Honestly, 2024 wasn’t the most fun year at the movies. The films nominated for best picture were all pretty good, but the dominant feeling they inspired was one of subdued admiration rather than ebullient wonder. Lots of serious content, but not nearly enough levity or irreverence for my taste. With a couple exceptions, they’re also the kind of films that tend to tamp down enthusiasm for the Oscars broadcast itself.
Indeed, the two leading contenders were seen by very few moviegoers. But that’s not going to hold us back here at Popwell Nation. Though vastly different, Anora and The Brutalist are both excellent, uncompromising films, devoid of the overt pandering that tends to mar most mainstream movies. And since the Oscars only exist to generate free publicity, why not pump up some worthy art films that can use the boost?
I’ll be handicapping the race as I do each year, but first let’s get to my reviews of all 10 nominees. We’ll do it alphabetically this time:
AnoraWriter/director Sean Baker offers a whirlwind modern romance that obeys its own organic logic, with two lead characters who occupy the vast middle ground between hero and villain. Mikey Madison plays the title character, a hooker at a high-end Jersey strip club who catches the eye of Vanya, the dissolute son of an obscenely wealthy Russian oligarch. They start seeing a lot of each other, and Vanya eventually pops the question during a marathon party spree in Vegas that would make P. Diddy tap out. It’s clearly a Green Card marriage, but Anora allows herself to buy into the dream, failing to ask some crucial questions along the way and setting the main action in motion when Vanya’s parents find out and send their henchmen to quash this unacceptable stain on the family honor. The hapless henchmen are played by Russian Yuriy Borisov and Armenians Vache Tovmasyan and Karren Karagulian, and their presence ratchets up the comedy while letting viewers know that the stakes might not be all that serious. The acting in Anora is uniformly superb, probably the film’s greatest strength. This is no Pretty Woman bullshit: Madison’s Anora is the real deal, a fully believable sex worker who knows her way around a man’s billfold and the front of his pants as well. As Vanya, Mark Eidelstein is even better. The boorish shenanigans of this loopy A.D.D. cocktail of vaping, sex and video games are so over-the-top you wish he had 10 faces so you could punch them all. The second half of Baker’s film slides effortlessly into the tradition of madcap, long-days-journey-into night comic adventures like After Hours, American Graffiti and the great “Pine Barrens” episode of The Sopranos. With less discipline it could have been a hectic mess, but the pacing and editing here keep the whole enterprise frosty and focused, unlike its main characters. You’d never want to hang out with these people, but the movie itself feels delightfully lived in.
The BrutalistWhen Hungarian refugee Laslo Toth catches his first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty in the opening of The Brutalist he’s overcome with joy, while viewers see the famous icon as they’ve never seen it before: upside-down. It’s a clear sign that the film we’re about to watch is no love letter to America, but a “brutal,” unsentimental portrait of the immigrant experience and how unwelcoming life could feel here, even for Europeans fleeing the Nazis. With his life in tatters and his wife still stuck in Hungary, Toth is toiling in abject poverty when he’s discovered by the capricious shipping tycoon Harrison Van Buren (played with delicious humor and well-disguised menace by Guy Pearce). Shocked and intrigued to find that this ditch-digging ragamuffin was once a major figure in Europe’s nascent brutalist movement, Van Buren offers Toth a commission to build a community center in a small city outside Philadelphia. It’s a chance to reclaim his career, but the work comes with inevitable strings. Bureaucrats, bean counters and assorted community do-gooders will try to thwart Toth’s plans, while the Van Buren clan will miss no opportunity to make sure he knows his place in their social hierarchy. Director Brady Corbet’s 3-hour-35-minute epic can’t really be called sprawling: It’s actually tightly focused on Toth’s years-long effort to complete the project amid the problematic dynamics between him and his benefactor. The film bears obvious similarities to Ayn Rand’s 1943 novel The Fountainhead, but it’s deeper than Rand’s famously sophomoric work, and Toth is a far more interesting protagonist than the saintly Howard Roark. Adrien Brody won an Oscar for playing a Holocaust survivor 20 years ago in The Pianist, and history could very well repeat itself this year. It’s a performance of great depth, embodying the trauma and turmoil of Toth’s displacement and betrayal while honoring the fierce pride that both fuels and threatens his survival. This is a rich, magnificent film whose visual beauty and literary pacing wash over the viewer like a warm bath, its formidable run time seemingly passing in a blink. Like one of Toth’s imposing creations, it’s built to last, and to be marveled at by future generations.
