When second thoughts nag

   

   I've been having an argument with myself, and I'm inviting you to listen in. I don't second-guess a lot of things, but I make an exception when it comes to my work.

  Let me clarify: I've been thinking about director Pedro Almodovar -- not the person whom I've never met and have only seen once in person when both he and I were much younger and Almodovar was making his first big wave on the festival circuit with 1988's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

   In the early 1980s, Almodovar, now 75, gained bad-boy notoriety for the gay tilt of his movies, which could seem shocking even as his native Spain shed the oppressive strictures of Franco rigidity. But Almodovar always has been too talented to be pushed into one more genre ghetto.

    Visually robust and thematically provocative, Almodovar has established himself as a significant  presence in the “art film” world. The auteur theory isn't talked about much anymore, but Almodovar qualifies as a bona fide auteur.

  I mention this because I just finished writing a negative review of Almodovar’s The Room Next Door, an adaptation of a 2020 novel by Ingrid Nunez. I’ve read Nunez, but not What Are You Going Through, the novel on which The Room Next Door is based and which I’ve learned is more discursive than Almodovar’s film. 

   Sadly, I found The Room Next Door surprisingly uninvolving. I seldom felt as if I were encountering a film in which style and story merged in vivifying ways. Offering only trace elements of the director's capacious talent, The Room Next Door isn't a typical Almodovar film. 

     The Room Next Door is also Almodovar's first English-language feature, but I didn’t dwell on the impact that might have had on the movie. Lingual landscape is also cultural landscape, but thoughts about something else have been nagging at me: how to think about potential shifts in an artist's approach.

     Almodovar tells the story of a terminally ill war correspondent (Tilda Swinton) who asks an old friend (Julianne Moore) to share a rented house in upstate New York. There, she plans to end her life by taking a pill she obtained on the dark web. 

     Why didn't a foray into such emotionally charged territory seem more grounded in the messy business of dying? 

     I’ve seen too many people die of cancer. None of them looked as well-kempt as Swinton for their date with the reaper. They may have been brave and composed on their deathbeds, but their bodies were being destroyed. It's difficult fully to understand the word “ravaged” until you’ve seen a body under malignant siege.

       So, there was that. At the same time, I wondered if I weren't being too rigid. Why must every Almodovar movie conform to my idea of what an Almodovar movie should be? At the same time, I saw no reason Almodovar couldn’t deal squarely with death while keeping his voice at full throttle. (For examples, see Almodovar's Volver (2006) and Pain and Glory (2019), movies in which death plays a role.)

        Questions and more questions kept tugging at my sleeve. Could Almodovar's decision to make a film in English have signaled his need to take a break from being the Almodovar of expectation? Should an artist be admired for trying to expand his or her range? Is it possible for a filmmaker to exhaust a particular style or, at minimum, need a refresh? Shouldn't such transformative efforts be supported? Or perhaps, I wondered, was the style of The Room Next Door not transformative enough?

       I haven't resolved these questions, nor do I want to recant my review. To check myself, I watched The Room Next Door twice and concluded that it might represent a mismatch between Almodovar and the movie's source material. Still, when serious filmmakers don't seem to be working at peak levels, they deserve more consideration than might be given to less ambitious efforts.

     To take another recent example, director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Northman, and The Lighthouse) brings distinctive atmospheric artistry to horror. I don’t think Nosferatu, Eggers' latest, totally succeeded, but as a work of undeniable aspiration, it shouldn't be casually dismissed.

      Francis Ford Coppola couldn't have wanted to spend his life making Godfather movies. He’s always insisted on going his own way. But Megalopolis? In Coppola's case and in the case of some other filmmakers, one isn't just reviewing a single film but trying to understand where that film fits (or doesn't) into a career based on vision, acuity, and the ability to get under the skin and stay there.

      In his way, Almodovar may have been advocating for everyone being able to choose death if faced with an incurable illness that promises nothing but pain. I’ve known people, who, facing such illnesses, proceeded bravely and with resolve. Enough, as the saying goes, is enough.

        And, so, too, with this essay. Enough.

       Maybe I've misread Almodovar's movie, or perhaps the director has landed in the midst of a transition period, the kind of artistic purgatory where one keeps working while waiting for the heavenly call of renewal to sound. That’s what artists do. They work.

      As I said at the outset, I'm arguing with myself, turning my thoughts this way and that while living with the unavoidable prospect of never sticking a perfect landing. 

      

A woman opens death's door

     The Room Next Door, Pedro Almodovar's adaptation of author Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel, What Are You Going Through, marks the Spanish director’s first English-language feature. Almodovar,  best known for his long career in Spanish film,  previously made two short films in English. 

      Language aside, I’ve generally counted on Almodovar to refresh my eye. I don't consider this a small matter in the age of Marvel, CGI, and mega-make-up. Almodovar’s bold use of colors, his ability to build stories around distinctive faces, and his skill at spicing his movies with tension, eroticism, and melodrama have made him an internationally known auteur.

