Traditional Top 10 Film List

 

Kirkham A Movie A Day 10 Favorite Films of 2024

The annual review of the previous year is fun to do, but it does sometimes present challenges. If I had kept data in the right software, it would have been easier to collate the information in a quick amount of time. It is not in my nature to do that, so I have to dig around and find information and create the material organically. Since I was traveling at the end of the year, this was not done until I returned home, thus the late nature of this post. It is still the first week of the new year so it is not too bad.

Ten Favorite Films of the Year

I saw fewer new films this year than I usually do. Frankly, there were many times when I went to the theater without being excited by the prospect of the film. I slept through most of "Moana 2", and I don't feel a need to go back and see it because it simply did not feel essential to me. "Megalopolis" felt like a huge misfire, but as it went on, it grew on me and I appreciate it more, though I still think it is not a good movie, just an interesting one. Several of the prestige pictures at the end of the year were not available to me yet, so they don't get included on the list because I have not seen them in a theater. I saw at least three features that were streaming movies, which got token theatrical presentations so they ended up on the blog, and one of them ended up on this list. 

These are not necessarily the best films I saw this last year, they are the ones I liked the best. A crummy comedy that worked and made me laugh may very well deserve a spot on my list because it achieved it's objective more than the well crafted drama that is impressive technically, but left me cold.  

#10  The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

This film was a complete surprise. I'd heard nothing about it until it was already in theaters for a week. Judy Greer holds the movie together as an average Mom, who takes on the responsibility of  her small town's Christmas Pageant. The difficult task is made harder by the inclusion of an unruly family of children who as known troublemakers, predispose everyone to expecting a disaster. The film is really about the kids, but it is Greer's patient Mom character that grounds the shenanigans and makes this film a real Christmas movie, with actual Christmas elements to it. 

It has a nostalgic feel to it, similar to the beloved "A Christmas Story", and there are several moments of redemption that will allow favorable comparisons to Dicken's "A Christmas Carol". It may have too many juvenile gags in it to be seen as a serious film, but along with last years "The Holdovers", it will be a regular part of my future Christmas Film watches.

#9  Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga 

I will admit that of the Mad Max films, this would be at the bottom. I will also say that the Mad Max films themselves exceed ninety percent of all action films, so being the fifth best film in the franchise is not fatal the the movies worth. 

George Miller keeps enlarging the canvas on which he creates his films. The detail in the backstory of he character of Furiosa from "Fury Road" back in 2015, is amazingly detailed and interesting. There are action sequences in this film that rival any of the moments from the other film, but the use of practical effects is sometimes swamped in digital fireballs, sandstorms and fortress locations. 

Nevertheless, Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth know the goal is to make their larger than life characters interesting and worth following for the run time of the film. They do that. Revenge may taste best when it is served cold, but Furiosa has a recipe for hot revenge which is excellent.

#8   Nosferatu (2024)

After hating "The Lighthouse", I never expected a Robert Eggers film to be featured on my year end list of favorites, but "Nosferatu" has a couple of things going for it that help me make peace with Eggers style. First of all, this is a remake of a classic silent film, so the story structure is in place and fidelity to the source material restrains Eggars from his left field swing for the fences plot developments. He sticks to the story.

Second, he using his visual strengths with material that deserves the attention that it gets. The gothic nature of the unauthorized Dracula ripoff from the silent era, craves the camerawork and lighting techiques that are hallmarks of Eggers work.

When you add the quality performances and production design, you get a winner instead of an irritation. 

#7   The Wild Robot

This film comes from the director who brought us the "How to Train Your Dragon" film franchise, so it was encouraging from the beginning. The juxtaposition of nature with technology is a winner, and the echo of "Wall-e" doesn't hurt either.  This is a mechanical character with a heart, and watching that heart learn how to love is as emotionally satisfying as anything you are likely to see on the screen these days. 

Rendering of the natural world using digital technology seems counter-intuitive, until you see the results on the screen and marvel at how beautiful nature is as seen by a computer. When your main character is doing that very thing on screen, you can really identify with the story. 

Let's not forget that this is also incredibly funny.

#6  Hit Man 

Director Richard Linklater and Actor Glenn Powell, have crafted a screenplay out of a real life scenario that was written about in the Texas Monthly 20 years ago. A nebbish college professor role plays as a hitman for a police department, in a series of sting operations that nabs potential clients in murder for hire crimes. 

