Day: February 12, 2025

If you could somehow magically migrate yourself into The Brutalist…if you could somehow penetrate that membrane and suddenly find yourself actually hanging with Adrien Brody‘s Laszlo Toth and all the rest of those miserable characters…if you could push a button that would allow you to actually gain entry to and live in their world…would you?

Answer: Of course you wouldn’t because (a) theirs is a grim, grief-stricken world…a morose “lemme outta here” underland if there ever was one, and (b) the characters aren’t “real” (by which I mean relatable in a recognizable, everyday, human being sense) but Brady Corbet constructs.

Living inside The Brutalist would be, in fact, hellish. That’s precisely how I felt as I watched it…trapped in a cold hell cave.

An HE commenter claimed a week or two ago that I had ranked Emilia Perez among my top five films of ’24. Not true — in my final 12.21.24 wrap-up I ranked it in 15th place.

1. Sean Baker‘s Anora / HE review (5.22.24)

2. Edward Berger‘s Conclave / HE review (8.31.24)

3. Payal Kapadia‘s All We Imagine as Light / HE review (5.24.24)

4. Alice Rohrwacher‘s La Chimera / HE review (4.24.24)

5. James Mangold‘s A Complete Unknown / HE review (12.10.24)

6. Luca Guadagnino‘s Queer / HE review (9.18.24)

7. Halina Reijn‘s Babygirl / HE review (12.10.24)

8. Steven Zallian‘s Ripley / HE review (4.27.24)

9. Robert Lorenz‘s In the Land of Saints and Sinners / HE review (4.5.24)

10. Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice / HE review (5.20.24)

11. Tim Fehlbaum‘s September 5 / HE mini-review (10.24.24)

12. Jesse Eisenberg‘s A Real Pain.

13. Alex Garland‘s Civil War / HE review (4.9.24)

14. Halfdan Ullmann Tondel‘s Armand / abbreviated HE non-review (11.18.24)

15. Jacques Audiard‘s Emilia Perez (audacious but calm down) / HE review (6.18.24)

16. Steve McQueen‘s Blitz / HE review (11.5.24)

17. Magnus von Horn’s’s The Girl With the Needle

18. Denis Villeneuve‘s Dune: Part Two.

19. Coralie Fergeat‘s The Substance

20. Christy Hall‘e Daddio (Sony Pictures Classics, 6.28)

21. Rose Glass‘s Love Lies Bleeding

22. Brady Corbet‘s The Brutalist.

23. Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire‘s Asphalt City (formerly Black Flies)

24. Clint Eastwood‘s Juror No. 2

25. Luca Guadagnino‘s Challengers

26. Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator II.

27. Yorgos Lanthimos‘s Kinds of Kindness

28. Wes Ball‘s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

29. RaMell Ross‘s Nickel Boys

30. Greg Kwedar‘s Sing Sing

31. Zellner Bros.’ Sasquatch Sunset.