     Serious and emotionally measured, The Room Next Door comes across as an anemic helping of  Almodovar, a modest drama about death that flirts with a major idea about climate disaster as it searches for a human approach to the doom that awaits every individual.

  Tilda Swinton, who has worked with Almodovar before, plays Martha, a well-known war correspondent who has witnessed her share of battlefield death. Julianne Moore portrays Ingrid, a prominent author who early on learns that Martha has been hospitalized with terminal cancer. Once close, the two haven't seen each other in years.

    Ingrid visits Martha in the hospital, and their friendship renews -- albeit under extreme circumstances. Whatever relationship the two develop must end with grief.

    Whispers of plot emerge when an experimental treatment fails to halt the advance of Martha’s stage three cervical cancer. After exploring the dark web, Martha obtains a pill that will end her life. She's done with suffering.

     Martha asks Ingrid to join her in a sleek modern home in upstate New York where she’ll spend her remaining days. She doesn’t want Ingrid by her side when she dies, but she wants someone nearby, a person who’ll know that she's gone. 

      The screenplay leans on exposition to explain how Ingrid will escape criminal liability for Martha’s death. She faces exposure because New York has not yet legalized assisted death. Ingrid will also bring news of Martha's death to the daughter from whom the dying journalist has become estranged.

       The Room Next Door may be less stylish than other Almodovar films, but don't get the impression that Almodovar drains it of all color. The characters wear vividly colored clothes, and Almodovar doesn't neglect the film's interiors. Martha's design-oriented hospital room looks impervious to the smell of antiseptic, and Almodovar seldom meets a wall from which a painting can't be hung.

     But these touches don’t feel nearly as pleasurable as they have in previous Almodovar work; they're like footprints, reminders of the director’s presence rather than a fully realized expression of it.

       Mostly, The Room Next Door involves conversations between Martha and Ingrid, although at one point, a flashback reveals a memorable experience Martha had while covering the war in Iraq. Another scene, possibly the movie's most vivid, explains what happened to the father of Martha’s daughter, a Vietnam veteran who suffered from PTSD. 

       And, then, there's the film's thematic reach — or possibly its overreach. While looking after Martha, Ingrid meets with a writer (John Turturro) who lectures on the inevitability of climate-related catastrophe. Both Martha and Ingrid once had affairs with Turturro's character, who has become annoyingly stern. 

       Turturro’s appearance may be meant to highlight the gap between the prospect of global doom and the solitary death of one woman, but the horrors of climate change seem tacked on to an intimately told story about two women who share a profound experience.

      Appearing gaunt and pallid, Swinton makes Martha's death feel a bit abstract. Not her fault. Almodovar focuses on a woman who’s managing the messiness out of her death -- and perhaps out of the movie, as well. Moore makes Ingrid's openness apparent; she's uncertain about Martha's decision to end her life, but she's devoted to her friend.

     A thriller-like score by Alberto Iglesias vibrates beneath the movie's surface, but the music feels misplaced. I took that as a clue. Maybe this is a case of a mismatch between director and material. The Room Next Door didn't seem to give Almodovar or the story he tells enough room to breathe.

A CEO struggles with her sexual desires

   Nicole Kidman has never been timid about her acting choices. She has worked with directors who know how to push limits, notably Stanley Kubrick (Eyes Wide Shut), Lars von Trier (Dogville), and Yorgos Lanthimos, The Killing of the Sacred Deer. 

   Kidman takes another risk in Babygirl, an erotic thriller about a highly successful woman who has spent most of her life suppressing her darker sexual desires (her description not mine).    

    Long before we meet her, Kidman's Romy has climbed to the top of the corporate ladder: She's the CEO of Tensile, a company that makes robots that replace human laborers in the nation's warehouses. She's won the trifecta of contemporary happiness: corporate power, a loving husband (Antonio Banderas), and two great daughters (Esther McGregor and Vaughan Reilly). 

    So where's the risk in what sounds like a showcase for affluence and achievement? Romy’s bedroom life has stagnated; she may dominate in the boardroom but she wants to be dominated in the bedroom. 

   We know that Romy is sexually unfulfilled because the movie begins with a prologue in which she has sex with her husband, whose tastes are ... well .... conventional. They finish. He falls asleep. She races to another room to masturbate while watching porn on her laptop. She muffles sounds of ecstasy, but what's sex without the danger of discovery?

    Such is the beginning of a story that revolves around Romy's improbable affair with an obnoxiously confident intern (Harris Dickinson) at her company. Exposure could derail Romy's career, ruin her marriage, and alienate her daughters, precisely the sense of danger she needs to charge her psycho-sexual batteries. 

   Kidman captures Romy’s uneasiness about surrendering to Samuel's demands. She fights a battle with herself, unsure how far she wants to go with a brash young control freak.

   And, yes, it's difficult to believe that a corporate leader would tolerate Samuel’s aggressively inappropriate office behavior. 

