by Jacob Jones Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Well, it’s finally that time: time to reveal our Top 10 Movies of 2024. It’s been a long and often uneven journey. We weren’t always able to review everything we liked, but we made a concerted effort to focus on what we loved as much as we possibly could. We also didn’t get to see absolutely everything we’d hoped to get to before the release of this list, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with 2024 movies once this list is public; there’s still a good deal to catch up on, and still a lot of quality cinema left to discover as we charge headlong into 2025. 2024 was a tough year for movies in some respects, with the SAG and WGA strikes affecting much of the intended release slate through the calendar year, forcing studios to delay major projects, films to shift release dates back, then forward, then back again, and generally gutting the summer release slate for tentpole projects, leaving a few films like Longlegs, Inside Out 2, Twisters, and Deadpool & Wolverine to hoist theaters aloft on their own shoulders and keep things moving as best they could (unintentionally allowing studios like A24 to fumble hard with release plans for otherwise immense awards-season undertakings like the botched rollout of Sing Sing). But if anything stays consistent in the big, beautiful world of cinema, it’s that nothing is certain, including the future. As we’re thrust into a new era in U.S. politics, Hollywood seems more poised than ever to become a target of the Trump machine, a machine that hates and fears stories that stand up for, celebrate, and acknowledge all different kinds of people while examining what makes humanity turn on itself in the way it has now and excavating how such vitriol and gleeful evil can propel itself to power. Who knows where movies will be four years from now, if indeed this nightmare is to end at that time? And who knows if movies will even be permitted to exist in the same way? In any case, we had 2024, and hopefully, later down the line, we’ll have those years of movies to look back on too. A few notes before we begin. These are not full reviews of the films included; for those films for which we did full reviews, we will link them next to the titles so as to make them easier to find. Secondly, these are not selections for what we believe are the objective ten “best” films of the year – no one can watch literally every single film released in a calendar year to accurately make that kind of judgement, no matter how objective they attempt to be – but rather a list of our ten favorites overall, ranked according to a blend of overall quality and personal taste. If readers would keep those two things in mind, they might understand why certain films which frequently appear on other Top 10 lists do not make appearances here. And now, it’s time. Here, at last, are our Top 10 Movies of 2024! 10. A Different Man Aaron Schimberg’s black-as-night comedy about self-image and insecurity is one of 2024’s most unconventionally entertaining movie experiences. Featuring Sebastian Stan as a man living with a facial deformity, the film turns after he gets a highly experimental surgery, leading him to look like…well, like Sebastian Stan. The face removing sequence in the film is one of the year’s most immediately memorable and genuinely upsetting moments as the audience is forced to sit with it as though a monster is being created rather than “defeated.” The real kicker comes in with the introduction of Adam Pearson to the film, who (both in the film and in real life) possesses the same facial deformity as Stan’s character, but whose life seems entirely driven by the upside of all he’s still able to do. Schimberg’s script and astute direction allow the film to walk an impossible tightrope, never veering into outright comedy but never letting go of its sense of humor about the whole situation. Stan and Pearson both are excellent in their parts, perfectly pairing off each other as Pearson’s charm only seems to drive Stan’s insecurity and deep-seated need for people to like him no matter what he looks like. The first of a few different A24 films on this list, it’s another in a long line of interesting projects for the studio, and a siren call to anyone unaware of Aaron Schimberg to keep a sharp eye out for whatever he does next. 9. Nosferatu Robert Eggers has become one of the great auteurs in movies, a director with a command of craft and dedication to authenticity in period storytelling not often found even through the storytelling medium’s centuries of existence, so when it was announced that he would direct a remake of the classic Nosferatu story, I stayed my mind’s reflexive disappointment that he wouldn’t be doing something original this time around, and allowed myself to look forward to his take on the material. While I don’t ultimately think it is his best work to date, however (that still belongs to The Lighthouse), it is by far his largest project with the most stunning attention to craft that I’ve seen in a film in quite some time. Eggers is not typically a jump-scare enthusiast, but the one time he utilizes the trick in Nosferatu is unexpectedly terrifying, and the implications of the titular character’s mission are not only gross but deeply uncomfortable. Where the film finds its great strength beyond crafts, though, is in the performances of Lily-Rose Depp and Nicholas Hoult, particularly Depp, whose work in the film should – in any just world – immediately thrust her into the Best Actress conversation. Depp’s performance doesn’t simply underscore the idea of women’s sexual desires in this time period being understood as manifestation of disease but accentuates it with a performance at once attracted to Count Orlok’s power and terrified by that same attraction. And speaking of Orlok, Bill Skarsgård is entirely unrecognizable as the iconic vampire, in both sight and sound. The makeup team did remarkable work, but credit should be given to Skarsgård as well for his terrific voice work. I’m sure there will be thing I notice and re-examine upon the home release of the film, especially in relation to the 1922 original, but for the time being, I can’t think of a better period horror film in recent memory than this. 8. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat The only documentary to make it onto this Top 10, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is a remarkable combination of sound and image to tell a story many of 2024’s films aren’t bold enough to tell in such explicit terms. The film focuses on the political machinations of The film focuses on the 1961 assassination of Congolese civil rights leader Patrice Lumumba and all the political machinations that led to it, including and especially the involvement of the CIA in recruiting Black American musicians to infiltrate Lumumba’s inner circle. While the film itself can be overwhelming at first blush, throwing information at the viewer left and right to the point where one occasionally has to pause and rewind just to re-orient themselves in the narrative (if one even has that ability), the sheer level of editing and archival collecting it must have taken to put the whole thing together could land it on this list by itself. As it happens, it’s also incredibly engaging on a narrative level, and a wildly fascinating look into a seldom-discussed yet critical turning point in world events. 7. The Substance The fact that a hard-genre body horror film from the director of Revenge is openly competing for above-the-line Oscars is an amazing indication of just how far the Academy has come the last several years in its embrace of different kinds of storytelling, and Coralie Fargeat’s fast and furious rage-fest against the beauty standards women are held to as they age is more than worthy of whatever nominations AMPAS gives it come Thursday morning. Demi Moore turns in her best performance to date as Elizabeth Sparkle, able to meaningfully connect her own career having done many parts centering on her own body, and bringing all the fury of having dealt with casting directors, costumers, producers, executives, and gross men in positions of immense power to the fore. Meanwhile, Margaret Qualley ascends to superstardom as Sue, cementing herself as an essential actress to watch in whatever she chooses to do, and playing a perfectly self-involved foil to Elizabeth’s self-loathing. Beyond all of that, though, this is a body horror movie, and the second the viewer thinks they’ve seen a relatively tame effect, the film rachets up the makeup by a thousand, somehow topping itself scene after scene, though never getting more disgusting than Dennis Quaid loudly and messily eating shrimp at a lunch table. The makeup work in this movie is on a whole other level, with its wild third act serving as a both a capstone to the film’s ideas and a hard swerve into genre territory. If Coralie Fargeat is nominated for Best Director, it will be a historic moment for genre horror in movie history. Full Review Here 6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga Following up an action movie as perfect and unexpectedly masterful as Mad Max: Fury Road would be an impossible task for any other director, so credit given where credit is due; Furiosa may not be as perfect a film as Fury Road was on the whole, but it’s also aiming for something quite different, an epic revenge odyssey spread across decades which is much more character-focused than plot based. Magnificently directed by George Miller, the film is yet another example of how no one in the world understands the Mad Max universe, or indeed the balls it takes to really do this kind of action filmmaking, quite like he does. At 79 years old, Miller is directing sequences like the War Rig chase and the Bullet Farm escape better than even the most skilled people could at less than half his age, and to witness someone so in command of their craft that a nearly three-hour revenge odyssey remains as engaging as this one does is a privilege it’s a shame more people didn’t opt into when the film was in theaters. Anya-Taylor Joy shines as the film’s titular character, able to communicate so much in her face without speaking a word, but it’s Chris Hemsworth’s Dementus who ends up stealing the show in the actor’s finest performance to date, and the final showdown between the two will go down as one of the best endings in all of action filmmaking. Full Review Here 5. Challengers Between this and at the risk of spoiling our number four selection, there was seldom a better time to be a movie fan than this past spring, especially for those with particular admiration for Tom Holland’s new fiancée. Luca Guadagnino’s steamy sports drama starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist as a trio embroiled in a lust triangle in which tennis plays the central cog on which it all turns is not simply the sexiest movie of the year by far, but also the only one without an outright sex scene in its entire runtime. Guadagnino understands the raw excitement of desire better than just about any director working today, and is able to use his skill to thrill his audience by turning the very idea of love and connection into its own tennis match, culminating the whole thing in what is easily the best ending in movies from the whole past year. Almost everyone in this movie is giving career-best performances, and are directed at the perfect pitch for the story being told as Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’ best score since The Social Network blares across the speakers. Zendaya and Mike Faist both turn in some of their best work yet as Tashi Duncan and Art Donaldson respectively, but it’s Josh O’Connor’s Patrick Zweig who ends up stealing the show as the devious little shit-heel throwing a wrench into what would otherwise be a normal, healthy relationship dynamic. Between all of that and a crackling script chock-full of great dialogue (“you have a better shot with a handgun in your mouth” is an all-timer) and fully realized characters, it’s no wonder Challengers was easily one of the best movie theater experiences of 2024. If only the Academy felt the same way. Full Review Here 4. Dune: Part Two I’m already planning to crash out if the Academy refuses to recognize Denis Villeneuve’s efforts in directing once again, and the growing likelihood of Villeneuve being passed over – despite making an even better movie than he did with the first Dune – in favor of someone like Jacques Audiard makes it all the more infuriating that AMPAS wouldn’t consider Dune: Part Two one of year’s greatest directorial acheivements; after all, it’s not like some of them haven’t seen the movie or finished it, right?...Right?! In any case, Villeneuve’s second half adaptation of Frank Herbert’s beloved sci-fi novel (which I’m currently reading) is a masterful step up from where Part One left off, increasing the world-building, the story stakes, the character depth, and the level of artistry to such a degree that the film joins the conversation easily as one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made. Villeneuve’s understanding of the source material is second to none, and there are more than a few action sequences in this film that made my jaw drop in the theater for how masterfully they were handled. But it’s not only the sound, the VFX, the costuming, the makeup, the editing, the cinematography, and Hans Zimmer’s new score that are improved upon from the last film; the expansions made to Chani's character in adapting the book only serve to further enhance the compelling story, which acts as a warning against the idea of charismatic leaders who would sooner burn the world down than bypass a chance at revenge (now where have we encountered that before?). The entire ensemble is giving it everything they’ve got, including and especially Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson, who turn in even better performances here with more interesting stuff to do, but no one outsteps Austin Butler’s magnificent introduction as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, and once he’s on screen, almost every actor finds it difficult to match his freak no matter how good they are, try as Javier Bardem’s deceptively funny Stilgar might. To say much more would be spoiling the film for those who haven’t caught up to it somehow despite its $714 million gross at the box office, but in the shortest terms I can think to put it in, this is essential viewing for all sci-fi, movie, and Denis Villeneuve fans. 3. I Saw the TV Glow Now more than ever, it’s important that trans kids and trans people are seen, heard, and loved by those around them, and the first step in making sure all of those things happen is by recognizing the dysphoria that comes with questioning one’s sexual identity as a queer person in an environment where such things are frowned upon. Jane Schoenbrun’s masterful excavation of that dysphoria is what gives I Saw the TV Glow its power, especially as it relates to trans youth, as we’re shown what burying ourselves out of fear ultimately leads to. The ending of the film in the “Fun Zone” is one of the year’s most outright heartbreaking, shattering with intention the idea that one can truly live not being their full selves without ultimately suffocating themselves in the process. Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine are fantastic in this gorgeous-looking film with frames that will stop your heart, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call it an especially “scary” watch in the traditional or even indie sense, it belongs every bit to the horror genre for the queer community as The Substance or Nosferatu would for those outside of it. Looking at the whole of movies in 2024, there’s still nothing out there quite like this, and I hope sincerely that every person struggling with their sexual or gender identities gets a chance to see this film and feel as though they are not only understood, but cared for. Full Review Here 2. Sing Sing A24’s botched rollout of Sing Sing is the stuff of legend amongst cinephiles, as the film was meant to have a nationwide release over the summer following its TIFF premiere in 2023, which got turned into a limited release as the eventual nationwide date of August 2 only saw the film play a select number of theaters before a planned re-release to only 500 theaters on January 17. Suffice it to say, let’s hope those Academy screenings went off like gangbusters, because the lack of transparency around releasing the film to a wide audience that would have loved to actually get a chance to see it may have just cost it some key awards nominations, including Best Picture, if the PGA ten is anything to trust in that regard. (Amazon’s botched rollout of Nickel Boys is in the same boat.) Regardless of rollout though, Sing Sing is still one of the three best movies released at all in 2024, a film that revels in the fact that humanity needs art in order to be human, and to remind ourselves how we're all capable of dignity. Greg Kwedar’s drama about incarcerated persons at the Sing Sing correctional facility participating in an acting program for rehabilitation is the year’s most soulful and deeply felt film of the entire year, a film that revels in the fact that humanity needs art in order to be human, while art needs a human component to make it come to life, and to remind ourselves how we're all capable of royal dignity. It’s a miraculous achievement for everyone involved, especially those incarcerated who played themselves in the film. Colman Domingo turns in his best work to date, and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin is the acting discovery of the year, immediately ingratiating himself to the audience as the supporting performance of 2024. If and when you do get a chance to see this film in theaters, I would urge you to go immediately; you don’t want to miss how special this one is. Full Review Here 1. The Brutalist While it does seem the AI controversy for which the film received enormous backlash was blown way out of proportion, and despite my having put it at #1 when I was first drafting this ranking, I found myself struggling to justify keeping The Brutalist in this spot in the wake of such news. But then, I considered how I felt when I first saw the film all the way back in December, before anyone knew any of this, and well before director Brady Corbet had to set the record straight on the film’s minimalistic and (it would appear) quite industry-wide use of the tools at their disposal. For my own reasons, I find I cannot deny that experience, and the sheer power with which the film overtook my every waking thought for the week afterwards. The Brutalist remains, to put it bluntly, a monumental achievement of a film, an entirely new cinematic language in itself, harkening back to the epics of old like The Godfather or the ones of yester-year like There Will Be Blood, while simultaneously charting its own unique path forward, all to the sounds of Daniel Blumberg’s immediately iconic score, the best parts of which can all be found in the overture of the film. The epic three-and-a-half hour runtime – punctuated smartly by a 15-minute intermission – flies by in the viewing, and by the time it’s all over, one realizes that they’ve not felt a minute pass that didn’t absolutely need to be there. Personally, I love an epic that knows to embrace its length, rather than fear how many sales it will lose for lack of showtimes, and Brady Corbet is clearly not shy about how expansive his vision for the film – gorgeously shot by director of photography Lol Crawley on VistaVision – needed to be in order to tell this story. Adrien Brody turns in his best performance in the better part of twenty years as László Tóth, a Hungarian architect fleeing Europe post-WWII to come find a better life in America, only to discover that the mythical promise of the American dream is built by rich men on the backs of other people’s work, while Guy Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. is not simply one of 2024’s most despicable characters, but maybe Pearce’s best ever. Special attention must be paid, too, to Felicity Jones as Erzsebet, who doesn’t really show up until the second half, but afterwards becomes the humanitarian focal point as László begins to slowly erode before our eyes. Even Joe Alwyn – while never matching these three – turns in great work here under Corbet’s direction, and while some may find his character a bit exaggerated, I never saw that exaggeration as anything but intentional on behalf of the character himself. There will be a lot to say about The Brutalist in the coming months leading up to the Oscars on March 2 (much of it bad-faith complaints rather than actual criticism, such is the way of film twitter), so I won’t spend too long on it here, but if I could urge readers one point of caution: do not let your first time seeing this be at home on your couch. Different viewing experiences can alter one’s perception of just about any movie, but to fully feel the power of certain films, they need to be experienced on the biggest screen with the best possible sound, and this is one of those films. As I did at my first viewing, I could sit in the corner of the front row again, and still feel amazed at what I was seeing and hearing, such is the sheer power and might of it all, which is just one of so many reasons why The Brutalist is my favorite movie of 2024. Full Review Here And those are our picks for the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024! What movies did you like best this year? Anything you’d recommend we catch up on? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
