. And Jean-Baptiste so artfully allows you to see how much energy this woman expends on all this discontent just as the cracks show you how much she exhausts her own spirit.
What I love – and what sticks with me, still – is how writer/director Mike Leigh doesn’t judge. There is every reason to give Pansy a moment of comeuppance, where someone finally lights into her and snaps her out of it. Instead, Leigh gives us contrast. There is a bit of whiplash that occurs when you see Pansy practically foaming at the mouth about some nonsense, only to shift to a hair salon where her sister, Chantelle (a luminous Michelle Austin), is the center of a free-flowing, open environment full of laughter and warmth. There is no way these two could be sisters. But as you see everyone around Pansy slowly moving away, Chantelle stays close. Midway through the film, the two sisters visit their mother’s grave. And while cinematic history may have conditioned us to believe a major breakthrough will occur here, Leigh doesn’t let anyone off the hook. “I don’t understand you, but I love you,” says Chantelle.
In the final scenes of the film, Pansy has driven everyone away with her outbursts and her unwillingness to accept the help and light of others. She lays in bed, hoping she can sleep away whatever is rotting within her. Meanwhile, downstairs, her husband, with a badly twisted back, calls for her. Neither one is able to move – one physically and the other emotionally. Even then, Leigh refuses to judge or give us answers. A film of remarkable performance and restraint that will make you rethink how your own energy affects those around you.
I WILL FOLLOW YOU INTO THE DARK: Rebel Ridge
Every year, there’s a highly regarded film that I finally get around to and then, as I’m watching, I inexplicably – and during a key sequence! – fade in and out of Napland. One year, it was Arrival. Another year it was Pig. Both great films that absolutely did not bore me; just had the misfortune of being seen on a Friday night when my body needed a reboot before my brain accepted the terms. A similar situation happened with Rebel Ridge in the (literal) darkest scene of the movie. I have an inkling of what happened. I looked at Wikipedia after to confirm the suspicions. But somehow that body reboot of a nap blunted my emotional engagement.
But by the time Aaron Pierce is rightfully praised for what will surely be an outstanding turn in next year’s Lanterns HBO series, many of us will point to Rebel Ridge as the proof of concept for Pierce’s superstardom. Yes, he is 6’3″. Yes, his piercing eyes make you feel like you’re hiding a secret you’re not even aware you have. And yes, he’s classically trained from England like so many male action film stars these days. But not every actor can put all these things together into something intriguing. Pierre does it with ease.
Despite my brief nap, I have no problem recalling that Rebel Ridge is an exceptionally clever film about how you can defeat a rather overwhelming enemy through nonlethal means. It’s truly masterful the way writer/director Jeremy Saulnier is able to ratchet up the tension as the minutes go by and Pierre’s predicament grows increasingly desperate.
Come for Pierre’s rise, so you can say you saw him back when he was in a film only released to Netflix (even better, watch him in Barry Jenkin’s Underground Railroad on Amazon Prime). Stay for Saulnier’s muscular direction and carefully laid out story of a man trying to fight back against severe injustice the only way he knows how.
And now, the stickiest of 2024:
10. A Real Pain
You could make the argument that this is a film about two great character actors playing something eerily familiar. Eisenberg’s Richie comes across like a lot of neurotic, stressed-out Eisenberg characters. And Culkin’s David isn’t too far from Roman Roy, with his unpredictable cadence and propensity for saying wild things at perhaps a tick or two past the right moment. But, to me, this is all deceptive. It’s going to relax you. You’re going to think you know what you’re seeing. Two very odd ducks coming together to go on a Holocaust tour. They’ll probably bond. Share some big tears together. Find some greater truth in life to unite behind. You’ve seen this kind of movie before. You can practically feel it.
But that’s not what this is. And what really sticks with me in the months since I’ve seen it is how artfully Eisenberg (who wrote and directed) lays out these two men who are so desperate to be more like the other, and yet will never get there. Richie is the responsible one. He plans everything. He reaches out. He is The Good Guy who does the Right Thing. But this also, in many ways, makes him invisible. And Richie knows it. He knows how painfully square he is, but he can’t quite break out of it. And as much as David pains him with his unpredictable behavior, he can’t help but look on in envy when his cousin effortlessly connects with these people he’s never met before. The way he can get them to all drop everything and do silly poses in front of very real, very solemn historical statues.