   Romy first notices Samuel when he calms a wild dog during a street encounter in front of Romy's office building. What better sexual partner than someone who knows how to control unruly animal impulses? 

    For his part, Dickenon's Samuel is happy to boss the boss around in scenes that include ordering a naked Romy to kneel on fall fours, lick milk from a saucer, and other things that you may not want to try at home.

    While you're attempting to understand Romy, consider Samuel. What makes this guy tick? He talks about needing consent before proceeding in a sexual relationship with Romy, but he often comes across as a manipulative jerk. Maybe he exists only to trigger Romy's sexual revolution. 

     Dutch-born writer/director Halina Rejin gives her movie a high-gloss veneer that allows her to slide across issues of power, age difference, and the desires Romy has avoided, perhaps because she considers it unbecoming for a summa cum laude graduate of Yale with an impeccable resume.

   For quite a while, Babygirl plays like a movie that may have drawn inspiration from predecessors such as Fatal Attraction, but Rejin charts a cause in which Romy must learn to accept herself, "dark" eroticism included. It may sound glib, but Babygirl's story arc might hinge on Romy's transition from faked orgasms to the real thing.

    Put another way, the movie seems less interested in psychological depth than situational tension, putting Romy in a position some will see as more demeaning than liberating. The screenplay takes a sober turn in its third act, but, at least for me, Babygirl already had sacrificed too much credibility to dig its way out.

   And for all its supposed daring, Babygirl can’t transcend a contrived, soft-core feel. Put another way, this isn't Last Tango in the Boardroom.

     Rejin’s choice of jobs for Romy proves telling. Making her a CEO may have been influenced by the need to show her as a woman with power. Can an acclaimed executive wield power in the daytime while abandoning it at night? That might have been more intriguing had Rejin’s movie been less surface-oriented. 

     Initially, Romy meets Samuel in a hotel of his choosing; it’s too down-scale for her tastes. She may be willing to submit to his sexual orders. but damn if she doesn’t pick a better hotel for their future assignations. Perhaps one has limits, after all.

 

     

Fighting her way toward recognition

     Before watching The Fire Inside, I hadn't heard of Claressa Sheilds. That's because I know nothing about women's boxing. I probably should have. Shields, the movie's principal character, won back-to-back Olympic medals in 2021 and 2016. She has held middleweight titles, and has boxed in multiple weight classes.

   Gifted cinematographer Rachel Morrison makes her feature debut with a movie that celebrates Shields's accomplishments, telling her story with welcome efficiency, heart, and drive.

   Written by Barry Jenkins, who wrote and directed Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, The Fire Inside focuses on a fiercely determined young woman (Ryan Destiny) who punches her way into the world of boxing. 

    Early on, an insistent Claressa captures the attention of Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry), a trainer who initially resists coaching a woman but who becomes her staunchest ally and advocate.

    Morrison's multi-layered sports drama deals with family issues, the difficulties faced by female athletes who deserve to capitalize on their success, and the determination it takes to transcend the hardscrabble confines of Flint, Michigan.

    Destiny's performance matches the movie's tough-minded intentions; she imbues Claressa with grit that transcends cliche.  Claressa wants more than ring success; she's making an emphatic statement about her presence in the world.

    Henry brings compassion and conviction to his role as a trainer. When Claressa's life gets rocky, Crutchfield takes her into his home. He lacks sufficient funds to travel to China for the Olympics and doesn't have the necessary accreditation to participate at ringside. But even when their relationship hits a bump, we know he'll be there for her. Sometimes, it works for a movie to fulfill its genre commitments.

   Additional strong performances add authenticity, notably from Olunike Adeliyi as Claressa's neglectful mother.   

   Family dynamics, a no-nonsense aesthetic, and dedicated performances keep Fire Inside burning. Shields, by the way, is scheduled to fight in 2025. Her professional record: 15 wins, no losses, and no draws. 

An architect's fight for integrity

   Few filmmakers -- Paul Thomas Anderson may be one -- make movies that seem to live and breathe in worlds of their own. The Brutalist, director Brady Corbet's three-hour and 15-minute foray into the life of a fictional Jewish Hungarian architect qualifies as such a movie. Like the architectural style for which it's named, The Brutalist can be raw and abrasive, a story blanched of sentiment.

   A movie as ambitious as The Brutalist puts a tremendous burden on the actor (Adrien Brody) who'll play architect László Toth, a refugee who arrives in the US in 1947 after being separated from his wife (Felicity Jones) and orphaned niece (Raffey Cassidy).

    Stuck in an immigration limbo, Toth's wife and niece still languish in Europe, but Toth perseveres in the face of a displacement the movie makes clear with his arrival in New York City. A cockeyed shot of the Statue of Liberty signals that neither Toth nor we have reached a mythic land of liberty and justice. 

     But Toth’s not arriving in the America of historical realism, either. He lands in the world Corbet and his co-writer,  Mona Fastvoid, create, a world full of striving and duplicity, as well as opportunities for reinvention. 