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by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we wind down this journey to our Top 10 Movies of 2024, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the almost best in movies for the calendar year. Many of these films were some of our favorites of the whole year, but as there are only so many spots to fill out even within the shortlisted titles being considered for the Top 10, more than a few were bound to fall by the wayside. To that effect, we came up with the idea of “pre-honorable mentions,” a space for those films , more than a few were bound to fall by the wayside. To that effect, we came up with the idea of “pre-honorable mentions,” a space for those films that made us laugh, cry, scared us, moved us, impressed us, and challenged us, but just couldn’t make it over the finish line and out of longlist placement. (It’s important to note that this list does not act as a stand-in for the official Honorable Mentions of 2024, which is included with our Top 10 piece as a signifier of what else was included in the shortlist from which we found our choices.) This will be our final list before we unveil our Top 10 Movies of 2024, and there are more films included here than on most other lists, meaning our reflections on them may run a little more brief than usual. So, let’s not waste any more time in giving these films the recognition they deserve as well as we are able. These are the Pre-Honorable Mentions of 2024! Alien: Romulus When it was announced that director Fede Alvarez would be helming a new Alien project under the 20th Century Studios banner (i.e. under Disney), I instantly began looking forward to it – albeit with some healthy trepidation – and while the final product does feature imperfections in some fan service over-reliance that ultimately brings the overall product down a peg, that overall product was well worth the wait. Alvarez both understands the horror of Alien and the action sensibilities of Aliens better than almost any other director the franchise has yet brought in, though the horror elements in Romulus work stronger than the action elements overall. Between Alvarez’ confident pitching of the tones this movie walks, the great performances of its cast (especially David Jonsson), and the film’s fantastic set-pieces buoyed by stellar practical effects, Alien: Romulus is a long-sought victory for Alien sequels that manages to both honor the franchise’s roots while charting a new path forward. The Apprentice I’ve already written about this one in my Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2024, so I won’t spend too much time on it here, but suffice it to say, The Apprentice just might be the only piece of media about Donald Trump to release since his first Presidential term to actually examine the heart of his unconventional origins and the events ultimately responsible for his rise to power. Ali Abassi’s biopic centering on Trump’s early life isn’t so much interested in the Trump we know today as how the Ali Abassi’s biopic centering on Trump’s early life isn’t so much interested in the Trump we know today as how the (unfortunately) President-elect became who we know him to be, and places its focus squarely on the relationship between Trump and his infamously mysterious lawyer, the late Roy Cohn. The question alone makes Abassi’s biopic worth watching, but it’s the world-class performances of Jeremy Strong as Cohn and Sebastian Stan as Trump that ultimately put it a step above any other recent piece of Trump-centered media. A Complete Unknown The greatest magic trick that director James Mangold pulls in his biopic about the life of Bob Dylan as the folk icon came up through the 60’s into the start of his electric era is that he doesn’t really make it a biopic about Dylan’s life at all. Dylan by nature has always been a somewhat unknowable figure, and Mangold makes the wise decision not to attempt to figure him out but to showcase just how impossible it was, is, and always shall be to ever accomplish that task, this particular time period in Dylan’s career being the most openly reflective of that notion. Timothée Chalamet, of course, excels as Dylan, never imitating and always trusting the writing from James Mangold and co-writer Jay Cocks to carry the character, with Edward Norton turning in what might be his most low-key performance to date, as well as Boyd Holdbrook rivaling Joaquin Phoenix for the best on-screen Johnny Cash in a James Mangold film. Special attention must be paid, though, to Monica Barbaro, who not only learned to sing for the part of Joan Baez, but learned to sing exactly like Baez herself, one of the most iconic voices in music history. She’s really excellent in the film, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her show up with an Oscar nomination to her name come Thursday. Dahomey Clocking in at barely over an hour, Mati Diop’s Dahomey is among the most beloved documentaries of the year, and it’s not hard to see why. Chronicling the return of 26 artifacts plundered by French colonialism to their original home in Benin, Diop’s urgent call for repatriation is as captivating as it is digestible, partly told through narration via one of the artifacts, partly through a meeting of Benin leaders and citizens concerning the events of the film and what they mean to both the plundered and the plunderer. The sound design is shockingly underrated even from those whom I’m aware have seen the film, and while I can’t say much both due to the film’s brevity and its relatively simple framework, the journey of watching it is one of the most moving one can have in any year it’s viewed. Didi Coming-of-age stories from indie studios are nothing new, but coming-of-age in the digital age is an especially tricky feeling to pull off well without seeming either condescending or simply too inexperienced to tackle such a delicate subject. Luckily, Sean Wang throws Didi into the mix at exactly the right pitch, capturing the adolescent anxiety of growing up in a time where everything around you is now being immortalized, and every decision you make feels like your social life literally depends on it. Joan Chen gives an Oscar-worthy turn as Wang Wang’s mother, and while it’s not an especially revolutionary character for her to be playing, she plays it with such grace and poise that one could be forgiven for forgetting that it’s a performance at all. For YouTubers especially, this movie is a different kind of special. Evil Does Not Exist Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car was among the most celebrated films of 2021, going so far as to earn Oscar nominations for both Best Picture and Best Director, so why is it that his existentially reflective follow-up, Evil Does Not Exist, seems to have passed so many would-be enthusiasts by? One could asset that this is due to Japan’s passing it up as their submission for Best International Feature this year, opting instead to back Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud (which recently announced a summer 2025 release date in the U.S.). Or, as in many cases with smaller films such as this, it could be that the summer 2024 release was so limited that the film simply didn’t gain enough traction for Japan to push a filmmaker whose work has already been widely recognized on the world stage. But if I were to tell it, to really, honestly tell it, I would say that believe it or not, Evil Does Not Exist is simply a much more low-key film than Drive My Car, and without a three-hour runtime to sustain its subtleties, its unassuming, ambiguous narrative could pass people by if they don’t examine it with the same vigor. There’s little risk of spoilers for this one because so little happens in it narratively speaking, but its thematic implications pack a significant amount of weight. It was recently issued on blu-ray through Criterion’s Janus Contemporaries label, so if – like me – you’re a regular collector of physical media, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot. Hit Man Between Top Gun: Maverick, Anyone But You, and now Twisters, there’s no denying the theatrical appetite for Glen Powell’s movie star charm, but it’s in Richard Linklater’s Netflix crime comedy Hit Man where he turns in his best work to date in that regard. Based on a real-life Texas Monthly story written by Skip Hollandsworth, the film stars Powell (who co-wrote the script with Linklater) as a college professor who moonlights as a fake hitman for the New Orleans Police Department, essentially setting up anyone looking to hire so they can be arrested and taken off the streets. Regardless of how casually the film seems to treat entrapment law in general, the ride itself is a blast, and Powell is clearly having the time of his life, especially when paired with Adria Arjona, with whom he has an unbelievable amount of on-screen chemistry. (I mean, I don’t know who wouldn’t have chemistry with Glen Powell, but still.) It’s a real shame this one never got a theatrical release; it would play exceedingly well with a crowd. Kill Of all the action movies to come out in 2024, Kill was not the best (and no, I have not seen Shadow Strays yet), but it was by far the gnarliest. How confident do you have to be in how good your movie is to drop the title card halfway through, knowing you’ve saved almost all of the best stuff for after that happens? Sure, you could call this John Wick on a moving train, but the truth is the violence enacted here is of a largely different variety. There are kills in this film I have never seen before, including one with a thrown lighter that readers will know when they see it as one of the coolest takedowns in any action movie. Lakshya Lalwani excels in the lead part, and the stunt work is some of the best than Indian cinema has to offer. Kinds of Kindness Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to the multi-Oscar-winning Poor Things may not be touching the same gold even given how unpredictable the current field is, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value, and it turns out I seemed to enjoy it more than most. The first of the short films within this themed collection is easily its best, touting a Jesse Plemons performance that absolutely could compete for Best Actor in a slightly weaker year (and in fact won him the same award at last year’s Cannes film festival), but the latter two are also just as off-kilter and unpredictably chaotic as that one. If you’re a Lanthimos fan, even if you consider this one of his weaker entries, it’s still an undeniable good deal of fun. Longlegs The most viral marketing campaign of 2024 prior to Wicked’s complete domination in the fourth quarter belonged to none other than Osgood Perkins’ Longlegs, and while it is an imperfect film to be sure, I haven’t yet encountered a film whose marketing so perfectly encapsulated just how creepy it actually turned out to be. No, it’s not outright scary or terrifying in a studio horror sort of way, but everything that creeped me out as a child was on full display here, pitched straight at the old 70s shag carpets and windowless basements I used to encounter all the time, and drenched in an atmosphere of dread we could only be carried through by two vastly underrated performances from Maika Monroe and Blair Underwood. The talk of the town for this one, though, is Nicolas Cage as the titular character, able to turn the things that usually make him entertaining or annoying to the opposite side of his fandom into the very things that make his under-your-skin creepiness so effective here. If you’re a horror fan, but somehow missed this over the summer, do yourself a favor and watch it in complete darkness. Memoir of a Snail I came late to the game on Memoir of a Snail, as I wasn’t able to watch it until it finally hit VOD, but once I finally was able to view it, I found myself completely unable to resist its myriad charms. The animation is incredible creative, the story is moving in ways I didn’t expect, and it’s often quite funny, though parents be warned, this is not an animated movie for kids. All told, this is probably the most underrated animated movie of the year without Transformers in the title, and one of the medium’s few genuine successes in 2024. Rebel Ridge Carry-On might well end up being the most popular movie in Netflix history, but it’s far from its best, even within the calendar year of 2024, and while I still have a few of their originals left to catch up on (which unfortunately won’t be considered for my Top 10 due to time constraints), it’s gonna be tough to beat Rebel Ridge, director Jeremy Saulnier’s revenge thriller about a former marine who gets caught up in small-town corruption when the police department enacts a civil asset forfeiture on the money he’s meant to use to bail out his cousin. It’s not exactly the most high-minded concept, but it’s handled in exactly the right way for a movie of its type, and once Emory Cohen yells at Don Johnson’s police chief to put some distance between himself and Aaron Pierre’s hulking frame, the film turns up to eleven and seldom comes back down. This is the movie future movie historians will point to (if they can find it without a physical edition) when they indicate where Aaron Pierre became an action star, and as perfectly pitched three-star rides go, this one is 2024’s absolute best. Sugarcane Watching Sugarcane directly after having finished “The Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead in preparation for that film left me with an eerie, unsettled feeling, so similar are the two stories in setting and tone. tone. This documentary from National Geographic, which is available to watch now on Disney+ and Hulu, centers on a group of Canadian natives who endured years of mental, physical, and sexual abuse at an Indian residential school on the Sugarcane reserve where many of the natives went missing and were never found again. The film is an investigation into the events surrounding the disappearances, as well as a search for any possible mass grave wherein the native dead are buried. It’s far from an easy watch, but in some small way, its existence offers some justice in telling the story of these Canadian Indians, reckoning with their past and acknowledging the hurt and loss they’ve suffered, even when the responsible parties seem unable to do even as little as that. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story You can read my full review for all my thoughts on this documentary, but suffice it to say, while it missing the Oscar shortlist for this category is disappointing, its presence at almost every other awards body’s events is a heartening thing to see. It may not do anything especially new to the documentary format, or even give us information on the titular Reeve that wouldn’t be easily available in public record, but it’s the way that directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui manage to tell Reeve’s story that makes the film so moving. Able to both excavate the super and celebrate the man, The Christopher Reeve Story deftly demonstrates to us all that, at least for a short while, we really did believe a man could fly. The Wild Robot As animated movies go, 2024 was not an especially strong year, and I don’t think it’s an unpopular notion amongst cinephiles that even within the cream of the crop, there were no outright masterpieces that rose to the top of the pack, no matter how charming or moving they were. What most people did seem to agree on is that neither of the best animated films of the year belonged to Disney or Pixar, and one of those two was Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot, which came to us from director Chris Sanders as he adapted the beloved children’s book with co-writer Peter Brown. The animation in Wild Robot is stunning, painterly without ever betraying the use of CG effects, but not so anti-CG that it looks truncated or any less smooth than it’s meant to. The story itself lacks a little emotional elevation, for my part (even if I do quite like Lupita N’yongo’s vocal performance), but so much of what makes this movie special is about the craft, including Kris Bowers’ excellent score which could Bowers himself an Oscar nomination. If you’re looking for an animated movie to watch with your kids, or even just for yourself, this is the best dialogue-inclusive one of the year. And those are our Pre-Honorable Mentions for 2024! Have you seen any of these films? Any guesses as to what triumphed over them in the Top 10? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! (Next up: The Top 10 Best Movies of 2024!)