A Complete UnknownHollywood’s indefatigable quest to dramatize the life of every pop singer who made a record in the 1960s or ’70s has finally landed on Bob Dylan, the most famously inscrutable rock star of all. A Complete Unknown is better than most of these films, though it eventually surrenders to the same flaws that sink the others. But the first 90 minutes or so of director James Mangold’s 140-minute film are a pretty good ride. The movie covers just four years of Dylan’s 64-year career, focusing on the twin dramas of his early love affairs with Suze Rotelo and Joan Baez and his even more tumultuous breakup with the folk establishment. The best parts of the film occur as Dylan arrives in Greenwich Village on a cold winter day in 1961 and begins to forge his legend with a dizzying series of songs that still give me goose bumps all these decades later. We see him write and perform “Blowing in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right,” “The Times They are a Changing” and others, as those around him marvel that anyone could write such words, let alone a 20-something vagabond with limited social skills. The romantic stuff is less effective. Elle Fanning is excellent as Rotolo (renamed Sylvie here at Dylan’s request), whose social activism and uncommon maturity must have scared the restless Dylan. However, Monica Barbaro is badly miscast as Baez, the established folk star who took Dylan under her wing before their affair fizzled out. Barbaro is all hips and hubba hubba sex appeal. The real Baez, though beautiful, was no sexpot — she was a strident, self-serious beanpole, and fancied herself more saint than sinner.
Mangold, who otherwise takes great pains to paint an accurate portrait of the folk scene of 1961-65, really blows it in the film’s climax. Dylan’s decision to bust out Mike Bloomfield and his sizzling electric guitar at the staid 1965 Newport Folk Festival is one of the seminal events in rock history, maybe even the culture at large. So why make it into a cartoon? Mangold’s got people hurling bottles at the stage, yelling epithets and all but expiring of apoplectic shock when a simple shot of shocked, confused faces and a few scattered boos would have done nicely. It suffers from comparison with Todd Haynes’ version of the same concert in his more experimental 2007 Dylan pic, I’m Not There. That film over-dramatized the conflict too, but balanced that chaos beautifully with a memorable shot of one concertgoer departing the grounds with the tossed-off remark, “I kind of liked having my ears blown off.” On the bright side, Timothee Chalamet shines as Dylan — and that’s not a phrase I ever thought I’d be typing. He nails the speech patterns and mannerisms down to the last millimeter of each overgrown fingernail, his singing is in the neighborhood, and he manages to capture the holier-than-thou jerkiness that fueled Dylan in these years. It’s a masterful performance that gets at the root of a man who sold his soul to grace the world with his songs — a bargain at any price.
ConclaveA chamber piece about the vicious palace intrigue accompanying the selection of a pope, Conclave could have been titled Knives Out: Vatican Edition. The film opens with the death of a fictional pontiff, prompting the traditional cattle call known as the papal conclave, where cardinals come from all over the world to sequester themselves until a new leader is elected. Only four or five are truly viable contenders, though, allowing the film to quickly narrow its focus to each man’s strengths and weaknesses and the inevitable sharp elbows and 11th-hour surprises that will decide the winner. Director Edward Berger, who helmed 2022’s brutally immersive All Quiet on the Western Front, leans into the challenge of a radically different genre here, sequestering viewers and clerics alike behind the massive church walls, embracing the tension of fraught silences and furtive conversations that propel the plot. The critical task of administering the conclave falls to Father Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), whose attempts to ensure fairness while nudging the outcome toward his preferred outcome are tested in every scene. Fiennes masterfully shepherds the audience through the film’s slow-burn story beats, mirroring the way Lawrence guides the conclave though the thickets of its members’ poison ambition. This is a solid, effective film and the crowning achievement of a stellar career for Fiennes — though I’m not sure the Catholic Church deserves a character so wholly decent and admirable.
