Obviously, this has not really come to pass. What has happened instead is the explosion of the steadily emerging new American horror wave (sometimes called “elevated” or “art” horror). We’ve seen massive critical and commercial success of a variety of titles across film and television, indicating that there is something particular about what these stories being told say to audiences and why we connect with them.

This came to mind last week because I was listening to the New York Times interview the star of Widow’s Bay, Matthew Rhys. The conversation eventually led to what the “changing of the guard” between superhero and horror as the dominant box-office genre might be telling us about American society. Interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro succinctly put what I had been circling for weeks:

[…] film and our cultural touchstone say something about us and the moment that we’re living in. And I think[…] when superheroes movies were really having their moment, we wanted things to be black and white. We wanted to be saved. We wanted someone to come and sort of make everything OK. And I think what this moment might be telling us is that things aren’t what they seem, that there’s things happening behind the scenes that are beyond our control and aren’t particularly nice either.

The shift from superhero to horror as entertainment’s most popular genre stuck out to me. Superheroes said something about American culture in a post-9/11 world, where we believed that someone or something was coming to save us. In a post-COVID world, this understanding has shifted from “something is coming to save us” towards “something is coming to harm us.”

There are threats to our safety, such as disease, climate catastrophe, war, and terrorism, that we previously trusted the structures of power to safeguard against. Now, we have an understanding that these structures of power will do little to nothing to stop these destructive forces. In some cases, the structures of power will perpetuate the problems that cause this harm. Modern horror understands this. Modern audiences definitely understand this.

In the present day, as Garcia-Navarro put it, things aren’t what they seem (when have they been?). Those who promise an end to endless wars start wars with seemingly no plan. Association with and participation in sex trafficking networks means almost nothing if you have the right job. We have unprecedented access to endless loops of recordings of violence. Everything is seemingly beyond our control. It is slowly driving all of us insane.

I had been preparing to write this in a less researched, academic fashion like the previous essay and was intending on leaning more on vibes. As you can probably tell by the writing style, I’m mostly following through on this. But I couldn’t help myself and cracked open screenwriter John Truby’s great 2022 book Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works just to get a little more perspective on the textual function of the horror genre.

Truby explains that horror stories are many of the first stories humans told each other. The genre is primal: the protagonist is pursued by death, often in the form of a monster, therefore the goal is to defeat the monster and overcome death (Truby 25). This gives the audience a catharsis that simulates us overcoming the dark forces of our world.

These dark forces that surround current events can take many forms in the popular media we’re familiar with. It can come in the form of evil spirits rising from the earth to honor a devilish blood pact made off the coast of New England during the founding of the country. It can come in the form of a wishing device that can take control of someone’s physical being and trap their soul inside as a passenger in their own body. It can come as a vengeful spirit taking the form of a slasher movie killer, seeking revenge for the ruthless bullying they were subject to due to their gender expression.

Obsession: Sin, the Garden of Eden and Social Horror

Truby explains the origins of horror as having roots in one of humanity’s origin stories: Genesis. The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden gave storytellers the foundational parameters of horror (22). It might sound a little ridiculous, but look at the story objectively and it resembles horror we see today. Our protagonists are lured by a delivish (literally) trickster to break the rules set for them, thus costing them their immortality and be confronted with death.

Obsession can be seen as a “gender-bent” evolution of the Adam and Eve story. In this narrative, the Adam character is susceptible to a trickster (fine print) and commits the story’s sin of stealing his fellow person’s autonomy. The couple are cast out of their Garden of Eden equilibrium and into a world of violence and evil.

This premise of tricksters and magic is used to look at a common fear among people, that our fellow person, someone often posing as a friend or a lover, might betray us and forcibly take something from us. In a post-#MeToo America, this story slots into a larger conversation about autonomy and consent.

These modern ideas have their roots in our cultural history, and it’s no coincidence ideas from our past return time and time again.

Widow’s Bay: The Haunted House and Ghosts from the Past

Another function of horror is that the ghosts of the character’s or the setting’s past (often intertwined) are connected to the crimes that will happen in the future (Truby 31). Widow’s Bay deals heavily with this idea.

Similar to how Obsession can slot in to the cultural conversation in relation to #MeToo, Widow’s Bay slots into the conversation about America’s dark, often buried, history of violence. The protagonists of the show work to fight against the curses set not just for the land under their feet, but for the blood in their veins.

The seemingly impossible-to-undo knot of the island’s curse and its native residents can resonate with a lot of Americans, especially those whose families have been here for generations. The complicated and horrifying history of some of our (white) heritage is a conversation that really took off around 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement reached its peak. The residents of this island want a better future, but in order to reach that they have to uncover their history’s shared truth and atone for what happened generations prior.

While Widow’s Bay has a lot of interesting ideas connecting the ghosts of the past idea to its “monster of the week” structure, I found season 1’s coda to be one of the most compelling parts of the narrative. Conveniently, this fits another one of Truby’s tenets of horror: the haunted house.

Of course, the show portrays a sort of Russian nesting doll of haunted houses, with the entire island being one big haunted house. But Truby argues that the haunted house is not just a setting with some scary stuff in it, but, of course, a metaphor, representing “the flawed mind made physical: the hero’s greatest fear is the very structure in which [they] have no choice but to live” (33).

The true horror of Widow’s Bay is not a killer clown, evil fog, Sea Hag, or the Boogeyman serial killer, it is being trapped on an island for eternity. It is your children being trapped there. The native residents of the island have no choice but to live within the confines of the island, coming into direct conflict with Tom Loftis’ vision of giving his son a good life.

This is a feeling so many can relate to. There is a horror in wanting the more for the next generation, but realizing that we have doomed them for one reason or the other simply by the circumstance of their birth. The nesting dolls of haunted houses exist in the threat of nuclear war, resource scarcity, climate change, and so on.

Camp Miasma: Stories Find Ways to Manifest

Finally, we arrive at the apex of horror being used as a device to analyze itself and society: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

One of the most fascinating ideas in a film that is overflowing with ideas about the genre is that we don’t make the movies, they come from somewhere else and manifest through us. This immediately reminded me of an idea I had read about a few years ago, in Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act.

Rubin describes art as coming from a “source” and creatives being vessels for ideas rather than creatives being the inventors of ideas. “We are translators for messages the universe is broadcasting” (Rubin, 7). This may come off as a little hooey woo-woo, but I think there’s something to it. There is a reason these ideas in horror are in abundance right now and audiences are connecting to them more than ever.

In Camp Miasma, this other source takes the form of a scorned spirit of a gender nonconforming child living below the lake they were murdered in by their fellow campers. The cathartic revenge taken by this spirit, thus creating the fictional slasher franchise, is an interesting take on this idea of universal transmission. It makes me wonder about this current manifestation of horror and what spirits it comes from.

Conclusion

These stories and this genre resonate because it helps us make sense of and cope with the world around us. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Americans felt as if someone or something might come to save us. We believed in a form of Captain America and Superman.

As we transition to this next quarter of the century, our collective mood has shifted. The feeling now is that nothing is coming to save us. In fact, things are rising from the earth to harm us. Dark forces have taken hold (maybe they’ve always had hold) and are in direct opposition with the morals of humanity. Violence has always existed, but we’ve never had instant access to view it on infinite loop. How do we cope with that?

Horror as popular media helps us comprehend our society. These stories have always been told and are universally understood. They help us fathom the lives we live.

It’s curious, as the decade before it is now so heavily regarded as the mumblecore decade. Starting in 2002 with the release of Andrew Bujalski’s feature debut Funny Ha Ha, film festivals like South by South West and Sundance were run rampant with these films that critic and academic J Hoberman characterized as “home-made, low-key comedy-dramas of 20-something angst” that more or less solely focused on the social problems of middle-class white millennials coming of age in cities like New York.

If you’re unfamiliar with the titles associated with the movement, such as The Puffy Chair, Kissing on the Mouth, Daddy Longlegs or Frances Ha, odds are you are at least acquainted with some of the faces that often appeared in these films. The Duplass Brothers have gone on to be involved in notable projects such as Creep, Zero Dark Thirty, The League and The Morning Show. The Safdie Brothers made Uncut Gems and starred in Oppenheimer. Most notably, Greta Gerwig has gone on to write and direct critical and commercial successes like Lady Bird, Little Women and Barbie. This collective of filmmakers based mostly in New York and Boston who, for the most part, all wrote, directed and acted in each other’s projects almost twenty years ago now populate a large portion of the go-to Hollywood roster.

The popular consensus is that mumblecore as a strictly film movement died around 2010 or the early ‘10s, just as it peaked in popularity (capped off with the 2012 release of Frances Ha). In its wake came post-mumblecore, which mostly occupied the television space with shows like Girls and Easy. After that, the movement lay dormant. Until now.

To understand the mumblecore of now, we must understand what inspired it over twenty years ago. As critic Richard Brody outlined in 2011, the movement was born in the context of the rapid rise of the internet and digital tools such as digital video and consumer-level video editing software. It also was born in a post-9/11 America, where these late Gen-Xers or earlier Millenials were navigating their 20s in the wake of a national tragedy and the ensuing defining geopolitical moment of the 2000s.

As filmmaking democratized and the fabric of American culture rapidly changed, these independent artists outside of the Hollywood studio system focused more on “first-hand, first-person inspiration from lived led and work conceived in relation to the Internet”. These films seemed less concerned with the “save-the-world” type stories that dominated the popular cinema of the early 2000s (and still do) like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man. They were more focused on interpersonal relationships and interactions. Brody argued that mumblecore captured “the transcendent in the awkward and the expressive of the everyday, a readiness that has been primed by the habit of watching YouTube videos”.

As Hunter Hargraves outlines in Uncomfortable Television, his 2023 book on postmillennial American television, early 21st century events such as 9/11 and the Great Recession “normalized structures of feeling punctuated by precarity and discomfort”, where “discomfort manifests on a scale of intensity while remaining symptomatic of embodied pain”. Audiences subsequently gravitated towards this rising brand of cringe comedy that is signature to mumblecore as a way to “understand and process their discomfort, thus turning it into pleasure” (162).

It feels natural that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, a historical marker Hargraves notes as a much harsher marker than the ones of the early 21st century (408 times more people died and an incomprehensible number of people were affected), assume subsequently harsher forms of discomfort. A period widely remembered for the pure lack of anything to do but look inward and live in discomfort is bound to produce art that forces audiences to grapple with that discomfort.

Again, SXSW and Sundance, among other festivals, have seen a class of filmmakers like Cooper Raiff, Emma Seligman, Ally Pankiw and India Donaldson showcase projects that feel like an evolution of what came twenty years ago. Shithouse, Cha Cha Real Smooth, Shiva Baby, I Used To Be Funny and, more recently, Good One have all been films that have struck me as having DNA rooted in mumblecore. These are all films with plots that involve a lot of “compulsive navel-gazing,” as J Hoberman put it, to paint a portrait of a moment in a character’s life.

And suppose the initial mumblecore films were ideated with “9/11 and the George W. Bush years hanging over them very clearly”, as Vox suggested in 2019. In that case, it only makes sense that neo-mumblecore has COVID and the Trump years hanging over them. It sets the tone for the types of social interactions young people have been having and are continuing to have. Gen Z and Alpha people coming of age who lost a big chunk of crucial social development in their young lives are identifying with this awkward, overly-realist style of cinema that reflects their reality more than big budget fantasy blockbusters can.