- The Friendly Film Fan by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we wind down our last days to the Top 10 Movies of 2024, we wanted to take this opportunity to show some love to the films that unfortunately did not make the cut for either the top ten themselves or the Pre-Honorable Mentions list that we do each year. Whether these films just didn’t quite live up to what they could’ve been, or we simply liked some others more, that doesn’t mean that they weren’t worth watching, examining, or spending time with along with everything else; there’s just only so many slots available, and only so many films that have the ability to fill those slots. With that in mind, we’d like to recommend to viewers the films below. You may see some entries on this list that we didn’t initially give positive reviews to, or even some that we’ve not mentioned up to now; those films are on this list due to the artistic merit we still believe they possess, worthy of discussion and examination regardless of whether we liked them or not. We also didn’t include any movies that could be found on other rankings based on titles, so if you don’t see any here you’d swear we liked, check out our Most Underrated list or – in the event you’re reading this later on – our Pre-Honorable Mentions list (Top 5 Scenes & Movie Moments entrants may still be included). In any case, we think all of the films listed are worth at least one watch, even if you never see them again afterwards. We won’t do you the disservice of breaking them all down one by one (that would make this piece excessively long), so in the spirit of brevity with which this list was made, let's get started! Underlined titles will feature links to our full reviews of those titles. Here are our Recommended Movies of 2024!
And those are our recommended movies of 2024! We’ll update the list once or twice as we round out the rest of what we wanted to see for the year (those Oscar shortlists can take a bit to get through), but for now, what do you think of these films? Any we missed that you would have included? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! We’re mere days away from revealing our picks for the Top 10 Movies of 2024, but before that, I wanted to shout out some of my favorite scenes and sequences throughout the year. Whether they were watched in the theater or re-watched them at home, the five scenes listed here continued to impress and delight, and occasionally, even got a little scary; in any case, I just couldn’t wait to talk about them with everyone I knew that shared those experiences. To that end, and in case you haven’t read one of these before, the very nature of this list acts as its own SPOILER WARNING, as I’ll be going over these scenes in great detail so as to examine what makes them so remarkable. I also limited these choices to one scene per film, so at the risk of spoiling part of the list, the Harkonnen Spice Harvester sequence from Dune: Part Two will not be making an appearance among the five finalists. We’ve only selected one scene per film, so at the risk of spoiling part of the list, and as much as we would consider it one of the best single movie scenes of 2024, the Spice Harvester attack scene from Dune: Part Two unfortunately will not make an appearance among the Top 5. Also, while there were a great many films released in 2024 that I thoroughly enjoyed, those films are greater successes as the sum of their parts than they are as highlight reels for particular scenes or set-pieces; it’s for this reason that some of the films listed here won’t be found in our Top 10 of the year, and likewise, some of the films that are included in the Top 10 will not include any particular stand-out sequences by which to call attention to themselves. And now, with all of these disclaimers in mind, let’s take a look back at The Friendly Film Fan’s picks for the Top 5 Best Scenes & Movie Moments of 2024! 5. Gas Station Birth – We Live in Time While I wasn’t personally as high on John Crowley’s decades-spanning romance as a lot of people seemed to be, We Live in Time is still a lovely movie that any fan of romance stories should would enjoy watching, regardless of how many tissues they end up going through in the process. With stellar performances from Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, the film’s stand-out sequence sees Almut (Pugh) and Tobias (Garfield) stuck at a petrol station en route to the hospital as Almut is going into labor with their daughter. Unfortunately for both of them, and for the station employees who appear ready to close for the evening, the labor process is well underway and moving too fast for either Tobias or Almut to go anywhere else. The resulting birth sequence – which takes place in the station’s ladies restroom – is not the best sequence in the film, but one of the best sequences of 2024. Gross, hysterical, stressful, and magical all at the same time as the station attendants assist Tobias in delivering he and Almut’s child, it’s a true highlight of the film watching these two individuals bring a new life into the world they share, and the four people all stuck in the bathroom together feel like their own little family. It’s an inspiring picture of how, even in the most unusual of circumstances, people from all different walks of life can come together and facilitate the happening of a genuine miracle. 4. D.C. Raid – Civil War There was a lot written about Alex Garland’s Civil War when it opened in April of last year to largely positive reviews and some divisive letterboxd takes. Everyone wanted to see whether A24 could pull off supporting a movie of this budget scale, and how Alex Garland would follow-up his even more divisive Men with what would turn out to be his final directing project (at least for now) in an era where the U.S. seems poised to make its title a reality every other minute. What side would Garland take? What does a modern civil war in the United States even look like? What would the film say to audiences who were fearful of the plot in front of them being made manifest? Would the film capture the same nervous energy as its exceptional set of trailers? While the answers to those first questions vary from person to person as the film is more interested in excavating photo-journalistic responsibility amongst dramatically divisive political moments, that final question was met with a resounding “yes,” and in no sequence more so is the energy of the film felt than the arresting raid on Washington D.C. that begins the film’s terrifically intense finale. With gunfire everywhere, helicopters flying through the city streets as bombs topple monuments, and the team inching ever closer to the White House – where it’s rumored the sitting three-term President (Nick Offerman) is shored up – the sequence lasts right up to the minute the President is finally shot dead by the Western Forces military, ending his reign – and the film – on a note of ambiguity the viewer will never shake. It’s this sequence that cements Garland as one of the best filmmakers to ever do it from a craft perspective, and it’s likely to be the one that solidifies the film’s eventual Best Visual Effects nomination at the Oscars (even though it really should be in Best Sound too). 3. War Rig – Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga One has to give massive props to George Miller for not making Furiosa just a re-skin of the incredible Mad Max: Fury Road, but there is at least one 15-minute action sequence reminiscent of the franchise’s previous entry so epic that according to the actors and those involved with the production, it had to be shot over a 78-day period. The sequence in question shows viewers the birth of the iconic War Rig vehicle which Furiosa uses in Fury Road to transport the five wives of Immortan Joe across the desert. In Furiosa’s case, it’s the first time we see Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character in action, as well as her companion Pretorian Jack, one of the coolest characters George Miller has yet introduced to this world, even if he is essentially a stand-in for Max prior to Fury Road. The scene itself is a mini-epic inside the greater revenge epic of the film, demonstrating Miller’s ability at 79 years old to still craft and execute on the most insane action set pieces one’s ever seen committed to film. It’s so epic, in fact, we had to get the whole thing from a YouTube video split into two parts. You can check it out above (Part One on top). 2. Match Point – Challengers The back-and-forth between this and my number one spot was almost as intense and uncertain as the volley between Art (Mike Faist) and Patrick (Josh O’Connor) as they trade tennis racket blows for victory in the New Rochelle challenger match. At one point during a set, Patrick reveals to Art in the most telling of ways between the two that he and Tashi (Zendaya) slept together during a time when she and Art – her husband – were at a crossroads of conscience. Art becomes furious, but the sequence may not play out exactly as one might expect. Every bit of craft in the film reaches its apex here. The score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, the direction from Luca Guadagnino, the editing from Marco Costa. It is, no pun intended, the climax of the sexiest film of the year at its tail end, a release of all the frustration and games played between the two men, a game that Tashi has both orchestrated and participated in since the three met all those years prior. It was in that fateful meeting where Tashi mentioned the film’s ultimate thesis as she and an opponent of hers shared what she called a really beautiful moment together, both understanding the game and each other on a level no one in the crowd could, and it’s in this final match that Art and Patrick finally share that same feeling, at once understanding each other and the game in the fullest sense of each. Even as the number two movie scene on this list, it claims the top spot as the most electrifying ending of the year in movies. 1. Worm Ride – Dune: Part Two Although the Harvester attack sequence will go down as one of the finest sci-fi action sequences ever put to film and is a highlight of the movie in its own right, it’s Dune: Part Two’s masterwork of a centerpiece that sets itself apart from all other set-pieces to be the defining moment in movies of 2024. Having immersed himself in Fremen culture and taken up arms against the Harkonnens who slaughtered his family and attempted to wipe out his bloodline, Paul Atreides must face his final test to become a member of the Fremen clan by riding the great sandworm, what the Fremen call Shai-Hulud. It is the most dangerous task any Fremen can perform, and the way the sequence is shot and edited together, paired with Hans Zimmer’s magnificent score and sound design that likens the sandworm to a space shuttle taking off, practically lifts the viewer of their chair and ascends them to the heavens themselves. Dune: Part Two is a miracle of adaptation, one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made, and this is the singular jeweled moment inlaid in its 2024 movie moments crown. The fact that moments from both Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two landed atop my list of the best movie moments of their respective years should be reason enough for the DGA to re-evaluate their choice not to nominate Denis Villeneuve, and a stern warning to the Academy not to make the same mistake. And those were my picks for the Top 5 Best Scenes & Movie Moments of 2024! What scenes did you like best this year? How would you rank these five? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
by Jacob Jones Hello, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! As we rapidly approach the day upon which I will unveil my Top 10 Movies of 2024, I wanted to make sure I gave a special shout to some of the year’s more underrated films. While it wasn’t the strongest overall year for movies, there were plenty of them to celebrate, and a particular few that seemed to get passed over, whether by awards bodies or by critics – including myself – who perhaps don’t recognize their full value beyond the potential they provide for the filmmakers to improve with future projects. As is the case with every year, I haven’t seen everything that might qualify for placement on this list, so for those of you hoping to see things like Sasquatch Sunset or Snack Shack amongst the mentions may end up, this may be a disappointing journey; nevertheless, I do hope that the presence of these titles might prompt some of you to finally check them out or inspire you to give them a second look. After all, art is about constant evaluation and re-evaluation; maybe a few of these will mean something different to you now than they did when you first saw them! In either case, whether you’ve seen these films or not, I’m of the mind that perhaps they deserve a little more love than they’ve been given. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2024! 10. Nightbitch Marielle Heller’s part genre, part drama tale of a woman being driven so crazy by motherhood that she things she’s turning into a dog may not sound like the basis for a successful project, and in some senses, that might be true – the harder genre bits don’t work as well when paired with the other half of the film, and a few of its supporting elements lack enough cohesion or development to really justify their inclusions – but on the whole, Nightbitch is far better than its marketing would lead one to believe. Amy Adams’ committed performance is among her best work to date, and could certainly be counted as her best in several years, to the point where I wondered considerably if she had a legitimate shot at a SAG nomination. The film itself also deals with the trials of early motherhood and raising a (way-too-well-behaved) toddler in a way that a lot of other films about the subject can’t seem to parse, at least not with the nuance this carries. 9. Juror #2 We are in serious danger of forgetting just how good a director Clint Eastwood can be when films like Juror #2 are unceremoniously released to only 50 theaters and then shuttered off to streaming as a Max Original (I will never forgive David Zaslav for that). The film is imperfect, absolutely, but it’s still a far better film than anything with this much hockiness and sincere faith in the American justice system has any right to be. This is one of Eastwood’s best movies in years, and it’s unfortunate to think that it very well could be his last. I go back and forth on whether the ending is good or not, but it’s everything before – including Nicholas Hoult’s incredible leading performance – that makes the film so consistently engaging and worth spending time on. The scene in the garage in particular is among my favorite acting moments in all of 2024, and Hoult nails every subtle expression required in that sequence to both make you empathize with him and believe him a coward, with no clear lean toward either end. If you haven’t checked this one out yet, I’d highly recommend giving it a shot. 8. Cuckoo Sometimes all one needs is a deeply weird, odd-feeling horror movie to remind you that the genre can still surprise you with just how strange it can still be, and Tillman Singer’s Cuckoo is exactly the right kind of odd-ball horror that the genre needs to stay interesting. The film may not succeed at every turn, but the always-engaging Hunter Schafer holds it all together with a central performance essentially confirming what anyone who’s seen her act before already knew: she has real star power, capably carrying the film largely on her own shoulders. Of course, it helps that she has Dan Stevens to play off of, who looks like he’s having the time of his life getting to sink his teeth into such a weird, off-putting character. The thing that makes Cuckoo so underrated, though, is that even when it misses amongst all the shots it takes, the miss leads to somewhere interesting, a new avenue to explore or idea to consider. Even if the whole thing doesn’t ultimately land the plane, at least it’s a memorable flight. 7. Transformers One Shame, shame, shame on all organizations and awards groups with animation categories that passed by the far better than it had any right to be Transformers One. While I won’t contend that it would’ve actually stood a chance at winning the category for any awards body or critics group, it being left off the list for almost all of them – even the Globes, who had six slots available – is completely unjustifiable. Josh Cooley’s origin story for the iconic rivalry of Optimus Prime and Megatron isn’t just far from the disaster its trailers made it look like, it’s actually a genuinely heartfelt story of betrayal, division, and what it looks like when the truth is more than meets the eye. The voice performances from Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry carry some beautiful animation over the finish line, and the film’s final moments deserve to be answered by a sequel that unfortunately is unlikely to ever occur. This one deserves a lot more respect. 