Catching up: The pope, Superman, snails and Daffy Duck
‘Tis the season for movie marathons
We’re in the home stretch of the movie year – my screening schedule is already getting busy, and I’m preparing to vote with my critics group for the best films of 2024 in less than a month (my top 10 list will probably be published around Dec. 13). As we hurtle toward my deadlines, my email is constantly filling up with online screeners – I’m sure a few physical ones are on their way as well – from studios eager for me to catch up with this year’s movies and consider them for my list. I also have a two-day movie marathon with my fellow critics set up for the week after Thanksgiving.
I’m not going to see everything; I never do. Aside from those few working for big-name publications, most critics are not doing this gig full time. We’re trying to watch movies when we can to screenings after work and catching up on movies when we have a few hours’ of free time or after the kids go to bed. But I try to make a valiant effort to see as much as possible, and my goal for now through the end of voting in early December is to average one movie a day. Some of these are screenings for new releases – look for Red One, Wicked and Moana 2 in the coming weeks – but most are going to be catching up on movies released earlier in the year.
Obviously, I don’t have the time to write full reviews of each of these movies, so occasionally between now and mid-December, you’ll see some of these digests where I write my brief thoughts about the movies I happen to see. Mostly, I’m going to try to stick to including several movies in a bullet-list formation instead of writing at length about them. It’s not a perfect system, because I think many of these films deserve to be talked about in greater detail; but it’s the compromise I came up with (and besides, some of these will also show up on year-end lists, so I’m sure it’s not the last I’ll talk about them).
So, enjoy! And let me know if there’s anything from this year I should add to my (ever-growing) catchup list!
I’m going to tackle this in chronological order from when I saw them, reaching back to well before Halloween with We Live in Time. A24 has several potential award contenders this year, and I feel like they’re giving short shrift to this effective weepie from John Crowley, which didn’t even screen for Detroit critics. Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are both fantastic as a couple navigating the ups and downs of love, parenting and illness. You’ve seen this movie before, but its jumbled narrative and the chemistry between the two leads keeps it from being a slog. Pugh, in particular, is fantastic.
Just before Halloween, I also caught up with Osgood Perkins’ surprise box office hit Longlegs. I’d actually gone to see this in the theater over the summer, but about 10 minutes in, there was an emergency, the theater was evacuated and we were sent home. Maybe I would have enjoyed this better in a theater, where I could have soaked in Perkins’ tone of oppressive dread. But this one left me fairly cold. Maika Monroe is really good as a psychic FBI agent pursuing a serial killer, and Perkins has a flair for atmosphere. But the instant Nicolas Cage took over in full crazy mode as the killer and the film revealed its supernatural secrets, the whole thing became a bit silly. A movie that seeks to resurrect Satanic Panic and filter it through Silence of the Lambs, but it just never gelled for me.
I’m going to keep this one pretty quick, because the rest of you won’t have a chance to see The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie until February. I was sent a screener, as the film’s been making the festival rounds. For Looney Tunes fans, I can say that this Daffy Duck/Porky Pig sci-fi romp is a ton of fun. It’s silly, demented and just the right side of edgy (but still fairly kid friendly), and feels like classic Looney Tunes. Non-fans may find 90 minutes of slapstick shenanigans to be a bit much, but there’s also the gorgeous 2D animation to take in. Either way, the entire board of Warner Brothers should be dismissed for letting their iconic characters go to another distributor; this honors the property better than something like Space Jam, and hopefully it will find its audience when it hits theaters next year.
Adam Elliot’s stop-motion comedy-drama Memoir of a Snail is one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking and fragile movies I’ve seen all year. Grace (Succession’s Sarah Snook), mourning the death of a friend, recounts her life of hardship to a pet snail. The film is a gorgeous look at brokenness, endurance and hope amidst extreme hardship – if it were in live action, it would probably be too sad to bear. The film examines the way the world seeks to break Grace’s optimism and questions the prisons and shells we build for ourselves to keep out the pain. The stop motion is perfect for depicting these fragile, unique characters, and Elliot lets the film unfold with a bittersweet whimsy. Leave the kids at home for this one – it’s rated R – but if you give it a chance, it’s going to make you feel things.