Dune: Part TwoDirector Denis Villeneuve returns with the second installment of his epic three-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel, after 2021’s segment also scored a best picture nod. Part Two offers more of Villeneuve’s tightly focused, immersive storytelling, which benefits from the seriousness of its approach to the source material, in stark contrast to the late David Lynch’s widely panned and frankly ridiculous 1984 version. Once again Timothee Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, the rebel leader who must save humanity (or whatever these people are) from an evil empire that wants to steal their spice, while avoiding giant sand worms and the disapproving gaze of a jealous Zendaya, not necessarily in that order. (Full disclosure: I might be a bit fuzzy on some of the details. I try my best with this stuff, but sci-fi nerditry has never been Old Dash’s stock and trade.) Part Two deals with Atreides’ integration into the life of the sand people, who he must lead into battle. They regard him with a mix of awe and skepticism, unsure of whether he’s a god or an imposter. Fans of the book should enjoy this film: For the rest of us, much of the fun lies in watching a succession of big-name actors take their turns chewing scenery, from the very good (Javier Bardiem,) to the pretty good (Josh Brolin), to the unjustly famous (Austin Butler, Christopher Walken, the aforementioned Zendaya). Chalamet was outstanding as Dylan, but to me he’s just sort of there in the Dune films. Not bad, but not exactly burning up the screen. At least he fares better than his nominal love interest, who has trouble exceeding her apparent factory setting of one facial expression. Villeneuve and his crew invested millions in spectacular sets and visual effects, but Zendaya’s one-note scowl threatens to be the dominant image one remembers from this 166-minute endurance contest. She and Chalamet will be back for the finale, slated for release in 2026. Maybe they’ll cook up some chemistry by then.
Emilia PerezJacques Audiard adapted his own opera libretto — a loose adaptation itself of Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Ecoute — into a different kind of movie musical. It’s not really the songs you remember here, it’s the story, a bold and timely drama about a South American drug lord who fakes his death and flees the cartel to undergo a sex change operation. Karla Sofia Gascon plays the title character, and her gender journey is presented with uncommon grace in what feels like real progress in transgender storytelling. Emilia doesn’t change her sex to evade the cartel as part of some cheap plot device, but to escape the body and gender she no longer wants. Her scheme is carried out by Rita Castro (Zoe Saldana), an attorney whose initial motivation is money and fear for her life. However, Rita and Emilia develop a close friendship and the women eventually work together in Emilia’s new project to bring closure to families who’ve had a loved one “disappear” in the drug wars. Of course, wherever you go, there you are, and Emilia’s efforts to find redemption for her violent life as a man are frustrated by the re-emergence of the ego and controlling impulses that fueled her rise in the brutal drug trade. Gascon is good as Emilia, but it’s Saldana who steals the film, in a career-best turn as a woman who sacrifices her promising future in an all-consuming, co-dependent relationship that frequently places her own health and safety in jeopardy. She’s aided by a surprisingly effective Selena Gomez, in a much meatier role than her increasingly one-note work on Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building. This is a vibrant, engrossing film whose ultimately tragic ending (it’s opera, remember) is offset by the way it breaks barriers with such liberating confidence.
I’m Still HereDirector Walter Salles’ adaptation of Marco Rubens Paiva’s memoir about his father’s abduction by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the early 1970s is one of those “important” films that’s supposed to make you feel outraged after you watch it, but I just felt 2 hours and 16 minutes older. The Paiva clan is exactly the kind of cultured, upper middle class family that’s often targeted by authoritarian regimes, and Salles takes great pains to get viewers invested in this family, spending a healthy chunk of running time showing Rubens, Eunice and their five children enjoying a full, happy life before the inevitable knock at the door, when Ruben is taken away by uniformed men with no explanation. Days become months and then years, turning Eunice’s dogged attempts to wring answers from an impassive bureaucracy into a lifelong quest. The story concludes with not one but two flash-forwards depicting the government’s long-delayed acknowledgment of Ruben’s fate, while also revealing that the adult Marco is confined to a wheelchair after a car accident. And if that’s not enough to depress you, why not throw in a little Alzheimer’s on the way out the door? I hate to sound so cynical about a film that’s largely well-made and filled with highly effective performances, but I’m hard-pressed to say I was particularly moved by I’m Still Here, and I certainly wasn’t entertained by it. The film is so focused on the family’s ordeal it leaves out the bigger picture of what’s going on in Brazil. We’re given precious little indication of Rubens’ actual involvement in resisting the regime, nor do we understand the social and political context behind the military’s paranoia or meet any of the bureaucrats obstructing Eunice’s goals. There’s no place to channel the anger. It’s like a history lesson with half the pages torn out. This is also the kind of movie that introduces the audience to an adorable dog only to kill the pooch to score cheap dramatic points. In fairness, I’m Still Here undoubtedly has great resonance in Brazil, where this era of horrors was swept under the rug for far too long, but as a piece of drama I think it falls short of similarly themed films like Z, Missing or Salvador.
