Best Movies I Watched in 2024
- Clue (1985)
Synopsis: A group of (seemingly) strangers, including Eileen Brennan, are invited to a spooky mansion by a mysterious host, who then ends up mysteriously dead. Except this time it’s good and not racist.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen another comedy film where the rhythm of the jokes goes from 0 to 60 this fast. Like, it’s a relatively steady drip until Tim Curry throws away “Then your work has not changed” like it’s a pre-approved credit card offer, after which point the sheer density of jokes is slightly overwhelming. It helps that they’re funny, obviously, very funny indeed, and delivered by a stacked cast of comedy talent. My only real complaint is that, while it maybe would’ve been tedious, the part of me that likes symmetry wishes they’d done a few more alts before the final ending.
p.s. How is Murder by Death a parody of this movie but it came out a decade before?
p.p.s. I legitimately did not recognize Michael McKean until the moment when he said “I’ll unmask myself” and took his glasses off. Also took me a while to recognize Martin Mull, I think this is the youngest I’ve seen either of them.
p,p.p.s. Nouveau Riche Oblige embossed on the mantlepiece, 10/10, no notes.
p.p.p.p.s. I don’t know if I should give Tim Curry an Oscar or an Olympic Gold Medal for that penultimate sequence. Him and McKean are doing some incredible physical work in this. I mean they all are but those two in that bit especially.
- Colossal (2016)
Synopsis: An alcoholic gets kicked out by her boyfriend and has to move back into her parents’ old house in Mainhead, NH. That the movie also takes place in Seoul, South Korea, is the first of several surprises.
I don’t have a lot to say because this movie is just the right type of weird to kind of override a lot of my critical brain. I really enjoyed it. I think it’s riding a fine line in balancing the darkness and comedy successfully, and which side of the line it falls on will probably vary from person to person. The ending I was picturing was a little more grounded and character-based, but the logical leap that Gloria makes was a cool surprise and I liked that they just fully leaned into the sci-fi. Would definitely recommend, with the caveat that some people will really hate it.
p.s. Fuck Joel.
p.p.s. Around the third time Gloria passed out I turned to my roommate and said “the resolution of her character arc will be she finally sleeps in an actual bed” and let me tell you when she fell asleep on the air mattress and then woke up with it deflated I applauded them like Shia the Beef in that Citizen Kane reference.
- Dune: Part Two (2024)
Synopsis: Dune, now with 20% more sand!
Let’s start with the good stuff:
— Every design decision in regards to the Harkonnen was perfect, and none more spectacularly so than the black and white palette of the arena fight.
— I like how they handled Jessica and Chani. The way Jessica is portrayed in the book (to my memory, at least) feels like it obfuscates just how manipulative she really is, and I think bringing that out, particularly in Ferguson’s performance, made her more compelling. Chani, meanwhile, gets a much more interesting character arc than in the books (to the extent she can even be said to have a character arc in the books), one that also serves to heighten the inherent tragedy of the story. My only problem with it is I’m skeptical they can satisfyingly resolve it in the third movie without her independence in this one feeling like a performative choice in retrospect.
— The worms are always cool.
— That scene where Raban lands with his troops and they’re surrounded by dust and then the Fremen slowly start taking out his guys and it’s this great almost horror vibe then Raban runs back to his ‘thopter and just as they break out of the dust and are back in the bright daylight that’s when he gets attacked. Love that scene.
But for all that the visuals were still excellent (not to mention the score), there was overall less spectacle in this one than in the first one, and while I think that maybe was a direct result of more attention being paid to the script and making sure the movie actually hangs together coherently, it also meant there was less to distract me from the film’s flaws:
— There were several moments (e.g. some of the early teen rom-com scenes with Paul and Chani, or the bits where Stilgar is basically played for laughs) that felt tonally at odds with the movie’s otherwise consistent commitment to the epic nature of the material.
— Other than Paul’s big speech at the southern council, I didn’t really care for Chalamet’s performance, and every time he opened his mouth it pulled me out of the movie.
— Indeed, as with Part 1, a lot of the dialogue just kind of landed flat. I think of the main actors only Bardem was able to consistently deliver his lines convincingly.
— I wish we’d gotten more of the Fremen. We don’t really get a great sense of how they live, what their seitches look like, particularly in the south, and we miss some key plot points related to Fremen culture, such as Jessica purifying the Water of Life not just for herself but for the tribe, showing how the Reverend Mother is not just spiritually but physically an integral part of their existence. That moment is also important for the climax of the book, but we’ll get to that.