This new mumblecore, if being born as a technical evolution of its predecessor, is also being born as a thematic evolution. The films of the 2000s were concerned with sex and relationships in very crude ways, while these new projects lean towards a more elevated analysis of these early 20s (often heterosexual) interactions between men and women. This is probably reflective of the generational attitudes towards topics like these, where people coming of age as Gen Z or Alpha seem more openly concerned with topics discussed in these films ranging in severity from ghosting, adultery, sexual harassment and assault and rape.

There is still time to see if this movement reignites in the latter half of this decade or if it peters out yet again and is just a blip. But every day I see new films that have DNA rooted in the indie cinema of the early aughts. This week, Anora won Best Picture. I would not categorize Sean Baker as a mumblecore filmmaker, but his films definitely contain elements of the deeply awkward naturalism the early independent digital filmmakers trailblazed.

Long live mumblecore.

This was a great year in movie-going for me. I saw over 50 new releases, attended 4 filmmaker Q&As and attended 3 film festivals. All I really can say is that I love movies so much it’s awesome. I wake up every day in hopes that I get that electric feeling in my veins when I see a good movie. It rocks. So of course, I have to share what my favorites of the year were.

I will be omitting some movies from this list for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is that many of the films I like will inevitably appear in most major outlets and other Substacker’s lists. Another reason is if I have already written about them extensively in my mid-year post and don’t feel I have anything new to add here at the end of the year. I want to use this as a chance to highlight other great films I saw this year that might not be getting written about as much on other lists.

If you want to see my full ranked list of 2024 movies, it’s on my Letterboxd here (full disclosure: I rank based on how much I enjoyed the movie and how much I kept thinking about it after I saw it. So if something lands toward the bottom of the list, that doesn’t necessarily mean I disliked it, I just enjoyed and was stimulated more by other movies that are ahead of it in the rankings)

La Chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

I have already written about La chimera in one of my mid-year posts, but felt it was worth mentioning again because of how much it has stuck with me. Josh O’Connor’s performance is something I’m still fawning over eight months later. There really just is something so compelling to me about a restrained performance. I don’t want this movie to fall away by any means so I just want to give it another nudge here in December.

La chimera is streaming on Hulu in the US.

Conclave (dir. Edward Berger)

My girlfriend and I went to see Conclave on a Saturday afternoon and right when we walked into the theatre, I saw exactly what I want to see when I go see a movie: packed theatre, and I’m the youngest in there by ~30 years.

Old people know how to pick good movies, and Conclave is good. The concept seems like a film that could have been made 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 60 years ago, which is true, but this is a very modern movie with a modern mindset. It knows what it’s about in ways I don’t exactly want to spoil because of how surprising is. What I will say is that it’s an excellent trojan horse for ideas I think are important, even necessary, to think about and discuss when it comes to faith and positions of power.

Conclave is streaming on Peacock in the US.

Red Rooms (dir. Pascal Plante)

Red Rooms is a fascinatingly disturbing deconstruction of modern society’s obsession with violent criminals. The opening scene is one of the more memorable long-takes in recent memory and is one of the best courtroom scenes I’ve seen since The Goldman Case. Red Rooms also offers a couple of the most upsetting scenes I’ve ever seen, but given the film’s title, I knew that going in.

I love a film that is unafraid to point a finger, especially when it forces the audience to examine themselves. In a year marked by widespread obsessions with violent deaths, criminals and our culture’s deep slide into stan culture, Red Rooms asks a sobering question about what is wrong with us.

Red Rooms is available to rent on Amazon in the US.

Sing Sing (dir. Greg Kwedar)

Sing Sing could have been made with a very theatrical script and full of professional actors giving very perform-y performances (if that makes any sense). Luckily, it is not that. With Sing Sing, we have a cast rounded out by many formerly incarcerated men who are alumni of the arts program depicted in the film, most notably Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, whose performance, to me, drove the entire movie.

One thing I want to shout out that I have been learning more about is the film’s profit-sharing budget. Essentially, everyone who worked on the film was paid the same day rate and given equity in the film’s profit. I think this is a wonderful structure that, in theory, incentivizes more love and care to go into each aspect of the craft, from the lowest level grip to the second assistant camera and beyond (filmmakers Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley talk more in-depth on the budget structure in this episode of The Town). It shows in Sing Sing that everyone was motivated by their attachment to this story to make something real and honest and the film is such an achievement.

Sing Sing is expected to be re-released in theatres in the US in January 2025.

A Different Man (dir. Aaron Schimberg)

A Different Man took me by surprise. I went in not knowing much about the plot other than the fact that Sebastian Stan portrays a man with neurofibromatosis that manifests as facial differences and he undergoes experimental treatment for his condition. I also knew Adam Pearson appeared in the film, but I was not sure to what extent.

Sebastian Stan’s performance blew me away. Stan has cemented himself as one of my favorite working actors because of the projects he has taken on in recent years. Much like Josh O’Connor’s performance in La chimera, Stan’s performance in A Different Man is much more about what we can tell he is holding back than what he says or does. Of course, he does have a few moments where he breaks through that veil, but he’s still not doing the typical “man yells loudly in hopes of Oscar nomination”. These moments happen in such a way that if it were any other combination of actor and director, they likely would have missed the mark.

After a low-buzz release, I’m happy to see this film get some recognition, with Stan and Pearson being nominated for their performances at the Golden Globes and Indie Spirit Awards, respectively, and the movie winning Best Film at this year’s Gotham Awards.

A Different Man is available to rent on Amazon in the US.

Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiat)

Hahaha

I really do not enjoy music biopics, especially when the artist or band is directly involved. They just feel too self-serving for my taste. But Kneecap rocked so hard, mainly because it didn’t put its focus on showing us how great the artists are.

Kneecap takes the idea of a music biopic that gives the band this mythological origin story of greatness and just doesn’t care to be serious about it. The film takes on the sensibility of the actual Kneecap guys, a trio who are very fun-loving but at the end of the day have strong convictions about politics and the world. The film is less concerned with an accurate depiction of how the group started or where certain lyrics come from (although there are some funny moments in here for fans that play with these tropes) and more concerned with the fight to preserve and uplift the Irish language. #COYBIG

Kneecap is streaming on Netflix in the US.

The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet)

I was lucky enough to see The Brutalist projected in beautiful 70mm at the AFI Silver Theatre as part of the European Union Film Showcase in its DC premiere at a sold-out theatre. I was shocked to see a line wrapped around the block just for the chance at a standby ticket. I knew the hype for this film was intense, but I genuinely have never seen something like that in my life.

The Brutalist is a staggering series of achievements. The film revived the VistaVision film format to use it in a live-action film for the first time in over 45 years. It spans over 3 and a half hours (215 minutes) without a minute of fatigue. It is a perfect marriage of themes and ideas: the American dream, the post-war Jewish immigrant experience, the bizarre relationship dynamics between the working class and the bourgeoisie, all working together to create a tragic portrait of an exceptional artist.

Form and content are working here in perfect harmony. It only makes sense that a film about an architect who obsesses with height, grandness and legacy is filmed in the grandest film format possible (also a very funny, I am assuming at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek, metacommentary on the idea of an auteur). Daniel Blumberg’s score adds a layer of wonder and grandness while maintaining a constant low hum that haunts you with reminders of this man’s horrifying past. A balance is struck between every aspect of this film to create what I am coming to believe is the greatest American film of the 21st century.

In a decade of film increasingly marked by the 3+ hour tentpoles like Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, and Avatar, among others, The Brutalist feels the most deserving of the long runtime. I don’t feel any scene could have been trimmed or is unearned in its length. Every moment this film gave itself to breathe felt important and necessary. The pacing is also immaculate and helps the audience glide through a sweeping narrative with ease (the intermission I found also helped with this, and I think we should utilize more intermissions if movies are going to venture past the 2.5-hour range).

I’m very much looking forward to when this reaches audiences later this month because it is chock full of fascinating ideas that I’m excited for people to chew on and discuss. I also am looking forward to a re-watch (if you are in the Washington, DC metro area, AFI has announced more 70mm screenings will begin in January).

The Brutalist will begin a US limited release on December 20 before releasing nationwide in January 2025.

I was also having a difficult time making friends and managing new social circles in an entirely new place, so movies were a big escape for me. I would sit in my seminar on campus and watch films by Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, Norman MacLaren, Vivienne Dick, and so on, and then after class head downtown to the Glasgow Film Theatre to see whatever the new releases were.

I associate November with this feeling of discovery and comfort. In the spirit of this, included in this month’s watchlist are some movies that changed how I view movies and were major discoveries to me at that time in my life.

Slides (dir. Annabel Nicolson, 1971)

This is probably the most “normie” film school short I could put on here. Most people who have spent any time around the world of film studies have probably seen this or are at the absolute minimum baseline aware of it and it’s influence. If you haven’t, walk with me.

There’s a lot about the history of cinema I didn’t understand before I became encapsulated by it. I really thought it was a sort of linear timeline that more or less just went something like The Horse in Motion to the silent comedies to Singing in the Rain then The Godfather and FINALLY, we’ve arrived in the modern era, and isn’t that all we’ve ever wanted to see?

Seeing all these different types of films, particularly the mid-20th century experimental shorts my class focused on, opened my world up to what film has been and what it can be. Pushing the boundaries of visual language and testing this young art is something that went completely over my head through a lot of my movie-loving escapades. Through seeing stuff like Slides, though, it finally (at least somewhat) clicked in my brain what the history of cinema can show us about where the form is today and how important every step and experiment along the way has been.

Lesser Choices (dir. Courtney Stephens, 2022)

Honestly, this is a tough one to recommend solely because I don’t know where it is available to watch. I saw it for the first time at Viennale in 2022. It is an experimental short documentary of sorts that follows the director’s mother as she recounts a trip to Mexico to get an abortion many years ago.

I initially wanted to recommend this because of the subject matter, hoping that things on that front would look better here in the US. Unfortunately, it seems as if the world has swung off its axis and now we’re on a spiral in any random direction. But maybe, for those of us that these types of issues affect less severely, let this deeply touching short serve as a reminder of what we need to fight for and who we need to stand alongside in the years to come.

The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (dir. Margaret Tait, 1955)

Margaret Tait was a HUGE focus of my Scottish cinema education, having been taught about her by (probably) the leading Tait scholar. I watched this in class and then saw it again this year during a Tait showcase at the Harvard Film Archive.

Margaret Tait has many wonderful films that are so full of life, but this one just sticks out in my mind the most. For people in search of short film poems, I recommend seeking out everything of Tait’s that you can find. A lot are on YouTube!

Dead Poet’s Society (dir. Peter Wier, 1989)

I mean, of course.

I’m not going to be the only person to recommend this as a fall/November movie. I try to spice these lists up a bit knowing that a lot of recommendations will end up being the same, but I’ve got to throw this one in there for old-time’s sake.

One of my original favorite movies with my (probably) all-time favorite actor, Ethan Hawke. I’ve also always been fascinated by the vibes of an East Coast private boarding school. As a California public school graduate who was surrounded by these types now having lived in DC and Massachusetts, it’s so interesting to see this romanticized version of it on screen. Obviously, I love a story about a group of young men falling in love with the art of the word, bla bla bla… sorry if it’s all so corny and trite, but COME ON! Can you blame me?