     The movie, which shows with a 15-minute intermission, divides into two acts and an epilogue that allow Corbet steadily to open thematic doors. Among them:  capitalism’s inevitable perversion of art, the fierce individuality needed to protect artistic integrity, and the abiding agony of surviving events that never can be left behind. 

       Early on, Toth moves in with a cousin (Alessandro Nivola) who lives in Pennsylvania with his American wife (Emma Laird). Nivola's Attila seems to have shed his Old Country past, even converting to Catholicism. Toth designs furniture for the shop Attila owns, a dim connection to his previous life but still a creative endeavor.

     The story shifts gears when the cheerfully opportunistic Attila puts Laszlo in touch with Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn), the son of a wealthy tycoon (Guy Pearce). Harry wants to surprise his father by renovating the library where Dad houses his rare book collection.

   Laszlo makes the library into a design-oriented space that takes the rarity of the books into account. He designs shelves that turn to shield the books from the sun. 

    When he arrives home, Pearce's character -- an infuriated Harrison Lee Van Buren — tosses Laszlo and Attila out of his home. He hates the library, which, for him, has one only purpose: to  display his taste and purported erudition. 

    A reporter for Look magazine discovers the library and proclaims it as the masterwork of a genius whose career was disrupted by war and the Holocaust. Van Buren recants. He pays Laszlo for his work, and invites him to design a community-oriented art and spiritual center for the suburban town of Doylestown, Pa.

    The plot's density increases. Laszlo moves into quarters on Van Buren's estate. His wife and niece return to him. He continues a heroin addiction that began as a way to cope with an injury, and his relationship with Van Buren wobbles, leading to a jarring and metaphorically strained act of sexual violence during a trip the men make to Carrara to select marble for the chapel's altar. 

    I’m not sure that The Brutalist makes groundbreaking statements about art, America, or the incorporation of new populations into the American tapestry. Toth’s Judaism remains, but isn't deeply explored. Corbet introduces a Black character (Isaach De Bankole) who becomes part of Toth's orbit, but whose story proves minimal.

      Limitations aside, Corbet's characters are among the year's most vividly realized and distinctive, offering Brody, Pearce, and Jones opportunities for  major performances. Together, director and cast create moments that prove provocative, fresh, and artfully imagined. 

       You may remember the movie as if it were dream, not entirely graspable but notable for its lingering power.

   

Rolling into Bob Dylan's early days

 Timothee Chalamet does his own singing in A Complete Unknown, director James Mangold's lively look at the years Bob Dylan transformed from a folk music prophet into an electrified and electrifying musician who defied classification.

  Although his voice isn't quite as gritty as Dylan's, Chalamet comes close enough to keep the movie credible, and Mangold, who told Johnny Cash's story in Walk the Line (2005), adds enough rising-star power to make for a captivating entertainment.

  Chalamet and Mangold meet Dylan on his terms or their idea of Dylan's terms. A Complete Unknown isn't an interpretation of Dylan's work or life. It's a cultural chronology that begins in 1961 when Dylan -- formerly Bobby Zimmerman -- arrives in New York City. He was 19.

   Dylan has a mission: He wants to visit folk legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) who by then was hospitalized in New Jersey with Huntington's disease. He also catches the eye (and ear) of Pete Seeger, played by Edward Norton in a smartly shaded performance. 

    Seeger recognizes Dylan as more than a wannabe trying to worm his way into an already established milieu. That may have been partly true, but Dylan had the chops and imagination to pay his own way.

    Tagged as an original, Dylan also came to the attention of Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), an established folks star. Their musical and personal relationship seemed to mean more to her than to him.

     The movie also depicts Dylan's relationship with Sylvia Russo (Elle Fanning), an artist based on Suze Rotolo, a former Dylan girlfriend who passed way in 2011, long after the movie concludes at the fabled Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

    Dylan's shift from folk to rock causes a stir at Newport. Seeger struggles to persuade Dylan to use his star status to keep folk music in the forefront. Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) upholds the opposite view, urging Dylan to follow his gut.

   Norbert Leo Butz plays Alan Lomax, the staunchest of Dylan's opponents, a folk purist who tries to keep Dylan's band off the Newport stage.

   The movie includes 40 songs, many of them Dylan favorites that are fun to revisit, even if they're not sung by Dylan. Whatever you think of Chalamet's singing, it never sounds like he's serving up cheap covers of classic Dylan tunes.

   I suppose it's arguable that Chalamet is impersonating Dylan, but that insults his effort. It's quite a feat, playing an enigmatic genius, imp, poet, and artist.

  The screenplay for A Complete Unknown was written by Mangold and Jay Cocks based on the book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald; Dylan fans may know where fact leaves off and fiction begins. In interviews, Wald has called the movie "poetically accurate."

   As it happens, I witnessed Dylan's moment of transition. As a young reporter, I covered a concert Dylan gave at a Syracuse, NY arena then known as the Onondaga War Memorial. During the first half of the concert, Dylan appeared alone on stage and sang the songs that had breathed new life into folk music.