— In that climactic dual, we could’ve done with one fewer lingering looks between Paul and Chani. And honestly I don’t think we needed her storming out, especially since she did that at least two other times in the movie. Her going out to the desert alone in that last scene is all we need to know how she feels.
—Also, I liked that moment when only Irulan, Paul, and Chani are standing, but I feel like it was a real missed opportunity visually; we didn’t get a perfectly-framed wide shot of all three of them to really emphasize that tension.
— I was really looking forward to 6-year-old Alia murdering the baron, I’m not sure why they felt the need to compress the timeline to months instead of years. That being said, it is a non-standard choice, in terms of narrative structure, to have a character we’ve just met kill the main villain, and then leave our hero to kill just some dude he’s never met before. So I concede it’s unlikely the movie would have made that choice anyway, especially since it didn’t have room to set up Feyd-Rautha beyond “he’s a psychopath and really good at fighting.” And since Villeneuve seems to have no intention to film book 3, Alia killing the Baron is less important.
— I think Feyd-Rautha should’ve been sexier. I mean come on he’s got shirtless Sting to live up to.
Ok so I’m nitpicking at this point, and really I have one huge problem with the movie and that’s the gun (or gom jabbar if you prefer) Paul holds to the Great Houses’ heads at the end.
In the book (spoiler, though it shouldn’t be, because the movie should have explained, because it’s pretty important to the whole story) we find out that not only can water kill the baby worms (sand trout), but also the worms and the spice exist as part of an ecological cycle; kill the worms, no more spice. Additionally, Water of Life that has been transmuted by a Bene Gesserit can cause a chain-reaction with pre-spice masses (a thing which basically doesn’t exist in the movie and I’m frankly not equipped to explain here) such that it would spread water molecules far and wide, killing off all the sand trout and destroying the spice cycle forever. This relationship between the worms, the spice, and water is at the core of the entire series (consider, for a moment, how this complicates the idea of turning Dune into a “Green Paradise”).
The movie decides to completely abandon this complex and narratively significant ecological threat, and replace it with…nukes. Just a shit-ton of nukes. It has no narrative or thematic resonance, it doesn’t make sense for the character, and it’s just so fucking boring. I hate it.
So where does that leave me? I mean, I generally enjoyed the movie, despite the reduction in spectacle. And as much as I hated that climactic threat, I can’t say I’m all that surprised, as these movies have never shown much interest in the ecological aspects of the story. Whereas I was surprised by the direction they took Chani in. I mean, I started to tear up a bit in that final shot of her, which might be the only emotion besides “wow” or “ergh” that these movies have been able to get out of me. And those are the kind of moments I usually value in a film, more so than mere spectacle (no matter how impressive).
Well, it was always going to be a mixed bag. But I absolutely have to give credit to the vision this team had, even if I disagreed with parts of it. What they’ve done with this seemingly unfilmable book is truly a monumental achievement.
- Encanto (2021)
Synopsis: In a large family where everyone has magic powers, one girl doesn’t, which as you can imagine is the cause of some tension.
Yeah, I mean, it’s a pretty good Disney movie. The story manages to be about family without being too sickening, the characters were fun, the animation was pretty, the music was catchy. I appreciate that Mirabel didn’t get a gift in the and also that no one actually said “Your gift is that you brought us all back together” or whatever. Perfectly acceptable Disney movie.
So, three things:
1. I needed more space between Alma’s apology and Mirabel’s pep talk. I got whiplash from that transition, both emotionally and logically. We need Mirabel to take a moment to actually address Alma’s apology (maybe with just a little “Yeah, no shit” energy), then forgive her, then build up to the pep talk. Maybe they could even have a song about it since that’s how musicals work. As it is it’s too big a leap and leaves the scene feeling uneven and the ending rushed. Which might also be a function of the fact that
2. This clearly wanted to be longer than a movie. You’ve got this giant ensemble cast of characters, and there are only 4 character-specific songs (one of which is only about that character, not sung by that character), so everyone else gets shoved to the sidelines. Like, we get more from Mirabel’s dad than her mom because her dad is such a caricature; her mom almost gets punished for being a real person.