It reminds me of an essay I read nearly twenty years ago and which has haunted me in the many hundreds of weeks since. Charles Baxter compares the fiction writer and the poet, and while the strokes my feel broad, the characterization rings true. Fiction writers are often deep in their heads. They’re piecing together the story, the dialogue, the little bits of their own life they can lift and put into fictional place, like a puzzle with just the right kind of felt on the bottom. The poet, on the other hand, lives in the moment. They don’t hold onto things. They seek out experiences and connections. They lead with curiosity and introspection, keeping them in The Moment far more than the fiction writer can ever seem to manage. But the poet is jealous of the fiction writer’s ability to rewrite anything, to bend the narrative towards something that feels better, perhaps even truer. The fiction writer wants to be less absorbed in thought, less up their own narrative ass. They want to be each other. At least a little more of each other. A perpetual battle that will never be won or lost.
9. Lisa Frankenstein
I will watch anything Diablo Cody writes. Beneath the playful dialogue and offbeat characters is deep empathy. She loves her little weirdos and she understands that we are all little weirdos in our own way. Zelda Williams brings a lot of flair to her directorial debut, and what I will remember more than anything is how much this film commits to an ending I did not see coming. Sure, the 80’s fashion and music is a lot of fun. Cole Sprouse and Kathryn Newton really sell their bizarre little relationship.
It starts really cute and playful and then accelerates in a way that if I became a Human Wikipedia and read you the plot, sentence by sentence, you would short-circuit. It’s insane. It sounds like a bunch of questionable ideas somehow strung along into a feature. But it’s the audacity of it all – and Cody’s delightful, yet human touch – that gives it all the electricity it needs to bring it to life. I still smile thinking about how everything went from the expected Frankenstein’s monster film into something only Beetlejuice Beetlejuice could dream to be. We need more genre fare with a flair for fun, and highest of kudos to Williams and Cody and their team for making this low-budget delight.
8. The Fall Guy
Two years ago, David Leitch came out with Bullet Train, in which a pretty great concept (a man fighting his way through a train full of escalating challengers) is led by a massive movie star (Brad Pitt) and injected with offbeat humor that doesn’t always stay on track. This past summer, Leitch has The Fall Guy, another film sporting a great concept (a stunt man goes undercover to win back the love of his director), a massive movie star (Ryan Gosling) and injected with offbeat humor that doesn’t always land. All of this to say: Leitch continues to make films that are shaggy as hell. Not all of it works. At times you can feel the bumps of a production with perhaps more money than it needs. But what elevates this year’s Leitch production is Drew Pearce’s smart script and the bubbling chemistry provided by Gosling’s co-star in Emily Blunt. I never quite fully believed in the movie Blunt’s character is supposed to be making – which she herself isn’t a believer of either – but I bought, 150%, the dynamic between Gosling and Blunt. And there are few funnier shots to me this year than Gosling, in a big truck he mistakenly believes to be a closet, quietly crying to Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”.
What Leitch’s last two films do especially well at this big-budget action hybrid stage is allow character actors to let their quirk flag fly a little freer. Hannah Waddingham gets to play someone several shades darker than Rebecca Walton. Aaron Taylor Johnson gets to flaunt just how little brains can exist behind an 8-pack. Winston Duke gets to ham it up as a stuntman bestie.
It’s an expensive soundtrack packed with 80’s anthems and power ballads. It just feels and sounds like guys having the time of their lives, living it up in Australia through stunt after stunt after stunt. You can feel the fun of it all. And I especially delighted in the way Pearce injects the metanarrative of our two lovers at the heart of the sci-fi film, like an almond-centered chocolate candy. Pure fun that should have made many more millions at the box office.
7. I Saw the TV Glow
For the longest time, I yearned for a mass cultural event. It’s why I watch the Super Bowl alongside social media – it’s one of the few things we have left that so many people partake in at once. But sports, for all its narrative flourishes, can’t always compete with the cultural depths of art. Art has been defragmented in a thousand streams (pun fully intended). We don’t have albums to obsess over. Movies aren’t in theaters like they used to be. Books lack a communal space for discussion that isn’t haunted by Nazis and Reply Guys. And there is just too much goddamn good TV out there. Nostaglia is a dangerous drug, but I think it’s easy to misunderstand what we truly long for. For me, it isn’t so much a time or place; it’s a common shared experience to obsess over. I still remember the Wednesday nights from college friends and I would gather for the latest LOST episode, and the way our minds were collectively blown with the first flash forward. And how, just a few blocks down the next night, there’d be a watch party for The Office. Or how, as a Resident Assistant, I marched 45 freshmen through Riverfront Park on our way to see The Dark Knight in IMAX, freaking out every passerby with my gnarly, melting Joker makeup.