    In the concert's second half, Dylan was joined on stage by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Half the crowd cheered; the other half screamed its disapproval, "Bring back the real Bob Dylan," I remember hearing someone yell.

   Dylan pressed on, like, say, a rolling stone.

   I don't know if Bob Dylan, who's now 83, ever has been knowable. Mangold suggests he was ambitious, difficult, and creative, cruel at times, and caring, at other times. If Dylan's career is about anything, it's about resisting definition. 

   Maybe that's why Mangold can't and probably didn't want to offer a definitive portrait. Instead, he highlights touchstones in a career that produced the only songwriter ever to win a Nobel Prize for literature. 

  Mangold, Chalamet, and the rest of the cast bring what could have been a dusty time capsule of a movie to life. That was more than enough for me.

   

Making this Monte-Cristo count

  With the lavish French production The Count of Monte-Cristo, audiences have an opportunity to feast on a beautifully served 19th-century hunk of vengeance. Richly designed, appropriately melodramatic, and novelistic in length at nearly three hours, this Monte-Cristo piles on the period-piece appeal without choking the life out of its characters.

  Directors Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere have made a movie that should please those who insist that filmmakers don't make movies like they used to. Unashamedly old-fashioned, the movie makes no attempt to conceal some of the hokier aspects of Alexandre Dumas's story about a wrongly imprisoned young sea captain who spends a decade in a prison, escapes, and then devotes his life to making those who wronged him suffer.

  Pierre Niney plays Edmond Dantes, a naive innocent who's betrayed by a corrupt prosecutor (Laurent Lafitte) and a man who was supposed to be a friend (Bastien Bouillon). In prison, Edmond joins forces with another prisoner (Pierfrancesco Favino) who not only helps him escape but tells him how to acquire the fortune that will finance his return to Marseilles and his quest for revenge. 

   Dantes' revenge is motivated by thwarted love for Mercedes (Anais Demoustier).Talk about bad timing: The poor fellow was arrested as a Napoleon sympathizer during the wedding that was supposed to mark the beginning of his fairy-tale life with Mercedes.

  Edmond dons various disguises to carry out his plotting, and the story relies on last-minute exposition to catch audiences up with some of its details. 

   The stakes are high. Edmond's quest threatens to destroy more than is enemies. His soul is at stake.

    An attractive cast, beautiful settings, and colorful detail make The Count of Monte-Cristo's slightly dusty story into a classy hunk of escapism about the lengths to which some will go to attain power and status.

Beautifully dark 'Nosferatu' goes on too long

 

   Nosferatu has acquired a considerable amount of baggage since F.W. Murnau’s creepy classic debuted in 1922, establishing its bona fides as a German Expressionist take on a vampire tale that evoked memories of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). In 1979, Werner Herzog took a bite out of the vampire apple with a much-admired remake of Murnau’s movie, Nosferatu the Vampyre.

  Beyond all that, recent years have seen the emergence of a vampiric bull market as various directors tried to infuse fresh blood into the genre with entries ranging from swooning teen romance (Twilight) to Renfield, a comedy starring Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage.

  Now comes Nosferatu from director Robert Eggers (The Northman, The Witch, and The Lighthouse). A specialist in  eerie atmospherics, Eggers works in collaboration with cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, who knows how to evoke a silent-era feel that pays homage to the original.

   Eggers's Nosferatu exudes dark beauty. When the ambitious realtor Thomas Hutter (Hoult in his second vampire movie) approaches the Transylvanian castle of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), Eggers's images become ominously suggestive. When we finally encounter Orlok, we hear his thick, stilted accent but shadows all but conceal his hideous countenance.

  Mood and a knowing sense of humor underscored by inflated melodrama make it clear that Eggers is swinging for the fences, which — I suppose — is the only way to approach material so steeped in cinematic history. 

   A few words about the cast: Lily-Rose Depp portrays Hutter’s bride, Ellen, the woman brought to Orlok’s attention by fate and primal yearning. 

   Willem Dafoe turns up as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, a rogue scientist who accepts the possibility that paranormal forces may be at work. Simon McBurney goes way over the top (who would want it otherwise?) as Orlok’s devoted servant Knock. Among other disgusting proclivities, Knock enjoys biting the heads off live birds.

   Hutter visits Orlok to close a deal for an estate in Wisborg, Germany, where Hutter and his bride live.  Disenchanted with Transylvania and sick of the brooding locals, Orlok aims to consummate his fated longing for Ellen on fresh turf.

   Eggers deftly mixes operatic flourishes and thunderous portents, and, yes, lots of rats, creatures that are blamed for the plague Orlok brings to Wisborg, where the movie concludes with a crescendo of sex, death, and sacrifice.

  I’ve waited until now to venture a judgment about Eggers's enterprise. I was with the movie for a long time, even noting that, at times, that Eggers approaches masterpiece levels. 