When Harry Met Sally (dir. Rob Reiner, 1989)

Just going to get the other obvious 1989 pick out of the way, while we’re on the topic. Honestly, though, you can really watch this whenever during this stretch of October through March. I see it as a Fall movie, but I can just as easily see it as a New Year’s movie or a Valentine’s Day movie.

Rocky (dir. John G. Avildsen, 1976)

Honestly, Rocky is hard to figure out how widely seen it actually is among my age group. I feel that the Creed trilogy has sort of absorbed the cultural space it fits in, and if people are going to go back and watch any of the original franchise, it’s probably going to be Rocky IV.

That being said, this is a wonderful film on its own, but also a wonderful cultural touchstone for what sports as spectacle mean to the American public as well as what independent film means to the American film industry.

Rocky arrives at an inflection point where sports are transitioning from an amateur, more often part-time career into a full-on multibillion-dollar industry that dominates the airwaves and American culture. Of course, sports were lucrative before the late 70s, but at this point, television had become ubiquitous and sports were about to become more of a show than a sport (think the Showtime Lakers of the late 70s). The fight between Rocky and Creed can sort of act as a stand-in for that changing of the guard. Apollo Creed is a highly commercial, wealthy athlete going up against Rocky Balboa, a neighborhood hobby boxer.

Rocky was also a lower-budget independent film that (ironically) beat out All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Taxi Driver and Network for Best Picture that year, all movies made for at least double Rocky’s budget and having a lot more high-profile people involved. It’s fascinating how much the narrative of the film mirrors its place in American pop cultural history.

The Banshees of Inisherin (dir. Martin McDonagh, 2022)

This one circles back to my time in Scotland, as this was one of my Glasgow Film Theatre viewings that I feel really defined a lot of my time there.

Banshees really is just so charming and such a surprising crowd-pleaser that it’s hard to go wrong. Irish film has hit such a stride internationally in the past few years and a lot of credit has to be given to this reuniting of the McDonagh, Collin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson trio, as we can softly trace their influence back to their initial team-up with In Bruges.

After having visited the Aran Islands, too, I understand the characters a lot more and can see how a place like that would make some people do some of the things they do in this movie.

The Social Network (dir. David Fincher, 2010)

Short recommendation here, since who really needs to be recommended a movie that is (probably) unanimously accepted as one of the best films of the previous decade? But this takes Sorkin and Fincher, two excellent filmmakers both with almost opposite strengths and weaknesses, and mashes them together to make what I would consider one of the modern masterpieces. You can say it’s too talky or it’s not entirely based in truth, but I really don’t care, since this goes so hard from start to finish that I genuinely cannot criticize this movie.

Spartacus (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1960)

Maybe this one is just on my mind this month because of Gladiator 2, but I felt compelled to include it. I’ve only seen it twice, the first time being in middle school. Even then, I loved it. I re-watched it for a class in college and was just absolutely blown away by how amazing this film is.

The scale of what this movie accomplishes is remarkable in any era, let alone something that came out over sixty years ago. The perfect production design is incredible and seemingly a lost art as we’ve moved into an era of more digital filmmaking. If you’ve seen it, re-watch it. If you haven’t, you’re missing out on one of the best films of the twentieth century.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (dir. Bill Melendez and Phil Roman, 1973)

Come on! I had to. These Peanuts holiday specials are such a constant for my family that it’s hard to not cap off this list with this absolute classic. Snoopy sandwiches!

Fall is such a fun movie time. So many of the film festival movies are starting to roll out for the public finally, and it’s getting cold and rainy outside so we’re more likely to be spending more time inside. It's a perfect time for some movies!

This month’s watchlist is going to lean more toward horror, but if that’s not to your liking (totally understandable, I’m a little timid so horror isn’t my favorite) there’s stuff that is a little different than straight-up slasher or supernatural.

But starting off with a classic Fall movie…

Good Will Hunting (dir. Gus Van Sant, 1997)

Hard to say something about this film that hasn’t already been said. What I will say is I credit this film and having seen it at such a young age with my development as both a movie fan and a man who tries to be in touch with his emotions. In terms of it being an October recommendation, I think this movie can be watched any time of year, but the fall foliage of Boston in this really just screams autumn.

Barbarian (dir. Zach Cregger, 2022)

Obviously, we have to throw some horror in here.

I first watched this in the middle of a cold October while studying in Scotland. It's one of the weirdest movies I’ve seen in recent years just due to the shape of the story. I’m sure many have seen this, but if you haven’t I won’t say much about the plot because I feel that’s the best way to go into this.

Blood Simple (dir. The Coen Brothers, 1984)

Gotta throw this one in here for old times’ sake. A legendary film from a legendary duo, Blood Simple was crucial to the development of my taste in movies and writing style. Given its status in the canon, this is another where it’s hard to say anything interesting that hasn’t been said. If you’ve seen it, give it a rewatch! If you haven’t, well, here’s your to-do for the soonest time you have 96 minutes free.

Super Dark Times (dir. Kevin Phillips, 2017)

A recent underseen indie classic (in my opinion), Super Dark Times is a movie that captures the dead-ness of an East Coast fall better than most other movies. Taking place in upstate New York after two friends find a katana in the woods, this quickly devolves into a deranged psychothriller that will twist you up inside.

The Vanishing (dir. George Sluzier, 1988)

To the Criterion heads, this is an all-timer. The Vanishing is one of the best-crafted thrillers in cinematic history, if not the outright best. It lures you in with a false sense of security before diving into what the movie really is, flipping incredibly quickly and seamlessly.

It came out almost 40 years ago and its influence looms so large that it’s surprising that the shape of the story is something not often copied, because it’s so genius and thrilling. It was re-made by the same director some years later into an American English language film, but just watch the Dutch original. Always watch the original!

Fresh (dir. Mimi Cave, 2022)

Another recent horror release that is just so damn fun. I have no desire to be terrified when I watch a movie, but if it can be unsettling while also entertaining I’m in. So Fresh is a wonderful addition to this collection!

Daisy Edgar Jones is obviously wonderful in Normal People and most recently Twisters, along with Sebastian Stan being one of the more interesting actors to come out the other end of the MCU pipeline who now has A Different Man playing in theatres. But for both of them, this might be my favorite role they’ve taken on. Similar to The Vanishing, Fresh will lure you in and then flip. The ideas here are unsettling and honestly quite terrifying but it’s done in a way that won’t exactly keep you up at night. Perfect movie to put on with a group of friends!

Also, this movie inspired the idea for my first feature script, so shoutout to this one.

Sidebar: This is the second of a few 2022 movies I have on this list. I was not conscious about how many of these movies are from 2022, but something must have been in the water that year!

All My Friends Hate Me (dir. Andrew Gaynord, 2022)

A sort of awkward comedy slash paranoia thriller, this is just such a fun watch I find is pretty underseen. Get some friends together, turn this on and have some fun.

It’s deeply unsettling, not in any sort of nefarious way, just in a “wow, this is way too realistic and… do I do this? Is there something wrong with me?” kind of way.

Hinterlands (dir. Scott Barley, 2016)

This is a short film for all my nerds out there. Because of that, I’m gonna have a bonus #11 at the end to sort of balance this all out.

Scott Barley is an artist I only recently discovered, a filmmaker whose mostly experimental work can be tied to remodernism and slow cinema.

There honestly isn’t much to say about Hinterlands, as it’s a short film you sort of just need to give yourself over to for 7 minutes. What I will say is that it is one of the most unsettling things I’ve seen in recent memory. I can’t explain why, but Barley knows how to build a deep fear in people with his video work.

Enys Men (dir. Mark Jenkin, 2022)

This pairs well with Hinterlands. Enys Men is an ambient Cornish folk-horror film with one of my favorite visual directions of recent indie movies.

(As an aside: perhaps it’s just my taste and scope having been enlarged by my education in Scotland, but the British have been cooking recently regarding these beautifully understated films. Aftersun, The Outrun, all the Scott Barley stuff, Luke Fowler’s work, and this… maybe it just works well for me specifically)

I must warn the more ‘casual’ viewer (I hate using that phrase, but it, unfortunately, captures what I mean well): if you go into this expecting a straightforward horror movie, leave any expectations at the door. Allow yourself to sink into the film and let the experience wash over you. It won’t be for everyone, but if it hits for you, it will.

The Batman (dir. Matt Reeves, 2022)

Thursday, October 31st. The city streets are crowded for the holiday. Even with the rain. Hidden in the chaos is the element, waiting to strike like snakes. And I'm there too. Watching.

Halloween also falls on a Thursday this year, so what better to recommend than The Batman?

Personally, this is a mash-up of my teenage and young adult interests: comic books meet Fincher detective and serial killer stories. The procedural-ness and politics of it all unfold in such a satisfying way that I find myself wishing this was longer than its already whopping 176-minute runtime.

It was a massive hit and is on Max, so I just assume that most people have seen it, but it’s always a fun re-watch.

Bonus: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (dir. Bill Melendez, 1966)

This is the bonus pick! Just a certified classic. October, November and December are all great because we’ve got three seasonal Charlie Brown movies to watch, and they never get old.

Up until Venice and TIFF, I only felt comfortable considering one of this year’s releases as a probable lock for Best Picture nominee: Dune Part Two. I still feel the same way. But now that these festival movies are gearing up their wide releases and awards campaigns, narratives are being formed to jockey for the remaining nine spots.

A24’s Venice Acquisitions

Before some festival acquisitions and premieres, the conversation around A24’s release schedule was that Sing Sing would come out on top as their most comfortable guarantee in the Best Picture race if not also some acting categories and maybe directing.

Unfortunately, it seems Sing Sing has fallen victim to what in the past has been a strength of A24’s release strategy. The slow-moving, word-of-mouth-driven rollout that past films like Past Lives and Everything Everywhere All At Once had taken and were fueled to Academy Awards success off of has seemed to hurt Sing Sing. The summer came and went and the buzz around the film has seemingly stayed contained to the corner of Twitter that watches this stuff like a hawk.

Where this gets even more complicated is A24’s Venice Film Festival acquisitions. Luca Guadagnino’s Queer and Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist have been two of the hottest titles out of the festival.

The former is getting buzz off the name recognition of a beloved auteur re-teaming with the writer of his previous (instant classic?) film and recruiting a former Bond actor to produce a reportedly extremely sexy period piece based on a well-known novel.

The latter has seemingly exploded to the top of everyone’s watchlist. A three-and-a-half-hour epic with an intermission isn’t exactly the type of movie I would immediately pin as something with a wide enough appeal for awards recognition, but hey, I’m open to it.

Both of these A24 acquisitions make Sing Sing’s path to the Academy Awards a little more complicated. Of course, distributors aren’t shy to campaign multiple films, but having the focus spread between three movies instead of focusing on just one puts some worry in my mind. It’s difficult to make any concrete predictions this far out, but I’m wavering on Sing Sing.

The TIFF Wrinkle

Even though I’m wary to make concrete predictions, Anora has probably been the next closest to Dune in terms of a “sure thing” potential nominee since its Cannes win. Now, with the Sean Baker film coming as the runner-up in the TIFF People’s Choice Award, I see it following a path forged by fellow NEON release Parasite. I’m not trying to compare the quality or impact of the two, just looking at the information available about its reception among festival the crowd.