6. The Apprentice Trying to unpack the enigma of Donald Trump would be an impossible task even for the most seasoned of filmmakers. How do you even begin to understand someone so notoriously buffoonish that he wants to take over Canada, rename the gulf of Mexico, and keeps Elon Musk of all people close to the chest? How do you interrogate the character of someone so cartoonishly evil that he inspired a whole mob of people to attempt an insurrection after he lost his initial attempt at a second term as President? Well, as hard as he tries to convince us otherwise, Trump is a human being, and all human beings come from somewhere. Whether circumstantially or deliberately, he is the way he is for a reason. Ali Abbasi's biopic about Trump’s early life – and chiefly regarding his relationship with Roy Cohn, pitched here as the man who essentially created the Trump we know – doesn’t simply probe these uncomfortable questions, but refuses to give clear answers to them. It really is one of the most accomplished studies of a somewhat unknowable individual. It really is one of the most accomplished studies of a somewhat unknowable individual to come out in recent years, and major credit should go to star Sebastian Stan for keeping this movie in the cultural conversation regardless of how difficult the questions is asks are to face. Between Stan and co-star Jeremy Strong, there should be two guaranteed Oscar nominations, and all those publicists that refused to pair their stars with Stan for Variety’s Actors on Actors series should feel a deep shame in avoiding the elephant in the room – the exact opposite of what the best art does. 5. Between the Temples Starring Jason Schwartzman as a cantor in the midst of a crisis of faith whose former grade school music teacher approaches him to inquire about having her own Bat Mitzvah, Between the Temples is just as crazy, funny, discomforting, charming, strange, and deeply endearing as its plot can manage to allow. The chemistry between Schwartzman and his co-star Carol Kane is off the charts, the latter of the two absolutely radiating a bouncy energy that perfectly compliments Schwartzman’s trepidation around just about everything he does. The film also features some of the year’s most daring filmmaking moments, and resolves in a way that both enriches itself and leaves viewers to wonder: where do these characters even go from here? 4. Thelma No, this is not the International Feature contender from 2017 directed by Joachim Trier; this Thelma is hoping to steal Tom Cruise’s stunt crown and become the new Queen of Stunts. At 93 years old, June Squibb – whom most readers would probably know from her work in the film Nebraska – does all her own stunts in one of the year’s sweetest films with a sincere sense of humor about itself. Thelma is an absolute joy, boasting not only one of my favorite lead performances of the year from Squibb, but one of the most underrated supporting turns as well from the late Richard Roundtree in what would turn out to be his final part. Almost every joke lands, and any movie that joins Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Fred Hechinger together to make up the family taking care of June Squibb deserves not only a lot more respect, but a lot more attention. 3. Wicked Little Letters It came out relatively early in the year, so one could be forgiven for forgetting that it even released this year at all, but Wicked Little Letters – which had its U.S. release in March – is one of 2024’s most charmingly naughty tales. Starring Jessie Buckley as a woman accused of writing a series of heinous letters in a pious community, and Olivia Colman as the letters’ recipient, the film is a great deal of fun, especially in the back and forth between its leading stars. Give two of the U.K.’s best actresses working today a shot at a small-time script, and they’ll milk it for all its worth. The film is streaming on Netflix for those inclined to take a watch. 2. Strange Darling One of the things that excites me most as I grow as a critic and branch out through all different kinds of filmmaking is the discovery of a new voice I hadn’t yet known. That’s exactly what happened when I saw Strange Darling, a new horror film from J.T. Mollner that feels like the director – along with cinematographer Giovanni Ribisi, who shot the gorgeous-looking movie on 35mm film – emerging as a new voice in the horror space, and an exciting one to discover at that. Of course, it helps that scream king Kyle Gallner is involved to offer the project the notoriety it needs to get it off the ground, but its Willa Fitzgerald’s multi-layered lead performance that ended up taking me completely by surprise. Even in seeing the trailers for the film, I had no idea where it was supposed to go, and if you think you might wanna take a chance on it, I’d recommend – at the risk of spoiling an element of the plot – that you go in as blind as possible. The next film on the list might be more underrated overall, but this by far was my favorite surprise of the year. 1. Daddio Over the summer, in June, a little movie released nationwide called Daddio. It wasn’t a large release, and in fact I didn’t get to see it until much later, but I couldn’t believe how few people were talking about it. Dakota Johnson stars as a woman coming back home from a family visit, with Sean Penn giving his best performance in years as her cab driver. The whole movie, right up to its ending, takes place inside this New York taxi cab, a simple conversation between two people that becomes far deeper and more meaningful than any conversation between a cab driver and passenger has any right to be, let alone a conversation that lasts almost 90 minutes. Both characters unveil layers to themselves throughout that surprise in small ways, and yet we know both of them completely from minute one; they’re fully realized, but never fully evolved. Frankly, there’s not a lot else to say about Daddio because there’s not much to the filmmaking itself, but if readers are looking for a good, solid bottle movie that won’t eat at their time and will leave them feeling good at the end of the day, I can’t think of a more underrated film experience from 2024 than this one. And those are my picks for the Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of the 2024! What movies did you think were undervalued this year? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
by Jacob Jones Well, ladies and gentlemen, that time has finally come – the time to reflect on the year’s end and celebrate all the cinematic gifts 2024 had to offer, and of course this means the beginning of the 2024 end-of-year Top 10 lists. While it hasn’t been the strongest movie year overall, there were plenty of films deserving of celebration (which we will get to in due time), and plenty of film marketing worthy of that very same praise. To that end, it’s time to unveil the first of these lists, and begin the countdown all the way to the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024. Whether the films on this list ultimately lived up to their advertising or not is another conversation altogether, but the participants in this particular countdown demonstrated once more that the craft of making advertisements in the first place is an art form in itself. Without further ado, here are our picks for the Top 10 Movie Trailers of 2024! 10. Superman | Official Teaser Trailer The production of James Gunn’s Superman (formerly titled Superman: Legacy) has been extensively covered by just about every entertainment news outlet on the planet, sometimes daily. Perhaps the most anticipated film of this year relative to box office expectations and tone-setting for an entirely new brand of DC films under Gunn’s new leadership, the pressure has never been more on to make a film which honors the titular character’s core faculties while also delivering on something entirely new. To that end, the trailer doesn’t give much of the film’s plot away at all; in fact, the title for the movie itself isn’t even included with all the footage we’re shown, so understood is the film’s subject and remix of John Williams’ iconic theme (perhaps the greatest singular piece of music the maestro has ever made). What we are shown are a lot of soon-to-be iconic images in brief flashes – a seemingly buffoon-ish Clark Kent towering over the other citizenry of Metropolis, a no-nonsense Lois Lane kissing both Superman and Clark, a never-balder Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, Krypto the Superdog coming to rescue his owner after what’s clearly been a rough fight – as well as an establishment of tone as Superman puts himself between danger and a little girl walking the streets, and a young boy in an unknown warzone holds up a flag, willing the Man of Steel to come and save them. Given the gravity of its subject, the trailer’s placement may seem a bit low on this list, but with such limited footage and only vague glimpses at things we haven’t seen before, there’s not a whole lot higher a mere teaser for a film still seven months from release can fly. 9. Sinners | Official Trailer Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan are a match made in movie heaven, much like Jordan Peele and Daniel Kaluuya, but as those latter two don’t have a film releasing until 2026 (at least on Peele’s part), the old south vampire thriller Sinners from the former team will have to do. The trailer – again merely a teaser for a film still months from release – went against many expectations viewers had for the film, chiefly by revealing the story’s setting and the fact that Jordan himself would be playing twin brothers in a dual performance alongside some terrific IMAX photography and a never-more-popular Hailee Steinfeld. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to miss MBJ’s canon arms mowing down whatever’s on the other end of those final bullets in theaters. 8. Trap | Official Trailer As with the previous two entries on this list, the most exciting thing the first trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap revealed was the premise of the film: a man named Cooper attends a concert with his daughter in tow, only to be told that all the extra security present at the venue – and the concert itself – is an elaborate set-up to catch a notorious serial killer known only as The Butcher. The kicker? Cooper is that very same Butcher. Unfortunately, the film itself – while underrated in its own right as a meta commentary on involving one’s own family in your work – failed to live up to the expectations of its stellar marketing run, but that first trailer nonetheless was a bolt of lightning for exciting new thrillers in an otherwise rather underwhelming summer blockbuster season. 7. Saturday Night – Official Trailer (HD) Speaking of bolts of lightning, while I enjoyed Saturday Night a good bit, there’s no question that its first trailer captured the manic energy of producing never-before-attempted live television glory better than even the movie did. That may seem like harsher criticism than it’s meant to, but without a trailer as fast-paced as this, full of young stars and mounting complications in every second, and driven by a literal ticking clock as the first episode of SNL struggles to make it to air, the film would have been a total flop at the box office. The film is good, to be sure, but nothing in it can match the heights this trailer took us to on the silver screen. You can read my full review of the film here. 6. Juror #2 | Official Trailer Clint Eastwood is 94 years old and still churning out some of the most thrilling premises – and trailers – any fan of movies could ever ask for. The trailer begins with Nicholas Hoult, the protagonist of this story, recounting to a lawyer what happened a year before when he may have accidentally hit a deer during a rainy drive home from a local bar; the intrigue of the film is that he’s also one of the selected jurors in a murder trial, and may have hit the victim instead of an animal. That’s not only a great premise for moral conflict in a movie, it’s a built-in thriller ripe for theaters, which is what makes it so perplexing and frankly maddening that WB CEO David Zaslav opted to only put the film in 50 theaters before shoving onto the Max streaming service at the tail end of the year. Still, the trailer was an impressive one, and made us all wonder whether Eastwood had one more Oscar juggernaut in him before he left us for good. 5. Megalopolis – Teaser Trailer A project over 20 years in the making, Megalopolis is a fascinating misfire of a film for Francis Ford Coppola, but for a long time, people wondered if it was ever coming out at all. Produced by Coppola using his own money from decades of sales and doing other projects to pay debts accrued during previous productions, the ludicrously expensive film lacked distribution despite its stacked cast and well-regarded director. So when the teaser trailer for the film finally dropped on Coppola’s own YouTube channel, it felt like an old master declaring his return to once more to the silver screen, a triumphant comeback for one of the best to ever do it. It’s still one of my favorite trailers released in 2024, and if the film had lived up to all the glories it promised within those first minutes of footage we received, we might have been talking about one of the best films not only of the year, but of the decade to date. 4. Conclave – Official Trailer [HD] Coming off of All Quiet on the Western Front’s enormous Oscar success, Edward Berger had something to prove with his next feature. Was his success the result of his own talents or the product of adapting one of the great novels of all time for the modern age? And what was he going to do next? It could have been another grand-scale epic with large ideas and larger-than-life action sequences, but instead Berger turned his eye toward adapting an airport thriller like a lengthy toxic workplace episode, and Conclave is all the better for it. The trailer for the film lays it all out: Edward Berger directing, Ralph Fiennes starring, score by Volker Bertelmann, and a premise based on electoral politics during an election year – the timing could not have been more appropriate. That the film largely lives up to the expectations set by its initial unveiling is a miracle worthy of praise in itself. You can read my full review of the film here. 3. Monkey Man | Official Trailer In the early days of the year – January specifically – the first trailer for Dev Patel’s directorial debut, Monkey Man, dropped like a lit stick of dynamite and quickly became one of the favorite trailers of cinephiles the world over. The bone-crunching action, cut to the sounds of Panjabi MC and Jay-Z’s “Beware of the Boys,” echoed through the theater speakers and every. single. cut. counted for something. The trailer sent a jolt of anticipatory energy into the stratosphere of moviegoers’ worlds, and with Dev Patel in the lead part, having produced the film so hard that stories about him apparently breaking his hand during a take began to surface around the same time the trailer released, there was no way Monkey Man was going to be anything less than something special. The film itself doesn’t quite live up to the trailer’s revelatory editing, but there’s still some incredible work within it, including a dining room fight that still ranks among my favorite action sequences this year. You can read my full review of the film here. 2. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story | Official Trailer To understand why Superman means so much even to people who didn’t grow up reading comics, such as myself, one has to understand Christopher Reeve’s embodiment of the character. Able to play both the shy and book-ish Clark Kent and the strong, towering personality of Superman simply by changing his voice and posture within a single scene, there was no one – and there’s likely to be no one ever again – who so thoroughly understood the dichotomy of the Super and the Man. What’s underscored by this film’s marketing is that Reeve in particular understood both his own iconography and how important it was for him to project his humanity to the world so that they might all feel super in their own ways, particularly with his work in paraplegic spaces following his tragic accident. The trailer for Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, despite some text cutaways that seemed a tad generic for a documentary about a well-known celebrity, is a triumph of editing and musical composition as the Kryptonian and Superman themes comes together to celebrate the life of the original man of steel, at least in movie history. There’s a reason it inspired grown men to cry in reacting to it, and it's because of how much people still value Christopher Reeve as a person and Superman as an icon of hope. You can read my full review of the film here. 1. 28 Years Later – Official Trailer (HD) I have something of a confession to make: I’ve never seen Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (rectifying that soon), nor have I seen 28 Weeks Later, its purportedly less successful and less beloved sequel, though the latter does appear to have its defenders. That said, if anything was going to get me to watch them as soon as they were available and I found myself with a few hours to spare, it’s the stellar first trailer to the franchise’s third entry, 28 Years Later, which is once more directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. While the initial moments of the trailer harken back to the series’ previous entries, the bulk of it is made of a cacophony of stunning images, set against the sounds of Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots,” a poem published in 1903, which is being recited in a 1915 recording by Taylor Holmes. The recitation of the poem has an incredibly eerie effect on the viewer, almost forcing them to reckon with the terror about to unfold, and if the accompanying imagery is anything to go by, this new trilogy starter could well be one of the most haunting moviegoing experiences of 2025. And those are my picks for the Top 10 Movie Trailers of 2024! What were some of your favorite trailers this year? Anything I missed in the Honorable Mentions? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
