I haven’t yet seen The Brutalist or Joker: Folie a Deux, and my fingers are crossed for A Complete Unknown…go, James Mangold and Timothee Chalamet!
But there’s no question that Anora, Conclave, All We Imagine As Light and A Real Pain are first-rate knockouts and likely Best Picture nominees.
So if you want to think hopefully or liberally that’s seven that appear likely to make the cut early next year. Okay, eight if you include the better-than-decent Emilia Perez, which has nonetheless been overpraised by the whoo-whoo brigade.
I’ve no faith in Gladiator II, certainly not with the dreaded Paul Mescal in the lead. It’s my humble opinion that Ridley Scott’s peak years are behind him.
Yes, I admired Dune: Part Two but let’s not get carried away.
A formidable cinema year always has at least 15 if not 20 films that qualify as very good to excellent. As I’ve just indicated, it’s a push to name more than ten 2024 films that make the grade.
Forget The Substance. It’s a passable Cronenbergian social-satire horror flick, but guys like David Ehrlich need to calm down.
2007 boasted 25 top-of-the-liners. 1971 saw the release of 27 grade-A releases, and 55 if you want to be gracious about it. Face it — ‘24 has proved to be a weak sister.
A decades-old Manhattan story from producer Mike Kaplan was posted a day or two ago by renowned film scholar and book author Joseph McBride.
HE to McBride: Fascinating story but what year did this happen? Or at least what decade? The ‘60s or 70s? Were they on the Fifth Avenue downtown bus? Lexington or Third Avenue? The great and confident Lillian Gish felt intimidated by an odd bus moment or by Garbo or what? How long were they together on that bus? How many average folks were with them? Was it raining?
This story cries out for more detail!
I’m thinking of Tom Cruise’s Collateral story about that dead guy doing laps around Los Angeles on a bus or metro car and nobody noticing. We live alone, and we’re gonna die alone…take it or leave it.
This George Clooney–Brad Pitt programmer is obviously a shoulder-shrugger.
Several weeks ago I equated Wolfs with a marginally soothing plate of warm waffles, but that 73% RT rating is concerning. If a movie has a problem or two it’ll end up with a score in the mid-to-low 80s, but a low 70s rating means “uh-oh.”
Plus it’s not playing in Fairfield or Westchester counties — you have to catch it in the city this weekend or not at all. Apple will begin the streaming on 9.27.
After seeing Sing Sing early last June I didn’t have the courage to say what I really thought about its Best Picture chances. I said it would “probably end up with a Best Picture nom…maybe.”
Be honest — the words “probably” and “maybe” are sometimes squishy chickebshit terms used by equivocating jellyfish.
What I wrote may have been an accurate assessment of where Oscar pundits and industry voters might be coming from as the second half of 2024 unfolds, but I chickened out by not saying what I really thought, which is that achey-heart, leaky-eyed Colman Domingo delivers a stand-out performance but the movie more or less just lies there. It’s a well-intended shoulder shrugger, and everyone knows this.
9.19 World of Reel comment thread:
HE to Rufus: Maestro is a masterful, one-of-a-kind biopic. Bradley Cooper tried so hard, achieved so much. Portions are dazzling, swoon-worthy, genius-level. Carey Mulligan’s performance is for the ages.There’s something deeply wrong with anyone calling it “a complete dud.” In all honesty, YOU’RE a complete dud in this respect. Throw yourself upon the church steps, weeping, and beg God the Father for forgiveness.
“Not happening…way too laid back…zero narrative urgency,” I was muttering from the get-go. Basically the sixth episode of White Lotus Thai SERIOUSLY disappoints. Puttering around, way too slow. Things inch along but it’s all “woozy guilty lying aftermath to the big party night” stuff. Glacial pace…waiting, waiting. I was told...
I finally saw Walter Salles' I'm Still Here two days ago in Ojai. It's obviously an absorbing, very well-crafted, fact-based poltical drama, and yes, Fernanda Torres carries the whole thing on her shoulders. Superb actress. Fully deserving of her Best Actress nomination. But as good as it basically is...
After three-plus-years of delay and fiddling around, Bernard McMahon's Becoming Led Zeppelin, an obsequious 2021 doc about the early glory days of arguably the greatest metal-rock band of all time, is opening in IMAX today in roughly 200 theaters. Sony Pictures Classics is distributing. All I can say is, it...
To my great surprise and delight, Christy Hall's Daddio, which I was remiss in not seeing during last year's Telluride Film Festival, is a truly first-rate two-hander -- a pure-dialogue, character-revealing, heart-to-heart talkfest that knows what it's doing and ends sublimely. Yes, it all happens inside a Yellow Cab on...
7:45 pm: Okay, the initial light-hearted section (repartee, wedding, hospital, afterlife Joey Pants, healthy diet) was enjoyable, but Jesus, when and how did Martin Lawrence become Oliver Hardy? He’s funny in that bug-eyed, space-cadet way… 7:55 pm: And now it’s all cartel bad guys, ice-cold vibes, hard bullets, bad business,...
Unless Part Two of Kevin Costner's Horizon (Warner Bros., 8.16) somehow improves upon the sluggish initial installment and delivers something...
For me, A Dangerous Method (2011) is David Cronenberg's tastiest and wickedest film -- intense, sexually upfront and occasionally arousing...