The more notable Toronto storyline that adds a much-needed interesting wrinkle to the Best Picture race is The Life of Chuck winning the People’s Choice Award. The Mike Flanagan-directed adaptation of the Stephen King novella still doesn’t have distribution (expect that to change by the end of the week), but has now given itself the ultimate underdog story by winning a major key festival award.

Since 2012, every TIFF People’s Choice Award winner has gone on to be nominated for Best Picture, with 4 of those 12 nominees going on to win the thing. This could be the year that the trend breaks, but I’m not betting against it. The People’s Choice Award is a clear indicator of audience preference in terms of North American taste, which is probably the most important audience to capture en route to an Academy Awards campaign (although in recent years the Academy has become more global).

I’m keeping an eye on The Life of Chuck. This year, I have about 5 movies that I feel will be pretty strong consensus contenders. But after that, the bottom falls out and those other 5 slots are, at this point, wide open.

We’ll see. I’ll check back in next month.

Enter the September watchlist. Movies overflowing with reflection while also preparing for a new stage of life.

This was inspired by my friend Sarah’s recent post about fall — particularly, her fall guide and curated autumn-themed Letterboxd list.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (dir. Céline Sciamma, 2019)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire feels like such an autumn movie, but the visuals imply warm weather. Even the film’s signature song, Vivaldi’s “Summer”, is trying to communicate something to the audience. A clear reflection on a joyful period in the protagonist’s life — her summer, one might say — that is now somewhat tainted, the takeaway from Portrait is not pure sadness or pure joy. This mirrors life, there’s little resolution for relationships of this nature, but also the expectation of a resolution is unrealistic and often unnecessary. We take what we can get and hope to be happy with our memories.

Boyhood (dir. Richard Linklater, 2014)

Another film that is all about looking backward while approaching a period of major change. This year, 10 years after Boyhood’s release, I’ve been thinking a lot about this movie. Of course, it ends just as the protagonist is starting college. Vignettes of this young man’s life culminating in him starting a new chapter is a signature September-ism for me, so adding it here was extremely easy.

Boyhood is probably the major feat of Linklater’s career and an undertaking that is probably impossible for anyone else to replicate (except, of course, Linklater himself, who is doing another version of this process as we speak with his adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along), so in it’s anniversary year I am trying to sing its praises.

Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells, 2022)

Aftersun is definitely in the running for being the quintessential end-of-summer reflection movie. It’s an interesting inverse to Boyhood, and infinitely more depressing. The reflection being done here is extremely September: it’s not reflection for reflection’s sake, it’s looking back and searching for something. Reflection with intention is very key to the mood I’m curating here, and Aftersun does it expertly.

American Graffiti (dir. George Lucas, 1973)

Now, we’re about to go on a run of back-to-school type movies here.

A perfect snapshot of such a specific time in California history that means something very specific to its characters, American Graffiti holds a very special place in my heart. Even though my experience came almost 50 years after this film was released, my end-of-summer in Northern California right before college was very similar, so I’ll love this movie forever. Filmed in Petaluma, California, the town right next to my hometown, seeing scenes of Sonoma County in the summer of 1972 like this on the big screen was deeply affecting for me, so I’ll shove this end-of-summer move in everyone’s face any chance I get.

Everybody Wants Some!! (dir. Richard Linklater, 2016)

The logical continuation of American Graffiti being a perfect last-night-before-college movie, Everybody Wants Some!! is a perfect first-weekend-of-college movie. I first watched this recently and loved it so much that I was upset I hadn’t gotten around to it sooner. I’m not the biggest fan of hang-out movies, but Linklater (appearing here again) threads it all together so perfectly in this one that I was more than happy to be along for the ride with this dysfunctional college baseball team. A very fun ensemble cast featuring 2024’s best boy Glen Powell.

Pitch Perfect (dir. Jason Moore, 2012)

Let’s keep it rolling. We had first weekend of college, now let’s extend it to first semester of college. Pitch Perfect is a movie that deserves at least a yearly re-watch. The process you watch the Anna Kendrick character go through in terms of finding a group to fit in with is, even though this is a musical about a comically competitive acapella scene, very realistic. Her push and pull between becoming who she thinks she should be, trying to be cool, etc. and becoming who she actually is and doing what she truly enjoys was a surprisingly real process to see unfold. There’s something that is aggressively early 2010’s about this, but in the best way possible. Ignore those sequels, though.

Shithouse (dir. Cooper Raiff, 2020)

Another first semester of college movie about finding a place to fit in, but with a much more mumblecore-informed take on the process. Shithouse, to me, is the quintessential first semester movie. Like my relationship to American Graffiti, Shithouse holds a special place in my heart because I found this movie reflected my experience of having an incredibly difficult first year of college almost expertly. Capturing a single weekend of what is probably late September, the story here is just undeniably real and features a cast of very talented people doing the most with such a low budget.

Raw (dir. Julia Ducorneau, 2016)

Capping off the back-to-school theme here, although I’m not sure what kind of school Raw is set in (boarding school? Technical school? College? I don’t know), not that it matters much. Perhaps save this one for the final week of September, though, as I’m putting it here to warm us up for the horror movies that are to be watched in October.

Fire of Love (dir. Sara Dosa, 2022)

Just trying to sprinkle in some documentary here, and this is honestly good for any time of year but I felt it slotted in well for September. It’s a love story, but not a February love story. It has heat, but not a summer heat. It’s also just visually stunning with some very talented people involved, so I’ll take any chance I can get to recommend this one.

Travel Songs (dir. Jonas Mekas, 1981)

Let me throw one on here for the nerds. I’m putting Travel Songs on here, but feel free to also include Song of Avignon in here as well. I find Mekas’s home movies and reflections on his journeys to be incredibly personal and something that really fits in with what I’m curating here in September. If you’re unfamiliar with Jonas Mekas, I encourage you to take a few minutes and watch a few of these songs. Keep an open mind and let it wash over you.

Have a nice September.

Also, before we get to the month-by-month, I would like to mention one of my most anticipated of the year that isn’t dated in the US yet: The Outrun. It already played Sundance and Berlin and is going to play Edinburgh in August. The trailer looks incredible. It definitely helps that I’m obsessed with the Orkney islands.

Anyways, let’s get on with it.

July: Longlegs and Twisters

Honorable mention: Starve Acre

July just feels like a good month for movies. There’s at least one new movie every weekend I’m excited about seeing. These two I’ve been genuinely hyped for like nothing else recently, counting down the weeks until their releases.

Longlegs really scares me but I’m also really excited. As established in past writing, I’m not the biggest fan of horror mainly because I’m kind of a scaredy cat. Which is why all the reviews and chatter around this put me on edge, but I can deal with a little bit of scary (I also just am really interested in serial killer media, some of my favorite movies and shows include stuff like Zodiac and Mindhunter. Also shoutout to Holy Spider, which I watched recently and was deeply unsettled by). I’ve tried to avoid footage as much as possible, but though the NEON ads are somewhat unavoidable. That being said, I really appreciate their campaign because it seems more interested in pitching the mystery and horror of the movie as opposed to laying everything out there in the trailers and promo.

Twisters seems like the exact opposite type of movie where it’s just pure summer fun. Admittedly I have never seen the original Twister (will be watching in the coming week, rest assured), so I’m not exactly sure what the tone of this movie is leaning towards, but it seems like a somewhat dumb fun idea. Also putting Glen Powell in a legacy sequel where he’s kind of a villain, kind of not (I don’t know if he is in this, but that’s what the trailers sort of imply) has me seated. We’ve been down this road before with Top Gun. Put Daisy Edgar Jones in center stage, too, and I’m actually glued to the seat.

August: Trap and Alien: Romulus

Honorable mention: My Old Ass

August continues what I’m looking forward to in July. These are just warm weather movies!

The pure concept of Trap alone is enough to get me in the door. I really don’t mind if it’s bad or anything because the idea is awesome and I’m happy that stuff like this gets made. I felt the exact same about Shyamalan’s previous effort, Knock at the Cabin, where I wasn’t blown away by it but it’s was a nice time to go to the theatre and just be intrigued for about 90 minutes. Consider me seated.

Alien: Romulus is a weird one for me because I wouldn’t really consider myself a huge Alien fan (never seen the originals) but I’ve somehow found myself at the theatre for every one of the newer installments in the series. Seeing Alien: Covenant was one of the strangest movie-going experiences I’ve ever had (for non-movie related reasons) which for some reason has me locked in for Romulus. Plus, this just looks good. Cailee Spainey is obviously having a moment over the last year with Priscilla and Civil War, but another actor in Romulus I’m excited to see more of is David Jonsson, who I thought was excellent in Rye Lane.

September: Megalopolis and A Different Man

Honorable mention: Wolfs

I mean… Megalopolis is just a given at this point, I feel. I really am not sure if I’ll like it since I really seem to dislike this whole genre of amazing director’s zany passion project that might be their magnum opus but also might be the worst thing they’ve ever done (Horizon? Babylon???). But I respect a big swing a lot so I’m seated opening weekend. I can’t live much longer without seeing how they’re going to handle the alleged real life performer interacting with the screen.

A Different Man is something I feel like has been on my radar for a few years now. I can’t explain why, but I’m excited for it! I really enjoy Sebastian Stan in most things he’s in, particularly Fresh. I’m trying to stay away from any press or trailers just so I can go in clean slate, but all the stills from it that I’ve seen look incredibly dark and moody. Mainly an intrigue pick here.

October: Anora and A Real Pain

Two more intrigue picks!

First up is the Palme d’Or winner, Anora. I think this will finally force me to do the Sean Baker filmography marathon, which I’m happy about because I’ve heard wonderful things about Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. Even though this year seemed to be a bit of a rocky year in terms of quality for the Cannes competition, winning the Palme d’Or is a stamp of quality that not many films can boast. With that, any movie has my attention.

A Real Pain I only have read the synopsis and seen the still that is shown above. Other than that I don’t want to watch a trailer or even know much more. I trust what’s going on here and it seems up my alley enough. Watch this space.

November: Gladiator 2 and Heretic

Honorable mention: Conclave

I watched the original Gladiator for the first time this year and was honestly kind of bored. I bet if I had seen it in a theatre it would have been thrilling. Seemed a bit sappy for the tone though. That being said, I’m writing this post-trailer release for Gladiator 2. Holy shit I’m so locked in. When “No Church in the Wild” started playing I wanted to stand up and bounce off the walls. Paul Mescal crazy eyes are something I have never seen from him (not sure when they would be warranted in anything he has been in) but now I can’t go a day without looking at over and over.

Heretic looks like another fun movie that I can’t explain my intrigue in it. It’s giving me major The Black Phone vibes (a similar vibe to the previously mentioned warm weather movie, if that makes any sense at all). Hugh Grant playing a complete freak weirdo is already awesome, plus Sophie Thatcher who I really love in Yellowjackets and Chloe East who was incredibly entertaining in The Fabelmans and Mormon missionaries is a combination I just can’t miss.

December: Nosferatu and Nightbitch

Honorable mention: Y2K

I can’t lie, this was a tough month to pick for. Not because there’s an abundance of things I’m excited for, quite the opposite. But also, I’m anticipating that there are festival movies that are undated which will probably swallow my attention over these two picks.