  But somewhere along the line -- I’m guessing around the three-quarter mark — I felt as if the bottom had dropped out; the movie’s two hour and 13 minute length began to work against it. The story felt drawn out, as it inched toward is inevitable climax. 

   The longer Nosferatu went on, the more its creepiness felt self-consciously expressed. By the time it ended, I was ready to bid farewell to Wisborg and its terrified inhabitants. 

   Skarsgard's Orlok qualifies as memorable and Eggers's locations, sets and atmospherics represent a top-rank achievement. Vision aside, I eventually found myself wishing Eggers would just get on with the story and let it speak for itself.

 

My 10 best movies of 2024

  I’m not a fan of lists, but identifying the 10 best movies of any particular year seems an unavoidable critical obligation. Whatever the merits of the exercise, identifying my10 favorite movies of the year forces me to review 12 months worth of movies, to see what has lingered and what has faded away. 

 Recently, someone asked me why there weren’t more good movies? It's difficult to answer that question without pontificating about the woeful state of popular culture, the decline of good writing, Hollywood’s addiction to movies with series potential, and the ever-present pressures of a market that has become nearly unrecognizable from the market that existed when I started reviewing.

   Any list involves choices from the available movies and mine reflects a particularity that. like many other forms of expression, resemble calves of an iceberg, the shape of which long has been forgotten. 

   By that, I don't mean that there are no good movies. But it's increasingly difficult -- if not impossible -- to talk about "the movies" as a unified field of cultural expression as opposed to a proliferating collection of targeted offerings that speak in a variety of voices, prompting fervor among some and indifference among others. 

   I no longer know where to begin when someone asks me what they should see. Do they see movies in theaters? Do they wait for them to become part of the streaming world? And what are their tastes and tolerances? 

   I know, for example, that many people will find a movie such as Nickel Boys off-putting, not because it deals with Jim Crow racism, but because it artfully evades the traps of straightforward narrative. In a way, the movie is about the validity of subjectivity in approaching a volatile subject. 

   We live in a time without either culture or counterculture. It's as if we're all at a convention where no one has been asked to give the keynote address. We're all trying to piece things together -- or we've abandoned the attempt entirely.

   I'll leave it with this: It's telling that Francis Ford Coppola, one of the greatest storytellers American film has ever produced, as well as the director of two of America's most enduring movies (Godfather and Godfather II), this year offered Megalopolis. Coppola's miasmic movie had brushes with brilliance but left many wondering what the director had in mind.

     Put another way, it was a strangely disorienting year in which individual movies struck like shrapnel from a bombardment launched from an undisclosed location. 

     Here, then, my favorites from the ceaseless barrage.

   

  1. Anora.

     

Deeply immersed in Russian and Armenian ethnicity as found in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, director Sean Baker's Anora tells the story of a sex worker who’s swept into the crazy world of the reckless son of a Russian oligarch. Sounds gritty and it is, but Anora boasts one the year’s funniest, farcical scenes and features fine performances, notably from Mikey Madison as Anora and Mark Eydelshteyn as Vanya, a spoiled rich kid whose carelessness reaches epic proportions. 

2.  Emilia Pérez

    A Mexican drug lord goes transgender in a musical? Outlandish and bold,  Emilia Perez marks a departure for director Jacques Audiard, who usually tells hard-hitting straightforward stories. (See 1990's A Prophet.) Audiard obtains fine performances from Zoe Saldana as a lawyer drawn into the world of a cartel boss (Karla Sofia Gascon) who abandons his macho self and becomes a woman. Fine performances, high spirits, and undisguised brashness give the movie a vividly memorable life.

3.  The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Director Mohammad Rasoulof fled Iran to avoid being jailed. So did some of his cast, but Rasoulof's story of a family that faces extreme stress demonstrates that abusive power not only corrupts institutions but sullies ordinary life. When Dad (Missagh Zareh) is appointed as an interrogator for the repressive government, his wife (Soheila Golestani) and two daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki) are threatened by Dad's murderous ambition. The result proves gripping.

4. Nickel Boys 

A brave and risky adaptation of author Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize winning novel from director RaMell Ross. Ross's subjective approach pays off. Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson give fine performances as young men confined to a Florida reform school that brutalizes and exploits them. Ross shifts the movie's viewpoint, alternately showing us only what each of his main characters sees. The approach takes some adjustment but RaMell and his cast create a movie full of haunting memories of pain and Jim Crow injustice.

5. All We Imagine as Light. 

  A revealing Indian movie set mostly in teeming Mumbai, a city dominated by alienation and estrangement but irresistible to those seeking employment. Director Payal Kapadia focuses her story on Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse whose husband has fled to Germany in search of work. Lonely but dedicated to her job, Prabha rooms with a younger woman (Divya Prabha) who's less bound by the shackles of tradition. All of this builds toward a conclusion that settles over audience and characters as gently as a sigh.