by Jacob Jones Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! In our last Oscars piece, we went over all this season’s major Oscar contenders, but they are not the only films vying for gold this season. There are still plenty of films outside of the major contenders that have a solid chance at sneaking into some nomination fields, whether below-the-line or above, the only differences being they’re unlikely to be competitive across a wide spectrum of Oscar categories, or they’re simply not as big of releases as those discussed in the other piece. As with last time, this is not a fully comprehensive list of everything competing for Oscar glory, but more of a guide as to where things could be heading. There’s still plenty of time for momentums to rise and drop, category shifts to take place, and things to change dramatically throughout the awards season regarding what constitutes a major or minor contender. With all that said, let’s dive right in. Here are this season’s minor Oscar contenders! WHAT’S ALREADY HERE The Apprentice Despite having released nationwide over the October 11 weekend, it’s still unclear just how strong this Donald Trump/Roy Cohn biopic really is in terms of awards contention. For my own part, I found it to be tremendously entertaining, buoyed by two fantastic central performances from Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. Stan is the most obvious contender here, having played the former President immaculately (and as unfortunate as it is, it’s more likely that the Academy nominates him for this than for his career-best turn in A Different Man), but with such an uncertain race ahead in the Supporting Actor category, don’t be surprised if Strong slips in as well. After all, the film hinges on the idea that Roy Cohn was at least partially – if not entirely – responsible for creating Donald Trump as we know him today, so if voters feel that nominating the lead actor also means connecting that nomination to the supporting part the performance bounces off of, it would be entirely likely that Strong lands that coveted 5th spot. The Academy also loves subtle makeup effects, particularly in biopics, so an Apprentice appearance in that category shouldn’t shock anyone, were it to happen. Best Chances: Best Actor (Sebastian Stan), Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Strong), Best Makeup & Hairstyling Civil War Alex Garland’s Civil War – divisive as it was upon release – was a barn-burner for A24, becoming their second-highest-grossing film to date (only behind Everything Everywhere All at Once), and stayed in theaters for a good while. The studio’s gambit to open themselves up to more I.P. and spectacle-driven storytelling only has this one success story thus far, but it’s an undeniable success. To that end, while the film is unlikely to compete above-the-line, there are at least two tech categories in which it stands a fighting chance. Chief among these categories is Best Sound, which – regardless of how one feels about the narrative or pacing thereof – remains the film’s standout element by a wide margin. The whiz of sniper bullets, the sharpness of the gunfire, the ferocity of every explosion follows the viewer everywhere, especially during the film’s masterfully-crafted third act raid on Washington D.C. One other category, however, that awards enthusiasts may not be considering hard enough is Best Visual Effects. As 2019 showed us with 1917’s win in the category, war films can contain a great deal more visual effects than one might expect, and it’s the seamless blending of these effects that the Academy pays attention to. That said, Civil War would still face a tough uphill battle in that department, so if you’re set on just giving it one shot, Sound should be it. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Didi It’s a real shame this Sundance darling about a young Vietnamese boy named Wang-Wang growing up through the dawn of the digital age doesn’t have as large of an awards reputation as some of its contemporaries in the genre, but then again, Bo Burnham’s near-perfect Eighth Grade may be its closest contemporary, and that didn’t get any awards love either. Didi’s one and only hope – apart from a miracle break into the original Screenplay category – is in Joan Chen’s endearing turn as the lead character’s mother. Chen is genuinely fantastic in the film, anchoring all of Wang-Wang’s anxiety with a steely vulnerability, and a well-deserved nomination in Best Supporting Actress is not out of the question as a surprise spoiler in the category. Unfortunately, with all of Focus Features’ awards attention fixed on Conclave, it’s highly unlikely for that spoiler to gain enough momentum by the time nominations are announced. Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Joan Chen) A Different Man As mentioned above, most of Sebastian Stan’s award attention is likely to be focused on The Apprentice for obvious reasons, but in my not-so-humble opinion, if he is to land a Best Actor nomination, it should be for this performance instead. A Different Man is an incredible look at the idea of self-hatred, internal insecurities, and identity that rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Stan’s towering turn, but also happens to feature Adam Pearson as one of the film’s funniest characters. While the script may be darkly comic and unendingly clever though, the limited amount of collective watch time amongst audiences and Academy voters (plus the crowded fields in both Screenplay categories and most other above-the-line slots for which it would have competed) likely means that beyond the Makeup & Hairstyling category, it basically only has one other shot, if A24 and Stan want to campaign for his performance. Best Chances: Best Makeup & Hairstyling Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga In case any of you were wondering, no, I will not be forgiving everyone who let this movie go DOA and flop so hard at the box office that director George Miller had to pull back on his certainty that he would be doing another Mad Max movie at all. There simply is no one better at making this kind of movie than him, and it will be a black mark on all movie-goers if he dies being taken for granted as a director. Furiosa is no Fury Road, to be sure, but to even make a post-apocalyptic revenge epic this well more than deserves all the praise anyone could throw at it. Fury Road took home 6 Oscars (all in tech categories) the year that it competed, so it’s not out of the question that some of those techs could repeat nominations as long as the movie is shown to Academy members in time for voting. Here’s hoping. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound Joker: Folie À Deux My oh my, how the mighty have fallen. Joker: Folie À Deux certainly has its defenders – even I admired Todd Phillips’ “screw your fantasy sequel” approach to putting it out there – but there’s no denying the film just doesn’t work, buried underneath layers of poorly-staged musical covers and lacking the conviction that comes with being allowed to rip off two of Scorsese’s best works. This was meant to be Warner Bros’ big fall season awards push; now, the studio could consider themselves lucky to land a few tech nominations. What happened?! Well, apart from the film’s myriad of issues like a repetitive narrative, lack of development for most non-Joker characters, and twist ending that essentially means the film before it meant nothing, it also didn’t make any money. Box office isn’t necessarily an indicator of awards consideration, but having a sequel to one of your most successful movies of all time flop, and having your star drop out of an upcoming Todd Haynes film just days before shooting, thus ruining his nomination chances for the same part he won Best Actor for last time, burns a lot of good will the movie may otherwise have kept even with the drop in quality. As it stands, Folie À Deux still has the slimmest of chances to repeat some of its old techs, but don’t expect it to go any further than that. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling The Substance Something is happening with The Substance amongst awards pundits, who seem to consider the film stronger than ever as awards season is in full swing and Oscar voting approaches. Many have still kept it out of the above-the-categories (save for one), but even with the Academy’s understood bias against the horror genre, the momentum for it seems to only be building, especially where it concerns the towering Demi Moore performance at its center. Personally, I doubt that it competes in many categories apart from the obvious due to that Academy bias, but if this thing somehow lands a Best Picture nomination, I will be shocked and delighted. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Makeup & Hairstyling WHAT’S TO COME Hard Truths Each year in one of the acting categories and in the screenplay category, there’s always one wildcard selection that has the potential to throw every would-be 5-for-5 predictions list out the window. This year, that’s Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, a film containing a Marianne Jean-Baptiste performance every critic who’s seen the film raves about. It’s not hard to imagine Jean-Baptiste as an included fifth contestant, especially if the Academy refuses to nominate Demi Moore, and Mike Leigh is beloved enough by movie enthusiasts that there’s some good will towards his landing a nomination for an original script, regardless of how far the film could go after those considerations. This early in the race, it’s too difficult to tell how certain these nominations would be, but if the potential for dark horse candidates is in play, so is the dark horse movie of this season. Best Chances: Best Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Best Original Screenplay Nightbitch Following a disastrously bad first trailer, Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Nightbitch received mixed-positive reviews, with many pundits singling out Amy Adams starring turn as mother who thinks she’s turning into a dog as proof that she’s still got it. Coming off a historically bad run following her Best Actress snub in 2016 for Arrival, this movie could be seen as a comeback vehicle for Adams, even if it’s unlikely to appear anywhere else that matters. We’ll find out when the film hits theaters on December 6 just how competitive Adams is likely to be, if at all. Best Chances: Best Actress (Amy Adams) The Piano Lesson August Wilson adaptations have done well at the Oscars in the past, with both Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom racking up nominations above-the-line left and right, although the latter did miss out on Picture and Director. Both received Adapted Screenplay nominations, and both had their lead and supporting performances recognized by the Academy, so it stands to reason that The Piano Lesson won’t be much different except with respect to the fact that John David Washington, who leads this movie, may not be able to crack this crowded of a Best Actor field, and Samuel L. Jackson – whom many pundits originally predicted to win the Best Supporting Actor category – apparently isn’t in the movie very much. That said, everyone who’s seen the movie thus far has raved about Ray Fisher’s performance, so Best Supporting Actor could still happen, and almost all of them also have Danielle Deadwyler’s supporting turn – as well as the screenplay – still locked into a nomination position, with the latter looking the most wobbly if something else were to take its place. The film is being put out by Netflix, which is also platforming Emilia Pérez and Maria this season, so it’s entirely likely that some of the larger categories don’t feature it as heavily. Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Danielle Deadwyler), Best Supporting Actor (Ray Fisher), Best Adapted Screenplay The Room Next Door Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film has received a bit of a mixed reception from those who have seen it, with many citing the magic he’s able to conjure in the Spanish language not translating correctly to English, leaving the script feeling clunkier than it’s likely meant to. That said, it does still have many defenders, including people who still believe it has a chance to make its mark in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress with Tilda Swinton, even if a Supporting bid for her would have worked out better for a competitive win. Stars Julianne Moore and Swinton are both campaigning in Lead Actress, but given Swinton is the one everyone talks about regarding this film, it’s most likely the nod goes to her or neither, leaving a more dark horse candidate to fill up that fifth spot. Both Pain and Glory and Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar’s last two films, managed to score some surprise nominations along the way, so we’ll see if that streak of surprises continues here. Best Chances: Best Actress (Tilda Swinton), Best Adapted Screenplay The Seed of the Sacred Fig A thriller apparently made in secret in Iran, Mohammed Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig has been burning up the minds of those who’ve seen it ever since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year. The film is Germany’s official selection for the International Feature Oscar race, but also seems to be nomination-competitive in at least one other category (Original Screenplay), and some are predicting it to break into Picture and Director as well. I’ll have to see the movie myself before I consider adding it to my predictions in those latter two categories, but International Feature is all but a certainty, and Original Screenplay is very much in play, so don’t count it out of your predictions just yet. Best Chances: Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay September 5 A film about the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, September 5 is told entirely from the perspective of the ABC newsroom who covered the story at the time. Bottle movies about journalism tend to fare well with the Academy, in at least the Editing category, and the studio is campaigning its cast for Supporting considerations given the ensemble nature of the piece, Peter Sarsgaard being the most obvious contender amongst the group. The predictions betting site GoldDerby has listed September 5 amongst its ten predicted nominations for Best Picture, but without having seen the film, and with much of the awards release slate still to come, the lack of certainty surrounding such a prediction is why I’m hesitant to throw it that bone just yet. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it sneak into the #10 spot, especially with such a wide-open Best Picture race only seeming to be getting wider. Best Chances: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Sarsgaard), Best Film Editing And with that, we’ve covered most (if not all) of the major and minor Oscar contenders this awards season! Which of these films are you looking forward to the most? Do you foresee any of these minor contenders making the switch to major? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan by Jacob Jones Hello all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Awards season has arrived as both major and minor studios vie for distribution rights from festival premieres and focuses shift toward a fairly unpredictable Oscar race. With the current awards field becoming simultaneously overcrowded and difficult to nail down in terms of finding front-runners for most major categories, sifting through what to watch out for and what not to worry about can be a daunting task to say the least, especially if (like me) you feel that there’s never enough time in the day to figure those things out organically by seeing everything you want to see. That’s where I come in. Over the next three to four months, a whole slew of new works – some from respected masters, some from audacious new talents – will be released to cap off the movie year as we prepare for one of the most unpredictable Oscar seasons in recent memory. This piece serves as both a directory of titles for those who may be interested in knowing more about the films most likely to be competing, as well as a guide to determine which categories these films best stand a chance of entering. This will be a two-part piece covering both the major and the minor contenders in the race, with the first publishing of our Early Oscar Nomination Predictions soon to follow. There’s still plenty of time for things to change (I’m not sure if anyone saw The Brutalist coming when this awards season was first being discussed), but for now, let’s survey the cinematic landscape ahead and explore what exactly the major contenders are. WHAT'S ALREADY HERE Dune: Part Two If there were one film above all others that has never wavered on its way to the finish line, it’s Denis Villeneuve’s second-half adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel, Dune. Dune: Part Two was a powerhouse when it released to rapturous acclaim, and has showed no signs of slowing down at all as this year’s grand-scale blockbuster achievement. When one considers the immaculate craft, committed performances, brilliant storytelling, and the failures both critically and commercially of WB’s other major player this season (Joker: Folie À Deux), it’s no wonder the cultural foothold of Dune: Part Two has continued to stay so strong, making it by far the most obvious major contender across eleven different categories, even if some wins outside of the tech categories are unlikely to occur. One thing’s for sure though: with the brutal snub of Denis Villeneuve for Best Director in 2022 in favor of Kennth Branagh’s so-so work on Belfast, Oscar enthusiasts are waiting with their metaphorical pitchforks to make sure the Academy doesn’t make the same mistake twice, so it seems all but a certainty that a snub there will not occur. (Then again, this is the Academy we’re talking about.) Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Denis Villeneuve), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Saturday Night Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which has now been released following its world premiere at Telluride (man, they had a good lineup this year), chronicles the opening night of NBC’s very first Saturday Night Live show. The trailer demonstrates just how chaotic and unpredictable the mounting of such an audacious production ended up being, though according to some pundits, those more familiar with the history of SNL may find the film lacking a bit. As an ensemble piece full of young stars about the history of a visual medium, however, the film has a strong chance to land some SAG attention, which could push it over the hill and into Best Picture territory, a sandbox with which Reitman is not unfamiliar. It’s doubtful that any acting nods will come out of it, but to put a movie like this together, Editing and Screenplay are far from out of the question, apart from the question of which Screenplay category the Academy decides the film belongs to. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score Sing Sing The unfortunate reality of the race’s current state is that as soon as A24 picked up The Brutalist, its other fall and winter releases (sans the horror films) seemed to fall almost entirely by the wayside in terms of marketing. Sure, Queer and Babygirl are still coming out, and are well-positioned to get some awards love of their own outside of most major categories, but the bulk of the campaigning from A24 seems to have fallen in line behind Brady Corbet’s great American epic. Despite this, however, and despite one of the more confusing release strategies for an A24 summer movie in recent memory, Sing Sing is still positioned by most pundits to take up a decent amount of space come Oscar nomination time, and in my opinion, it would fully deserve everything it’s given. It’s not only the year’s best movie so far, but one of the only real challengers to Dune: Part Two in terms of relative certainty in competition. You can read my full review here. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Colman Domingo), Best Supporting Actor (Clarence Maclin), Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay WHAT'S TO COME Anora Winner of the Palme d’Or at perhaps the most prestigious film festival on the main circuit (it competes with Venice on that), Anora comes to us from director Sean Baker, and stars Mikey Madison as the titular character, a sex worker who gets married to the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. NEON picked up U.S. distribution for the film, and considering the immensely positive word of mouth surrounding the project, as well as the fact that NEON has won the coveted Palme d’Or five years in a row now, with three of those wins translating to Best Picture nominations at the Oscars, this seems like one of the more “no-brainer” type of contenders, even with its limited and worldwide public release dates still weeks away. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay Blitz This is where things start to get a little more complicated. Steve McQueen’s Blitz, which will be released in limited theaters on November 1 leading up to its nationwide debut on AppleTV+ three weeks later, has been the big question of awards season ever since news of its production broke. For a long while, it was unclear whether it would ever make a fall/winter release date, or have to be pushed into 2025 due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. It was also unclear just which categories its starts would compete for, as Saoirse Ronan prepares to mount a comeback to the awards field with this film and The Outrun. Would she be lead or supporting? How prevalent is Harris Dickinson in the movie? Does it look like a strong contender in the tech categories? These were all questions that, until the trailer released, had inconclusive answers. Few people have seen the film as yet, but with the film’s London Film Festival premiere having now occurred, things do appear to be looking favorable, though not everyone's praises appear to be as gargantuan as the film might need to be win-competitive. Of course, there is also the looming shadow of the Academy’s complete shut-out of McQueen’s previous theatrical feature, Widows. McQueen’s Small Axe limited series, which was essentially five short films that debuted on Prime Video, was warmly received by critics, but due to the confusing categorization of the project relegated it to Emmy contention instead of Oscar glory. Widows, on the other hand, was a straightforward crime thriller, and received no acclaim at all, apart from positive reviews. When taking all of this under advisement, it seems that the Academy’s love for WWII-set films, as well as the talent involved, is what’s most likely to give Blitz the boost it needs to become more than just a craft category staple. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Steve McQueen), Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design The Brutalist If you’ve stepped onto film twitter over the last several weeks even once, you’ve likely heard raves from every direction about Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which is being dubbed a new American epic by pretty much everyone who’s seen it, in part due to its lengthy runtime which features an intermission, and in part due to its apparent high qualities of craft and storytelling. Every reaction and review to come out of a screening of the film regards Adrian Brody’s work as some of the best – if not the best – of his career, while pundits also single out Guy Pearce for shining in a supporting part, as well as Felicity Jones, who plays Brody’s wife as – according to IMDB – the two “flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America.” Many thought NEON would jump at the chance to have another major contender in the mix, and I’m sure they put up a pretty penny, but A24 holds distribution rights and has set the film for a limited December 20 release, with an expansion coming in 2025, likely in January. There’s something to be said for the studio spreading their awards campaigns too thin, but if any of A24’s acquisitions appear to be the most muscular in terms of awards competition, it's this one, especially since comparisons have already been made to Once Upon a Time in America and There Will Be Blood, two of the great American epics of all time. Could The Brutalist join those ranks? We’ll have to wait and find out. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Brady Corbet), Best Actor (Adrian Brody), Best Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce), Best Supporting Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound A Complete Unknown Regardless of how one feels about James Mangold’s unusual miss in helming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, there’s no denying the director’s immense talents, which has seen him put out more hits than misses in the course of his overall directing career. Now, he’s set his sights on Bob Dylan, a subject who’s no stranger to the cinematic landscape. What remains to be seen is whether or not Mangold’s take on the famed musician can stand out enough to rise above other fare covering the same subject, including Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, which saw Cate Blanchett play Dylan, and no less than two separate Martin Scorsese documentaries, one of which can be found in the prestigious Criterion Collection. Mangold has a good team with him on this – largely the same that made Ford v Ferrari back in 2019 – and with a Christmas Day release date, it seems likely that this is the big play for Searchlight Pictures this season. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Cinematography, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound Conclave Though it’s unlikely to achieve front-runner status in the Best Picture category, Conclave – which comes to us from All Quiet on the Western Front helmer Edward Berger adapting the Robert Harris novel of the same name – has been one of the race’s most certain contenders since it premiered at Telluride in August. Many pundits have tapped both Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci for Oscar contention in the Lead and Supporting Actor categories, and some have even gone so far as to include Isabelle Rossellini among the mix for Supporting Actress despite her apparently not being in very much of the film (one might call this “the Judi Dench effect”). Whether Berger himself holds enough capital with the Academy in such a competitive director year is anyone’s guess, but it would hardly be a surprise to see him slide into that fourth or fifth spot next to the year’s three most obvious candidates (Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, Denis Villeneuve). Focus Features, who is distributing the project, has already moved up the film’s release from November 1 to October 25, likely to give it some distance from the upcoming U.S. Presidential election given the film’s subject matter, so we’ll see soon just how strong a candidate it’s likely to be. According to book readers, the politics of the story’s finale may sour some voters on its winning more major categories (I’ll find out myself when I finish the book, hopefully before the film’s release). Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Edward Berger), Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Supporting Actor (Stanley Tucci), Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Adapted Screenplay Emilia Pérez Without a major domestic awards player this season, Netflix has gone international (as it has in years past, the most famous of which being Roma), opting to become the home of Jacques Audiard’s audacious trans Mexican drug lord musical, Emilia Pérez, which won both the Cannes Jury Prize for its director as well as a four-way split for Best Actress between Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. The former two actresses are widely expected to be competitive in both the Lead and Supporting Actress category (Gascón in Lead, Saldaña in Supporting), with the latter of those two widely speculated to be win-competitive. The trailers have not given much to viewers in the way of plot, so its chances of winning Picture seem slim at best, but a nomination is likely, and many pundits have the film tapped to compete in a few below-the-line categories as well, especially since France wisely selected it as their submission for International Feature, a mistake they made last season by opting out of selecting eventual six-time nominee Anatomy of a Fall. The film opens in select theaters on November 1 before dropped on Netflix November 13, so it won’t be long to wait now before viewers are able to decipher for themselves just how competitive it really is, and given the musical genre’s recent struggles at the box office, a streaming home might be just what it needs to entice reluctant would-be patrons. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Jacques Audiard), Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña), Best International Feature, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound Gladiator II For my money, one of the biggest questions this Oscar season is whether or not multiple sequels will make it into the Best Picture field. It’s not an unheard of prospect – only two years ago both Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick competed for the top prize (which would eventually go to Everything Everywhere All at Once) – but that was also the first time in Oscars history that such a thing has ever occurred. When it comes to this year, the big question mark hovers over Ridley Scott’s hotly anticipated Gladiator II, which sees former Oscar nominee Paul Mescal (Aftersun) in the lead part after Russell Crowe’s Maximus tragically perished at the end of the original film, which won Best Picture in 2001 (2000 being the competition year). First reactions to the film, which dropped following its first screening on October 18, praise it as perhaps Scott’s best since Black Hawk Down, with nearly everyone singling out both its audacious production values and Denzel Washington’s performance, an apparent front-line contender in the Supporting Actor race (some have even pegged it as win-competitive). That sounds like a recipe for enormous awards success, provided it hits with the right audiences, and if its projected box office opening – which it’s set to pull off against Universal Studios’ Wicked – is anything to go by, there will be a lot of audiences for it to hit. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Paul Mescal), Best Supporting Actor (Denzel Washington), Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Maria Pablo Larraín’s recent output of biopics about complicated famous women and the public’s relationship to their personas has been a consistent staple in the Oscars race for each year in which they’ve been released. Both Jackie and Spencer managed to score Lead Actress nominations for Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart respectively, with the former also scoring nods for Original Score and Costume Design. This season looks to be another repeat success for the Chilean filmmaker, as Larraín is poised to go three for three in the Lead Actress category, this year’s nominee being Angelina Jolie, who plays renowned American-Greek soprano Maria Callas. Those who have seen the film rave about Jolie’s performance, with many citing this as the best of Larraín’s leading lady performances to date. The film is also expected to contend in other below-the-line categories, though its critical appraisal – as of this writing – may keep it from reaching the necessary heights required to attain other above-the-line category nods. Best Chances: Best Actress (Angelina Jolie), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design Nickel Boys Another Telluride premiere turned Oscar hopeful, Nickel Boys is based on the Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. Early reactions to the film have raved about its bravery, daring cinematography, and devastating emotional core. Having not yet read the book (and, of course, not having not seen the film), I can’t speak to just how emotional the story gets, nor its production qualities, but it is expected to be a strong Oscar contender nonetheless. In fact, director RaMell Ross currently sits in my number 5 spot in Best Director predictions, given how the Academy does like to surprise with an unexpected name (or lack thereof) in that category. The film is set for mid-December release in New York and Los Angeles prior to a likely outward expansion over the winter months. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (RaMell Ross), Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay Nosferatu Until the most recent trailer was released for Robert Eggers’ upcoming take on the titular vampire horror story, many Oscar pundits (including me) may have assumed that the furthest it could reach would be a Best Cinematography nomination. After all, The Lighthouse is Eggers’ only film to not be completely shut out by the Academy come nomination time, and it was in the Cinematography category that it found its singular point of praise. In fact, this film was not originally included on this list. However, once viewing the trailer, Cinematography became all but a certainty; the question now becomes not “can Nosferatu score any nominations,” but “how many more nominations can it score?” As a remake of one of the most iconic silent era classics, it’s sure to enthuse many a cinephile from within the Academy’s ranks, and with Robert Eggers’ star only rising every time he puts out a movie, this could be their chance to reward him for nearly a decade of visionary filmmaking. Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling Queer With Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers remaining conversationally relevant in terms of the best movies of 2024 to date, it’s tough to tell whether the director’s upcoming Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, will hold enough sway with the Academy to ultimately make a stronger dent, or if the former is the stronger bid for Picture contention. Early reactions from the film out of Venice suggested that it may be too unwieldy for some fans, whereas others praised just how strange it was. In any case, not one of those reactions suggested that Daniel Craig would be dropping out of the Best Actor race, and the film – which is adapted from the William S. Boroughs’ novel of the same name – still holds strong odds in Adapted Screenplay. Personally, I’m always interested to see what Luca Guadagnino is up to, so I’ll be seeing it either way. Whether the Academy will like what they see enough for a real push is anyone’s guess. Best Chances: Best Actor (Daniel Craig), Best Supporting Actor (Drew Starkey), Best Adapted Screenplay A Real Pain Searchlight Pictures’ other contender this awards season is Jesse Eisenberg’s writer/director project, A Real Pain, in which the actor plays David Kaplan, who embarks on a guided tour through Poland with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) following the death of Benji’s grandmother. While critical reception of the film itself has been on the mixed-positive side, Culkin’s performance is one of the two strongest contenders right now for a Supporting Actor win, and that tenth spot in Best Picture could mean the film has an opening to fight for amongst the pack, depending on whether or not it hits properly with audiences when it releases on November 1. It certainly is likely to land (and perhaps be win-competitive) in Original Screenplay as well, especially with a slightly less crowded field than Adapted, and I’ve got a personal sneaking suspicion that if it does well, Culkin and the script won’t be the only nominations it can muster. Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin), Best Original Screenplay Wicked While nomination counts may ultimately appear lower in the major categories, there’s no denying the box office juggernaut Universal Studios has on their hands with Wicked, which adapts the first half of the Broadway musical phenomenon by the same name. Pre-sales for the film are already sky high, and many pundits believe there are a few of the larger tech categories in which it could be win-competitive. Such a large production – with a Thanksgiving release no less, opening against Gladiator II – requires some impressive production quality to pull off, and although the color grading in the trailers has left some cinephiles wanting, the design work itself appears to have leaned into the audacious nature of such a production. The reveal of the soundtrack’s song list indicated that there would be no original music included in this half of the Wicked story, so Best Original Song is definitively not happening, but a surprise Sound nomination could be in the cards if it truly blows viewers away. We’ll be able to sniff out whether Universal’s bid to campaign its two stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, for Lead and Supporting Actress bears any weight with the Academy once people have had a chance to see the film, but for the time being, expect it to at least show up in all major design categories. Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling And that’s it for the major contenders for this year’s Oscars season. Have you seen any of these films? Was I right on the money or way off on some? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the minor contenders, coming soon!