That being said, I’m generally a fan of Robert Eggers. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of The Northman or even The Lighthouse (The Witch 🐐), I can recognize that Eggers is one of the greatest working filmmakers. That’s enough for me to at least go check out Nosferatu. Maybe I’ll visit the original Nosferatu in preparation for this remake, too, because I’m not exactly an expert in vampire media or literature.

Nightbitch I’m really curious about. I know it’s based on a book, but the plot sounds incredibly similar to the 2021 movie Wolf starring George Mackay (which had its premiere just a month before the publishing of the Nightbitch novel, oddly enough). I vaguely remember Nightbitch having a test screening or two sometime last year and the responses being very very negative. It went dark for a while, so I can only assume they re-cut it or something. Amy Adams is an actress I’ve been waiting for to have a resurgence because she’s had almost a decade of questionable movie acting choices. It appears Searchlight is gearing up for a Best Actress push for Adams in this movie, so maybe she’s back.

That’s it for the mid-year movie check-in! Maybe we’ll revisit some of these at the end of the year.

Black Bear (2020, dir. Lawrence Michael Lavine)

I’m really hesitant to say much about Black Bear because if you haven’t seen it, I think it’s best to go in blind and just see what happens. Incredibly mind-bending and wildly entertaining. I feel it was largely forgotten because it had its festival premiere in January 2020 and came out in December of the same year, so not a ton of people were really focused on new movies.

Still trying to hold back on saying anything, even though over 3 years since release seems safe to speak freely. I just don’t want to ruin it for anyone.

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016, dir. Richard Linklater)

Some Linklater redemption after dinging Hit Man yesterday.

Honestly, I don’t know how I overlooked this in the years since it came out. I have a little collection of movies that are about being a freshman guy in college and what that adjustment means, and until recently I had just been totally ignorant to this.

What a fun time! I don’t even care about baseball. Linklater’s more personal movies are such perfect examples of how he makes something so specific to himself that his movies overflow with realness that almost anyone can relate to and get invested in.

I watched this following my disappointment in Hit Man and began to think about Linklater’s filmography as a whole. You could do a pretty solid 4-movie coming-of-age quadfecta by going from Boyhood to Dazed and Confused to Everybody Wants Some!! and then finally arriving at Before Sunrise. You could also throw the rest of the Before trilogy in there if you wanted, but I didn’t want to draw out the whole childhood-to-early-20s thing the 4 movies have going on.

Tenet (2020, dir. Christopher Nolan)

I know this movie has a very dedicated cult following who are very insistent on how you watch this, so I just want to give full disclosure: I watched this on a plane. I know the “intended experience” is a theatre, ideally the biggest and loudest screen possible, but when they did the IMAX re-release a few months ago I just couldn’t find anything in my city (one of the biggest cities in the country, didn’t make any sense why it wasn’t showing).

That being said, better late than never. I’m officially Tenet-pilled. This movie rocks so incredibly hard. I absolutely loved how this envisions time travel, which is a sci-fi/fantasy function that was in desperate need of a fresh take. And sure, maybe the gimmick doesn’t make a ton of sense if you think about it super hard, but I’m not defending a thesis here. Buy in to the “ehhh, does it really matter?” mindset and let it take you on a journey.

Even watching on the seatback screen, I was insanely locked in. Honestly, I would have been just as locked in if this movie was 6 hours. It was so entertaining.

Potentially a weird thought process but:

Immediately after watching Tenet, I followed it by watching Mission: Impossible, which I had also never seen. I was incredibly struck by the similarities of the two films. This led me to think about why Tenet was never franchised (an incredibly rare thought for me, I’m usually good on stuff standing alone) like Mission: Impossible has been. I don’t even necessarily mean a sequel continuing the story of the John David Washington character, just another story in the same universe using the inversion technology. I just want more Tenet (2enet?).

Friday: the fourth and final part of the mid-year check in! Going through my most anticipated of the rest of the year!

I’ll start off with two horror movies since I’m not exactly the world’s biggest horror-head. Maybe I misunderstand the genre, so horror people, just go easy on me.

In A Violent Nature (dir. Chris Nash)

This one I already wrote about on here and summed up my thoughts so I’ll keep it brief. As time goes on I like it less and less. The idea of an inverted slasher sounds interesting on paper, but in execution, it’s just not pleasant to watch at all. This is maybe something to play in the background of a party, but definitely not engaging as a narrative in any way whatsoever.

I’m also becoming increasingly aware of my susceptibility to be duped by film festival groupthink. A small group of people go to a handful of screenings of a movie and declare it a staple of the coming year (I’m also guilty of this. It’s fine).

I Saw The TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)

Listen: I know I’m in the minority here, and I’ve accepted that. You can read my piece on not liking stuff that other people like and that being ok if you need to get acquainted with my feelings on disliking things. Also let me reiterate that this doesn’t mean I think this movie is bad, I was just disappointed and that’s fine because this clearly wasn’t made for me. That’s just how it goes a lot of the time. I should have known this going in because I was also not a fan of director Jane Schoenbrun’s previous effort, We’re All Going To The World’s Fair.

This is another example of me getting duped by the Sundance crowd that sees its premiere. I really expected to walk in and see one of the greatest films of the year unfold before my eyes.

Schoenbrun has often been described as a David Lynch protégé, and I totally understand that categorization. Where I butt heads with that idea is the fact that Lynch made his surrealism accessible to a wider audience by layering it on top of very simple stories. Twin Peaks, at its core, is a cop investigation show with surreal imagery and ideas pushing the audience toward the evil embedded in the American small town. Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet and every other signature Lynch project follow this sort of formula. TV Glow loses me when it begins to get confused with itself, unable to discern any sort of base narrative from its surreal elements. You can make the argument that that aspect of the film is a part of a metanarrative but at that point we’re really grasping for straws.

Wildcat (dir. Ethan Hawke)

In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have even seen this since I have never read Flannery O’Connor nor do I know anything about her life. But on the other hand, there’s tons of biopics I’ve seen about people I know nothing about or have any attachment to and had a fine time watching (Mank, Oppenheimer, Beautiful Boy, etc).

Unfortunately, this just is not a pleasant watch. Maya Hawke, who I think is great in other things I have seen her in, is wonderfully miscast in this. I understand that this movie was her idea that she brought to her dad, Ethan Hawke, to direct but it’s still a tough watch. I’ll give them credit for trying something… different, we can say, with how the narrative is framed, but that doesn’t make it good. The only explanation I can think of for why they did it this way was when someone in the post-screening Q&A asked Hawke and co-writer Shelby Gaines if the fading between reality and O’Connor stories was to mimic the confusion lupus brings with brain swelling.

Hit Man (dir. Richard Linklater)

This is the most painful one of all. I LOVE Richard Linklater. His movies have had an incredible effect on my life. Which is why it pains me to say I thought Hit Man was mid at best. Again, I drank the festival-goers Kool-Aid (I just about chugged the entire bottle) after this premiered last year at Venice.

It’s moderately funny and somewhat easy to watch, but just left such a sour taste in my mouth. For some odd reason the movie gives its female characters absolutely nothing to do except talk to Glen Powell about his feelings and have philosophical conversations about whether people can change. The only female character with any sort of depth is essentially reduced to a horny damsel in distress. The one time she actually does something interesting it happens off-screen, bizarrely.

Also, as a final gripe, you just cannot have Glen Powell of all people playing the main character and have a line about him being a forgettable face. He is one of the most attractive people in the world. Maybe it was supposed to be a joke, but I just sat there absolutely baffled by it.

The way I felt about this can basically be summed up to the fact that if this movie was the exact same and the only thing changed was the name of the director, it would be in the same pool as other streaming stuff like Ricky Stanicky and A Family Affair (I apologize Zac Efron for dinging you twice there).

Starting with my top 5 films of the year — so far! These are all subject to change and I expect them to especially as festival stuff trickles out to the general public.

Also, just to be transparent on how I “rank” the stuff I watch: there’s no way I quantify quality. No scoring system or anything like I know a lot of people who are as insane as me use. I order all my new watches purely based on vibes and how much I connected with it, and I constantly go back to update rankings based on how much I continue to think about it as time goes on. It’s all feelings-based.

Now that that’s out of the way…

5. I Used To Be Funny (dir. Ally Pankiw)

Starting off with a very recent watch that I feel could move up given time or a re-watch, I Used To Be Funny is an indie Canadian dramedy from writer/director Ally Pankiw starring Shiva Baby/Bottoms star Rachel Sennott. The film follows Sennott as a stand-up comedian in Toronto struggling with PTSD and depression following the disappearance of a teenage girl she used to nanny. It premiered last year at SXSW and made a festival run through the rest of the year.

This is an incredibly strong feature film debut for Pankiw, who has until now made her name directing music videos for MUNA, Janelle Monáe and Ariana Grande as well as writing and directing for TV shows like Black Mirror, The Great and Schitt’s Creek. I Used To Be Funny fits perfectly into a group of films I’m mentally categorizing as a Gen Z mumblecore resurgence (although Pankiw is a Millenial) which includes films like Shithouse and Shiva Baby.

I Used To Be Funny is an incredibly touching mid-20s trauma comedy (traumedy?) that I really cannot recommend enough. Sennott’s depiction of mental illness is incredibly grounded and real, bypassing any sort of unrealistic depictions I feel are very common in film. This has elevated her in my mind from a really funny actress I enjoy watching to a really funny and also really good actress I enjoy watching. In a just world, a restrained and realistic performance like this would be included in awards chatter once the Academy Awards buzz heats up, but unfortunately, this won’t even crack through to those conversations.

I Used To Be Funny is playing in select theatres in the United States and Canada.

4. La chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

This Italian film starring Josh O’Connor is the conclusion to director Alice Rohrwacher’s thematic trilogy about Italy’s relationship with its past.

I was deeply touched by O’Connor’s performance as Arthur, a British archaeologist turned tombaroli (Italian grave-robbers), and his restrained depiction of grief. I have not seen him in many movies and shows, but he’s quickly become one of my favorite actors working right now (I love a white boy who can act sad). Every silent inaction by Arthur is a gateway into his past and what he’s seen and experienced. His constant battle with himself is subtle but loud, O’Connor telegraphing a man who has been torn to pieces by the choices he has made.

La chimera is an incredibly slow burn, but by the time it reached its crescendo it really overtook me and I was left in awe of the achievement. For me, a good movie doesn’t scream at its audience the emotions it is trying to evoke, rather it shows them genuinely and quietly, just as real life does. La chimera barely tells you what it is trying to say, but it’s almost impossible not to pick up on every little thing. I was kicking myself for overlooking it when I was at Cannes last year for its premiere.

As a final profession of love for this movie, I would just like to mention how much I loved the stylistic choices of mixed film stocks to depict reality and dreams. Using film is always going to be super effective for me, especially when it can be used to serve a narrative purpose. Visual, tactile storytelling, baby!

La chimera is available to rent on PVOD.

3. Dìdi (dir. Sean Wang)

After glowing Sundance reviews, I was glad to catch Dìdi at the Independent Film Festival Boston. Sean Wang’s narrative feature debut is a coming-of-age film set in the summer of 2008 in Fremont, California, where 13 year old Taiwanese-American Chris is in between middle and high school. I was really looking forward to this because its setting is essentially a reflection of my childhood (although I grew up in the North Bay, and Fremont is in the East Bay). Coming-of-age is a genre that is easy to make cringe and trite and can be incredibly challenging to make genuine and special. Luckily, Dìdi threads this needle perfectly, capturing the authentic crudeness of being a 13 year old boy in the early age of social media.