I’m not a Catholic, but that’s not essential for enjoying Edward Berger’s Conclave, a thriller about the intrigue surrounding the Vatican’s search for a pope. Ralph Fiennes heads up a fantastic cast – most notably, the always-great Stanley Tucci – as the head of the titular conclave after the death of the pope. There’s wry humor and suspense as the votes are tallied and secrets are spilled, and the film has some interesting things to say about what it means to fight for the soul of an institution – do you cling to the past and tradition, or do you make compromises and stumble forward? Watching the film the day before the U.S. presidential election had added resonance, and even if I’m not sure I fully accept the film’s final twist, it’s a compulsively watchable drama powered by a smart script.
Keith Kupferer has been around the Chicago theater scene and had brief parts in movies, including The Dark Knight, but he’s never had a screen role as prominent as his lead in Ghostlight. He delivers what might be the best performance of the year as a grieving and emotionally closed-off father who finds an outlet in community theater. Acting along with his real-life daughter, Katherine, and his wife, Tara Mallen, Kupferer anchors a powerful story about the healing power of art and the struggles of a broken family. The script has to navigate a few contrivances and the characters’ real-life parallels to the narrative of Romeo & Juliet sometimes feel a bit forced, but it doesn’t matter. Directors Alex Thompson and Kelly O’ Sullivan understand what the heart of this story is, and even if the plot beats might feel a bit false, the emotion never does. It’s an emotional wallop that I didn’t expect.
Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a documentary that could have been overly maudlin or hagiographic. Instead, it’s straightforward about its subjects strengths and flaws, and while it wrests its tears, it comes by them honestly. The film tells the story of how the Julliard-trained actor became an icon after starring in Richard Donner’s Superman, and how an accident left him paralyzed and with a new battle to fight. The movie’s clips remind us that no one will ever fill Reeve’s iconic boots, but it’s also honest about how that role trapped him in an often unfulfilling career. And the depiction of Reeve’s paralysis shines the light on his late wife Dana and his family, and how the worst thing to happen to him also allowed him an opportunity to reconsider his priorities. I’m not sure you’ll learn much new, but you also won’t leave dry-eyed.
While its title might give the impression of a horror thriller, Evil Does Not Exist is actually one the most deliberate and quiet movies of the year. Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s drama is about a small Japanese village whose residents are wrestling with the arrival of a glamping resort that could threaten their way of life. The film movies slowly; it’s first five minutes are just a tracking shot of trees, and the film doesn’t really pick up the pace from there. But rather than a stultifying chore, the film is mesmerizing as we watch the villagers go through their paces, observe their interactions and appreciate the delicate balance they have with their environment. Few movies this year are as gorgeous, and there’s a gentle intimacy to the town dynamics that we wouldn’t have in a fast-paced thriller. It ends in a sequence that feels a bit out of left field, but the hints have been there all along. A wonderful movie for those with the patience for it.
I expected Megan Park’s My Old Ass to be a bit more of an uproarious, raunchy comedy, but I turned it on because I’d heard good things about it. I was surprised to find something that is, yes, a bit crass, but more thoughtful and sweet than I’d anticipated. Maisy Stella gives a fantastic breakout performance as Elliott, an 18-year-old who heads into the woods to do mushrooms with her friends on her birthday and ends up encountering her 39-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza), who is cagey on the details of her future but warns her to stay away from anyone named Chad; who do you think she meets the next day? The film keeps its magical realism a bit limited, instead turning into a gently funny coming-of-age story about appreciating the moments we have before they slip away. Plaza’s smartass humor never undercuts the sentiment, and even if you can see the film’s final reveal a mile away, the emotions are genuine enough that they still land. I’m really curious to see what Stella does next.