They add an unconventional love story and turn the situation inside out in order to get a story structure for what would otherwise be a series of incidents. Powell gets to work his acting range by playing two versions of himself and a half dozen versions of what potential contractors think a Hitman should be. This is a very funny, crime thriller which escaped Netflix long enough for a two week run. 

We lucked out seeing it in Austin at a screening with the two leads and the Director doing an interview after the film. 

#5   Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One

My biggest disappointment of the year was that this terrific western from Kevin Costner, did not get a release for the second part which has already been completed. The failure of the movie to catch fire at the box office resulted in the cancelation of the planned release of part two later in the summer. Regardless, the film deserves some accolades because it makes the western sojourn an historical journey worth investing in.

Costner gets to do some shootouts, Indian raids are depicted as the horror that they must have been, while at the same time showing huge sympathy for the indigenous people who are facing an invasion of immigrants with grandiose visions.

There is a vast cast who get some terrific moments, some of which are set ups for what is coming. I really hope we will get to see those payoffs down the road. 

#4   The Fall Guy

I love this movie without any apologies. It is a fantastic tribute to the stunt community and a solid argument for why there should be a Stunt category at the Academy Awards. The film is filled with the gags tha the stunt team creates and the integration of the real process into the fictional story is very clever, making what would be too in your face, something that you can be entertained by.

The stars, Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling have some of the best romantic chemistry on screen that I have seen in a long time. They are also both so funny that you will be laughing at some lines just because of who is speaking them, not because they are jokes.

It so happens that the film contains some of the best needle drops of the year, and a particularly amusing use of a Kiss song, so you probably knew I was going to love it before I told you so. 

#3   Juror #2

Warner Brothers dropped this film into only 40 screens the first week of release. This is a picture from Clint Eastwood, who has been Warners most reliable film partner for forty plus years. The streaming business and the theatrical business are connected, but in a parasitic way rather than a symbiotic manner. The idea that this should first have been an HBO Max release is just disturbing to film lovers like me.

Clint takes a story, with a tenuous premise and turns it into a compelling moral Rorschach test for the audience. We have great sympathy for the conflicted character played by Nicolas Hoult, the second time on my list this year. The judicial process is supposed to render justice, but the system is not always set up to do so, and it can be subverted by any number of people who participate in the process. 

If this is Eastwood's last film, he goes out on a high note which is misplayed by his studio collaborators. 

#2  Dune Part 2

As a big fan of the original book, and the 1984 film from David Lynch, I had looked forward to Denis Villeneuve completing the story with the second part of his adaptation. In 2021, the first part of his film was in the same location on my list as this part is for this last year. Consistent in quality, but maybe deeper in meaning, Dune Part 2 fulfills the promise of the first film by developing characters like Stilgar and Barron Harkonnen and then adding Austin Butler as Feyd-Rautha, the rival genetic project from the Bene Gesserit. 

The movie has the best scene of the year in Paul's initial conquest of the sandworm. It is a visual stunner and the sound design of the sequence will blow you away. The advantage of Villeneuve's approach is that sufficient time has been provided to make the ominous elements of Paul's story clearer to the audience, Muad'dib is both hero and villain, a circumstance that makes this Science Fiction more complex than most films. 

#1  Late Night with the Devil

From the first time I saw it, I knew this was a film that would be near the top of my list at the end of the year. This is a found footage style film, supposedly of a lost episode of a late night talk show from the 70s.  The period recreation is excellent and the story mixes characters based on real 70s personalities with the fictional cast of the show. 

David Dastmalchian stars as the host of a talk show that competes with the Olympus of  "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson". His second tier status seems to be driving his willingness to press on with an unconventional set of incidents on a Halloween Special. The behind the scenes moments are not consistent with the format of the film, but you won't care. 

Like most horror films f the seventies, it is a slow burn in the first act and then things start to sizzle in act two. Unlike most horror films however, "Late Night with the Devil" manages to stick the landing in the third act with some truly scary moments. 

 

A Complete Unkown (2024)

 

Like the previous film, I have yet to have a chance to provide complete thoughts on this film. I liked it quite well, and I will share those thoughts later this week. I am simply trying to keep my 2024 time line complete with this post. 