Look at The Lion King: about the same number of songs, but smaller cast, so Simba gets a couple songs, Scar and the hyenas get a song, Timone and Pumba get a song, Nala gets…to be in both of Simba’s songs, but that’s not because of time limitations, that’s just good old-fashioned sexism. The point being (almost) no one feels shoved to the side in that movie because they limit their cast. And then of course in the Broadway show Mufasa gets a couple songs, Rafiki gets a song, Zazu gets a song, Scar and Simba both get another song, the hyena’s get their own song, even Nala gets a song and it’s not even about Simba. I mean, it is indirectly because it’s about how she has to leave to go find Simba so he can save the Pridelands, but still. Baby steps.
Now, I’m not saying Encanto should have been a Broadway musical (though, you know, there is the whole Lin-Manuel of it all), if for no other reason than the animation kind of makes it. But, imagine if this had been like a 12-episode show, with each episode focusing on a different character as Mirabel investigates what’s happening. I mean, some of the smaller characters probably just get a scene, so maybe 8 episodes, but still. We get to actually know the characters, everyone gets a solo, the slower pacing and more casual context draw less attention to the fact that the stakes are so low—oh, right, so
3. The stakes are so low. Like, soooooo low. Oh no, the fancy family lost their fancy house…in the town where everyone loves them and will very obviously come together to help them. I mean sure, the movie could have been about how the villagers pretend to love them as long as they’re useful and then turn on them as soon as they’re not, but come on, it was never going to be that. Disney serfs stan their magic royalty always (unless they’re evil, I guess, but then it’s only so they can replace them with not evil magic royalty).
And yeah, I mean, obviously the real stakes are Mirabel not being accepted by her family, and I guess the movie mostly manages to be about that, which is good, it’s good to have smaller-scale stories like that in mainstream fun kid’s movies.
I just think it would work way better as a show.
p.s. I can’t believe they had to credit “Let it Go” for that one line.
p.p.s. “We have no gifts but we are many” Gotta love those Disney serfs, they’re like talentless ants.
p.p.p.s. I don’t know if this would be too pat, but I almost want an epilogue that’s just like, “And the Madrigals continued to prosper and with each new generation, some had miraculous gifts, and some had gifts they made themselves, and they were all loved” or something, it just feels weird to think that Mirabel will always be the one with no capital-G Gift, it implies some entity or force that’s making these decisions and then I just want to know more about that.
p.p.p.p.s. Oh no trying to stop the prophecy made the prophecy come true but it was good actually, ahhh, never saw that coming. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever actually liked having a prophecy in a story. They’re like narrative cheat codes, just throw a prophecy in there and suddenly you’ve got your character motivations, your plot, your plot “twist” (which essentially boils down to “The prophecy meant what you thought but it’s good actually” or “the prophecy didn’t mean what you thought and it’s good actually” (why is the twist never “the prophecy is bad actually?”)), you can get away with any contrivance so long as it’s somehow justified by the prophecy. Name one story where the prophecy isn’t annoying.
Ok so obviously Dune but that doesn’t count, Dune isn’t just a story that happens to have a prophecy Dune is about the very nature of precognition and determinism.
Name one other story. I’ll wait. I mean, I won’t. I’m going to bed. But. Anyway.
(I originally wrote this before Dune: Prophecy came out, which is…fine? It’s fine. So far. I did just find out about the secret computer that the person or people who has/have the secret computer absolutely would not have if anyone who actually cared about the books were writing this, so it’s edging into bad. And the dialogue is just kinda meh, I mean when that guy said he got a power that was “Beautiful…” and paused I would’ve bet $100,000,000,000 that the rest of the line was going to be “…and terrible” and if someone had taken me up on that I could quit my job for starters. Anyway the point is that show also has a prophecy and it’s also stupid, so I just want to be clear that when I say Dune, both here and anywhere else, unless otherwise specified I am talking about either the book or hexology of books written by Frank Herbert and nothing else.)
- Fern Brady: Power & Chaos (2021)
Synopsis: Jokes about being Scottish and a woman and a comedian and Fern Brady.
A solid hour, but it’s interesting to think about the gap between Brady on Taskmaster and her more confident, but slightly less weird, on-stage persona, and whether there’d be a way for her to merge the two.
- Hank Green: Pissing Out Cancer (2024)
Synopsis: Hank Green tells jokes about cancer and honestly at no point did it occur to me that Tig Nataro already did that so that just goes to show how good this is.
