THE LAST SHOWGIRL

Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: C+
Cinematography: C+
Editing: C+

I’m here to root or Pamela Anderson. It’s the reason I went to see The Last Showgirl, the first wide release film she’s been in that garnered her any real respect. And she deserves as much respect as anyone else. I just wish the movie were better.

Don’t get me wrong—I actually enjoyed it. Maybe more than it deserves. It’s not bad. It’s just . . . incompetent, maybe? This is the first of Gia Coppola’s films I have seen, and I find myself wondering if her previous films also featured narrative threads that ultimately went nowhere.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s what I genuinely like about The Last Showgirl: it has empathy for its protagonist, while not necessarily endorsing her choices. Shelly (Pamela Anderson) has been working as a Las Vegas showgirl in the same show, called Le Razzle Dazzle, for four decades at least. She talks about how she was featured on the promotional materials last shot in the early eighties, which the show is still using now. This job is her life, and she is devastated to learn that the show is closing for good. She has a daughter, Hannah (Billie Lourd), with whom she is not close, because she left her to grow up in the care of one of Hannah’s friends’ parents.

But here’s where the writing in The Last Showgirl (by Kate Gersten) gets messy. It’s never made clear how or why neither of Hannah’s parents actually raised her. We learn relatively early on that the producer of the show, Eddie (Dave Bautista), is actually Hannah’s father. There’s a scene in which Hannah confronts Shelly, having come to see the show for the first time in her life, and challenges her to say why working in a topless Vegas show was worth more to her than raising her daughter. It’s a good question. Shelly’s response is to say she’s done defending herself, but she hasn’t done very much of that.

And one of the things The Last Showgirl actually does well is characterize the vibe of Las Vegas, the false hopes amidst its glitz, the place where dreams get lost in the shuffle. But Shelly has a singular passion for her work, which she romanticizes as something of great value of the past, even as the young women hanging out with her backstage note how things have changed. Shelly talks of how, as young Showgirls, “We were ambassadors!” To what, though? An idea of what Las Vegas once was to her, I guess. And to be clear, I love Las Vegas, and its parallel tracks of polished glamor and tacky sleaze. Coppola does not give us a clear picture of exactly which track Le Razzle Dazzle is on, or has ever been on.

There is a scene near the end, when we get a glimpse of the show, actually on stage, for the first time—it’s their final show, and all we really see are the women gliding across the stage in their elaborately bejeweled costumes. I will admit I got a sense of what Shelly had such pride for—something that a lot of work went into, at a high standard. In these last couple of weeks of the show, though, they repeatedly reference their rapidly dwindling audience, just a smattering of people in the house. It seems clear the show’s time has come.

Much has been made of Pamela Anderson’s performance in this film. I do want to give her the respect she deserves, but to say this is the best performance of her career does not set it above an exactly high bar. A slight majority of the time, she is very compelling, even with her pitched, girly voice and Shelly’s blindly selfish ambition. A bit too much of the time, her delivery is slightly off, giving an air of a self-conscious performer. A method actor, Pamela Anderson is not.

Anderson is surrounded by other actors who lift her up with their own gifts, most notably Jamie Lee Curtis as Annette, Shelly’s cocktail waitress best friend with a gambling problem. Curtis tears into her part with gusto, albeit with a striking similarity to her part as Carmen’s mom in the Hulu series The Bear (in which she is, frankly, much better—because the part is written much better). There’s also Kiernan Shipka (Sally Draper from Mad Men, now 25, recently seen as the villain in the abysmal Red One) as Jodie, one of Shelly’s young cast mates. Shelly judges her for auditioning for another Vegas show she thinks has no class, though Jodie’s demonstration of a lusty dance with a chair in their dressing room is the most amusing scene in the movie. Shipka us actually quite good in this role, but for the fact that it has Jodie seeking maternal comfort from Shelly, Shelly coldly denying it, and the script never offering any resolution to their relationship.

It doesn’t seem like the greatest sign when it’s Dave Bautista who gives the best performance in a film. He’s actually got long-ish, salt and pepper hair parted in the middle, and his Eddie character is the most “regular guy” kind of character I’ve ever seen him play—somewhat impressive given how gigantic he is. Eddie is a very docile man who does not deserve to be treated the way Shelly treats him. And although The Last Showgirl doesn’t necessarily want us to agree with Shelly’s choices, it clearly wants us to root for her. And this is a challenge.

Ultimately, The Last Showgirl seems to exist solely to prove to the world that Pamela Anderson, herself age 57, is more than she seems at first glance. I’ll grant the credit that the film does exactly that. None of this makes her part in this a “great performance,” and it certainly doesn’t make it a great film. The relentlessly wobbly handheld cinematography alone—a choice I was baffled by—is enough to drive you to distraction. In spite of all that, I was compelled by the story from beginning to end, which in this unusual case was part of the problem: being compelled alone means little when so many of the narrative threads are dropped without resolution by the end. I get what Coppola was going for by finishing with Anderson’s final defiant, desperate smile onstage, but I left the theater with too many questions that should have been answered.

I honestly wanted better for her.

Overall: C+

THE BRUTALIST

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A-

I’ve been thinking about the plot structure of The Brutalist. It might just be a cornerstone of modern American cinema. It takes some time to digest it . . . architecturally. Okay, I’ll stop.

So here’s the great question: is The Brutalist a modern American masterpiece? I hesitate to use the word '“masterpiece” in reference to a film the very same day I saw it. Time will be the judge of that. The marketers of this film sure have been eager to share the many reviews that have referred to it as “monumental.” This was not how I responded to it, though. The Brutalist did not blow me away. Instead, it seeped into me, like some kind of narrative IV drip. There are certain narrative threads that remain unresolved and which I keep thinking about, but there is also a strong sense that that is by design.

I’m always impressed with a film that takes a fairly small cast of characters and successfully makes it an allegory for America. That is certainly what’s happening here, along with its examination of capitalism, massive income inequality, insidious antisemitism, and broad xenophobia. All of this is woven into the subtext—and often the text—of a story involving three principal characters: László Tóth (Adrien Brody), the title character having immigrated to the U.S. from war-torn Budapest; László’s wife, Erzsébet (Felicity Jones), who isn’t even seen onscreen until the second half and yet she still looms large; and the Pennsylvanian millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), who discovers László to have been a renowned European architect and hires him to design a massive community center in his town outside of Philadelphia.

There are other key characters, of course. Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy), László’s mute and orphaned teenage niece brought to America with Erzsébet, is in many scenes in which she never says a word yet conveys a great deal with her eyes alone. Later, as a young adult, she gets one scene in which she has any dialogue, when she and her young husband declare to László and Erzsébet that they have decided to move to the then-very-young state of Israel—a scene with many implications, both in their time and in ours. Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), Harrison’s entitled son, is the first to hire László for a design job, rebuilding his father’s library as a surprise that does not quite go as planned but kicks off Harrison’s and László’s complicated and ultimately tragic relationship. Attila (Alessandro Nivola), László’s cousin, takes him in when he first arrives in America, and hires him to work at his furniture store in Philadelphia. Audrey (Emma Laird), Attila’s Catholic wife, has convinced Attila to convert to her religion and clearly resents László’s Jewishness. Minutes after meeting him, she says, “We know someone who can take a look at that nose,” and although the conversation is about an injury, the double meaning is far from lost on us.

