Clear, 32°
Wind: mph,
From horror and sci-fi flicks to a portrayal of working-class America, all genres were represented in the 2024 film landscape. Film critics Audrey Ruppert and James Buxton picked the best and worst films of the year.
“The Substance” proves that horror should not be overlooked by the Oscars as it so often has been historically. The film is an incredibly powerful exploration of multiple topics including the male gaze, objectification, fame, self-perception vs. external perception, aging, and the destructive power of self-hatred. Viscerally disgusting, garish and bold, the film is in your face, and it’s meant to be. Watching it felt like being flung face-first into a wall and being forced to confront topics that many of us try to avoid day-to-day. Incredible performances from Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.
— Audrey Ruppert
Action-packed, “Dune: Part Two” doesn’t suffer from the same pacing issues as the first movie. Director Denis Villeneuve manages to adapt the incredibly weighty source material into something coherent that retains the spirit of the original text and is visually breathtaking; he brings his French arthouse background to the big screen. Some key changes are made, but they are sensible changes that are thematically consistent.
Timothée Chalamet rose above the skepticism and rose to the challenge of playing Paul with much more depth than the first installment, and his chemistry with the other characters – particularly Zendaya’s character – is palpable. I only can wonder how they will manage to close such an impressive undertaking in only one final film.
— Audrey Ruppert
Imagine if the scenario in “Saw” was run by a much more charming Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, and you have “Heretic.” Genuinely thrilling and thought-provoking, “Heretic” asks us to explore religion and belief with skepticism, but with respect. As a former evangelical who left the church and became a nonbeliever, I was particularly touched by how respectful and nuanced the film’s portrayal was of Latter-day Saints, who are often the butt of the joke in media portrayals. Fundamentalists are people after all, with complex reasons for their belief.
Hugh Grant gets to just be himself, but evil, and honestly it works – you might find yourself agreeing with many of his points and being concerned that you’re agreeing with such a nefarious person. The ending is ambiguous and left to interpretation. Much like “Silence,” another film exploring religious belief, this allows the film to be appreciated from a multitude of perspectives. Some Mormons have even enthusiastically embraced the film, despite a rather tone-deaf rebuke from the official church leadership.
— Audrey Ruppert
This is a movie about passion, desire, betrayal and a little bit of tennis in between. Luca Guadagnino crafts a perfect sex drama that substitutes intimacy for sport, restricting every heated dispute or mental breakdown to the confines of the court. Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor are all spectacular, each layering their performance with the kind of depth and complexity that lesser films would struggle to impart onto a single lead.
Discovering each character’s true goals is half the fun, but the amount of weaving and twisting makes a second watch just as fun as the first. “Challengers” is not a film about tennis; it’s a film about power, and although the movie seems to be disappearing under the radar this awards season, it’s undeniably one of the best movies of the year.
— James Buxton
Sean Baker, the mind behind “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket,” brings yet another stunning look at the working-class underbelly of America. This time focusing in on the world of erotic dancers and sex workers in the less romantic end of New York, “Anora” quickly delves into the deep end of dangerous clients and the animosity faced by so many women in the industry.
In classic Baker fashion, it’s a movie that prioritizes authenticity over star power, with lead actor Mikey Madison being perhaps the only recognizable name on the poster. A brilliant, funny exploration of an underrepresented community, “Anora” is also not afraid to show the pain and horror that comes with that lifestyle.
— James Buxton
Sony’s off-brand Marvel cinematic universe comes to a whimpering close with “Kraven the Hunter,” a movie that doesn’t even have the good grace to be entertainingly bad. “Kraven” is a bland, soulless husk of a film that only exists to extend Sony’s hold on the rights to “Spider-Man,” an endeavor that seems to have also failed given their decision to bring these movies to a quiet, uneventful close.