Sitting in a sold-out screening at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA definitely played into my enjoyment of Dìdi: a loud collective gasp took hold of the audience as the protagonist types a potentially premature “<3” to send to his crush over AOL Instant Messenger. Its depiction of a youth spent partially online is overflowing with realness in ways that other movies which depict being online haven’t been able to perfect. Dìdi is a film I’ll hold close to my heart for years. It reminded me of the agony and pure joy of growing up in the Bay Area, awkwardly texting girls, wondering if you have any friends and trying to be cool. I’m excited to see it again this summer.

Dìdi releases in theaters in the US on July 26, 2024.

2. Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

Sports rule. Movies rule. Sports movies inject some sort of special serum directly into my bloodstream that causes me to start barking and shaking uncontrollably.

Trying hard to not be weird about this movie, but it just has that special sauce that gets me so pumped. I’m not really into tennis at all, but this movie electrified me about the sport more than I feel about my actual favorite sports.

Using sport as a metaphor is one of the easiest pitches to me as a moviegoer, and in a genre where the metaphor is so oversaturated with team sports/teamwork messages, an individual sport like tennis is incredibly intriguing. Of course, Challengers uses tennis as a metaphor for relationships and it rocks so hard.

Giving a script like this to a director like Guadagnino is a match made in heaven, where the concern falls less on the sport part of the movie and more on the relationship part of the movie. There’s a version of this directed by someone else where the emphasis is placed on the actual challenger match and not on the relationships and it might still be good, but probably isn’t as good as this version.

As a final note, I’m sure we’re all aware, but the score rips. It’s a top 3 Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score for me, it might even be their best. The Social Network is obviously iconic, and I think their work on Bones and All has gone largely overlooked, but this injects such a unique energy into the movie that it’s arguably as key as any of the performances. Often times when I’m at work and need to focus I’ll put on “I Know” and just absolutely lock in on a video project.

Challengers is now available to rent on PVOD.

1. Dune: Part Two (dir. Denis Villeneueve)

This feels kind of obvious.

Also, before I proceed: I’m not the world’s biggest IMAX-head by any means. I typically do not care about the size of the screen I watch something on (as long as its in a theatre, ideally). I also am not the biggest fan of massive event-style action or sci-fi movies. I usually am much more aligned with a small drama or comedy, as we can all tell given all the other movies I’ve written about here.

All that is why I feel as strongly about Dune: Part Two as I do. Seeing this twice in IMAX and Dolby Atmos was as close as I’ll get to a religious movie-going experience (I’m being dramatic). Watching Paul ride the sandworm for the first time on a massive screen with completely overwhelming sound is an experience that will be incredibly difficult to replicate in any movie for the rest of my life, probably.

This just felt like the peak of everything it needed to be. The best of the best right now all working in harmony to create a huge experience that completely overtakes you. The Villeneuve/Zimmer/Fraser three-headed monster is just astounding and fires on all cylinders. It also helps that this movie is a massive coming-out party for Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet and Austin Butler. These three we can all assume will be three of the biggest stars of this generation, so it feels like a pop culture moment.

Completely unrelated to the quality of the movie, but the sheer excitement around Dune is what I credit with getting me back into reading. I was so caught up in Dunemania that I bought the initial trilogy box set and tore through the first novel in a week. I also read Messiah, but it took me a little longer because it’s pretty boring and honestly just is not as good as the first book. I’m going to get around to Children of Dune eventually, too, but I’m taking a little break to read other stuff right now because I was a little worn out by the Duniverse. Shoutout to Dune, though, because I’m in the weird post-college stage where I’m trying to rewire my brain’s relationship with reading and comprehending that I can do it for enjoyment now.

Dune Part Two is now available to stream on Max.

Cinephiles do plenty of mythologizing about Cannes due to its historic reputation in the film world. I’ll admit, I also participated in this mythologizing for years. But last year, I attended the 76th Cannes Film Festival and now I can’t mythologize it anymore. And not to sound ungrateful for the experience I had there, I would love to attend again in the future, but it’s just another film festival. 

Yes, Cannes attracts buzzy titles and stars to walk the red carpet and it is located in the French Riviera, but it’s an industry event. People are trying to sell their movies. Industry people and critics attend Cannes just like any other festival because it’s their job. And I assure you, these people do not hate movies. In fact, these people work in struggling industries for weird hours and weird pay because they love movies.

Seeing tweets from self-proclaimed “movie lovers” about the reactions to the new Coppola and Cronenberg movies inspired a question in me, what is a “movie lover”? Are people who didn’t like Megalopolis or The Shrouds meant to praise them just because the same directors made The Godfather and Videodrome? Surely a “movie lover” is not someone who blindly praises anything they watch just because something existed before it. 

To me, a “movie lover” is someone who truly loves the art form and is not shy to criticize, even obliterate, a movie when discussing it if that is their position. The push and pull between the artist and the critic is vital to any art form. This relationship thrusts the form forward. If we, as “movie lovers”, naively praise everything we see, what does it even mean to actually like something?

Admittedly, this is anecdotal and has no statistical basis, but I have seen this praise-heavy mindset rising in recent years. And I completely get it, to a certain extent. We are fans of movies, it is incredibly easy to fall in line and praise every film we see. Especially in such an awkward financial time for the industry, it feels like our duty to support not just with our money but also our opinions. But it’s precisely for the same reasons that I feel it is important to be incredibly critical about what we’re paying money to see. 

Someone disliking something you like feels like an indictment on your taste and interests when really all it is is a statement on the other person’s taste. When that person is a critic, someone who (probably) spends more time with the medium than you do and is a perceived voice of authority, that can hurt even worse because it can make us feel like the things we like are bad and our taste is bad and we might not be as smart as we think we are. But, as Esther Rosenfield asks in her Medium article about the infamous “Let People Enjoy Things” webcomic, “If you hold an opinion about a movie, why should reading an opposing one make you feel bad? [...The] notion that a negative review could make someone feel bad for liking a movie says less about the review than it does about the person reading it. It indicates to me that they want to like a movie and not think too deeply about why they like it, out of fear that introspection would lead to them not liking it anymore.”

It’s ok to like different things. It’s ok to dislike things. I would argue it’s incredibly important to have differing opinions. A monoculture is bland and gray.

The purpose of a critic has become so incredibly jumbled in this era of Rotten Tomatoes scores. We often perceive aggregated critic scores as a statement on the quality of a movie, and in some ways, it can be, but it’s not concrete. To me, a movie critic is much like a food critic. You have to find a critic whose taste complements yours. When you do that, a critic can help better guide what you might like and dislike. 

Personal example: IndieWire’s David Ehrlich is an objectively good critic, but not my go-to critic because based on what I think is good and what he thinks is good, our tastes are different. His reviews probably won’t guide me towards movies I will enjoy. That’s okay though, I still read a lot of his reviews, mainly because I just like reading reviews.

The growing antipathy to criticism, to being mean, is a net negative for any art form. The point of attending a film festival, especially as a critic, is not to gush about every movie you’re seeing. You have to look past the veil of “oh my god, I’m at Cannes!” that a “movie lover” might imagine comes with attending. At the end of the day, you’re sitting in a movie theater that looks like the majority of other theaters. You’ve got to treat the movie the same. We’ve got to start treating other people’s opinions less like an attack and start treating them like a conversation about the future of the art form.

Thank you to Sarah (her substack linked here) for the help editing this!

Deep in the Ontario wilderness, a group of teenagers on a weekend trip unknowingly meddle with a violent local spirit and subsequently get picked off one by one by a chain-and-axe-wielding masked killer who slowly stalks them through the woods.

This sounds like the setup to a stereotypical, yet entertaining, horror movie that rips from classics like Halloween, Friday the 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre until you realize the entire movie is told from the perspective of the killer. Take the slasher genre and invert it — then suck any fun out of it to make it a procedural and dull version of itself, and out pops In A Violent Nature. Chris Nash’s debut feature premiered at Sundance in January to high audience praise and proceeded to make its way to the East Coast as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival.

The concept is interesting and may lead horror fans to believe it could breathe life into a once-great genre that has since faltered, but cast those expectations aside as there’s a reason slashers are told from the perspective of the victims. Watching a man, who we will come to know as Johnny (Ry Barrett), for 94 long minutes as he walks around the Canadian wilderness is as fun as it sounds, even if now and then it is interrupted by some of the most brutal kills I’ve ever seen.

Horror fans might recognize this behind-the-back third-person perspective style most recently from a mid-movie sequence in Barbarian. Another inspiration for that (good) horror movie, I found stylistic choices for In A Violent Nature incredibly similar to Gerald Kargl’s highly controversial 1983 Austrian horror film Angst. In both, the audience follows from a technically interesting third-person perspective of a mindless killer on a violent rampage. Similarities stop there, though, as Angst builds tension and keeps the audience engaged in a narrative following a psychotic killer who has no goals except blood. Like Johnny, In A Violent Nature is completely devoid of emotion, tension and fear (three very important aspects of a horror movie). There’s no reason for the audience to care about anything happening on-screen.

The kills, which should be the most entertaining part of a slasher, range from creative and gnarly to downright boring and lazy. In one scene the killer beats someone’s face for minutes on end. In another, a log splitter is used to cut up the limp body of what is obviously a mannequin. For the entire scene, the camera is a fly on the wall and the audience watches as Johnny slogs back and forth between the machine controls and the corpse. All the while the gas engine blares at an annoying volume that made me wish, for the first time in my life, I could mute an entire theatre.

The idea of this film as a sequel or as happening parallel to another (more entertaining) movie is interesting in theory, but not in execution. It lacks tension and momentum, not to mention it contains a completely bare-bones mythology for the killer that seemed like an afterthought. The scenes very early on in the film where a majority of information is blurted out instantly feel like part of a reshoot where the writers had actors improv the killer’s mythology to try and get the audience to care.

This movie is hard to recommend. It is boring and brutal, with an ending sequence that is one of the biggest snooze-fests in recent memory for me. For a certain type of horror fan who is incredibly interested in the genre, this could maybe work as a double feature with Friday the 13th or put on as you play Dead By Daylight. For most others, though, it’s probably not worth the cost of admission plus 94 minutes.

In A Violent Nature will release in theaters on May 31, and will come to streaming later this year on Shudder.

On Thursday, March 21, Strange Kindness premiered at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, MA as part of the Boston Underground Film Festival’s 2024 edition.

The film opens the morning a small community on Cape Cod is rattled by a violent shooting. Rose (Leanne McLaughlin, who also produced), a nurse taking care of her aunt Chris (Deirdre Madigan), is surprised by her brother James (Kristofor Giordano) returning home. Across town, Chris finds the injured gunman (Michal Vondel) in her living room. As the police go door-to-door searching for the gunman, she assures him “I’m not going to scream.”

The film was shot on location on the Cape by a small crew of 10 people, who raised $33,000 through the film-centric crowd-funding platform Seed & Spark in 2022. Headlining the crew for his feature film debut effort is award-winning music video director Joseph Mault, who pulled triple duty on Strange Kindness as the writer, director and cinematographer.