As much as I love writing these little Best Of lists, the desire to do so has sometimes felt more like inventory – etchings into wood to be revisited later – than something to be shared. The chances of readers having watched all these same movies? Basically nil. The chances they will seek any of these out and find a way to fit it amidst their already expansive, ever-expanding media diet? Only slightly higher. What Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow gets is just how important those shared experiences are and just how much we die a little inside when we have no one to share it with. And especially when no one else gets it quite like you do. Owen (an incredible Justice Smith) is in denial of just how much The Pink Opaque has impacted him, even as a childhood friend comes back trying to draw him back into that communal safe space. We are all dying to share the things we’ve seen because we’re all dying to be seen a little bit better. And to feel like that thing that so profoundly affected us was real. That it happened. And that it cannot, regardless of administration or climate, be erased.
6. Love Lies Bleeding
Any movie that can convince Ed Harris to have that awful of a mullet wig is going to be worth it. Kristin Stewart brings a sweaty loner desperation to Lou that’s instantly captivating, and the chemistry between her and the wayward Jackie (an outstanding Katy O’Brian) is heartbreaking and real. Dave Franco has never been sleazier until his JJ meets a mindblowing (maybe kinda pun intended) end. Every actor really makes you believe in the reality of this.
The ending is what still sticks with me, many months later. Our gals have seemingly fought their way – both physically and metaphorically – through the last remaining ties to their difficult past. The desert surrounding them and the miles of highway before them suggest a life they can happily rewrite. It almost feels too good to be true. And then there’s a stirring in the back of the truck. A body once believed dead has sprung to life. Next: we see Lou digging the body she just had to re-kill while Jackie awakes. It’s that kind of nap where you wake up and realize things are much harder than you dreamed of. That the truth will catch up to you, eventually. And that the fantasy you’ve been living just might be more real than you can handle. It’s a deceptively simple ending.
What I still think about, months after first seeing this, is how writer/director Rose Glass (alongside co-writer Weronika Tofilska) shows her characters under smaller lights, surrounded by growing shadows. The frame is expansive, bathed in darkness. And there’s our characters, only visible from the small range of light they’re standing in. It’s an artful metaphor in so many ways. The way we have to make our own little happiness, and the way we can be fooled into thinking we’re safe when we are surrounded by what will devour us.
You can tell Glass just wanted to tell this weird, little crime story in her own way and, when given the opportunity, passionately makes the most of it. She’s absolutely someone who is now on my radar and I cannot wait to see what she comes up with next.
5. His Three Daughters
There are few genres of film I enjoy more than “let’s get some of our best actors together in a small intimate space and let the fireworks fly“. And when you combine some of my actual favorite actresses in Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen? I’m there. I’m so there.
There are many movies about siblings coming together as a parent is dying. But I’ve never seen one quite like this. I love the way the writer/director Azazel Jacobs initially films each of these three very different sisters, all alone in their own frame, even as they’re sitting at the same table together. That separation by frame continues through most of the movie, subtly breaking apart. And then, by the end, we rarely ever see them alone.
In many ways, Coon has the hardest role. She’s bitter. She’s angry. She doesn’t understand why her pothead sister just couldn’t get a simple form signed. She is a heavy presence everywhere she goes, even as though she wants to believe herself to be a feather floating amongst the wind, confused as to why people are not more appreciative of her. Coon finds all the edges in the silhouette and all the light that can squeak within. It’s astonishing work.
We know by Lyonne’s limited response that she’s a dam waiting to burst. And yet Jacobs and Lyonne keep you waiting, letting other people – including her boyfriend (Jovan Adepo) – speak and fight for her. And when she finally breaches the wall? It’s your tears, not the metaphorical water. It hits you in the softest spot. The narrative and audience patience is rewarded.