There is a great deal to unpack in The Brutalist, but perhaps the most with László’s Ivorian single father friend Gordon (Isaach de Bankolé), and Gordon’s young son William (Charlie Esoko as a little boy; Zephan Hanson Amissah as a teenager). William is also orphaned; Gordon is also an immigrant; both of them are Black; and it feels somewhat like a missed opportunity that The Brutalist has nothing to say about them as it pertains to these facts, least of which how their experiences might differ from László’s. They are just László’s friend—met in a bread line; Gordon later hired by László to work on his projects—and his son. There is a moment when Harrison returns from a trip sooner than expected, discovering the library “surprise” mid-construction, and refers to Gordon as a “strange Negro” in his front yard, and this is the only overt reference to their race. There is no doubt that director and writer Brady Corbet is unusually intentional with every choice in this film, from casting to editing, and still some of it remains a mystery. We get a brief glimpse into Gordon and William’s relationship when Gordon insists William does not remember his late mother, and William replies that he just wanted to make it easier on him—and then it cuts to the next scene.

That said, one of the notable achievements in The Brutalist is how quickly it seems to go by in spite of its length. This is a three-hour and 35-minute movie, including a 15-minute intermission (which helpfully features a countdown clock), and when the intermission happened roughly ninety minutes in, I was surprised we were halfway through already. And this is with a narrative that is not especially fast-paced—but, you still can’t take your eyes off of it: not the excellent performers, not the beautiful cinematography, not the tragically typical American immigrant story unfolding onscreen. During the opening titles, the camera follows László through a tightly crowded, dark space that I first suspected to be some chaotic place he was escaping from in Europe, but turns out to be the depths of the ship he’s taken to Ellis Island. This is where we see, within minutes of the film’s beginning, the iconic shot of the Statue of Liberty viewed upside-down. László is elated, but we already know what American experience awaits him. Much later, he utters one of the most memorable lines in the film: “We came here because we had no other option.”

Felicity Jones deserves special mention, as László’s wife, Erzsébet. We hear her, narrating letters from Hungary during László’s first five years in America without her, in the first half of the film, before the intermission. We see her onscreen for the first time in the opening scene of Part Two, when she finally arrives. Others have already commented how Erzsébet is “the wife” character but also more than that, and this is true. Brady Corbet and his co-writer, Mona Fastvold, have written her with much more autonomy than most characters of this sort get, and she is much more integral to the story in the second half. I actually found her to be one of the most interesting and dynamic characters in the film.

Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren, on the other hand, is by turns the most enigmatic and the most predictable character. His son, Harry, is much more readily pompous, but Harrison is subtly every bit the entitled figure one would expect from someone with far more money than he needs. Money changes how people view the world, and how they view everyone else in it, especially those without wealth, and Harrison embodies this to his very essence. Pearce plays him as a deeply repressed man, with occasional bursts of shocking violence. In one such scene, between him and László, I was so taken aback my jaw dropped, and I’m still not entirely sure how I even feel about it. In the end, though, it all comes down to power and privilege, and how casually they can be leveraged when people simply move from one system of oppression to another. They may have different structures, but the same people are granted access to separate spaces designed only for them.

Opening doors to the intersection between aesthetics and knowledge, but without equal access to either.

Overall: A-

BETTER MAN

Directing: B
Acting: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Special Effects: B+
Music: B

I’m sure you’re all wondering: does anyone fuck Robbie-Williams-as-chimp in Better Man? Well, not onscreen. Someone gives him a hand job though!

Here’s the most impressive thing about Better Man, though: it has an astonishing ability to make you forget its wackadoodle premise: this is a biopic about British pop superstar Robbie Williams, except Robbie is the singular character rendered as a CGI chimpanzee. It’s a liberalization of two ideas at once: a pop star as a dancing monkey (okay, yes, I know, chimps aren’t monkeys, that’s not the point) and raving addict as an out of control animal. I’m not sure how well the layered metaphors work in the many scenes of Robbie as a child, mind you, detailing his love of his nan who openly accepts him flaws and all. He’s neither dancing nor out of control at that young an age, and all I could think of was how his mother must have reacted when she pushed a chimp through her hoo-ha.

Indeed, I really wondered how a movie like this would tackle sexuality. I’ll certainly give director and co-writer Michael Gracey this much credit: his does indeed write Robbie Williams as a sexual being—under normal circumstances it would make no sense not to—but he does it relatively subtly, only one scene being overtly sexual (the aforementioned hand job, from a fan at a meet and greet), and somehow, it actually works in the context of the narrative. I couldn’t tell you what the secret sauce was that he used, though; this is otherwise a pretty straightforward biopic story.

It’s also a fun one, most of the time. I had a good time. The trailers do not make this clear, but Better Man is also a musical in the classic sense, with Robbie breaking out into song as part of the narrative, in addition to the several we see him perform onstage in concert. Relatively early on there is a truly dazzling sequence, an almost seamless blend of on-camera choreography and blue screen, the camera swirling around Robbie as he moves from indoors to join a massive crowd of synchronized dancers out in the street. A particularly nice touch is when the crowd jumps, but just close enough to doing it at the same time so that their jumps form a quick rave from the front of the crowd to the back. It’s mesmerizing and incredibly entertaining, and I wish Better Man had more sequences like it.

What it does have far too much of is a focus on Robbie Williams’s self-loathing, with constant cutaways to other versions of himself in audiences, reacting back to him with everything from disapproving scowls to outright hateful screaming. This happens a lot, well past the point of it becoming tiresome, until finally in one fantasy sequence he jumps from the stage and engages in combat with them all, to the death. He even seems to kill is inner child, a choice that I could not quite wrap my brain around, aside from it perhaps representing the extremity of his suicidal ideation. I understand what Gracey is going for with this, but it is overwrought and overdone. This is on top of the many scenes we see of him excessively drinking and doing drugs. It seems worth mentioning yet again that it’s a chimp we see doing all these things. A chimp with a British accent—both motion capture and voice performance by English actor Jonno Davies (the voiceover narration and the music vocals are from Williams himself).

Then there’s the issue of the music. It should be noted that Robbie Williams, while a massive star elsewhere in the world, never broke through in the United States, and it’s not difficult to see why. I went to his official YouTube page, played the most-played music video posted there, and then fell asleep.

To be fair, contextualized in the film, Robbie Williams’s music is a lot more fun, though none of it made me eager to download the motion picture soundtrack. Better Man has several musical sequences and interludes that are undeniably infectious, all of them performed by a CGI chimp with a stunning amount of legit charisma, even when being depraved. Robbie Williams as a character in this movie is someone you connect with, you empathize with, and you root for. It’s kind of a stunning surprise, and makes you wonder whether it would even work as well if he were portrayed by a regular human. The plot beats are fairly by the numbers, after all, and the chimp-as-metaphor forces a kind of consideration that it would never manage otherwise.

What an odd, fun, deceptively conventional movie this is, wrapped in a wildly unconventional concept. It’s not nearly as provocative as it clearly wants you to think it is, but it will impress anyway, particularly how deeply expressive Robbie Williams’s CGI chimp face is, using FX technology that barely works but still works well, and at the same time will look dated in five years. Perhaps the same is the case for Better Man as a movie overall, but sometimes you only need a movie to work right now, and right now, this one works surprisingly well.

He’s not a monkey, get it straight!