As the plot unfolds from its setup, we follow these dual plotlines and the building tension from their inevitable collision. The story following Chris and the gunman rises to the top as the film’s most compelling, as it contains standout performances from Madigan and Vondel. Their dynamic contains notes of curiosity, disdain and desperation, with something dark lurking in both of their pasts.

As we switch back and forth between the characters, the film swings heavily between a more mumblecore aesthetic of naturalistic dialogue and a heavy-handed, deliberate dynamic that often makes the audience incredibly aware that the actors are reading lines from a script. At times, the sibling plotline makes the audience question its relevance. There are moments of time jumping that have little clear purpose and may leave the viewer puzzled as to what just happened and its importance to the broader story. This plotline is also where the film demonstrates its inability to be more specific and direct when it needs to be, as unimportant moments of exposition and backstory take center stage while moments of high tension and intrigue are left ambiguous, often to a fault.

The film sways between these varying levels of quality and coherence and stumbles along with what it is trying to say. Symbols and metaphors are often left jumbled. Moments of importance flash on the screen so briefly that if you blink, you could miss them. There are lines drawn very thinly between the morality of military combat and violent crime and the varying levels of empathy people have for sanctioned killing as opposed to unsanctioned killing. I would have liked to see this idea explored more, as it seems central to the movie’s thesis, but it seemed brushed to the side almost immediately.

The technical aspects of the film also seem to waver between levels of quality. Having shot with a small crew on a tight budget and using natural lighting, it is understandable how a project like this won’t look the same as something with a monstrous budget. But odd visual things like colors not matching from shot to shot became a distracting game of wondering if there was an artistic meaning or if one shot simply had better lighting.

The editing had its moments of odd choices, cutting to black for extended periods. This is a technique I can appreciate sometimes, making the viewer sit with the ideas presented or hone in on listening more. But, in the case of Strange Kindness, it may begin to annoy the viewer as it is deployed so often with no discernable purpose other than making a sequence last longer.

In these moments, the score often blares and leads the audience through this darkness. Editing issues aside, moments of heavy score became a standout because of how impressive it is. In the post-viewing Q&A, Mault briefly described how most of the score is created using objects seen on-screen in the film. Bamboo from jungle scenes was used to create flutes he then learned to play, creating a droning soundscape by playing them with a delay pedal and layering them on top of each other. The idea of ‘what you see is what you hear’ was incredibly interesting, creating a sort of closed-loop audiovisual sensory experience.

This combination of interesting techniques and ideas can make the movie incredibly compelling. Some ideas don’t come across as clearly as others and a lot of technical aspects can feel unrefined, but that’s the nature of a low-budget indie debut feature. A lot was accomplished with such a low budget and tight crew, and everyone involved is talented. The film left a somewhat bland taste in my mouth, but I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone involved does next.

10. Maestro

Bradley Cooper’s follow-up to his directorial debut, A Star Is Born, came from Netflix. Leading up to its release, Cooper’s direction and performance as legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein received praise from the festival circuit. I was relatively excited as I do enjoy Cooper as a performer and think we’re seeing the rise of a high-profile director, but I ended the film feeling disappointed. Maybe it’s just my disinterest in films about conductors (I also did not love Todd Field’s Tár, as others did), my lack of attachment to Bernstein as a historical figure or the self-aggrandizing style the film seems to take, but Maestro did nothing for me. I found the story to be unfocused and incredibly strange (that one Maya Hawke scene still puzzles me). I understand that making a film is challenging and because of that I try to give every movie I watch a genuine chance, but with this one, I was mainly excited for it to end.

9. Past Lives

Another film I was excited about because of its festival buzz, Celine Song’s Past Lives seems like a movie made specifically for me. I love romantic drama especially when it deals with people’s childhood, and hearing that it’s a tear-jerker got me even more excited. Maybe I got set up to fail by my own expectations, though, as I walked out of the theatre liking the movie but incredibly puzzled by its high praise. I thought everything about it was good but not great. It’s a very small story, which I appreciate, and I’m happy that it is receiving such high praise but I wasn’t able to connect to it in the way that many others are which I feel is crucial to a film of this shape when it comes to its relationship to the viewer.

8. The Holdovers

Putting Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers this low might be one of my most diverging opinions from the pack of film lovers. This is in a similar tier to Past Lives for me, where I walked out thinking “good, but not great”. I enjoyed everything it was doing and liked the film’s stylistic homage to a 70’s holiday movie with a more modern mindset. I agree with what seems to be the popular consensus that the performances were great and the movie had a cozy feel to it, but I was left wanting a little more bite to it all. I recommended this to almost everyone in my family over the holidays when I was asked about anything good I’d seen recently, which I feel says something about how not challenging the movie is. In my opinion, that is both a good and bad thing.

7. American Fiction

I love a satire. Go back and read my thoughts on The Lobster to see how much I love satire. American Fiction is a very different, riskier type of satire though. A satire about satire is a super interesting idea, and I think Cord Jefferson’s film debut accomplished a lot on that front as well as in its family drama. That being said, the film often feels torn between those two types of movies and is unwilling to commit to either. Very funny, layered while still on the nose, smart and emotional, American Fiction ends up feeling a bit toothless in its critique. The performances here are good and everyone is playing their part perfectly, in my opinion, but I wanted more from each character (Sterling K. Brown’s character is incredible but feels a bit underserved by the narrative, by the time the credits rolled it felt like his character’s arc existed solely to set up a 3rd act monologue). That being said, I enjoyed the film and think it deserves its nomination here.

6. Barbie

There truly is nothing left to say about Barbie that hasn’t already been said. The biggest movie of the year, instantly iconic and very easily arguably saved the summer box office. Insanely entertaining and fun, both Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie cement themselves (as if they hadn’t already) as two major figures in 21st-century pop culture here. I think it’s disappointing and bizarre that neither were nominated for their crucial roles in Barbie’s success. The film was incredibly smart and will likely go down as Gerwig’s definitive work as the single most culturally important millennial American filmmaker. Regardless, this is a nominee I wish I could have ranked higher but is a victim to a strong top 5.

5. Anatomy of a Fall

It’s a great year for smart films. Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is a fascinating exploration of ambiguity as well as a harsh critique of the French judicial system. This came out of Cannes guns blazing, winning the Palme d’Or, and was the biggest blind spot of my time at the festival. Sandra Hüller was wonderful in the leading role, which rightfully landed her the Best Actress nomination, but I think most will agree with me in saying Milo Machado Graner comes out of the movie leaving the biggest impression on the audience. Rarely does a child actor outperform an entire cast, especially one with veterans like Hüller, but Machado Graner does something special in Anatomy of a Fall. For me, the film’s only weakness was that it felt a little bit too long. To be 152 minutes and not feel like a slog, a movie has to earn it and keep the audience engaged, which the film mostly does, but some sequences feel like there could have been a little more left on the cutting room floor. That being said, the way the film concludes is riveting and knocks it out of the park.

4. The Zone of Interest

This is an unbelievably challenging movie. Jonathan Glazer’s style is already not the most mainstream, so combining that with the source material that is Martin Amis’s novel about the Nazis that run Auschwitz is a combination not for the faint of heart but should be required viewing. A disgusting film that shoves evil in your face and doesn’t allow you to look away, The Zone of Interest is disturbing for every reason you will not expect. What is not seen and only heard is the most important aspect of the film and is top of mind for every second you are watching. I think its nomination in this category is essential as it will bring attention to the film, one that is not otherwise likely to be seen by viewers who aren’t particularly interested in film, let alone more experimental and non-narrative film. 

3. Killers of the Flower Moon

The long-anticipated adaptation of David Grann’s 2017 book of the same name comes from an all-time, all-star squad of Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Robbie Robertson and Thelma Schoonmaker (and introduced lots of people to Lily Gladstone, who, in my opinion, is the best part of this movie). Its COVID delay was probably for the best, as it reportedly underwent an extensive rewrite as production stood in limbo due to the pandemic. And even after that, this is not a perfect film. Scorsese is obviously a master of the craft and is the single most important contemporary figure in terms of filmmaking, preservation and promotion, but the film leaves much to be desired in terms of its point of view. This movie would not have been made without Scorsese, but it’s still easy to acknowledge this as a flawed project. All that said, the film’s finale seems incredibly self-aware of this unavoidable trap a project like this falls into. After sitting through more than three hours of an entertainment product, the movie effectively slaps you in the face to wake up to what you’re consuming. Crime adaptations effectively do no justice to their victims and serve only to be forgotten.

2. Poor Things

Another film with strong festival buzz, Poor Things was top of my most anticipated list for most of the year because of my affection for Yorgos Lanthimos. His style of weird filmmaking is refreshing, as he knows how to take an established genre and make it something bizarre (shoutout to the Greek Weird Wave). There is so much to chew on with Poor Things, mainly its use of absurdism to critique patriarchy and the idea of male ownership of women. All of this is carried by the film’s outstanding performances. Some notable ones here are of course Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo, but two unexpected ones are Ramy Youssef and Christopher Abbott. Abbott is an actor I think is wonderful (I recommend On The Count of Three, directed by fellow Poor Things castmate Jerrod Carmichael). Youssef is a performer I’m excited to see in movies (I recommend his semi-autobiographical comedy series, Ramy, as well as his stand-up special Feelings). And of course, Emma Stone, who we already knew to be amazing, has established herself to be a generational talent with her performance as Bella Baxter (this film’s release alongside her performance in The Curse strengthens this idea). She’s doing something incredibly special in this movie and, in my mind, is a shoo-in for her second Academy Award. 

1. Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer is such a clear frontrunner for this category it has basically been running unopposed since its release this past summer. An incredibly strong showing on every front of filmmaking, Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic fires on all cylinders for every single minute of its 181-minute runtime. What might otherwise be a 3-hour slog is, in my opinion, propelled by Ludwig Göransson’s absolutely electric score (“Can You Hear The Music” is instantly recognizable and a masterwork). The great performances of everyone involved, notably Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Rami Malek and Alden Ehrenreich, take the technically amazing achievements of the crew and run with them to complete what I think is the definitive film of the year. In the way that I watch and think about these things, it’s easy for me to poke holes in movies especially so long after a release, but with Oppenheimer, I find it undeniable. Easy pick for my #1.

Dating has become, in many ways, both easier and more difficult. With the rise of the internet came the inevitable use of it to find “the one”. We now have access to other singles anywhere in the world looking for romantic connection at the touch of a button. 

According to a February report from the Pew Research Center, the majority of people aged 18-29 use dating apps or websites. The normalization of online dating platforms has completely overhauled how society views dating and relationships. 

Yorgos Lanthimos’s 2015 absurdist black comedy The Lobster guides us through a bleak and dystopian society where being single causes you to be exiled from society. The beginning of the film introduces us to David, our protagonist, portrayed by Colin Farrell. In the aftermath of his wife leaving him for another man, David is admitted into a hotel for singles. In the hotel, singles have 45 days to find a partner or are punished for their loneliness by being transformed into an animal of their choice. 

In a video essay detailing the single-hating philosophy The Lobster embodies, YouTuber I Watch More Movies Than You references an extremely influential dystopian text when he says that “Huxley would have[...] been proud, somehow, of this movie.” 

A reference to Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World reveals a striking resemblance between the legendary mass-production-inspired dystopia and the world Lanthimos has illustrated in The Lobster.