I am not a die-hard vlogbrothers fan. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with them for a long time because I associated them with cringy tumblrcore fans. And, you know, that’s not not true. Then I listened to John Green’s Anthropocene Reviewed podcast and discovered to my consternation that he is actually a very good writer. And then I started watching vlogbrothers and it turns out it’s a very good YouTube channel. And I thought I was done being frustrated with how good the Green brothers are at apparently everything they do and then this thing happened and I was like “I’m not going to sign up for another streaming service just to watch this” and then this morning [at time of writing] I started watching the preview clip Hank posted on YouTube and I was like “I am going to sign up for another streaming service just to watch this.”
Right from jump it’s very clear that this is a Hank Green comedy special and he’s gonna tell you some science, but also he’s gonna make evolution German and do act-outs and crowd work and jokes about butt hair and water sports. You know, comedy stuff.
This could very easily have been some some dilettantish vanity project operating solely on name recognition and pity, but it’s not, this is a real, polished comedy special and I laughed out loud several times at 7 am. It’s very funny.
p.s. While the whole thing is very much his voice I’d venture that there’s a bit of Mulaney influence in there (especially when he says “She thinks I have some kind of fun young man thing, like I’m here to get my vasectomy or I lifted a log too hard, like I played a sport to much—but look at me: what sport?” in a very Mulaney voice.)
p.p.s. The fact that him erroneously attributing “Closing Time” to Matchbox 20 early in the show is actually just setting up the final post-credits joke is just *chefkisshandmotion*
p.p.p.s. I had a free trial so I figured I might as well check out Dropout and I am now fully Dropout-pilled, it still kind of seems like a cult but goddamn are they funny.
- James Acaster: Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 (2020)
Synopsis: Jokes about edgy comedians, being on The Great British Baking Show, and the stuff that Repertoire was about but this time very explicitly (I mean he doesn’t name names but that’s at least in part because everyone knows the names).
I’m just continuously fascinated by not just the differences between this show and Repertoire but the fact this show—or more specifically the 2nd half of this show, or even more specifically the 2/3rdsish of the 2nd half that are about 2017 and not-Mr.-Bean—even exists.
Not that it’s redundant or superfluous, both shows are doing very different things. But it’s just so interesting that after doing a 4-part, multi-layered, theatrical exploration of the breakdown he went through in 2017, he would then write the end of his next show about that same breakdown, but this time just laying it all out with basically no artifice (beyond the inherent artifice of stand-up, and also the “his side of the story” frame, though that’s intentionally thin).
I compared the controlled vulnerability of this show to that of John Mulaney’s Baby J in my review of that special, and I feel like a piece I was missing was the context of each comedian’s previous specials. Like, going from Kid Gorgeous (or even moreso, Sack Lunch Bunch) to Baby J is very different than going from Repertoire to CLHM99.
As fun and intricately crafted as Repertoire is, the edges are emotionally ragged. Going from that to CLHM99, there’s not really any revelation to be had, unless it’s that, hey, he seems like he’s doing better. If Repertoire leaves you going, “Whew, wow,” CLHM99 leaves you going, “Mmm, that was good.” It’s the dessert after Repertoire‘s main course.
Meanwhile, if you were just watching Mulaney’s specials in order with no outside knowledge, Baby J would come out of nowhere. But it’s not as substantial as Repertoire or as satisfying as CLHM99; it’s a tantalizing amuse-bouche to a meal that there’s no guarantee Mulaney is ever going to serve.
I don’t know if that really added anything to the two other times I’ve written about these specials, but I just needed wrap that up so I could stop thinking about it.
Anyway, Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999 is very funny. Though it’s a much more traditional special than Repertoire, it’s still got that Acaster flair, with characters, call-backs, act-outs that go on way longer than you expected (e.g. the airplane bit), and of course it’s 2 hours long. And as much as I will always love Repertoire for how deeply it makes me feel what he was going through, I think there’s a lot of value in someone talking openly, honestly, and with humor rather than solemnity, about their mental health issues.
- Jerrod Carmichael: 8 (2017)
Synopsis: Jokes about…ok to be honest at this point I don’t really remember but some of them were funny.
I’m glad I watched Love at the Store first, because I think I can appreciate his point of view more seeing how it’s evolved from that special to this one. The voice is a lot stronger, the irony more selective. The silent beats are expertly crafted. And his physical affect is more carefully crafted; that combined with the camera work (not just the closeups, though those are definitely a huge part of it, but also it looks like it was filmed on film?) make this way more visually compelling than you’d think a dude standing on stage talking would be. And then there’s the conversational flow of it, the dialogue with the audience and the starting and ending in media res. It’s not like I don’t still have some disagreements with it (I feel like essentialist jokes were already tired by 2017, and they’re definitely tired by now), but the art here is undeniable.
- Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel (2022)
Synopsis: Almost anything I could put here is a spoiler, you should probably just watch it. Also I tried to write around it in the review but if you read between the lines you’ll get it (and actually it turns out I spoil it immediately), so again, maybe just watch it.
I mean…fuck.
So, full disclosure, when watching Love at the Store and 8, I vaguely remembered maybe hearing something about the big reveal in this special. But I specifically did not look it up to confirm, because I wanted to try to experience those specials as they were received at the time. I didn’t want to see them through the lens of his coming out and miss what they were in the moment.
But of course it’s impossible not to view them through that lens now. For example (a particularly obvious example), he has a whole bit in Love at the Store about the most opportune times to come out, and like that on the face of it is just a lot to unpack but wait. The last scenario he lists is coming out to your girlfriend when she tells you she’s pregnant, and when the audience laughs nervously he assures them “I didn’t do that I, would never do that, because I don’t have any kids” and like, I mean, he just said it, right? He snuck it in there, hid it in a joke, and it sat there for 8 years just waiting for someone to notice.
And then in 8, which is so tense, so controlled (such a contrast to the expressiveness of Rothaniel, the release of that tension), and he says, I think multiple times but in particular when talking about love and relationships, he says “What am I rebelling against?” and then in Rothaniel he says he “rebelled against” the idea of coming out for years and it’s just…this was the tension. That super controlled affect in 8, that fully crafted image is who he had to pretend to be.
And those pauses in 8, where he slows it down, then pauses, rubbing his face, seeming like he’s about to get emotional…then bam, joke joke joke, speeds it right back up again, never actually getting to that emotional core, always veering away from it, hiding it. And then in Rothaniel, the same basic beats, slowing down, pausing, then speeding back up, but the crucial difference that in that slowing down he does actually get to the emotion, he lets it breath before moving back into the comedy, until of course toward the end of the special when it’s all emotion, it’s all honesty, he’s so committed to stripping away all affect that he even apologizes for a fake little laugh, it’s just as intentional as the carefully crafted artifact that is 8 and yet it’s in a completely different mode.
And that’s not to imply there’s no craft here, even as loose as it is, especially at the end, the structure is there, and the selection of venue, the staging, it’s all precisely chosen to facilitate the intimacy of the moment. This absolutely could have been done wrong, it could have come off as trite or oversharing or cynical, the mere fact of the subject matter does not make his artistry negligible. And it’s funny too, I think I laughed more at this than I did at either of the previous specials. It wouldn’t work without the laughter. Part of what he’s doing, both explicitly and implicitly, is addressing how this secret has informed his comedy (e.g. in the ways previously discussed), that’s only going to work if we agree this is a comedy special, for whatever else it also is.
I could keep going, there’s so much to unpack here, but I’m just going to talk about one more thing. Just one devastating moment. Right before the end, when he’s talking about his mom, and he says, “What do I want from her? I know she’ll see this…” and then he pauses, looking at around, and then he looks directly in the camera, opens his mouth as if to say something while giving a little shrug…and then looks away. This moment, when he looks into the camera, when he tries to say something, anything, whatever would get her to break down that wall and connect, and then he just can’t. It made my breath hitch, you know? It stopped me. I’m haunted by that look now, that wordless shrug.
Jesus between this and Old Man and the Pool I’m really starting my year off with a bang. 30 years old now. Just thinking about that look, and then the lights cut out. That look, and then the lights cut out.
- Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man and the Pool (2023)
Synopsis: Jokes about getting older and the YMCA pool. I know I usually do three things here but that’s it, that’s the whole show.
This one’s gonna take a while to digest. It’s very funny, moving in ways I was not prepared for despite having already heard a couple of the stories, the final bit is a masterful piece of crowd work, and the ending left me literally stunned. There are things in this show that I related to waaaaaay too much, like I haven’t been this shook by a comedy special since Inside except the takeaway here is I should probably see my doctor which means I should probably have a doctor, and like I get that I’m 30 and so should not be having a midlife crisis but also if I’m right then actually I could be overdo for one, if you see what I mean. I probably should not have watched this right before bed on a work night. Hoo boy.
(Yes I’m aware of the irony of writing this 2 months before sustaining a significant injury which was complicated by me not having a doctor.)