Overall: B

THE FIRE INSIDE

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

The Fire Inside opens with an overhead drone shot of Ryan Destiny as Claressa Shields, as a preteen, future Olympic gold medal-winning boxer, jogging across town in Flint, Michigan, to a gym where she’s determined to learn to box. It’s a very effective establishing shot, in spite of how overused drone shots are in movies anymore. But this particular shot illustrates a key point in filmmaking, which is that the tool doesn’t matter so much as how it’s used.

I suppose the same could be same of Claressa herself (commonly referred to in the film as “Ressa”). After telling her he doesn’t train girls, coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) sees something in her defiance after the boys he’s been training in the ring give her shit. He invites her into the ring, he gives her some pointers, she takes them on like a natural, and a great relationship is born.

This movie follows pretty standard sports movie story beats, until it doesn’t. Maybe two thirds of the way through, Claressa has worked her way through regional and national boxing championships, and ultimately gets her gold medal. (That’s not a spoiler, given that this is based on a true story.) But then the story jumps forward six months, and we see how Claressa has settled back into her life in Flint, little changed from her life before traveling the world. She resents her male athlete counterparts enjoying lucrative endorsements while those opportunities remain out of her reach.

The Fire Inside is directed by Rachel Morrison, in her feature film directorial debut—and she does an adequate, if not spectacular, job. She has many other credits as a cinematographer, most notably having shot Black Panther. She works with a different cinematographer here, Rina Yang, who brings a fresh visual perspective to a pretty standard genre. The script writer, though, is Barry Jenkins, who here seems to be tackling unusually standard fare compared to his previous work, having written and directed both the absolute masterpiece Moonlight and its follow-up, If Beale Street Could Talk. Both that and The Fire Inside are undeniably compelling and pretty to look at, but Moonlight is a tough act to follow.

The thing is, if you dig deep enough—some might even say nitpick—it’s fairly easy to find fault and flaws in The Fire Inside. Claressa’s mother, Jackie (Olunike Adeliyi), is depicted as a pretty bad mother at the beginning of the story, and gains some maternal instinct by the end, without us ever seeing how she got there. I was relieved to see her humanized, at least; it would have been easy to villainize her. Then there are Claressa’s siblings, including a sister who becomes a teen mother, a detail we are shown without any real connection to Claressa’s overall story.

And yet—there’s a lot in The Fire Inside that makes up for all of this. Ryan Destiny is fantastic in the lead part, portraying a teenager who is equal parts driven and petulant. Brian Tyree Henry is well cast as the father figure Claressa needs, although her father’s release from prison complicates the relationship (something this movie actually simplifies a bit, in a kind of Hollywood-movie way). The boxing scenes are staged well enough to make someone like me, who could not have the least bit of interest in boxing outside of a movie like this, invested in the outcome.

Although the story here focuses more on her first gold medal, her status as a singularly accomplished athlete is her second gold medal, which finally helped her accomplish some of the goals that seemed out of reach at first. Perhaps most notable of these is how she demanded that women Olympic athletes in training get the same stipend as the male athletes, who previously were given three times the amount women got. There’s a fair amount of feminist inspiration in The Fire Inside—let women get away with saying they enjoy beating people up!—and it feels notable that it has nothing to say about race in Claressa’s story. Perhaps I am jumping to conclusions that there is any need for it to, though. It’s enough that this is a film with a majority-Black cast with what feels like honest depictions of their community, including several allusions to Flint being a city that got unfairly ignored.

This is a flawed film with some narrative inconsistencies, and which I also really enjoyed watching. And an imperfect movie is a great hang, how much do the flaws matter?

You can ignore the bullshit if you keep your eye on the prize.

Overall: B

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN

Directing: A-
Acting: A-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+
Music: A

I have a confession to make: I have never, before today, sat down and listened to any Bob Dylan album from start to finish. I am actually listening to his 1965 landmark Highway 61 Revisited for the first time, literally as I write this. And my first impression, upon hearing Dylan’s singing, is that Timothée Chalamet’s performance in A Complete Uknown is actually a bit more subtle than the real man himself. You know how people sound when they do comic impressions of Bob Dylan? That’s what he actually sounded like. If Chalamet had gone for absolute accuracy, people might have thought he was being a little over the top.

Honestly I enjoyed Timothée’s version better.

To be fair, I’m getting a bit more into Highway 61 Revisited as it goes along, although its status as something that exploded the music industry would never be clear just from listening to it, without a music history lesson. More fundamentally, and this is something the film depicts beautifully, Bob Dylan’s talent as a songwriter is undeniable. One wonders if someone like me might like it better performed by a better singer. There’s certainly plenty of that to choose from—from Simon & Garfunkel to to Heart and Ann Wilson—just in my own music collection. It’s easy for young music fans to be completely ignorant of the wide reach of Dylan’s staggering infuence.

People truly idolize this man, particularly working musicians, and many quite famous ones. Could we even say that, at this point, there is more idolatry of Dylan than there is of the Beatles? That is perhaps up for debate, and to be fair, Dylan is still alive (he’s 83) and only half of the Beatles are still alive; if they were still alive and producing music today, they’d probably still be ahead on that front. In any case, the cultural reach of Bob Dylan simply cannot be overestimated.

A Complete Unknown climaxes with Bob Dylan’s famous (or infamous, depending on the perspective) performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he angered the crowd by performing with electric rather than acoustic guitar. The scene is a curious one to witness, with the crowd immediately responding with confusion and anger, literally throwing things at Dylan and his band onstage. Director and co-writer James Mangold (Logan, Ford v Ferrari) makes an interesting choice here, not focusing a great deal on the crowd at least partially coming around as the set goes on. If you’re paying attention, you see specific audience members initially screaming in anger later moving happily to the beat.

To Mangold’s credit, there was no need to bring me around, as I was locked in with A Complete Unknown from start to finish. This is due to two key components, the most important being the music: the actors (including Chalamet) performing the songs themselves, and doing so wonderfully. There’s a lot of beautiful acoustic music in this film that I was only moderately familiar with and very much enjoyed, bringing to mind the 2013 Coen Brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis—blatantly Dylan-inspired, and an objectively better film.

The second key component is the casting, which is stellar all around. Tomothée Chalamet’s inevitable Oscar nomination will be fully justified; Edward Norton brings an old-school warmth to Pete Seeger; Monica Barbara is subtly radiant as Joan Baez; Elle Fanning does a lot with a girlfriend part that is typically thankless; Boyd Holbrook is irresistibly charismatic as Johnny Cash; Scoot McNairy is astonishingly compelling as a nonverbal Woody Guthrie suffering from Huntington’s disease. Many have already commented on how A Complete Unknown follows pretty typical beats of a film biopic, and this is accurate, but the fantastic cast and the fantastic music largely renders an otherwise by-the-numbers script to be inconsequential.

What’s more, the script takes the wise course of focusing on a specific moment in a person’s life, rather than attempting to cover an entire life. In this case, it’s the early- to mid-sixties, Bob Dylan’s early years, gaining a startlingly quick amount of fame with folk music with the uncharacteristic distinction of being original compositions (with the exception of his largely ignored debut record of covers), and then culminating in a monumental expression of freedom so as not to feel boxed in by fan and producer expectations. To be specific, “going electric.” And that sequence, at the Newport Folk Festival, is indeed electric.

Incidentally, while I was writing this, Highway 61 Revisited ended, and I went back and played his sophomore album, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. I must admit, I’m enjoying this earlier, acoustic folk sound better. Now I am also disappointed he went electric. What an asshole!