But Olsen nearly runs away with the whole thing. The way she so carefully lets us see a woman cracking from within, someone who thought they had it all figured out and isn’t sure how to let the world see she most definitely hasn’t. She’s never comfortable, even when she’s doing her yoga breathing exercises in the living room. It’s the kind of work that often goes unnoticed at awards season but that when you stumble upon it later, you’ll look around the room for a witness, any witness, and wonder aloud, “How did she not win all the awards for this?”
I still think about a moment late in the movie when the father (Jay O. Sanders) of the three daughters – who’s presence has only so far been heavy breathing heard down the hall – is brought out into the living room. He suddenly stands up, pulling off all the tubes and tape he’s been entombed in, and delivers one lucid, haunting thought after another. He’s full of love and regret and a desperate need to get out any important thought he has, like a door is about to be closed on him. It’s so jarring and yet so fitting. And Sanders is the perfect vessel of an actor for it. The masterful thing about this sequence is that you know it has to be some kind of dream sequence. There is just no way otherwise. But it’s a catharsis that’s only possible because of the patient story steps taken beforehand, as beautiful a dramatization as I’ve seen of what can happen when three people at odds with each other finally see the light. Sisters who were once shot in isolation are now always within the frame, together, forever.
4. Mad Max: Furiosa
I still think about the opening scenes of this astonishing film, the way the low, distinct rumble of the motorcycles sneaks up and lives within the theater walls as we watch characters chase each other over long, blue sand dunes at night. The way that George Miller lets this prequel reference Fury Road in ways that only deepen it. The way that Chris Hemsworth, Thor himself, absolutely disappears into a role as this muscular yet desperate villain, Dementus.
And Praetorian Jack. What a name. What an actor in Tom Burke. What an impression.
There are so many ways this film could have gone wrong. It could have repeated the structure and all the things we loved about Fury Road. Hell, it could have just been 150 minutes of the Doof Warrior rocking out, a rock opera for the apocalyptic ages, and I would have been satisfied. But where Fury Road is almost entirely a chase film, from opening frame to last, Furiosa builds instead like a biblical epic broken into parts. This isn’t just the story of Furiosa (Anna Tayler-Joy). This is the story of the Land of Women fighting back. Of protecting what’s theirs. Of trying to find a glimmer of hope in a sea of darkness.
I confess I did not see the point of this film until I read Kyle Buchanan’s excellent Blood and Chrome, which revealed how, in the long gestation of Fury Road, Miller and his team had written an entire prequel that is very much the film we came to get this year. Miller and his team have lived this tale, day after day, year after year, and the obsession pays off in astonishing ways. I still get tickled thinking about the various set pieces and how they play out differently in shape and rhythm. The long shot of Dementus’ monster truck chasing Furiosa along the ridges of large, cracked land. The first time we see death by motorcycle. The final confrontation between Furiosa and Dementus, when she realizes that revenge will be something she has to define and live with, because death is not enough.
I don’t know what kind of tax credit wizardry had to be agreed to with Australia to make something this big and weird and beautiful happen, but I’m so glad it exists. It’s a complete vision. The thing that still sticks with me a year after seeing it is the closing moments when we see how Furiosa has decided Dementus’ fate. It’s the cleverest kind of “revenge” I’ve seen onscreen in a long time, a kind of mythically-tinged moment that may or may not be true and yet could make a believer of anyone.
3. Sing Sing
There is a moment late in this extraordinary film when Divine G (Colman Domingo, deserving of all the awards) is at his parole hearing. The film has carefully laid out for us all the reasons to be hopeful. Divine G is clearly a positive presence in the community at Sing Sing Correctional Facility: setting aside his pride and taking another troubled prisoner under his wing in Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin), talking to the prisoners when play director Brent’s (Paul Raci) words aren’t quite hitting the right way, and offering inmates ideas and ways to do better at their next parole hearing. We want Divine G to win because we see how deserving he is. We know there’s some kind of tape that’s supposed to exonerate him. Everything will, for once, work out. Justice, as we see it, will finally be served.
But then Domingo offers some of the best acting I’ve seen all year when you can see it slowly dawn on Divine G, mid-interview, that he’s not going to get the news he’s worked so hard for. Worse, he’s interviewed in such a callous manner, leading up to when he’s asked, point-blank and soaked in disrespect, if he’s been acting in front of the panel. There are about 5 different layers of things going on in Divine G’s head at this point, and Domingo plays them all like a heartbreaking symphony. From there, the film only gets more artful, laying down each devastating card it had carefully hinted at before. When Divine G finally breaks, it’s just as bruising to see how beautifully the men around him absorb it. They don’t overreact. They don’t fight. They just stand and listen. Because they know that anger and they know how badly they wanted someone just to listen to them once. So they do it all together, as a community, a safety net being offered for a man ready to jump.