Guaranteed to upset die-hard and casual fans alike with its complete disregard of the source material and weak action set pieces, “Kraven the Hunter” is the easiest movie to skip since the studio’s own “Madame Web.” Aaron Taylor-Johnson is saved only by the fact he also appears in “Nosferatu” this year, and the quicker people forget about his performance here, the better.
— James Buxton
Francis Ford Coppola has made some of the greatest American films of all time. “Megalopolis” is not one of them. The story behind its inception is undeniably compelling – a cinema legend selling his vineyard and coming out of retirement for one last picture – but none of that negates the fact that “Megalopolis” is an appalling mess of a movie that rarely makes sense and never feels like anything other than a waste of two hours. It’s packed to the rafters with generational actors, yet none of them achieve anything beyond endangering their careers. Narratively nonsensical and aesthetically bizarre, it’ll be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
— James Buxton
As D’Angelo Wallace aptly put it, “the book is a bust, the film was a flop, it’s like a cinematic universe of sadness.” “Argylle” was the product of a very confusing, overly contrived marketing campaign. The film was announced before the book even came out, with director Matthew Vaughn hyping the story as rivalling the James Bond series in terms of ingenuity for the spy thriller genre and boasting a stacked cast (talk about setting an unrealistically high bar for yourself).
After several delays, the book was finally released; despite an interesting premise - the author being an in-universe character (think, Lemony Snicket) who writes a successful spy novel but has forgotten she was once a spy – the book and film both were incredibly generic. Peppered with stilted dialogue, “Argylle” is less a film and more a series of chaotic action scenes using terrible CGI that is vaguely strung together with an after-thought of a “plot,” and ends with the most predictable twist imaginable. Some fans thought Taylor Swift wrote the novel, because how else could a first-time author get this much buy in? The marketing team gladly took advantage of this baseless speculation. Later, it was discovered that the book was written on contract by a middling thriller writer. The entire debacle was all marketing, zero substance.
— Audrey Ruppert
Sam Taylor-Johnson was a “choice” to direct this biopic. There’s the elephant in the room nobody in Hollywood wants to address – the fact that at 42, she dated and later married her 18-year-old employee (the star of the other stinker on this list, “Kraven”) and has never spent more than a few days away from him in their entire relationship, yet she has completely avoided the #MeToo movement and kept directing films. This well-balanced person, who also directed such masterpieces as “50 Shades of Gray,” was tasked with telling the incredibly sensitive story of Amy Winehouse, who has already faced so much exploitation, it’s inexcusable - it is, ultimately, what drove her to her death.
Everyone from her father to her manager, to her partners, to the media, failed this woman and Taylor-Johnson continues that legacy. This biopic focuses primarily on Amy’s doomed relationship, as if that was the only thing that ever happened to her, and is a very superficial exploration of a complex person who deserved so much more care and appreciation.
— Audrey Ruppert
A film that purposefully spits in the face of its primary fanbase, “Joker: Folie à Deux” was well intentioned – a lot of the fanbase has edgelord, misogynistic and problematic tendencies. Other creators have gotten sick of their fanbase misinterpreting their work (think “The Boys,” “Fight Club” and “The Matrix”) and have also made attempts to disavow the people reading their work uncritically. You’re not supposed to admire Tyler Durden or the Joker! But these disavowals aren’t working, because this part of the fanbase cannot grasp subtlety.
It doesn’t matter that two trans women wrote “The Matrix.” The phrase “red pill” is now forever associated with Alex Jones and Andrew Tate. Bad counterattacks are still bad at the end of the day, and being unsubtle in your disavowal is useless if the film is unwatchable. “Joker” is boring, contrived, a bad musical for some reason, and is a real slog to watch. In the words of commentator F.D Signifier, progressives should be making good media people want to watch, like “Star Trek,” to promote their ideals, rather than trying to beat misguided fanboys over the head with bad movies that make fun of them. Nobody, progressive or otherwise, wants to watch that.
— Audrey Ruppert
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here