The Bob and Joan Story—is one that will suck you in regardless of generation or musical interest.

Overall: B+

Cinema 2024: Best & Worst

Below are the ten most satisfying and memorable films I saw in 2024: 10. Dune Part Two A-   There's a slight irony to Dune Part Two being #10 on my top ten list for the year, given that I certainly engaged with this film far more than any other in 2024: I saw it three times in the theater, and have since seen it a fourth time streaming—I'd have seen it the fourth time in theaters too if the theatrical window were longer, but that all changed after the pandemic. Otherwise, this would have been the first film I saw four times in the theater since The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in 2003, 21 years ago. In other words, I really love this movie, and I like it perhaps more each time I see it. Upon first viewing, I loved it then, but was not immediately overwhelmed by a love for it, thinking maybe it did not quite live up to the hype. But when it comes to Dune, the joy is in the details, the more of which get picked up on with successive viewings. Appreciation for both of these films—which I now just think of as one, five-hour and 21-minute movie—only gets deeper with repeat viewing. Denis Villeneuve has done with both films what had previously been thought impossible: adapting what is arguably the most intricately epic science fiction novel ever written, and doing so with grand success. What I said then: The word “iconic” has been overused for decades. For this reason, I don’t ever use it. Maybe Dune Part Two is the exception that proves the rule. 9. Ghostlight A   A criminally overlooked drama that sneaks up on you with how moving it is, Ghostlight is a title that refers to the name of a community theater where construction worker Dan (Keith Kupferer) is acting in a production of Romeo and Juliet unbeknownst to his grieving wife and daughter. Dan is grieving too, and this film takes its time in revealing exactly what happened there, which is very much tied to a very stressful scenario in their present-day. Ghostlight is ultimately about the healing power of theater, both as performance and as seen by audiences, which is handled with a uniquely deft touch. This is a definite tear jerker though, so you'll want to keep tissues handy. What I said then: Ghostlight is secretly one of the best films of the year, because it feels like a “small movie” and yet it’s so much bigger once you wade into its gentle waves of emotional resonance. It exists in a cocoon of fondness for its own characters, no matter how flawed they are, and it’s impossible not to feel warmed by it. 8. Robot Dreams A   Every bit the delight it appears to be from trailers, Robot Dreams has charms to spare, both in its overt nostalgia for 1980s New York City and in its achingly adorable animal (and robot) characters. This is a love story, but a platonic one: a wonderful movie about friendship, which ends on a surprising but totally appropriate bittersweet note. There's a lot more going on here under the veneer of its sweetness, all of it conveyed without the use of any dialogue and with a deceptively simple animation style that belies its deep sophistication. What I said then: This is a movie that loves New York, and all of the characters in it. It loves Dog and it loves Robot, and it loves all the characters they meet along their respective journeys. It loves the art of storytelling and it loves animation in all its forms, and perhaps most of all, it loves us: the people watching the movie. 7. The Taste of Things A   Rare indeed is the film that succeeds in engaging the senses beyond sight and sound—this movie will make your mouth water, will make you vividly imagine, well, the taste of things.  It also gradually reveals itself to be a romantic love story, and one of a particular sort, where expressions of love, over a span of many years, are made through both the preparation of food and the consumption of it. This is the kind of film you give yourself over to completely, so that it virtually becomes a full-body experience. There are many different kinds of hunger, and The Taste of Things engages with all of them. What I said then: The meat based dishes—beef, veal, fish, you name it—still failed to make me salivate, in ways I am certain it will most audiences. And then Eugénie whips up this Baked Alaska dish and I nearly cried with desire: Holy fuckballs that looks amazing! And I don’t even like meringue. The men Eugénie serves this dessert to discuss the physics of how the ice cream stays frozen inside, and I was rapt. This was one dish with meringue I could imagine using as skin cream. I wanted to bathe in it. 6. Babygirl A   I have a slight difficulty here, as Babygirl is a movie I saw in the final weekend of the year—how much of my love for it, and my decision to put it on this list, is just recency bias? I won't know for sure until another year or so passes, but for now, I remain impressed by this film on every level: its explorations of sex and specifically kink the likes of which we rarely, if ever, see in mainstream movies; its exploration of gender power dynamics; its exploration of power imbalance and when it can be difficult to identify which party actually has that upper hand. All of this is packaged in a film with spectacular performances, particularly by Nicole Kidman in the lead role, all of it gorgeously shot and with perhaps the best editing of the year. What I said then: There is another key line, when Romy’s assistant (Sophie Wilde) says “I genuinely thought women with power would behave differently.” What [wrtier-director Halina] Reijn deliberately leaves unclear is the extent to which the implication there is or is not correct: is Romy behaving just like the other men in her position? We could argue about this for hours, and that, perhaps more than anything, is what makes this movie great. 5. Anora A   I never thought I would find myself comparing Anora to Dune Part Two, but there is a key point of contrast to be made, specifically regarding the hype: Dune Part Two lives up to the hype with repeat viewings; Anora lives up to the hype from its opening moments, and then never wavers throughout. Almost pointedly a 21st-century response to the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, Anora grounds the proceedings with every aspect of its production, with equal parts grit and wit. Mikey Madison is a revelation as a stripper named Ani, who falls for the seductive matrimonial promises of Ivan (an equally stellar Mark Eydelshteyn), the recklessly romantic son of a Russian oligarch. Anora has everything you could possibly want and more, with an extended sequence involving bumbling Russian goons (including an excellent Yura Borisov as the unexpectedly empathetic Igor) that is absolutely hysterical, and then the film gradually settles into startling pathos. What I said then: It’s so rare, and so deeply satisfying, when a movie actually lives up to the hype. Anora is everything it promises to be and more. 4. Flow A   My Top Ten this year includes not one, but two animated films—which both feature no dialogue, and neither feature any human characters. A friend recently waxed poetic about all the layors of metaphor in this film, which . . . I guess I missed. Not that I didn't see depth (pardon the pun) in this; I guess the depth I saw was of a different sort. I have a tendncy to take things at face value, and that was what I did here—and still I was utterly taken with this, this tale of cyclical, Biblical flooding that has clearly extinguished human life and now finds a small group of animals sharing a boat and cooperating for survival. Most of them are wild animals, except for several roaming dogs, and the protagonist, a domestic cat. They are all voiced with recordings of the real sounds of their species, with the exception of the capybara (that sounds is actually of a baby camel), and they are animated to move just like their real-life animal counterparts do. This all makes it easy to nearly miss that they are, indeed, anthropomorphized and they are characters—it's just done with such effective subtlety, you've convinced yourself you're watching something realistic. How beautifully rendered all the animation is, with the use of the open-source software Blender, is a different conversation altogether. What I said then: I’m not sure I can adequately explain how much I loved this movie. Flow is not just the best animated film of the year by a mile, it’s within striking distance of being the best film of the year overall. Critics love to throw around the word “triumph,” but here it legitimately applies. This is a film that transcends any cliché. 3. All of Us Strangers A   There are many criticisms of All of Us Strangers, which glides back and forth between the physical and the metaphysical, that have objective merit. None of that matters to me, as this film spoke to me on a deep, personal level, a queer love story contextualized by intergenerational relationships, the enduring impact of AIDS on the queer community, and the missed opportunities for understanding between parents and their queer children. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal make a cracklingly sensual onscreen couple, making it much easier to buy into the idea that this is a movie to be felt as opposed to understood. Best of all, the choice of songs make for a stellar soundtrack, with perfectly chosen pop songs I will never hear the same way again. What I said then: This is a movie I will be thinking about for a very long time, maybe for years to come. I haven’t been this in love with a mood-piece queer love story since Moonlight. Indeed, that film and All of Us Strangerswould make for a spectacular double feature. From end to end, it is beautiful and sad and cozy and charming and erotic and mysterious and bewildering. It would seem there is no end to the riches it has to offer. 2. Sing Sing A   People are not talking about Sing Sing enough, even though both Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin, who are both incredible, are likely to be nominated for Oscars. Limited release schedules often have a tendency to be bewildering, because this film could have gained a lot more traction in the cultural consciousness had it just been marketed differently. I'm just immensely grateful that I had a chance to see this film in its initial theatrical run in my local market in August, when I was deeply impressed by its gorgeous cinematography—shocking to see in a movie set in a prison—and its standout performances. Far more importantly and significantly, Sing Sing is a singularly towering achievement, blending fact and fiction by casting nonprofessional actors from the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program that this film depicts. (Maclin is one of them.) This film is both a testament to the success of such programs, and a deeply moving portrait of prisoners with a level of humanity far too often denied them. What I said then: Sing Sing absolutely nails every part of everything it sets out to do, from showcasing talent to telling a perfectly calibrated story that could have been corny or maudlin in lesser hands. 