 6. The Substance

  Demi Moore stars in a movie about an aging TV personality whose expiration date approaches. Tongue-in-cheek sci-fi gives the movie its tone, and Margaret Qualley appears as a younger version of Moore's character who arrives thanks to the introduction of an unapologetically preposterous sci-fi twist. Moore and Qualey both excel, and director Coralie Fargeat delivers a boldly stylish movie that doesn't flinch when it comes to skewering a culture that worships at the altar of youth and beauty.

 7. Green Border

I don't know of a better film about the heartbreak of immigration than director Agnieszka Holland's Green Border. Holland takes a gripping look at Syrian refugees desperate to escape their war-torn country. They've gotten as far as Belarus before trying to cross into Poland. Harsh and sometimes difficult to watch, Green Border never gives up on the humanity of its characters, even in the face of so much heartbreak and cruelty.

 8. The Taste of Things

Technically a 2023 release,  The Taste of Things didn’t play in the US until early 2024 when I first saw it. Beautifully appointed and steeped in a French aesthetic, The Taste of Things features stellar performances by Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, as a cook and master chef who have devoted their lives to a never ending quest to produce the most refined of tastes. Director Tran Anh Hung works without irony or sarcasm, leaving us to make our own judgments about the insular 19th Century world he revisits. 

9. The Brutalist

Few filmmakers know how to make films that live in worlds that feel separate from reality but also point us toward larger truths that are grounded in recognizable life. Director Brady Corbet's three-hour and 15-minute look at a Jewish Hungarian architect whose career was mangled by the Holocaust features a bravura performance by Adrien Brody. Brody plays a Brutalist architect who arrives in the US in 1947, and eventually finds a wealthy patron (a brilliant Guy Pearce). Felicity Jones portrays the wife who finally is able to join Brody’scharacter. I'm not sure the whole adds up, but the movie becomes a platform for major performances and its scenes can feel haunting, fresh, and artfully imagined.

 

 10. I'm Still Here

  

Director Walter Salles examines the consequences of the disappearance of Rubens Paiva, a one-time legislator who was arrested during Brazil's military dictatorship.The film begins in 1970 as Paiva’s family prepares for Chirstmas. Once Paiva is snatched, the story focuses on Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), the wife who tries to locate her husband and keep her family afloat. Salles fills out the story with Paiva's offspring and friends. Notable for Torres's performance and for the intimacy Salles brings to a heartbreaking story, I'm Still Here shows what happens  when ordinary life is trampled by goons and lackeys who make people fearful of hearing a knock at the door. 

 

Honorable mentions, Blitz, Hit Man, Love Lies Bleeding, and A Different Man

      

A powerful story eloquently told

 

  With Nickel Boys, director RaMell Ross, who has worked mostly in documentaries, brings a daring version of a Colson Whitehead novel to the screen. Multi-layered and willing to speak in its own visual  language, the movie insinuates itself in memory in evocative and mournful ways.

  Beginning with an opening that qualifies as an idyl about Florida in the 1960s and carrying the story into the 21st century, Ross introduces Elwood, a teenager who’s on track to escape the limits of life in Tallahassee as the power of Jim Crowe begins to wane. Elwood's on the verge of attending college, when a cruel detour lands him in a juvenile reformatory. 

    Ross risks an unconventional telling of his tale. In its early stages, Ross's camera shows us only what Elwood sees. Elwood's vision offers a slightly blurry take on the world we're entering. Snippets of news might be gleaned from TVs in a store window Elwood passes. Two young Black men step aside to allow whites to pass on a sidewalk. Elwood's grandmother expresses tender love for him.

    Initially, Ross's subjective approach may disorient viewers, but he proceeds leisurely, allowing us to experience the story with an immediacy that throws us off guard and keeps us from getting too far ahead of the characters.

     Elwood’s teacher (Jimmie Fails) has worked hard to get his charge into Melvin Griggs College. En route to the school and a fulfilling life, Elwood hitches a ride with a man driving a stolen Impala. Presumed guilty of something (probably doesn't matter what), Elwood is sent to a reform school known as Nickel Academy.

   Naive and trusting, Elwood believes he’s going to finish his education. It takes time for him to realize that he’s in a penal institution where young Black men are exploited and segregated from the white population of the "school." The young men work for free, and corrupt school officials profiteer, selling food that's meant to feed the Black "students."

     Some of the boys "disappear.” We don't need a guide to tell us what that means.

    Whitehead modeled his story on the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a real-life Florida institution where 100 Black students died and were buried in unmarked graves. The school operated from 1900 to 2011.

    Ross could have taken the easy way out, presenting  his story in linear fashion, but he charts his own path. For what might be a quarter of the movie, we see events only through Elwood’s eyes, which means we don’t know what he looks like until the viewpoint shifts to that of Turner, another Nickel youngster who’s more savvy about the system. 

  Ethan Herisse (as Elwood) and Brandon Wilson (as Turner) give performances that reflect each young man’s personality and history; Elwood maintains a belief in the possibility of being treated fairly; Turner grounds his cynicism in the reality of cruel experience. 