- The Friendly Film Fan The Friendly Film Fan Ranks All 10 Films in the Famed “Planet of the Apes” Franchise. By Jacob Jones One of cinema’s most long-standing and storied series, the Planet of the Apes films have one of the most consistent hit records in the history of franchise filmmaking, especially wherein the sci-fi genre is concerned; only once has the series ever put out a generally agreed-upon bad film, and even those entrants that are less beloved than others all have something valuable to offer, whether that be an ambitious swing that doesn’t always pan out or a further exploration of philosophical concepts. Having been around since 1968, when the original Charlton Heston film wowed audiences with its twist ending, the themes and ideas examined by this world and explored by the characters within it continue to resonate with audiences to this very day. Those same audiences now have the opportunity to experience the series’ latest release, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, in all its visual glory on the silver screen, and re-immerse themselves in the world of their favorite intelligent simians, courtesy of director Wes Ball (you can find my full review for the film here). In light of this new Apes film finally hitting screens after a seven year hiatus for the series, I binge-watched all nine previous entries in the franchise over the course of three days. Now having seen Kingdom twice, I have ranked all ten Planet of the Apes films below, beginning with the worst, and of course, ending with the best. Apes Together Strong! Let’s get started. 10. Planet of the Apes (2001) The only outright bad entry on this list, Tim Burton’s perhaps always doomed remake of Planet of the Apes features none of the things that made the original great or any of its follow-ups even passible at their worst. Most notably lacking in the series’ core tenets of philosophical science and exploration of humanity’s nature, the film substitutes these ideas with a generic sci-fi action story which – to be fair – features terrific makeup effects but essentially nothing else worthwhile. The iconic lines are irreparably altered, clunkily-scripted, and none of the performances really land (Tim Roth is particularly bad here). Still, this Planet of the Apes is only a generically-bad sci-fi movie…until the ending happens and throws the entire thing off-balance. In trying to replicate the “it was Earth all along” twist, the story sees Mark Wahlberg’s character (whose name I have yet to recall without having to look it up) actually leave the planet he has been on the entire time in order to re-enter the time-warp storm that sent him there, eventually ending up on what’s implied to be Earth at the end. There’s just one (or several) major problem with this; in the original film, Charlton Heston’s character Taylor never leaves the planet of the apes, which is then revealed to have been Earth all along; how are we supposed to infer that the planet Mark Wahlberg leaves was even Earth in the first place? Did he just go forward in time? Why would the apes just make the same society humans did; isn’t the whole point of their being intelligent apes that they make a different society for themselves? If he went backwards in time as intended, how does General Thade even factor into the Lincoln Memorial in terms of the timeline implied by the film? WHY DO THE APES HAVE A LINCOLN MEMORIAL? Every answer to each question only introduces three new questions, the answers to which all contradict the previous question’s entire premise, fundamentally breaking the film – and my brain – in the process. I long for who I was before the ending of this movie. 9. Beneath the Planet of the Apes On the whole, Beneath the Planet of the Apes isn’t the outright disaster that the 2001 remake of the previous film eventually becomes, but it lacks the vision of its immediate predecessor, failing to make good on that film’s ending or explore further elements of the planet of the apes itself which were previously unseen, at least for most of its runtime. It certainly tries some interesting ideas with having an entirely new protagonist suffer the same introduction to this world that Taylor did and have to navigate it himself (albeit with a lot more help from Nova), but the film fails to explore anything else that Charlton Heston’s Taylor hadn’t already experienced; Nova simply finding John Brent and taking him back to the same ape colony with the same characters we’re familiar with is an understandable choice, but too safe for what this sequel could offer. Most of the film’s runtime after Taylor disappears in the first five minutes is spent above ground as Brent hides out with Zira and Cornelius, re-treading what happened with Taylor during the third act of the previous film in a less interesting way. It’s not until we get to the third act of this film that anything new happens at all, when – in a thoroughly ambitious and bizarre swing – we’re introduced to an underground mutant human society that worships an atomic bomb. (They have magical powers which they say are only illusions, but the mechanics of these illusions are never demonstrated, so it’s still more or less magic.) This part of the movie is definitely the most interesting, but doesn’t feel as though it matches at all with what we’ve experience to that point in terms of any sort of natural progression, and by then, the film has burned up most of its good will by wasting too much time getting there and making Nova an essentially useless character. The tail end of it, with Taylor’s poetically-tragic killing setting off the ultimate doomsday weapon after he’d been so distraught about the results of nuclear warfare in the last film does offer a slight good note for the movie to end on, but it feels like part of a better third act the film doesn’t have. I’ve certainly seen worse sci-fi sequels, but for a franchise this storied, with such an iconic opening film, it’s hard to recommend this follow-up to anyone who asks. 8. Escape from the Planet of the Apes For many, this is considered the best of the original sequels, but for my part, it is without doubt my least favorite. The only reason I’ve listed it above Beneath despite how it frustrates me more is due to my admiration for the hugely ambitious swing it takes with the premise: having Cornelius and Zira go back in time to 1973, before the John Taylor mission ever launched. Reversing the formula to place the intelligent apes into regular human society is an inspired decision, even if the spoof comedy style it introduces at first it has no actual intentions of committing to. The tone switch, once our main characters are on the run in the latter portion of the film, becomes far less interesting after the story has spent the past hour of zaniness rendering Zira less intelligent than any of the humans around her, and the addition of yet another “twist” ending – which by this point one could see coming a mile away – made this one a little more annoying to sit through than its immediate predecessor, even if it does have a little more to offer on the whole. 7. Battle for the Planet of the Apes Many may call this the least successful of the original Apes sequels, due to its looking extremely low-budget and not having a ton going on apart from its battlefield skirmish, but overall, it’s the most well-balanced of any of the sequels offered by the original set of films, even if it’s not the most exciting overall. The story is well-told across the runtime, without ever feeling too long or as though the structure of the film leans too heavily in one direction or the other. The ape/human society discussions are further rooted in the more philosophical musings the series began with, and even though Aldo’s whole plan for the humans makes no sense once you think about it too long, all the Caesar stuff is generally pretty solid. Plus, there’s a certain charm to the human army rolling up to the battle with a school bus as one of their transport vehicles, all Mad Max-style. This one has a lot more in common with the future Dawn of the Planet of the Apes than any other film in the franchise, and while we’ll get to that film later on down the list, this one is not a half-bad prototype on which to base that kind of story. 6. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes While Battle may be overall more well-balanced and a generally better movie than this one, Conquest’s second half goes so hard that I can’t deny its innate power, which elevates it slightly over its sequel. The first half is a bit wonky though, especially in the editing. That’s not to say that nothing about that first half works; the Orwellian ape slavery society we see is interestingly set up, especially since we’re only privy to what we can see in the Century City portion of the world, but what doesn’t work kind of overwhelms whatever is working. At two points, by my count, it seemed as if there were entire transitional scenes missing from the film; a character would say something and the movie would immediately cut to the result of what was said, but without any indication that a cut was even coming. The film also starts rather slow, with Caesar (renamed from “Milo,” thank god) simply biding his time in learning about the ape society itself, meaning he has to spend a lot of time with the human characters that aren’t especially interesting. All that said, once the second half of this one gets going and the revolution begins, the film doesn’t stop until the credits roll. The prison break sequence is one of the great set pieces across the Apes franchise, and while the plaza showdown is overlong, it remains surprisingly tense and thrilling to watch play out, all culminating in Roddy McDowall actually getting to show off some acting chops under the mask and deliver a killer monologue which sets up the next film beautifully. Of all the original sequels, this one is my personal favorite. 5. Planet of the Apes (1968) Though a few of its sequels have terrific individual elements or thrilling sequences in a vacuum, the best of the original Apes films remains the 1968 classic starring Charlton Heston. It’s not exactly as flawless as one might hope on a rewatch – the interior sets seem a little too closed off even for this world, and the pacing isn’t exactly smooth sailing the whole way through (plus Heston’s performance is a tad wooden, even for him) – but it holds up rather well when compared to its immediate counterparts, and is still one of the best sci-fi films of its era full-stop. It really mostly feels more like a series of interesting scenes set in different rooms than one fully fleshed-out story from beginning to end, but that could also be due to what we know is coming later on down the line, and the film’s notorious twist ending buys the movie a lot of good will – it’s all too rare to see a twist like that executed as well as this one was. If you haven’t revisited this one since seeing it the first time, I don’t think a rewatch would be too disappointing. 4. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes As alluded to in the intro for this piece, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the most recent addition to the Apes canon, and falls for me about where the next entry on this list does, though the pacing isn’t quite as strong and some of the character work seems too broadly-painted by the film’s end. Still, these are largely minor complaints in a film which is clearly the first entrant in a series of new Apes stories set many generations after Caesar’s trilogy, and which still features some terrific cinematography, excellent visual effects, and expert-level compositing, as well as really solid performances from the entire cast (especially Owen Teague and Kevin Durand). I don’t want to spoil too much of what goes on in this one, given how new it is, but the journey it takes the viewer on is much more of an adventure film than anything that came before it, and the confidence Wes Ball clearly has in his ability to not lose the audience despite the long runtime is something that can’t be taught to many directors. This is the largest scale at which these films have ever been made and you can see the money spent very wisely up on screen. The official word is that the producers of this new set of Apes films want this to be a nine-film saga, the beginning of which would have been Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and if the storytelling for this second trilogy in that saga can improve enough from here to whatever comes next, in the same fashion the previous trilogy improved, we’re in for something really, truly special. 3. Rise of the Planet of the Apes The first chapter in the Planet of the Apes franchise’s first prequel trilogy, Rise of the Planet of the Apes has us bear witness to the origins of Caesar, the original intelligent ape, as he’s brought up by Will Rodman (James Franco) following an ill-begotten test of a brain repair drug which is implied to have the ability to cure Alzheimer’s. The subsequent rise of Caesar from intelligent ape to leader is one of the great protagonist formations in one of the great starts in movie trilogy history, a start which would only be surpassed by the film’s immediate sequels. Above all else, this movie is exceptionally well-paced, clocking in at just over one hour and forty-five minutes, the efficiency in storytelling never waning for a second. To be fair, this can cause one or two edits to feel a little off, and the speed at which the film moves does cost somewhat in terms of the quality of CG compositing and some backgrounds still looking digitally-rendered, but even the early visual effects on the apes look remarkable for where they began. Hearing Caesar say “no” for the first time still takes my breath away, and the Golden Gate bridge finale is a fantastic action set-piece. The film’s other flaws are a little more noticeable, like the fact that Frieda Pinto’s character feels fairly inconsequential to the story beyond just being James Franco’s girlfriend and isn’t present at all for the Redwoods finish despite having been with Will and Caesar for five years to that point, and the fact that David Oyelowo’s fun scenery-chewing character eventually just morphs into straight-up cartoon capitalism villainy (then again, art imitates life, so what are you gonna do), but they’re not heavy enough to detract from what the film has going for it positively. This is still a terrific first film for this trilogy to open with, and an incredibly fun watch for first-time viewers just now getting interested in this franchise. 2. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes For a long time, this was my favorite of the most recent Apes trilogy, and on some days, it still is, with good reason. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the first of the two Matt Reeves films in this franchise, and it’s under his astute vision for this world and the characters within it that everything is elevated to another level, from the visual effects to the characters themselves, to the conflicts they have with each other, to the tension from scene to scene, to the performances from both ape and human actors to some of the franchise’s greatest action set-pieces and image-making. At no point during my first ever watch of this movie in theaters did I know exactly where it was going, and on no viewing since have I wanted it to go anywhere else. There are two or three shots in this film that are absolutely goosebump-inducing: the 360 one-shot on the tank, the crane shot above the tower as Caesar and Koba are about to face off, and of course, Toby Kebbell’s Koba – the greatest antagonist in Planet of the Apes franchise history – on horseback, bursting through a wall of flames with a machine gun like a demon spawned straight from hell. Kebbell’s performance matches Andy Serkis’ evolved character of Caesar with a tragic rage no villain in this franchise, or most sci-fi series, has ever had in such nuanced terms, and it can be so easy to get lost in just how good a character Koba is before remembering that it’s all being done by an actor in a mo-cap suit. He still never outperforms Andy Serkis as the mo-cap king, a more insurmountable task with each passing film in this trilogy, but he more than holds his own, as does Gary Oldman despite rather limited screen-time. Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and all the other human actors also turn in good work, but it’s the previous three mentioned that steal the show. And even with all of that, no one steals the show here from Matt Reeves’ directing. From the first moment after the film’s brief virus recap to the last frame, Reeves has total control over this narrative, and knows exactly how to evolve this story organically without playing a single false note, and I have no doubt that it’s this movie that got him the job for The Batman in 2022 (it certainly was the reason I wanted him for it, anyway). If this one is still your favorite, you will not hear an argument from me. 1. War for the Planet of the Apes Having gained some distance from initial pre-release expectations and marketing which didn’t really sell the right movie, War for the Planet of the Apes is my new #1 film in this franchise, and in bingeing them all concurrently, it was an amazing thing to see the final film in the series to this point be the franchise’s strongest. Everything in this film is operating at the top of its game. Somewhat victim to the same misnaming issue that Battle for the Planet of the Apes suffered, the film opens explosively before reminding us that the war we’re witnessing affects characters we care about in deeply personal ways, and it only gets more personally affecting from there. The choice to journey inward, to reckon with the darker parts of Caesar after all this time, instead of forcing a grand-scale spectacle purely off of audience expectation rather than organic storytelling, is a bold choice that reminds the viewer why Matt Reeves was chosen to conclude this story, Caesar’s story. Between Reeves’ direction and Serkis’ understanding of these characters, the filmmaking and narrative storytelling has never been better for this franchise. This is Andy Serkis’ best performance as Caesar bar none (maybe Serkis’ best performance ever), especially in how it’s juxtaposed against Woody Harrelson’s menacing Colonel character, and every expression on his face, be it the best visual effects the franchise has ever had or the performance in itself, is full of unprecedented depth. In fact, so powerful is the sheer level of detail in this film’s visual effects, it’s still a bit baffling that this franchise has never won an Oscar for them (which this one lost to Blade Runner 2049 in an entirely understandable but unfortunate blow for this movie). Steve Zahn’s “Bad Ape” provides some really great comic relief while also still being somewhat of a tragic character himself, and of course, I have to shout out the underrated MVP of this trilogy in Karin Konoval as Maurice. The cinematography and compositing in this one is note-perfect, the pacing moves exactly as fast as it needs to and slows down when appropriate, the film contains some of the trilogy’s most quietly sweet and tragic moments, and this is easily Michael Giacchino’s best score in a live-action film prior to The Batman. Without a doubt in my mind, this is the best film in the Planet of the Apes prequel trilogy and the best Planet of the Apes movie ever made. What a conclusion. And that’s my ranking of the entire Planet of the Apes franchise! How would you rank these films? Any you think are more underrated than others? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan by Jacob Thomas Jones Greeting, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! 2023 sure was a great year for movies, and 2024 looks to be another banger of a cinematic calendar. One of the lead stories of 2023 was the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, which led studios to push certain films into 2024 in order for actors and writers to continue and begin promotional work on both small and larger-profile projects. These projects ranged from the highly-anticipated Dune: Part Two to Luca Guadagnino’s tennis film Challengers, the latter of which was one of the first major moves off of the 2023 slate. However, as a result of those moves, we may be getting more quality cinema in 2024 than even we’re expecting. A few notes on the list order before we begin: given some of those films’ larger prominence and imminent release dates, they may appear lower on this list than you might expect. The fact is, there are others with more mystery surrounding them that adds a layer of excitement some of the lower-numbered entrants don’t necessarily lack, but no longer possess in quite the same way. As well, while some of the films higher on the list have less information available or a lack of current footage, the information that is available is elevates them above other, more obvious candidates. There are also any number of films due to release this year that simply don’t have enough information available yet to be included on this list, and some that may be expected to release this year could get pushed into 2025, so while it’s possible some of these end up on the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024 list, one can’t bank on that. As with the Top 10 Best Movies of 2023 list, there are a few films in the Honorable Mentions section that are listed in numerical order of anticipation due to how much we’re looking forward to them over the other, non-numbered alphabetical entries, but all the films on this list carry some level of excitement for us, so let’s get started. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024! 10. Horizon: An American Saga Kevin Costner is back in the director’s chair with an epic western event that not only has a theatrical release but already has an announcement trailer from Warner Bros. Given that its multi-part stories have not yet separated themselves in either footage or plot details, I’m just including them both as just one big entry here. With Chapter 1 dropping in June and Chapter 2 finishing the job in August, there’s a lot to look forward to, especially as Costner has invested a lot of his own money into developing the project after having left the series Yellowstone in order to make it happen. We haven’t gotten a proper Western genre epic in a long time, and to see Costner back in the director’s chair on a Western project so long after Dances with Wolves is cause for excitement. Hopefully this will be one of the moviegoing events of the summer (provided its quality is as high as it can go). 9. The Bikeriders The first film on this list to fall victim to the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders will be the first feature film the director has released in 8 years, following the severely underrated Loving in 2016. The film – which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2023 and was slated to release that December – was dropped by Disney following the strikes in what seemed like a revenge move against SAG-AFTRA, later being picked up by Focus Features for a June 2024 release. Inspired by the 1967 photo-book of the same name, the fictional story tracks a biker gang from the streets of Chicago all across America’s Midwest, and stars the likes of Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Mike Faist. Nichols is one of our greatest yet most under-sung filmmakers and this looks to be yet another film of his that utilizes a brilliant ensemble cast and likely excellent script to their fullest effect. 8. Dune: Part Two It may seem odd for Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited follow-up to Dune to be this low on the list, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not still hotly anticipating its arrival. The first film in this two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic novel was a remarkably well-crafted production of sci-fi glory that wasn’t afraid to take its time establishing everything we would need to know in order to understand this world, and every element from the cinematography to the score to the sound design heralded the arrival of a new genre classic. Part Two promises to add everything the first film missed – or at least, sort of missed – with a greater emphasis on action, a more thorough understanding of Zendaya’s character Chani and the Fremen people with which she is embedded, and the added cast powers of Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, and Christopher Walken. If these trailers have shown us anything, it’s that Villeneuve was exactly the right person to helm these adaptations, and if he’s snubbed for Best Director a second time, the Academy and I will have words. 7. Mufasa: The Lion King If you weren’t aware, director Barry Jenkins – the man behind Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and the Prime Video limited series The Underground Railroad – was tapped some time ago by Disney to direct a live-action Lion King prequel film centered around the character of Mufasa. The latter part of that description leaves a lot to be desired in terms of voter confidence, no doubt about it. However, while live-action Disney projects as of late have ranged from poor to not-as-poor in quality, Barry Jenkins is one of the highest-quality filmmakers we have, and unless a Dial of Destiny-level misfire occurs, this is likely to be yet another incredibly poetic, beautiful, and miraculous notch in the Barry Jenkins quality belt. If anything, it will be something to remember. 6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga It’s been nine years since we last had a Mad Max adventure on the silver screen, and if its first trailer is any indication, the theatrical space has sorely missed George Miller’s fast and furious apocalypse franchise. As a prequel to one of the most badass Best Picture nominees ever in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa tracks the titular Imperator’s journey from her beginnings to her eventual rise within the ranks of Immortan Joe’s inner circle. Sure, some of the CGI in the trailer looks a bit wonky, but this thing comes out in May, so there’s plenty of time for improvements, and with superstar Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into Furiosa’s desert boots – tagging in Chris Hemsworth as the new Max – I have very little doubt that this Mad Max Saga won’t at least mostly satisfy. 5. Blitz You’d be forgiven for not even knowing what this was, since there’s very little publicly available information and absolutely zero footage yet, but what ultimately matters is that Steve McQueen, the man behind 12 Years a Slave, Widows, and the Prime Video short film series Small Axe, is directing a movie about the blitz of London during WWII, and has tagged in Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson to play his two leads. McQueen is one of the most singularly talented and visionary filmmakers working today, and with leads like that – plus a likely Christmastime release date – this thing seems like a major awards player already. We’ll just have to wait and see how much of a player it is. 4. Civil War While Alex Garland’s Men was an unusual but nonetheless interesting miss for the director compared to his previous two works, his remains one of the most consistently quality careers in entertainment, both as a writer and in the head chair. And with A24 expanding their typically indie portfolio to larger-budget projects such as action films and IP-based adaptations, they couldn’t have chosen a better or more innovative filmmaker to launch with. Civil War looks intense, terrifying, and insanely well-put together, its first trailer jolting one into fight or flight almost as easily as its characters (Jesse Plemons might be too good at this job), and with secret weapon Stephen McKinley Henderson on the call sheet, there’s little doubt that this will be one of the most talked-about and impressive movies of the year. 3. Mickey 17 Recently delayed “indefinitely” by Warner Bros. Discovery in order to move up Godzilla x Kong’s nationwide release, Mickey 17 is all but certain to debut in late 2024 as a major awards season player, thanks to the likes of Academy Award Winner Bong Joon Ho – who made a little movie called Parasite (the first non-English language movie to ever win Best Picture) – and superstar Robert Pattinson teaming up for a sci-fi movie that already has an announcement trailer available to watch. Plot details have been kept pretty close to the chest, but I’m hoping more is revealed soon, and I hope what is revealed is as weird and eclectic as the rest of Bong Joon Ho’s filmography. This will be the director’s first fully English-language film, and simply based on him and Pattinson alone, I’m more than confident in its overall quality being high, hence its placement this far up the list. 2. Nosferatu Nosferatu is one of the most iconic films ever made, the first to popularize the titular vampire as a horror icon, and still one of the best vampire films available even though it came out in 1922. There have been other film adaptations of the character before – most notably Werner Herzog’s 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre – but nothing quite like what visionary director Robert Eggers is sure to be cooking up. Bill Skarsgård stars as the character, with the additional cast of Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe. Dafoe in particular has had some extremely praiseworthy words for Eggers’ directing, and with a Christmas Day release date, Focus Features seems extremely confident in their product. Robert Eggers films are some of the best around, always extremely well-crafted and brimming with commitment to whatever story is being told; this is a perfect fit for him, and I cannot wait to see how he envisions this world and this iconic character. 1. Megalopolis For the better part of two decades, Francis Ford Coppola has been building up his revenues with his and his daughter’s other companies – including a quite popular winery – to self-finance this passion project about an architect who wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following an unprecedented disaster. There simply is no other spot on this list more befitting for the man behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, especially not when he’s working with Adam Driver – whose words of praise for his director should not go unnoted – as his leading man. With all of that information, plus the title itself being a play on Metropolis (another iconic film ripe for re-interpretation), my confidence is quite high. Any movie can suck, including those by some of the greatest filmmakers to ever be in the business; in fact, a few of Francis Ford Coppola’s more recent films have been rather poor. But my instincts on this one, and the knowledge that Coppola’s less quality films were made largely after he ran out of money to make movies on his own, tell me that we’re about to receive a film from Coppola the likes of which we haven’t seen before in the best possible way. And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024! What movies are you looking forward to this year? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Honorable Mentions:
11. Challengers 12. Hit Man 13. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes 14. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim 15. Deadpool 3 16. Twisters 17. The Wolf Man 18. Joker: Folie à Deux 19. Wicked: Part One 20. Gladiator II
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AuthorFilm critic in my free time. Film enthusiast in my down time. Categories
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