Nickel BoysLikewise a difficult movie to sit through, Nickel Boys is nevertheless a vital and original piece of filmmaking. It’s not a true story, but it is based on a real-life boys reform school run by the state of Florida that was accused of carrying out decades of torture, rapes and murder before the state shut it down in 2011. The film tells the story of Elwood, a high school student in 1962 who shows great promise in the classroom until he innocently accepts a ride from a stranger in a stolen car and his life changes forever. Sent off to the Nickel Academy, he strikes up a friendship with Turner, another teen who shows more sensitivity and intelligence than most of the inmates. Director RaMell Ross has a graceful style that embraces quiet moments of verisimilitude, and some viewers might feel like they’re watching the best parts of a Terance Malick film. Ross also films the story in dueling points-of-view style, meaning we see everything though either Elwood’s or Turner’s eyes. This experiment is apparently meant to leaven the claustrophobia of a film that largely takes place in a correctional institution, but it doesn’t always succeed, and at times even adds to the viewer’s burden. That might actually be the point: Elwood and Turner don’t deserve their punishment, and neither do we. The gloom of the prison scenes are more effectively lifted by a few brief flash-forwards set in the modern day, which offer elliptical clues that only reveal themselves at the end, in a striking montage of minimalist storytelling and that ties together the plot in ways that will leave your head spinning. That final sequence is only matched in emotional intensity by a scene early in the film, when Elwood’s teacher offers him a college scholarship and a future beyond the imagination of most Black boys in the pre-1964 South. We know that future will never materialize, and if the unbearable heartbreak of that knowledge isn’t fully redeemed by the film’s ending, it’s at least replaced by a bittersweet catharsis that feels well-earned.
The SubstanceEvery party needs a crasher. As a horror fan I saw The Substance when it came out in September but never thought for a second it would be nominated for an Oscar. It’s a damn fun ride directed with a winning style, but too much of its pleasure comes from the low-hanging fruit of body horror and the accompanying “Oh no, they didn’t!” brand of genre cinema. Demi Moore stars as Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging TV star and host of a daytime exercise show being pushed out the door by a ruthless, bottom-line network exec (a leering Dennis Quaid). Not willing to go quietly into that good night, Sparkle acquires an underground “substance” that allows her to temporarily inhabit a much younger version of her body, with one caveat: If she overstays the time limit, her current body will have to make up the difference. Young Sparkle (played by Margaret Qually) soon takes over as host of the show, and naturally enjoys this version of her body so much she does indeed violate the time limit, leading to increasingly deformed consequences for her older self, until the whole thing escalates into a shocking crescendo that will make some viewers hurl their popcorn (this portion of the film was too much for Mrs. Rabbit, but I found it immensely satisfying in the way one expects a big finale at the end of a symphony piece or a fireworks show).
Writer/director Coralie Fargeat has an unapologetic way of ladling on the style: The film takes place in a nebulous alternate universe or near-future that looks like a fever-dream vision of the early 1980s as imagined by Michael Mann by way of Patrick Nagel and Roy Lichtenstein — all spare furnishings and bulging primary colors that feel like someone just threw a specialty cocktail in your face. Nearly every shot of Qually is a closeup of her face or her ass, driving home the point of how the media oversexualizes women while letting viewers have their cake and eat it too. Qually is going to have a huge career, but she may never have a role as perfect for her as this one, equal parts sexy, bubbly and obnoxious. She’s also nothing like Moore’s character, even though they’re supposed to be the same person — a logical flaw that keeps The Substance from transcending its genre limitations. I think this nomination was fueled by sentimental attachment to Moore and legitimate guilt over the way the industry treats women. Call it a bit of old-fashioned Hollywood virtue signaling, but at least The Substance has the actual virtue of being a pretty good movie. Not a best picture, though.