1. National Anthem A   Here is a queer film that takes the culture and iconography of rural America, and claims it for its own—all without violence, without any overt queer trauma, all just a celebration of queerness, with a notable and unusual dose of gender variance and diversity. Just as there are many sides of mainstream America, so too are there many sides to minority communities, whose cultures also vary regionally. All of that is merely the backdrop of this wonderful story, about a young man of unspecified sexuality tentatively (Charlie Plummer) exploring gender expression as he finds himself welcomed by the rural queer commune where he's been hired to do construction work. There is just something about the warm tone and vibe of this film, with its ensemble cast of characters both learning and teaching new and different ways of loving each other and building community. This is the kind of movie I just want to wrap myself up in like a heated blanket. What I said then: I’m not sure I have fallen so hard so quickly for a film like this since Moonlight (2016). And while that film distinguished itself by showcasing queer Black characters, I would say the distinction with National Anthem, while centered on mostly White characters, is its beautifully shot showcasing of gender diversity. I will admit, there’s a lot here that is very personal to me. It would take me a while to think of the last film that so directly and deeply spoke to me. Five Worst -- or the worst of those I saw 5. Your Monster C   If you want perhaps the greatest example in 2024 of cinematic mediocrity, Your Monster easily fits the bill. It's doubly disappointing when a film with so much potential almost seems to be actively resisting its realization. A quirky story about a young woman who discovers a humanoid monster is actually living in her closet seems like it could be a kick in the pants—until you actually watch it, and discover it apparently has no idea what story it's actually telling or what it has to say. What I said then: Your Monster wants to be a quirky riff on the Beauty and the Beast story, and instead flounders as it becomes less and less clear exactly what writer-director Caroline Lindy, here making her first feature film, is going for. I found myself losing patience with its fuzzy plotting long before I had a chance to consider what the point of any of it was. 4. IF C+   The first of multiple would-be blockbusters on my worst-of list this year, IF had a budget of $110 million, earned $111 million domestically, and $190 million worldwide. I guess that makes it a success? Barely. It certainly did not meet the expectations of the studio, which clearly did not understand that they had an utterly baffling movie on their hands. Writer-director John Krasinski apparently felt that having several creative and/or funny Imaginary Friends ("IFs") is enough of a concept to coast on its own. I assure you, it is not—especially when the story establishes rules that it then does not bother to follow. If your response is "What?" more often than it is laughter, then you have a problem. What I said then: The fundamental problem with IF is the evident blank check Krasinski was given after his previous success, where no one else bothered to step in with some guard rails outside his own passion. This movie clearly means something to him, and presumably it made sense in his head. It has some fairly imaginative ideas in it, to be fair, but it also feels like it came from the imagination of someone who recently had a lobotomy. 3. Fly Me to the Moon C-   Fly Me to the Moon was the first of three movies I saw this year that were bad enough to make me angry. The fact that this one has actors in it who are at least charismatic is of little consequence. The way this film plays with the utterly stupid idea of faking the Moon Landing, however tongue-in-cheek it thinks it's being about it, is both exasperating and reckless. It was all I could think about, the budding romance between the two leads (Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum) holding little interest from the start and waning from there. What I said then: Let’s skip straight ahead to the moon landing, a pivotal event in this story. This was a real, historic event, a watershed moment, something everyone who lived to witness it never forgot. This was an unforgettable moment for everyone on the planet, but especially for Americans—something that seared itself into memories in a way that was on par with the assassination of President Kennedy, or the attack on Pearl Harbor, or 9/11. The key difference is that this event filled people with awe, gave them hope, and opened their minds to the idea of unlimited possibility. Has such an event ever happened again? Well, I can tell you this: Fly Me to the Moon takes something with massive historic import, and reduces it to a cheap Hollywood plot contrivance. 2. Borderlands C-   If Borderlands managed to impress in any way whatsoever, it was how it manages to showcase a bad performance by Cate Blanchett, who plays the lead in this abysmal, ugly, unfunny, downright uninteresting video game adaptation, a blight on the resumes of the four genuine stars in its ensemble cast (which also includes Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black). Jack Black plays the only even remotely amusing character, and he's a robot named Claptrap—a name that would have been better used as the title for this movie. What I said then: The most frustrating thing about Borderlands is that it actually could have been good. Being silly doesn't inherently mean bad, but it needs just the right calibration. It’s not just that Borderlands is all spectacle and no substance. It’s that overall it rings hollow. The characters have all the dimension of video game characters left dormant, with no one even playing them—even while they move and speak. There’s nothing driving this story but going through the motions. At one point Lilith walks past an abandoned park merry-go-round and I wished I could have just spent two hours riding that instead. It would have been objectively more rewarding. 1. Red One D+   Of the few movies I saw this year that left me feeling active contempt for it, Red One absolutely takes the cake—getting the worst grade I have given a film in seven years (shoutout to 2017's Geostorm). The fact that I know multiple people who enjoyed this garbage movie only makes it worse. What is happening to people? There's a phrase my mother used to love to say: "There's no accounting for taste." I guess not. I guess some people are perfectly pacified into being entertained by every cheap visual effect, random CGI character, and incoherent action sequence imaginable just being thrown willy-nilly onto the screen all at once. This movie had so much going on, it deadened the senses, leaving only one logical reaction: utter boredom. God, I hated this movie.  What I said then: Red One is what happens when feeling dead inside becomes a feature film. I have never seen a movie with so much magic onscreen be so lacking in actual movie magic. I went into this thinking I was fully prepared, but ready to have a good time in spite of the poor reviews and lackluster response. Sometimes bad movies are fun! If only. Instead, Red One is so busy just being busy, it dulls the senses, and becomes a snooze fest. Believe me when I say that literally. I nodded off multiple times. During the periods I managed to stay awake, one of the five other people in the theater let out a loud snore. We’re all in this together, I guess. Complete 2024 film review log: 1. 1/7 American Fiction A-
2. 1/8 Society of the Snow B+ *
3. 1/9 All of Us Strangers A
4. 1/12 The Book of Clarence C+
5. 1/13 Mean Girls B
6. 1/16 Poor Things A- (2nd viewing)
7. 1/19 Orlando: A Political Biography B
8. 1/21 The Zone of Interest A-
9. 1/22 Safety Last! A- **
10. 1/23 American Fiction A- (2nd viewing)
11. 1/25 The Beekeeper B
12. 1/26 The Color Purple B *
13. 1/28 Origin A-
14. 1/31 I.S.S. C+
15. 2/12 Lisa Frankenstein B-
16. 2/16 The Taste of Things A
17. 2/19 Perfect Days B+
18. 2/22 Drive-Away Dolls C+
19. 2/29 Dune Part Two A-
20. 3/3 Dune Part Two A- (2nd viewing)
21. 3/8 Anselm B-
22. 3/12 Dune Part Two A- (3rd viewing)
23. 3/14 The American Socity of Magical Negroes B-
24. 3/16 Bad River B
25. 3/17 Arthur the King B+
26. 3/18 One Life B+
27. 3/19 Love Lies Bleeding B+
28. 3/28 Problemista B
29. 4/9 Monkey Man C+
30. 4/10 Wicked Little Letters B+
31. 4/16 Civil War B
32. 4/19 Housekeeping for Beginners A-
33. 4/20 Abigail B
34. 4/21 Sasquatch Sunset B
35. 4/29 Challengers A-
36. 5/7 The Fall Guy B
37. 5/10 The Queen of My Dreams B ***
38. 5/12 Stress Positions B+ ***
39. 5/13 Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes B+
40. 5/14 The Ride Ahead A- ***
41. 5/16 Merchant Ivory B ***
42. 5/17 I Saw the TV Glow B-
43. 5/18 Sebastian B ***
44. 5/19 The Summer with Carmen B ***
45. 5/21 Back to Black C+
46. 5/24 Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga B
47. 5/27 Babes B+
48. 5/28 IF C
49. 6/2 Evil Does Not Exist B-
50. 6/5 In a Violent Nature B
51. 6/7 Hit Man B+ *
52. 6/17 Inside Out 2 B+
53. 6/19 Tuesday B+
54. 6/20 Thelma A-
55. 6/25 Ghostlight A
56. 6/27 The Bikeriders B
57. 7/2 A Quiet Place: Day One B
58. 7/6 Kinds of Kindness B-
59. 7/8 MaXXXine B
60. 7/12 Robot Dreams A
61. 7/16 Fly Me to the Moon C-
62. 7/18 Twisters B
63. 7/21 National Anthem A+
64. 7/23 48-Hour Film Festival ****
65. 7/26 Deadpool & Wolverine B-
66. 8/1 Trap B-
67. 8/5 Kneecap B+
68. 8/9 Dìdi A-
69. 8/11 Sing Sing A
70. 8/13 Borderlands C-
71. 8/15 Alien: Romulus B+
72. 8/23 Blink Twice B-
73. 8/27 His Three Daughters B
74. 8/28 Between the Temples B
75. 9/2 Good One B+
76. 9/6 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice B-
77. 9/8 Longlegs C+
78. 9/9 Rebel Ridge A- *
79. 9/17 The Killer's Game C+
80. 9/24 The Substance B+
81. 9/26 Megalopolis C+
82. 9/28 The Wild Robot B+
83. 9/28 Will & Harper B *
84. 10/1 My Old Ass A-
85. 10/8 The Outrun A-
86. 10/9 A Different Man B+
87. 10/13 Saturday Night B
88. 10/14 Piece by Piece B
89. 10/17 Wakhri [One of a Kind] B+ *****
90. 10/19 We Live in Time B+
91. 10/19 Katlaa Curry [Fish Curry] B *****
92. 10/22 Goodrich B
93. 10/24 Your Monster C
94. 10/29 Conclave B+
95. 11/1 Godzilla Minus One B+ (2nd viewing)
96. 11/3 Emliia Pérez B+
97. 11/7 Anora A
98. 11/8 Blitz B
99. 11/9 Small Things Like These B+
100. 11/15 A Real Pain A-
101. 11/17 The Piano Lesson B+
102. 11/19 Red One D+
103. 11/21 Wicked: Part I B+
104. 11/23 Gladiator II B-
105. 12/1 Maria B
106. 12/3 All We Imagine as Light B
107. 12/6 Queer B+
108. 12/8 Flow A
109. 12/10 Y2K C+
110. 12/14 Nightbitch B
111. 12/15 The End B-
112. 12/27 Babygirl A
113. 12/28 Nosferatu B+
114. 1/29 A Complete Unknown B+ * Viewed streaming at home
** Re-issue (no new review, or no full review)
*** SIFF Advanced screening
**** 48-Hour Film Festival, Shobhit participating (no review)
***** Tasveer South Asian Film Festival