Kwadar and his team clearly did their research, and by using former prisoners (and members of the Rehabilitation for the Arts program depicted in the film), there is an almost effortless economy to the storytelling. When Sean Johnson, on the verge of seas of tears, pleads to Divine Eye to let go of the anger consuming him, you believe it. When Divine G tells his fellow thespians that anger is the easiest emotion and Raci, with the perfect disposition, exasperates, “too easy,” you believe it. The camera understands the most valuable part of the film is their collective stories which, in the limited time of a movie, means we see through their faces. The 16mm film makes all the contours, wrinkles, and bumps of each of these characters pop. We know these are men who have lived and are striving, every day, to get a little more color back into their lives.
But I keep coming back to the vulnerability. The acting exercises they willingly perform together. The endearingly goofy props they put together with cardboard and dreams, all in service of a truly out-there time travel story involving gladiators, Egyptians, and Hamlet. The way they share their dream places, each of them as varied as their personalities. They are creating space for each other to feel a little more human each day. And within that space, they can allow the art to heal them. Healing doesn’t happen on its own; it must be done within community. And what a community this is to briefly be a part of.
2. A Different Man
Categorization, by definition, dehumanizes. Studios hope to fit their films within neat genres to make them more marketable. But many of the most unforgettable movies are the ones that defy this neatness. They yank at genre boundaries like yarn, running and weaving into its own final form. Aaron Schimberg’s exemplary, deeply reflective A Different Man is such a film. It lurks with Lynchian and Cronenbergian horror, harkening back to old-school, tactile sci-fi, before shifting into a psychological dramedy and settling into a daring satire that wraps it all together. I wouldn’t even know how to truly define it except as a true vision of what it means to push beyond the constraints of the stories we’ve been told to believe.
Sebastian Stan deserves all his flowers for the way he shows Edward’s transformation throughout. His posture can only be described as “haunted” early in the movie. And when the extra skin (quite literally) peels away and he looks like Stan himself? Edward doesn’t quite know what to do with this strange new power. He walks downtown, stunned at how people simply pass him by without comment. He goes into a bar he attended the previous day – in which he, in the throes of transformation, puked his entire guts out in the bathroom toilet – and has a new, ill-fitting swagger to him. He feels stiff. Like an action figure trying to figure out how many points of articulation it has. And then when unruly Mets fans come bumbling in, Edward is suddenly one of them. The way Stan screams within all the excitement says so much about the character; he is a man desperate to fit in but with nothing to build upon. He is an empty vessel in search of direction.
There is so much more to say about this film. Renate Reinsve is incredible as Ingrid, a one-time neighbor of Edward who later writes the play of the story she imagines his life to be. The way she pokes and prods at his life early on, trying to embellish it into something more interesting, only to later twist everything into an overwrought, misguided attempt at onstage empathy? I know that person all too well and yet Reinsive manages to keep Ingrid from being a completely repulsive character, finding new layers to bring to the surface. And when Adam Pearson shows up as Oswald? Everything kicks up to a whole new level of playfulness and meaning. Oswald has the same genetic condition of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) Edward has, but he’s just about everything Edward is not and wishes to be. And Stan plays that desperate jealousy and resentment beautifully. He is a man being shown the distance between where he is and where he yearns to be and is deeply unsure if he can bridge the gap.
Often when there’s a work of art related to disability released into the public, it takes me a while to get to it. There’s a fear that your experience will be portrayed somehow, and badly. And if it’s somehow well-done, then you feel your chances of expressing your own have deflated. A box has been checked; the Hollywood bus will not come back around anytime soon. What I found so comforting about A Different Man is how I felt like it was made by someone who understood. Schimberg has been very transparent about how having a Cleft Palate affected him, over a lifetime of 60 surgeries. And his collaboration with Adam Pearson has clearly helped him find a delightful conduit through which his complex ideas can course through. Nearly every line in this film is tinged with a double-meaning. Philosophical and cultural conversations are dramatized. Schimberg has heard and grappled with them all. And he’s eager to push forward.