Nosferatu (2024)

 

I have been traveling, so I have not had a chance to write a complete summary of my opinion on this film. I do want it on my 2024 time line so here is an abbreviated comment. Come back later this week for more details.

I was surprised at how much I liked this film. It is the subject of the LAMBcast this week, and when that episode is done, I will post it here for you.  

Update

Now having a little more time to write, I thought some more complete thoughts on "Nosferatu" would be useful. I have made no secret in the past for my indifference to some Robert Eggers films and my loathing for one in particular (The Lighthouse). It was with some trepidation that I included the new version of "Nosferatu" on my list of films to see on Christmas. Having already watched the dreadful "Babygirl", a second disappointment would surely have been a downer on my holiday spirit. As it was, this did the trick of brightening my day in spite of the gloomy subject matter. 

This is a vampire film with a mostly unhappy ending, that succeeds in enveloping us in a time and place that is in our heads from so many older films. The original version of this movie was a silent film from the 1920s which was nearly lost to us because it was made by violating the copywrites of the original source material, the novel "Dracula". A court had ordered that the film be destroyed but a few copies remained hidden and this gem of filmmaking from the early days survived. When it was remade in 1979, it was done in color and it has a very solid reputation.  Director Eggers has had a version of this film in his head for a long time, and now that he has brought it to the screen, there are a couple of obvious insights that I have had. First of all, because he follows the story so closely, he avoids the preposterous plot turns that marred his other films in my opinion. A template for the story has grounded his narrative.

Second, Eggers is both a visual artist but also a linguistic one as well. His dialogue feels of the time, with colloquial expressions and period authentic pronunciation, despite English being spoken in the German setting. The traditional status of men and women is reflected in the formality of some interchanges and the politeness of the social class is emphasized by some of the word choices. Even Orlock, the evil vampire has an elegant way of expressing himself with his brutal voice. The design of the dialogue does as much to transport us into the world as the physical production design does.  

The towns, castles and streets of the film are solid reproductions of the era or they are well chosen locations to reflect pre-Victorian Europe. When the streets fill with rats and bodies, you would certainly dread being in those times in that place. The film is in color, but so many scenes are shot in low light with a blue filter that much of the story seems to take place in black and white. In addition, there are sequences that are in fact drained of any color. I found that the camera acrobatics that bothered me in some of his other films, worked effectively in this old fashioned sort of story.

All of the actors are doing their jobs well. Bill Skarsgård has to act behind a face full of appliances, but his vocal expressions are top notch creepy. Lily-Rose Depp is convincing as a bride of the 1820s, dutiful and devoted to her husband, but with a mysterious inclination toward dark thoughts and sexuality.  When her lustful possession stirs her husband, the influence that Orlock has on her personality becomes clear. He is a monster, turning the husbands love into sexual rejection on a massive scale. The devotion that Nicolas Hoult's character continues after those moments reveals the way that masculine love ideals of the time are far superior to the self centered transactions of today.

Willem DaFoe is getting all the nutjob roles that Nic Cage used to get. Prof. Albin Eberhart von Franz is as weird a character as the one he played earlier this year in the Beetlejuice sequel. DaFoe clearly relishes these parts and he is having a great time, overdoing the histrionics of his character. There are some very grim moments in the film, including child deaths and animal mutilations, so the gruesome aura of the story cannot be overemphasized. Kids should not be seeing this movie. 

I will be including this film in my favorite films of the year post coming soon. You should take advantage of any opportunity to see this in a theater. Home video will require a lot of fine tuning of your screen to be able to see some of the things on the screen.  

Babygirl (2024)

 

This film irritated me as much as any movie I saw in 2024. It is basically "50 Shades of Grey" inverted so that the role relationship is gender altered, and then there is a family dynamic layered on top like gravy, trying to cover for a poor dish with some extra sauce. Unfortunately, the patina of dramatic heft is wasted because the demeaning sexual relationship depicted in the film is the only thing that is interesting, and you will feel dirty for being interested in it. 

Nicole Kidman is convincing as a middle aged woman seeking sexual satisfaction outside of her marriage, but it is an incomplete story. She apparently cannot achieve orgasm with her husband, and this is after they have been married for nearly twenty years. The sex play she suggests to him at one point, hints at her needs, but she is not capable of expressing her frustration about their sex life and resorts to masturbating to on-line porn immediately after a clinch with him. What she needs is a real man to tell her how to feel and what to do during sex. Does that sound like feminist empowerment to you? It felt demeaning to me and even if she is a submissive, the manner in which she tries to exert some agency is very destructive.