NOSFERATU

Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B
Cinematography: A
Editing: B
Production Design: A

Given that Nosferatu was directed by Robert Eggers, nothing in it surprised me. Had it been directed by someone else, some of it may have. Coming from Eggers, the closest thing to a surprise is how straightforward it is in narrative structure—no gonzo isolationist craziness or bizarre cutaways to Bjork in this movie. Still, Nosferatu indicates an odd sort of consistency to Eggers’s work, with great performances spread unevenly among the cast; stunning cinematography and production design; and writing that is competent but never great.

It must be noted, though, that Nosferatu really steps it up in the production design department. The Production Designer is Craig Lathrop, who worked on all of Eggers’s other films—and then, a bunch of others no one has ever heard of. Here, he designs a world of dark gothic horror that goes to great lengths to realize Eggers’s bent vision.

Mind you, this is a remake of a German expressionist silent film classic from 102 years ago: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. I have seen it one time, 19 years ago, at which time I declared Max Schreck’s depiction of Count Orlok to be “alternately grotesque and comical.” I did not even think to re-watch it prior to seeing this version, which I think was the right choice, as it would just invite inevitable but unnecessary comparisons.

This time around—this century—we get career villain Bill Skarsgård’s depiction of Count Orlok. One does wonder whether even this will come across as “alternately grotesque and comical” after another hundred years. Surely audiences in 1922 found Count Orlok to be simply grotesque, and that is absolutely the case with Skarsgård’s Orlock today. He’s beyond disgusting, covered in oozing bumps and sores, and a test of one’s patience to boot: he is the one character in the film speaking exclusively Dacian (with English subtitles), an extinct language from Southeastern Europe. That wouldn’t be so bad on its own, except that every single line is belabored, Skarsgård delivering each word in a slow, guttural and exaggerated accent. Get to the point, you ghoul! I’ll give him credit for incredibly well-kept, long pointy fingernails, though; someone get me the number for his manicurist.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this version of Nosferatu for roughly the first half of it. This film is stunningly produced and shot throughout, but the front half is very focused on an ambitious newlywed, Thomas (Nicholas Hoult, who spends pretty much the whole movie either nervous or terrified), being sent to a faraway land in 19th-century Germany to secure a real estate deal. I know many people who would get bored by this movie very quickly. I can’t say I ever got bored, but I did find myself wondering where it was going.

My favorite thing about this Nosferatu is on a meta level: I absolutely love that they released this gothic horror film on Christmas Day. As it happens, it’s actually set at Christmastime, the production design details very specific to the region and era, as are all the others. In one scene, we see a Christmas Tree, decades before the invention of Christmas lights, actual candles propped on its branches. All I could think about was how often houses caught on fire from Christmas Tree candles, but the characters had far more pressing matters to attend to.