I am probably going to spend the rest of my life thinking about this film, turning it over like a Rubik’s cube, feeling my way through every crease and shift. I am just in complete awe of what Aaron Schimberg and his team of Stan, Pearson, and Reinsve have accomplished. There are more layers than a forever-spinning onion. It’s incredible. The understated nature of it all makes it easy to overlook at first. And then, like me, you’ll never get it out of your head.
1. My Old Ass
It took me until my second daughter started walking to realize how much I had been a parent asleep at the wheel. At times, I felt we had moved through our firstborn daughter’s stages with efficiency because we knew we could probably savor the second one a little bit more. We didn’t entirely know what we were doing the first time around. And then we really didn’t remember what we learned the second time around. And then, by that time, we realized it was too late. She had already started walking. Our days of holding her were now numbered.
The reality with children is that everything is numbered and you are not privy to that data. You don’t know the last time you’ll pick them up. Or that they’ll let you pick them up. Or the last time they will tell you they love you and mean it. Or the last time they will actually want to sit and eat with you, rather than scurry off with their friends. My first daughter used to say, in the cutest way, “Dada, hold you” instead of “Dada, hold me.” The day she finally said it the more grammatically correct way, a small petal inside of me dropped from the rose, much like in 1991’s Beauty and the Beast. So when my second daughter started saying “Dada hold you“, something woke in me like a cold sweat. I had to document better. I had to savor it more. It would all be gone too soon.
The premise of My Old Ass – a high school senior meeting her 39-year-old self on a drug-induced trip – suggests some humor and wisdom. But I did not expect to get so emotionally walloped. Cracks formed in the dam when Madison talked with her mother about the first night she could put herself to sleep. I felt that so hard. I could picture it so well I could almost remember the smells, the soft sound machine lights, and the slight breeze from the nursery’s ceiling fan. It was so long ago and yet just like yesterday. Time isn’t a flat circle; memory makes it feel so.
It’s easy for films with time travel concepts to suffer cognitive entrenchment with their own ideas, to go so deep in the weeds they lose the audience. Writer/director Megan Park understands none of this matters. We just need to know they’re connected and that she trusts her own metaphor. When Younger Elliot (an electric Maisy Stella) and Older Elliot (a heartbreaking Aubrey Plaza) are lying in bed next to each other, it’s one of the tightest time loops ever constructed. “You are so lucky,” Older Elliot stresses. “Life will never be the same as it is now.” She describes getting lost in the excitement of the city, of the regret of missing out on her first Thanksgiving away from home. “The only thing you can’t get back is time. When you get older, it goes by so fast, dude. So fast. It sucks.” And as she’s saying this, we can see in Plaza’s face the way Older Elliot’s done the math many, many times, and still, no matter how hard she tries, cannot find a way to find a more satisfying answer. Time is undefeated. Then she looks over to see Younger Elliot falling asleep. The message might well have been a ghost, a whisper. But that’s how it is. That’s how it often has to be. The brain has to lose the plot so the heart can even get into the conversation.
There’s especially inspired song selection in this film, even if it makes me uncomfortably feel my age. Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Right” while Elliot and her girlfriends slide across water towards their hallucinogenic hubris. Justin Berber’s “One Less Lonely Girl” on a second mushroom trip as Elliot wrestles with why her girl-hunting self suddenly is in love with a guy. Even the French song “Comme Des Enfants”. But my favorite, and the one that hits hardest, is when Chad and Elliot start getting intimate with each other beneath an isolated boathouse in a rainstorm and Feist’s “Let It Die” begins, the sound of ache and longing entwined. What we don’t know is how the lyrics will hurt more later. And that’s precisely the point. If we knew the pain coming, would we still make the effort?
I went in expecting this film to be about a younger self being schooled by a more cynical older self. What I didn’t anticipate, and what sits with me all this time later, is how it works in reverse. Younger Elliott reminds Older Elliott of how to let go of the past, of how to find a way forward as they both walk into their own path of uncertainty. In the final shots, the golden hour light shines around Young Elliott’s head. Her hands reach out and knifes through the water she once haphazardly motored through. She’s going to savor this lake that gave her so many memories. She knows she’s fortunate to be aware it’s the last time, and she’s not going to let herself take it for granted.