(Which has since recurred and it turns out I actually kind of hate my doctor.)
- Paula Poundstone: Cats, Cops and Stuff (1990)
Synopsis: Jokes about cats, and cops, and, indeed, stuff.
The back half drags a little and it’s lacking a strong closer, but the first 30 minutes or so are some of the best stand-up you’ll ever see. Poundstone’s voice (literally and literarily) is unlike anyone else’s—her tone, her sense of timing, her ability to adapt to the audience, the way she says “Slim Jim.” I’ve watched this 3 times in the last year (or 2?) and it’s still laugh-out-loud funny.
- Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
Synopsis: One man tries to get home for Thanksgiving. Another man is just preternaturally around all the time.
We were talking at work about how there aren’t really any Thanksgiving movies and I was like “I’m pretty sure Planes, Trains and Automobiles is” and it is so here we are.
I don’t even know when I last watched this movie, pretty much all I remembered was the “those aren’t pillows” scene so I wasn’t sure how this was gonna hold up, but it’s pretty good. Some definite high points (the opening boardroom scene, “but I prefer noogies”, the pure delight of John Candy miming to Ray Charles) and not really any low points (I mean there’s the whole “no homo” thing with that first motel, but it’s not played up that much, and honestly in the “those aren’t pillows” scene the way they go from freaking out to like doing calisthenics and talking about sports is actually pretty funny). And it’s maybe Steve Martin’s most understated performance ever?
I wasn’t laughing my ass off (granted I was watching alone so that’s a higher bar to clear) but I was never really bored, and I think it ultimately comes off as a sweet story with only a slightly ridiculously schmaltzy ending (the way Laila Robins says “Hello Mr. Griffith” in that super soft voice with that music playing is a bit much, right? And then the freeze frame? What is this, a John Hughes movie? Oh it is?)
p.s. I appreciate that they were so committed to the fucks that they were willing to get an R rating for what would otherwise be a PG-13 movie. Edie McClurg’s “You’re fucked” is too good to lose, and you need all the other fucks to get there.
p.p.s. I thought I’d never seen a Kevin Bacon movie, forgot he’s got a cameo in this. This will greatly improve my Six Degrees game.
p.p.p.s. There was only one plane and the 2nd train is the L, so it should be Plane, Train, Automobiles, and Elevated Train (Which Real Train Nerds Probably See as a Meaningful Distinction) (Also Maybe Something Needs to Be Said About the Bit When They’re In the Trailer of the Cheese Truck, Is The Trailer Part of the Truck Or Is It Attached To the Truck, Making It Not, in Fact, An Automobile)
- Poor Things (2023)
Synopsis: The body of a young woman is brought back to life with the brain of a baby. And then things get weird.
Frankenstein is the obvious comparison but actually it’s Forrest Gump starring in a fairytale version of Flowers For Algernon, and if the problems with those two stories don’t quite cancel each other out then at least their strengths are complementary.
It helps, I think, that this narrative savant is a woman, though the film is largely uninterested in exploring that beyond the familiar tropes. In fact it’s largely uninterested in any kind of specific commentary—which is fine, the story is engaging enough and the performances are good, particularly Stone, who lends Bella a degree of dimensionality lacking in the rest of the dramatis personae—which, again, is fine (though Carmichael, I think, is miscast, because I feel like he’s better than what he does here). Problematic aspects aside (my discomfort with the film was inversely proportional to Bella’s mental acuity, and that in itself is discomfiting, but I don’t know that I’m really equipped to untangle those threads), it is a fine, enjoyable film.
But when watching that final ostensibly idyllic scene—Bella, after searching the world over (or at least parts of Europe and the Mediterranean) for how to improve it, preparing to take up the mantle of yet another self-assured doctor playing God, while the goat-brained body of the man she said she did not want to kill and yet by her own definition has killed chows down happily on some leaves—I can’t help but feel that there were some missed opportunities to actually say something.
- Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine (2020)
Synopsis: The host of a daily talk show smiles her way through a global pandemic.
This probably would have hit harder 4 years ago, but as it is it’s still enjoyably weird.
- Shin Godzilla (2016)
Synopsis: A satire about political bureaucracy in which Godzilla occasionally appears.