Thomas’s young wife is the most key figure in the story, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) having been taken in her youth—depicted in a brief but terrifying opening sequence before the title card—and now being both possessed from afar and pursued by Nosferatu after he’s been summoned from his grave. Eggers unfolds this story with a fair number of horror movie jump scares and tricks uncommon in his other work, but makes up for this deceptive conventionality by offering some of the most horrifying and grotesque sights you’ll see this year. You won’t see a lot of it in the comparatively plodding first half, but trust me, they are coming. Whether that means it’s a worthy payoff depends on what you’re looking or in a movie like this. I mean, if you came to Nosferatu—or even a Robert Eggers film—expecting anything resembling wholesomeness, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Nosferatu has a curious history, though most of it is tied to the first film, which was the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula ever made. Stoker’s widow, Florence Balcombe, was angry about an unauthorized film based on the classic novel, sued, and won. The negatives and all prints of the film were ordered to be given over to her to be destroyed, but as we all know, the film survives, with restorations for home video beginning in 1981 and the most recent, for DVD and Blu-Ray, having been in 2006.

Eggers’s 2024 Nosferatu is a fascinating specimen in its own right for sure, but certainly not something that will be still discussed in the context of cinema history a hundred years from now—and the 1922 version absolutely will be. Just because the original has greater import to history and the more interesting backstory, however, does not mean it’s the better watch today. It creates a certain distance between itself and its audience—another hallmark of Eggers films—and is thus perfect for intellectuals with an affinity for horror. Trash, this is not, but is there also any real depth to it? I could not find any, beyond the layers that exist in its undeniable technical achievements.

Nosferatu is a breathtaking vision, both in terms of its visual design and its impressively sustained tension between fear and desire. If nothing else, this is a movie that delivers on everything it promises.

Nosferatu clearly remembers AT&T’s slogan from the eighties.

Overall: B+

BABYGIRL

Directing: A
Acting: A
Writing: A-
Cinematography: A
Editing: A+

Babygirl does not pull any punches regarding what it’s about: it opens with Nicole Kidman having an orgasm with Antonio Banderas. Or so it would seem!

That is to say, this is a very sex-forward film. It’s a very sex-positive film, which is good for everyone. It’s actually not that difficult these days to find high-profile, even mainstream movies that are frank and positive about sex, a trend I fully support. What makes Babygirl stand apart, how it goes an extra step that other movies do not go, is that it’s specifically kink-positive.

I’m not saying this has never been done before. Secretary came out 22 years ago, after all. The key difference is that James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal are nowhere near as big of movie stars as Nicole Kidman, or even Antonio Banderas, and never have been. Nor did that movie bother much with gender politics and power dynamics at all really, let alone handle them so deftly. Another key point is how much of a relief it is that Babygirl was written and directed by a woman—Halina Reijn on both counts, who previously directed (but did not write, though perhaps she should have) Bodies Bodies Bodies. Any movie about a woman with a humiliation fetish should absolutely be directed—and, preferably, written—by a woman.

Nicole Kidman gives a towering performance in Babygirl, which I fear may be overlooked by many just because of the subject matter. This is arguably her best performance in twenty years, although a couple others come quite close—it’s no revelation to say she’s an incredible actor. But she’s given something very new to do here, as a woman who can’t climax without very particular circumstances, and who only slowly comes to understand and embrace what’s going on in a healthy way.

This brings me to Harris Dickinson, who is hot as hell as Samuel, the subtly cocky intern who seduces Kidman’s Romy, the CEO of an Amazon-like tech company in New York City. Dickinson is the rare kind of package in the same vein as Timothée Chalamet or Colin Farrell before him: as talented as he is gorgeous. I’ve been impressed with Dickinson as a performer since his breakout role as a closeted gay teenager in Beach Rats (2017), and he was magnificent in Triangle of Sadness (2022). He is unlikely to become a superstar like Chalamet, but he’s poised to have a film career that is every bit as interesting.

Babygirl never tells us how old Romy is, though it’s easy to presume it’s somewhat younger than Kidman’s actual age of 57. She’s the mother of two teenage daughters, one of whom (Esther McGregor) is an exceptionally well-drawn young lesbian. Samuel is clearly meant to be in his twenties (Dickinson is 28), which makes the age gap between him and Romy somewhere between 20 and 30 years. Halina Reijn, as writer-director, spins a sexually tense tale between them with true finesse, never quite making clear the degree to which Samuel may or may not be threatening to Romy. What’s easy to forget, and perhaps deliberately so, is the inherent power imbalance between them, and very much in Romy’s favor. Samuel knowingly talks about how he could take everything from her with one phone call because he knows it turns her on. But who is really taking advantage of whom here? How threatening could he actually be to her, really? Reijn is very much playing with our expectations, taking advantage of our inclination to see the man as the one who is inappropriate. Neither of them is innocent here, but only one of them has the real power.

This is not directly related to, as many would assume, but is in conversation with Romy’s humiliation kink. Her husband, Jacob (Banderas), is a nice guy who cannot wrap his head around Romy’s specific sexual desires. He utters perhaps the most critical line in the film when he says of her suggestions in bed, “It makes me feel like a villain.” This sexual disconnect, having no bearing at all on how much Romy loves him, is the entire reason for her affair with Samuel, who has an innate instinct for her desires and takes advantage of them at the first opportunity. Conversely, again, it’s important to note that Romy allows it—something made explicit when she and Samuel have a conversation about consent that is unusually clarifying onscreen, and they even agree on a safe word. Incidentally, when I was thinking about Samuel’s seemingly borderline behaviors later in the film, it took a while for me to register that she could have used that mutually agreed-upon safe word, and never did.

I kind of love that Reijn cast a star as big as Antonio Banderas for the part of Jacob, which could arguably have been played by anyone and which in someone else’s hands could have been a thankless role. This is the kind of part that has been a bone tossed to older women actors for decades, although once you look deeper, you realize that Jacob also plays a critical role in this story. Samuel, tantalizing as he is, is just a catalyst for what is ultimately Romy and Jacob’s story. There is only one scene Banderas and Dickinson share, and it is fantastic, going in directions you never expect, in turn both furious and tender.

If you are super vanilla and don’t get kink at all, you’d best avoid Babygirl. If you are vanilla but have an open mind about people who are different from you, then you have just as much reason to see this incredible film as the rest of us. Babygirl is easily one of the best films of the year, and Kidman gives one of the year’s best performances. Romy is just the kind of complex figure perfect for an actor of Kidman’s caliber, a woman balancing the nuances of beauty standards for mature women in the highest levels of the corporate world, who remain rare indeed.

There is another key line, when Romy’s assistant (Sophie Wilde) says “I genuinely thought women with power would behave differently.” What Reijn deliberately leaves unclear is the extent to which the implication there is or is not correct: is Romy behaving just like the other men in her position? We could argue about this for hours, and that, perhaps more than anything, is what makes this movie great.

Move over Nicole, I’m next!

Overall: A

THE END

Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C+
Music: B

I went in to The End really wanting to like it. The premise is right up my alley—a postapocalyptic musical about a family fraying at the seams after twenty years in an underground bunker. “Bunker” is a bit misleading; Tilda Swinton’s character, here credited only as “Mother,” has saved priceless pieces of art from the surface, and decorated all of their walls with them. We get many close-up shots of painted skies and clouds, the closest thing we get to seeing real versions of such things in the entire film.