Splitting the film into two parts, David inhabits first the Coupled world and then the Loner world. While in Huxley’s dystopia, the divide is between the Fordists and the Savages and what the human relationship to technology should be, in Lanthimos’s dystopia the split is between the Couples and the Loners and how to police themselves in terms of socialization, affection, and sexual desire. In Lanthimos’s vision, however, both the Couples and the Loners are the Fordists.

Rachel Weisz, who plays the film’s narrator and David’s eventual lover, says in an interview with The Guardian that the film is “about the way in which we live sheeplike and follow rules and ideologies without questioning them.” Both the Couples and the Loners have their own twisted, nonsensical rulesets that make each society resemble something of an emotionless fascist dictatorship. Each society has painful punishments for defiance, such as your hand being held in a toaster or something sinister called “The Red Intercourse”. You either fall into one of these societies or you cease to exist at all, either being transformed into an animal like David’s brother was, or killing yourself like Biscuit Woman (Ashley Jensen).

In Huxley’s vision, the title “brave new world” is a criticism of the evil nature of the industrial revolution and how mass production has increased our consumption of disposable products and therefore has irreparably damaged our society. For Lanthimos, it means something similar, but in place of the industrial revolution is the dating revolution.

The introduction of online dating platforms such as Tinder, Bumble, and Match.com has completely overhauled how singles view dating and relationships. Now, to find a “perfect” partner, singles have to present themselves properly in the eyes of an algorithm to maximize their chances of getting a match.

In an article on the design functions of dating apps, Liz Gorny writes that “In 2023, dating is a public affair, which means the face users put forward is often an extension of a personal brand.” Singles must construct a brand centered around a few distinct traits their potential perfect match might share.

But what is a perfect match, really? If you are shortsighted, is it absolutely necessary that your partner be shortsighted as well? Italian philosopher Franco Berardi suggests in Breathing: Chaos and Poetry that with dating apps, singles are looking less for someone truly well suited for them and are more “often looking for a mirror.”

In an interview following the release of The Lobster, star Colin Farrell ponders the idea of trying to find love through sameness, saying “the idea of choosing someone based on them being the exact same as you, which is kind of proffered in this film, is a rather narcissistic approach to things and yet, that's what a lot of the internet dating is predicated upon is: these are my interests, do you have the same interests, well let’s share interests together.”

Most of the twisted humor of the film comes from David and the motley crew of other singles we meet in the hotel trying to share the exact same interests or traits together. Early on, Limping Man (Ben Whishaw) slowly mutilates himself by continuously slamming his face against surfaces to make his nose bleed so he can have a commonality with Nosebleed Woman (Jessica Barden). We see this and wonder if it is worth it – repeatedly smashing your nose looks quite painful – until Limping Man has an outburst where he exclaims that giving himself a painful nosebleed every day could not possibly be worse than the alternative of being turned into an animal.

In the world of the film, the hotel acts as a physical manifestation of a dating app. Inhabitants boil themselves down to “defining characteristics”, such as a lisp, being shortsighted, or frequently getting nosebleeds, in hopes that someone else might share these traits and be their perfect match. Instead of constructing a public profile like one would on OkCupid or Grindr, new inhabitants of the singles hotel are forced to get up on stage in front of everyone and say their name, why they’ve come to the hotel, and what their defining characteristic is. 

Liz Gorny details a conversation one contributor had on a dating app. “Our conversation was dry – I asked if she liked cheese, she replied no, but said she didn’t mind mild cheese. She asked me what my dad did for a job, I said he was a civil servant, she asked if he liked it, I said I think he did.” This is eerily reminiscent of a conversation that would take place in The Lobster’s singles hotel: blunt and mundane, inhabitants try and find something, anything to relate over. If they can’t, they move on quickly to the next person to find out if their dad is a civil servant, or if they like cheese as well.

Dating apps more or less force users to commodify themselves. In her article on the neoliberal capitalist influence hovering above the entirety of The Lobster, Dr. Katya Krylova, a film and visual culture professor at the University of Aberdeen, states that “social media and digital dating platforms offer effective instruments for transforming the self into a dematerialized commodity. They allow remodelling of the self into a shallow image of a commonly desired product that performs and promotes itself publicly through specific texts and visuals. In parallel, we are exposed to an escalating flux of visual stimuli represented by other commodified bodies – smooth, athletic, hairless, eroticized flesh.”

Krylova argues that there is “obsessive self-categorization” taking place in both The Lobster and online in the real world and that this is a product of “our everyday lives under neo-liberalism. To function within this sociopolitical regime, we categorize ourselves on several interconnected levels, such as gender, career and romantic relationships.” With the majority of young people looking online for a partner, their dating experience is more or less dictated by an algorithm. This obsessive self-categorization feeds into a life built by algorithm – the more we categorize ourselves, the more specific the computer program can be with matching us with others it deems a “match”. Computers pair users together based on selected interests hand-picked for viewing on your profile – the real-life equivalent of David getting on stage and telling the hotel that he is shortsighted and that his wife left him, but in this case, it’s your top Spotify artist, your interest in rock climbing, or a photo of you holding a fish.

In the algorithm of The Lobster, you either have the same defining characteristic or you don’t. You can lie about it, but don’t get caught, or you’ll be turned in to the hotel authorities. This leaves the audience to ponder the terrifying thought of whether or not we are lying about our defining characteristics. Are those that say they love us forcing themselves into molds not meant for them to avoid the persecution of singledom? Even more terrifying, are we ourselves doing that? Is there even a way to tell? Maybe we’re not so different from David, after all.

Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans is one of the standout movies of the year. The legendary director’s long-awaited semi-autobiographical film has its roots in the late 1990s when he first expressed public interest in a project about his young life in New Jersey, Arizona and California. Over 20 years later, the movie offers an intimate and critical view of the Spielberg family during the director’s adolescence.

After a very touching silent, home movie-style sequence that portrays the Fabelman family moving into their new home in Saratoga, California, the parents sit their four kids down for a family meeting. Long-expected but heartwrenching, we watch as the kids react to their parents announcing the decision to separate. 

The three Fabelman sisters, seated on the couch, begin to cry as they process what is happening. Meanwhile, our teenage protagonist Sam Fabelman (Spielberg’s self-insert character) sits silently at the bottom of the stairs. At this moment, there is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot that heartbreakingly ties together every slice of life the audience has seen so far of Sam.

As Sam watches his family fracture, he glances at the mirror on the wall. In it, he sees himself circling his family with his camera, filming the drama. 

It is out of place as a sort of daydream, as the movie does not utilize this style anywhere else. It’s also easy to miss in a moment like this, where the drama and emotions are so high that each individual shot can sort of blend together. But it tells us the most about the movie, about Sam and, most importantly, about Steven Spielberg.

The film opens with a young Sam being both entranced and traumatized by the climactic train crash in The Greatest Show on Earth. He goes on to unlock his passion for filmmaking through his need to process and control this trauma, by recreating and filming the train crash.

Years later, we can see Sam has taken comfort in being behind the camera. He doesn’t want to attend his senior class’s ditch day event in Santa Cruz but is convinced to go when he is presented with the opportunity to film it with an Arriflex. 

Sam uses his camera as a shield. This is perhaps a common phenomenon for those of us who handle cameras a lot. The filmmaker/photographer/videographer/etc can use the camera to dissociate, in a way. You are still presented with the world in front of you, but behind the glass of a viewfinder. It acts as a sort of barrier between lived experience and perceived experience.

Sam clearly struggles with complex emotions. He is adept at dramatizing them, as we see when he is directing the lead actor for his WWII film, but processing them is an entirely different beast. When things get difficult for Sam he retreats behind his camera, opting to translate his trauma to drama to put up a barrier and protect himself. He is trying to control the things in his life that seem uncontrollable.

I couldn’t help but try to stifle laughter when there was that scene of Harry Styles yelling at Florence Pugh. Even worse was when he was dancing. But a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes (as of September 24) is an exaggeration (aggregate film ratings are flawed for so many reasons, but this is just the world we live in). 

Listen, I’m not trying to defend the movie by any means. It has faults that range from simple swings and misses to cowardly avoidance of the true undertones the movie is trying to attack. But the Twitter conversation around Venice and Olivia Wilde and Spitgate has just completely shifted the actual conversation the movie wants the audience to have. 

Let’s start with the most click-worthy flaw: Harry Styles.

WARNING: SPOILERS for Don’t Worry Darling. Obviously

The Jack character is miscast. I respect and understand the attempt the movie made at using Styles and his star power to elevate this movie, but it doesn’t work. I don’t believe him as Victory Project Jack, and I certainly don’t believe him as Incel Jack. His acting is not great, but not atrocious like social media wants you to believe.

The issue with Harry Styles that is almost unfixable is that it’s impossible to see him as a character. Every time he was on screen, all I could think of was that it was Harry Styles in a movie and not Jack Chambers, played by Harry Styles.

The simple fix for the Harry Styles problem is to swap him and Chris Pines’ roles. 

The business decision is you get to keep Harry Styles in the movie. Exploit his star power in trailers and promotional content to get more people in the theater while giving him a much lighter load to carry in the movie with much less screen time. The Frank character honestly might be suited better for a figure of Styles’ cultural stature anyways because it could allow for a deeper satire on internet idol culture and violent masculinity (more on that later).

The filmmaking decision is you give a much better, more experienced actor like Pine a layered role that Styles was unable to fully flesh out (especially next to a generational force like Florence Pugh). I could never believe Styles as Jack, especially after the full reveal of what the Victory Project is. I don’t know if Pine would land the twist either, but the odds are far better. When I saw cheek acne goatee incel Harry Styles I laughed. It felt like a joke.

The flaw with the movie that is much more glaring is the undercooked (the oven was never even turned on tbh) political statement. If you watch the movie, you get what the whole idea is. The modern misogynist has retreated into the virtual world as a reaction to the social progress made in terms of gender equality and equity. They feel emboldened by the algorithms Silicon Valley pushes out and profits off of, bla bla bla Facebook Discord Reddit. Alt-right pipeline, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, etc etc etc. People are aware of this.

The problem the thesis of the movie faces is it presents these ideas and does nothing with them. Of course, I’m not asking a movie to solve an extremely pressing and complex social issue in 123 minutes, but tiptoeing around the subject for three-quarters of the movie until the reveal and then literally never mentioning it again is inauthentic.

The spec script Don’t Worry Darling is based on was written by Carey and Shane Van Dyke and circulated in 2019 on The Black List, a popular yearly survey of the most liked unproduced screenplays. The original script, while wildly different and in many ways inferior to the final product released this past weekend (it included a 13 Reasons Why-esque scene involving a broom), more sharply addressed the social issues presented by the premise. It still doesn’t do a great job interrogating the circumstances of the incel world, but it at least tries, whereas the rewrite done by Katie Silberman essentially throws all of that out in favor of more time spent in the virtual 1950s world attending weekend barbeques and going shopping at malls, adding nothing to build tension or advance the plot.

Somewhere in the 123-minute runtime, a good movie is buried. One that takes the time and care to address the problems Big Tech has created and/or exacerbated in terms of social progress. It just needed another rewrite and maybe some different casting choices.

Some other questions that are sitting in my head but can’t answer so hopefully someone reads this and can scream the answers in my face:

• Why is it that when men die in the virtual world they die in real life? Is it just men or is that the same for everyone?

• Why does Gemma Chan stab Chris Pine?