Her intern at work, for whom she is supposed to be a mentor, seems to have the gift of reading her needs. It is not exactly clear why, but Harris Dickinson as her lover is appropriately creepy. The near Rasputin like influence that he exercises over her, feels unearned, but she seems to accept it as a condition of having her needs fulfilled. For the first part of the movie, those are mostly petty humiliations that seem to arouse her and that he choses capriciously. In the second half of the film, they become more explicit and although the nudity is slightly muted, the sexuality is not.  The prurient interest that writer/director Halina Reijn is attempting works, but so would ten minutes on a porn site. 

There is no story of redemption, or emotional breakthrough here. The power dynamic is offensive on both lead characters, and the distasteful reduction of Kidman's character will be embarrassing for everyone.  I saw this on Christmas Day, and the story takes place originally at Christmas Time, but this may have been nearly as bad a choice for a film to see on the holiday as "Babylon" was two years ago. I'm not sure why Hollywood is interested in crapping all over the audiences for the holiday, but I wish I had found a lump of coal in my stocking instead of this turd.

The Nightmare Before Christmas In Concert Live to Film (2024)

 

The above promo is for a different venue with a different orchestra, but the idea is the same. The Austin Symphony Orchestra just did not post their own version of the promo.

We saw the original "Nightmare Before Christmas" at a special screening at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood in 1993.  Many of the technicians and artists who worked on the project were in attendance that night. It was a nice way to get introduced to the movie. For some reason, my wife could never make it through the film without falling asleep, but she loved it well enough to order a series of Christmas ornaments and displays that have their own place in our collection.

The songs are tuneful, but like many contemporary musicals, they are more woven into the narrative than a stand alone song, which makes them less likely to be something to sing along with. There is clearly a great deal of attention paid to them in the orchestra's presentation, and there is nearly continuous music during the film.

As always, live music is worth the extra effort and our local Symphony are no slouches when it comes to performance. I did have trouble trying to spot a couple of the instrumentalists who did an especially noteworthy job in particular sections of the film. I should have brought some binoculars. 

 The program included a list of donors to the symphony, and even my meager contribution was noted, that was a complete surprise to me. 

Moana 2 (2024)

 

I'm going to be honest with you. I slept thru 80 % of this movie. After the opening, of which I have no memory, I dozed off repeatedly. I have a vague recollection of a scene where a priestess is lecturing Moana, and there is a song. That's about it. It looked pretty but was not compelling enough for me to care about. I may watch it on streaming, but I don't think I missed a particularly great film. 

Kraven the Hunter

 

This movie is not good. There is something cringy about most of the Sony films that have tried to spin off Spider-Man characters into their own films. They just feel inauthentic entirely. The "Venom" films work in part because the film makers lean into the stupidity of the premise and they get that the films are commercial junk. "Kraven" is commercial junk that takes itself seriously an is laughable as a result. The opening sequences are really good, but then we get an origin story that is so preposterous, I was laughing at it as it was being played out. 

Aaron Taylor-Johnson looks great in the part, it's just that the part is ridiculous. The child of a Russian mob figure acquires supernatural powers from a dead animal at a safari hunt with the assistance of a voodoo elixir that comes to him through a civilized girl who is visiting her grandmother's primitive culture. If chiseled abs were enough to make a movie work, then Taylor -Johnson would have this sewn up. You also need dialogue and story for a movie to work, this film has some very stupid dialogue and some equally stupid story telling.

By the time we get to the CGI climax, I just did not care anymore. The only person who gets out of this unscathed is Russell Crowe, who plays the mob boss father with a heavy accent and a sociopath personality. It's as if he doesn't give a crap and just leans into the dumb mess of a film he is in. The film is set up for a sequel, but with the box office returns, I don't expect anyone is jumping abord for another film in this series. 

I have fallen behind on films that I have seen in the theater here in December, so I am going to keep this short. There was not much to talk about anyway. I will probably turn my derision toward another film that came out more recently. Aaron, wipe your feet thoroughly before you try on James Bond's shoes. I think you might be great for that series, but you stepped in some pooh here.