Having never watched a Godzilla movie before, or been particularly interested in watching a Godzilla movie, what sold me on this was that it was more of a political satire than a monster movie. And it is a political satire—but it’s also a monster movie, and that juxtaposition is largely what makes it so effective. Like, Godzilla is actively rampaging, and meanwhile we’re watching cabinet meetings in this very awkwardly laid out conference room and it’s great I love it. But also there’s plenty of goofy monster movie stuff, like the attack of the CGI train tentacles, or Godzilla’s wall-eyed early form. And despite Godzilla being very CGI they make a point of having him move in ways that seem very puppet- and/or stop motion-like (especially his head), which is an interesting choice.
Part of me is like “Well clearly this is the best Godzilla and there’s no reason to watch another one” and then another part of me is like “obviously I now have to watch every Godzilla.” Probably I’ll end up somewhere in the middle, I mean, there are a lot of them right?
p.s. I really enjoyed Kayoko’s flirting with Yaguchi (does he flirt back? Maybe?), it was fun and didn’t go anywhere, which feels relatively rare in an action/adventure type of movie, or maybe even just most movies. Like, sometimes people just flirt and it’s fun and nothing happens, there’s no relationship drama or anything.
p.p.s. Yaguchi and Akasaka both think the other is too politically motivated and both are kind of right and both are kind of wrong? But it’s hard to tell for sure and I can’t figure out how much of that ambiguity is on purpose and how much is just lost in translation, and I spent way too much time last night thinking about it and ultimately I think I generally believe both of them are, to some degree, the (somewhat unrealistic) ideal of a noble politician, someone who has ambition but only because they legitimately care about their country and think they can help it. Akasaka is little more conservative, but he recognizes the value in Yaguchi’s more radical approach even if he doesn’t think it’s generally the shrewdest path to take. Yaguchi obviously has a lot of ambition, but we know that because he just straight up says it, and not in like a schemey way but just honestly. And yes, it’s true that being “the guy who saved the world” (though really he’s the guy who led the team who saved the world and mostly he just contributed a productive environment which isn’t nothing but still for all that this movie is challenging traditional hierarchies it is still a little Great Man-y) will probably help with those ambitions, but I don’t think that’s what he was thinking when he (they) did it, and if his doubt and then change at the end seems a little forced I think that’s more of a miscommunication then a sign that he’s actually been lying the whole time (thought that moment when he’s looking directly into the camera feels weirdly sinister, right? But is that even on purpose I mean his gaze is just following Kayoko, but characters looking directly into the camera is hardly ever accidental so I don’t know).
p.p.p.s. The new PM is the Minister of Agriculture and I appreciate the reference.
p.p.p.p.s. Every time I mention this movie to someone they think I’m talking about Godzilla Minus One so I’m going to have at least watch that one so I can convincingly argue this one is better.
- Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Synopsis: A playwright becomes obsessed with replicating his life in his art as his life is falling apart.
So what I’m starting to realize is that Kaufman’s films are all connected. The most obvious connection here is Adaptation, but the way it plays with identity, and the way Caden shows up on TV and in movie posters and whatnot, echos Being John Malkovich (which I still haven’t seen) and prefigures elements of Anomolisa (not to mention the Tom Noonan and Jennifer Jason Leigh of it all).
It’s a sort of Charlie Kaufman Cinematic Universe—no, I know, I hate that I said that too, as if there’s no other model for how films can relate to one another. So wait, actually, because Charlie Kaufman is a character in Adaptation there’s an argument that all his movies do exist within the world of that movie, a sort of Tommy Westphall universe of depressed writers constantly asking women to save them but failing to treat them (the women) as actual human beings (particularly the ones (the women) who, for some unfathomable reason, actually like them (the writers)).
And it’s not like they (the movies) don’t explore that story in very interesting ways, and it’s not like that’s all they’re about, but how many times can you make a movie about yourself (making a movie about yourself (making a movie about yourself (making a movie about yourself))) before we get to ask “And? What else?”
Anyway, it’s a great movie.
p.s. Some incredible performances here, obviously from Hoffman who’s basically the only reason to give a rat’s ass about Caden, but also from a delightfully creepy Noonan, the just plain delightful Sadie Goldstein, and the women who steal the show: Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, and Dianne Wiest.
p.p.s. There are plenty of signs that Madeleine Gravis is a terrible therapist but I think the cleverest one is how she starts talk just a little before Caden finishes his sentence, every time.
p.p.p.s. This must have been a nightmare to direct when there are three people in a scene all playing the same character.
Honorable Mentions
Certain of Eventual Failure 