WickedBetween Wicked‘s mind-numbing marketing blitz (seriously, how is this not a Disney film?), its legacy as a record-breaking Broadway phenomenon, Ariana Grande’s megawatt star power and co-star Cynthia Erivo’s dogged insistence on turning every interview and social media post into a head-smacking display of Gen Z jackassery, it could be hard to find a movie underneath all that noise. But I’m happy to report that once the lights go down it’s easy enough to surrender to this film’s considerable charms. Wicked tells the origin story of the Wicked Witch from 1939’s classic The Wizard of Oz — a film that for anyone older than 50 was once as ubiquitous a cultural presence as Wicked has been since its 2003 Broadway debut. Of course, Oz doesn’t really exist in that 1939 film, it’s merely a dream experienced by Dorothy, which begs the question of how this prequel makes any sense at all, but we’ll put that aside — along with the idea of a 38-year-old Erivo playing a college student — since Wicked already comes with more than enough baggage. Erivo plays Elphaba, a young woman attending some sort of Hogwarts-like finishing school with Oz’s other youngsters, including Grande’s Glinda, who will become the Good Witch. The irony is that for much of the story Glinda is actually the wicked one, though it’s not always clear how much the film understands this. She enables and encourages Elphaba’s ostracism for her green skin and studious ways, and subsists on the oxygen of her mean and sycophantic schoolmates. When she does befriend Elphaba it’s more as a reclamation project, another chance to feed her already monstrous ego. Worse, Elphaba, to the film’s discredit, is all too eager to welcome her tutelage and lap up lessons on how to curry favor with the cool kids. A much stronger empowerment message would have shown her learning to love herself and telling that vapid clique to fuck off, but I guess that wouldn’t make a splash on Broadway.
To paraphrase the parlance of the day, Wicked is “a lot” — but at the end of the day it’s also a pretty good time at the movies. The sets, costumes and dancing do much of the heavy lifting in director Jon M. Chu’s film, transporting viewers to a world that’s part Harry Potter, part classic MGM, part Las Vegas and part 21st century music video. The songs are serviceable: There’s nothing as lasting as “We’re Off To See The Wizard” or “Over The Rainbow,” although “Defying Gravity” makes a memorably rousing finale. But Erivo is a revelation as a vocalist. She’s simply spectacular, and without her soaring, emotional voice the film would likely never leave the ground.
And the winner is…
If this is indeed a two-picture race, one can scarcely imagine a greater contrast between 20th and 21st century sensibilities: A brooding, novelistic drama about an obscure architect haunted by the Holocaust, and a kinetic banger about two shallow hedonists in the age of instant gratification. Anora won the Palm D’Or at Cannes, the LA Film Critics best film honor and the top honor at both the Producers Guild and Directors Guild awards, while The Brutalist was chosen best film by the New York film critics.
If Oscar voters are inclined to consider posterity (history suggests they’re unfamiliar with the concept), they would do well to ask whether Anora will be viewed as anything more than a mildly enjoyable diversion a few years from now, while The Brutalist will be firmly ensconced in the pantheon of great movies. Even Wicked will likely have taken its place as a beloved classic if it hasn’t already. Wicked‘s Oscar prospects are dulled by the fact that it’s the first part of two films: The Academy waited until Peter Jackson made his third and final Lord of the Rings film before awarding him the big prize in 2004, and I think a similar reticence will prevail here, since we’re really just in an extended intermission awaiting the rest of this story later this year. Emilia Perez was considered a late-closing contender with its trendy trans-positive theme and musical flare, but that was before Gascon’s unfortunate tweets were unearthed. I don’t think it would have earned enough broad support to cross the finish line anyway.
That leaves us with the hooker and the Holocaust survivor. To me it’s no contest: The Brutalist was clearly the best film of the year by a country mile, the only movie to lift this viewer above the doldrums of good intentions into the rarefied air of true art, with all its beautiful complications. It’s epic and profoundly personal, a masterful exercise in classical filmmaking style that feels fresh and seamless in every scene. In this day and age it also just seems like poor form to reward the less serious film. But I can’t ignore those Producers and Directors Guild awards: They were pretty telling, and the voters inexplicably seem to be heading in a different direction. I therefore reluctantly predict that Anora gets the happy ending that eluded her on screen.
Bravo, DR. Having not seen any of these flix, I’m fairly certain I now know more about them than the most puffy film buff.
But these takes, especially the lower alphabetic titles, seem uncharacteristically positive. Are you off the booze and weed now, DR, or just doing more?
Laughed and learned as I often do with Popwell!