Movie Log: 2024 Round-Up
I still haven't seen all of the potentially important movies of 2024, as I was busy throughout the awards season when most of the movies often become more widely available online. Instead of trying to do the customary Top Ten - and have it feel lacking and incomplete - here are some movies I did see that I don't feel received enough love.
I could tell you how much I loved A Complete Unknown or Anora, but if you were playing Oscar season catch-up you already know about those movies. Here are some that I loved as much or more but I feel did not get enough love:
A Different Man
USA, 2024, d. Aaron Schimberg, 1h52m, ****
Sebastian Stan plays Edward, a man with neurofibromatosis that gives him an 'Elephant Man'-like appearance which seriously interferes with his calling as an actor. When an experimental treatment turns him handsome for the first time in his life, the changes in his life are legion but not all for the better, as he finds the story of "his life" being stolen by another actor with neurofibromatosis played by the actor Adam Pearson (who has neurofibromatosis in real life).
While I adored The Substance - a bold, body horror take on unrealistic beauty standards and aging for women in Hollywood (and by extension, everywhere) that escalates to such a glorious explosion of gore in its finale that I genuinely can't believe it secured so many Oscar noms. But the movie about an insecure actor who receives a body transformation after an experimental drug treatment that I most thought about for months after seeing it was A Different Man. I'm not saying it's a better film, but it has some more complex things on its mind.
The Movie Emperor
China, 2024, d. Ning Hao, 2h5m, ****1/2
Hong Kong megastar Andy Lau plays Chinese megastar 'Dany Lau' who is not content with his acting legacy when he misses out on a "Best Actor" win to 'Jacky Chen'. He sets out to mainland China to research a new role where he'll play a Chinese peasant and show that he's in touch with the common man in a 'serious' film about the struggles of poverty...
I have never seen such a dry and satirical comedy from China; the pitch of the humor is remarkably similar to the films of Ruben Östlund, especially Triangle of Sadness with its class commentary and absurd situations. Lau smuggles a pig into his 4-star hotel which escapes to wander the halls on its own, prompting a robotic concierge to ask "valued guest" if it needs assistance.
On the surface level this movie would seem to be a self-criticizing satire of the out-of-touch wealthy movie elite of Hong Kong, and that's certainly the level on which this movie was approved by Chinese censors. But I see in this movie a scathing indictment of the state of filmmaking in Hong Kong. Over the last 10 years, Hong Kong filmmakers like Lau have been increasingly stifled by new Chinese censorship and rules. Mainland investors and actors have to be involved in productions, and content is increasingly vetted.
The investors in this movie pay to get speaking parts in the movie. When Lau travels to the mainland to learn to be a poor farmer, he finds out that "poverty has been eradicated" on the mainland. It's not a stretch to see everything that looks self-satirical in this film could actually be redirected to the external forces working on Dany Lau. As he says in the film: "Why can't you accept me as I am, and see that what I do is hard work too?"
Steppenwolf
Khazakhstan, 2024, d. Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 1h42m, ****1/2
Humanity would seem to be at the brink of total self-destruction. Everywhere is civil war and rioting, fascistic forces try to exert control over total anarchy. A woman named Tamara searches desperately for her son and asks a competent stranger for help. Like a Clint Eastward hero, he has no name, but he would seem to have even fewer scruples about using violence to survive.
The action set-pieces from this Khazakh film are incredible, but for every cheap thrill there is also emotional violence that comes like a gut punch. When the traumatized Tamara starts stuttering, our no-name 'protagonist' slaps her in the face. She laughs when he does this. The violence is numbing. This is a feel-bad movie. It is as important a warning to our current war-torn world as Alex Garland's Civil War; this is us, if we keep turning our backs to violence.
Eephus
USA, 2024, d. Carson Lund, 1h38m, ****
On the eve of the dismantling of a storied, small-town ballpark called Soldiers Field, the players of an amateur league play one final game. The game takes all day, as the men who are playing are aging, some have beer bellies or failing joints. A few young people pass by the game and afford some curiosity, but not enough patience to stick around. The old knights continue their game, upholding a dying tradition and culture. The time period is purposefully kept unclear, but generally it's meant to evoke memories of two or three decades ago.
The first voice on the soundtrack - of a radio DJ - is actually of the documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. Wiseman's films present fly-on-the-wall portraits without narration and direct commentary. You are presented with all of the small procedural details of whatever institution he is documenting and have to draw conclusions yourself. His cameo is fitting: Eephus finds joy in the procedural details of the institution of baseball and uncovers the reasons humans sit around all afternoon on a Saturday doing this.
Robert Altman is another touchstone here with layered sound design. Where Altman wanted you to feel the inability to make things out in the noise of a crowded room, director Carson Lund wants to evoke the feeling of clearly hearing a rival talk about your teammate's wife in the dugout across the quiet ballfield. There is a lot of patter going on at varying distances in the sound mix, all carefully scripted, and some of the best gags of the movie occur here. Eephus is full of good humor but is mostly wistful; I personally don't have a lot of nostalgia for baseball, but I felt a lot of nostalgia for Americana in this relaxing, well-detailed slice-of-life.
Blink Twice
USA, 2024, d. Zoë Kravitz, 1h42m, ****
Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut is brilliant. It's shot with loads of style but also has a lot of important things on its mind. I don't want to get too deeply into what these things are, as part of the fun of this movie is in the gradual unfolding, but let's just say that if a rich mogul convincing some pretty younger women to come on his private jet to his private island sounds familiar... that might be a clue.
I don't want to oversell how deeply this movie explores its themes, but it interweaves its commentary very smartly. It is first and foremost an entertaining thriller. In my book, the best thriller of the year 2024.