   If the long arc of the universe bends toward justice, Elwood wants a more immediate result. He continues to believe that his capabilities will be recognized. I'd call that a deep expression of faith.

   Perhaps to add context, Ross includes real images, some bordering on the surreal. He also distorts the flow time; sometimes, we meet a grown Elwood -- or so we think. An adult living in Harlem where he runs a successful moving business, Elwood can't escape the torments he experienced at Nickel. He needs to testify about them to help bring Nickels down.

   Emotionally, the film opens slowly. It features a deeply affecting turn by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the grandmother who, despite limited resources, never gives up on Elwood. Ellis-Taylor provides a lesson about how much can be accomplished with limited screen time.

    Ross's experimental approach takes some adjustment.  The shifting points of view deprive us of context, forcing us to look beyond what's being shown. Sometimes, we have to pull back to remind ourselves whose eyes we're looking through. 

    But Nickel Boys creates the kind of disquiet that's spawned by memories that cannot be appeased.

     No, make that should not be appeased.  One of the year’s most haunting movies, Nickel Boys resonates with the eloquence of poetry, speaking powerfully as it pulls us into lives robbed of promise.

'Conclave' and 'Wicked' top list of Critics Choice nominees

    The Critics Choice Association has announced its nominees for its 30th annual Critics Choice Awards. Conclave and Wicked lead the way with 11 nominations each. Dune: Part Two and Emilia Pérez followed with 10 nominations each. Notably, Emilia Pérez received nominations in both the Best Picture and Best Foreign Language Film categories. 

 Winners will be announced in a live broadcast on E! on January 12, 2025. 

 Disclosure: I'm a member of the Critics Choice Association and voted in the nominee process. 

  As always, I encourage you to make your own lists, argue about everyone else's choices, and enjoy catching up with all the films you may have missed.

Best Picture

A Complete Unknown

Anora

The Brutalist

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Perez

Nickel Boys

Sing Sing

The Substance

Wicked

Best Actor

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Daniel Craig, Queer

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

Hugh Grant, Heretic

Best Actress

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez

Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths

Angelina Jolie, Maria

Mikey Madison, Anora

Demi Moore, The Substance

Best Supporting Actor

Yura Borisov, Anora

Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Denzel Washington, Gladiator II

Best Supporting Actress

Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nickel Boys

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Margaret Qualley, The Substance

Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez

Best Young Actor/Actress

Alyla Browne, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Elliott Heffernan, Blitz

Maisy Stella, My Old Ass

Izaac Wing, Didi

Alisha Weir, Abigail

Zoe Ziegler, Janet Planet

Best Acting Ensemble

Anora

Conclave

Emilia Perez

Saturday Night

Sing Sing

Wicked

Best Director

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez

Sean Baker, Anora

Edward Berger, Conclave

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

Jon M. Chu, Wicked

RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two

Best Original Screenplay

Sean Baker, Anora

Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, Alex David, September 5

Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvoid, The Brutalist

Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain

Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers

Best Adapted Screenplay

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez

Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox, Wicked

Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Sing Sing

RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys

Peter Straughan, Conclave

Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, Dune: Part Two

Best Cinematography

Jarin Blaschke, Nosferatu

Alice Brooks, Wicked

Lol Crawley, The Brutalist

Stephanie Fontaine, Conclave

Greig Fraser, Dune: Part Two

Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys

Best Production Design

The Brutalist

Wicked

Conclave

Nosferatu

Gladiator II

Dune: Part II

Best Editing

Anora

Challengers

Conclave

The Brutalist

 Dune: Part II

September 5 

Best Costume Design

Conclave

Nosferatu

Maria

Wicked

Dune: Part Two

Gladiator II

Best Hair and Makeup

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Dune: Part II

The Substance

Wicked

Nosferatu

A Different Man

Best Visual Effects

Gladiator II

Wicked

Dune: Part Two

Better Man

The Substance

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Best Animated Feature

Flow

Inside Out 2

Memoir of a Snail

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

The Wild Robot

Best Comedy

A Real Paiin

Deadpool & Wolverine

Hit Man

My Old Ass

Saturday Night

Thelma

Best Foreign-Language Film

All We Imagine As Light

Emilia Perez

Flow

I'm Still Here

Kneecap

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Best Song

Beautiful That Way, The Last Showgirl, Miley Cyrus

Compress/Repress, Challengers, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross

El Mal, Emilia Pérez, Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon, Camille

Harper and Will  Go West, Will & Harper, Kristen Wiig

Kiss the Sky, The Wild Robot, Maren Morris

Mi Camino, Emilia Pérez, Selena Gomez

Best Score

Volker Bertelmann, Conclave

Daniel Blumberg, The Brutalist

Kris Bowers, The Wild Robot

Clement Ducol & Camille, Emilia Pérez

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Challengers

Hans Zimmer, Dune: Part Two