I get that many details are completely irrelevant to the plot of this film, but there were so many that defied logic that I found it distracting. We never see any exterior walls to this structure this family lives in—Mother (Swinton), Father (Michael Shannon), Son (George MacKay), Friend (Bronagh Gallagher), Butler (Tim McInnerny), and Doctor (Lennie James). These six have been living in this self-sustaining underground home for over twenty years. We know this because it was twenty years ago the last time anyone tried to come after them from the surface.

But now, a stranger has managed to penetrate, and is found unconscious, no one with any idea how she got in. I watched the entire film thinking they were in cavernous snow caves, only to discover when I looked it up after getting home that, apparently, they are deep down a salt mine. Still, plenty of questions remain unanswered. All we know is, the group tentatively agrees to take the stranger in. She is played by Moses Ingram, credited here as “Girl.”

Over time, this young woman reveals that she is the last surviving member of her family, and she begs to stay with these people because she cannot survive on the surface. She sure looks well fed, though—not fat, but perfectly normal. You’d think she’d be as emaciated as she was desperate, but these are not details director and co-writer Joshua Oppenheimer is concerning himself with. Instead, the story focuses instead on how her presence gradually reveals how this wealthy family has spent decades both lying to each other and kidding themselves.

Normally, I would be really into this, except that The End spends a lot of its extended runtime—148 minutes—with very little actually happening, aside from them singing, to themselves or to each other. Oppenheimer’s choice to make the singing fully unironic is a bold one I can respect. The singing abilities run the gamut; neither Tilda Swinton or Michael Shannon are very good at it; George MacKay and Moses Ingram are much better at it. What’s more, the limited setting allows for little in the way of variety: we either see people sining inside a home amongst the paintings, or out in the salt caves.

I just couldn’t quite connect with The End, and not for lack of trying. This is like a quiet family drama where the family members happen to break out into song. And what of the music, then? It’s serviceable. It’s not bad, but neither is it particularly catchy or memorable. The accompanying orchestrations are pleasant. Much like Emilia Pérez, the point of making this a musical is never readily apparent. I would propose that this film would be both a more reasonable length and more compelling without the songs.

The performances are solid across the board—something we can reliably count on with both Tilda Swinton (her somewhat distracting dark haired wigs notwithstanding) and Michael Shannon. There is real depth to mine in these strained relationships. I just found myself preoccupied with unanswered questions, such as where they get the eggs they eat from, when we never see any live animals down there. And if the stranger could survive that long on the surface, why do these characters never go up there? Surely there’s stuff they could scavenge. But I guess they are all committed to their insulation, as is this largely impenetrable movie.

A talented cast offers music without passion.

Overall: B-

NIGHTBITCH

Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B

I’ll give Nightbitch this much: it’s deeply engaging from start to finish. Some of the time you may not quite understand what’s so compelling about it, or indeed what the overall point is, but it’s still engaging.

It’s also very, very odd. It’s a layered film, in that it has layers of oddness. One particularly odd thing is how it moves back and forth from being a little too on the nose, and being metaphorically opaque.

This is the story of a woman (Amy Adams) who turns into a dog, after all. It’s confusing to her at first, but ultimately becomes her means of being set free, specifically from her resentment toward motherhood being far more overwhelming than she expected. Why a dog? You got me there. It occurred to me that it was possible I was having a gendered reaction to this heavy-handed yet unclear metaphor—I cannot have children, so who am I to judge? Sort of to my relief, it appears that other critics’ reviews of this film are pretty evenly mixed between the genders, whether they quite liked it or they didn’t.

The script, co-written by director Marielle Heller, is far more muddled than the previous feature film for which she wrote the script, The Diary of a Teenage Girl. And if the script isn’t great, it matters less when everything else is great. Nightbitch opens with the mother and son at the grocery store, and when another young mom sees her and asks how she’s doing, she immediately fantasizes about unloading all of her frustrations. It is no doubt very relatable to just about any mother, but also filled with sentiments we have heard many times over. One might even be tempted to call it deeply unoriginal.

The curious thing with Nightbitch is that Amy Adams’s stellar performance makes up for far more than it ought to. She’s incredible in this movie—both as a frustrated mother, and as a woman turning into a dog at night. She bites into this role with no vanity, giving us a performance on film more memorable than anything she’s done in nearly a decade. Nightbitch is almost worth seeing just for her alone.

I’m glad I saw it, anyway. I’m not going to urge anyone else to rush out and see it. I do love that Heller is uninterested in taking any particular moral stance on motherhood: there is no judgment here, and if there is anything done deftly in this script, it’s the adorable little boy (played by twins, Arleigh and Emmett Snowden), who is never anything but a perfectly normal toddler. There are no “special needs” or unusually challenging behaviors that set the mother off the edge. He won’t fall asleep when his mom wants him to, just like virtually any other kid. This is about motherhood being overwhelming no matter what the kid is like, and Nightbitch exists only to empathize with that—and with the quiet cluelessness of a husband (Scoot McNairy) who assumes he’s being supportive while never truly seeing the burdens of parenthood that he rarely thinks to engage with.

All of that is what I understand about Nightbitch. It’s the whole dog business that throws me. She develops heightened senses, particularly of smell, and starts to attract other neighborhood dogs to her door, who bring her dead animals as offerings. She starts to deeply hate the household cat, which makes for a few moments of good comedy even if it’s a little weirdly off the mark: dogs tend to be very affectionate toward cats if they are part of the same household. There’s a particular group of three dogs that keep coming around, and I began to wonder if other women are turning into dogs too, and perhaps we are meant to understand these dogs are actually the three other moms that keep chatting up our protagonist at the storytime group she brings her son to. But, there is never any clarity on this.

I do wish Heller had drawn a bolder line between what might be merely in this mother’s imagination, and how “real” what she’s going through actually is. The mother tells her husband about strange hair growths, but never shows him the tail that starts growing out of her lower back, or the extra sets of nipples that appear on her abdomen. The husband just keeps moving along in blissful ignorance, which I suppose is part of the point.

There are no named characters in Nightbitch’s primary family, by the way—this is why I have not referred to any of them by name here. Amy Adams is credited as “Mother”; Scoot McNairy as “Husband,” and the different types of descriptors there seems very deliberate. The little twin boy actors are credited as “Son.” Even in flashbacks, Kerry O’Malley is credited as “Mother’s Mother.” There’s something to this, how family roles erase previous identities. Again, it could have been illustrated with greater clarity.

Mother does use the word “Nightbitch” at one point in the film, because of her getting snippy with the Husband in the middle of the night when it’s only reasonable he take a turn dealing with the boy. Heller then very much literalizes the idea, and turns Mother into a bitch. Maybe the idea is that being a bitch is surprisingly freeing—although, as a dog, Mother sure sprints through the streets in the middle of traffic a lot. If this happened in real life, she’d get run over by a car her first night out. Even this interpretation of “bitch” as a metaphor has no clean application, however, as Mother is only a bitch in the behavioral sense a couple of times. She turns into a dog to get some space away from the tedious frustrations of motherhood, which is pretty distinct from being a bitch. Then again, many people would judge such a woman to be a bitch whether it’s fair or not, so maybe I’m walking right back into the point here.

There’s some real weight to that maybe though, when Nightbitch is arguably—and admirably—Marielle Heller’s most ambitious work to date, but also her most challenging to make clear sense of.

Bitch please.

Overall: B