2024 Films
In descending order of preference.
I’m woefully unprepared to proffer a best-of yet. Give me six weeks.
Anora (Sean Baker, 2024): 3.5/5
Lots of pleasure, humor and, finally, authentic feeling to be had, if no real surprises. Baker’s characters are almost always grating, but his breakthrough here is that he makes the most annoying characters the antagonists (and funny) and makes his protagonist down-to-earth and sympathetic. In what way is this tale of a sex worker with a heart of gold and a callous Russian oligarchic family an “American Story”? Discuss. Good example of a last scene deepening the characters as well as all post-film discussion.
Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024): 3.5/5
A movie like none other—sui generis. Every frame beautiful and reconsidered from the ground up at every moment—absolutely nothing taken for granted or presented as rote. Admittedly clunky and undramatic emotionally, but it argues powerfully for imagining and striving for a new kind of perfection over continually shuffling the same bad cards around. “Practically everyone contemplated the idea of change with pleasure.” Accurately (and generously) diagnoses Trump this way: “a little crazy, no boundaries, and he’s an entertainer. That’s how you make a political leader.”
Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2024): 3.5/5
Here’s a story that I’ve never seen before, very much about desire and sex, from the point of view of a middle-aged woman (not young, not happy, but not dead yet), and taboo. Finally, it’s an expression of the horrible cruelty, desperation and pain of love—like all of the Breillat films I’ve seen. Both messy and exact—as complex as a great novel.
A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg, 2024): 3.5/5
An interesting pairing with The Substance. In that movie, there is no relief from the oppressive insistence that beauty is required and that it is imposed from the outside. This film begins there and even gives the main character a Substance-like transformation. But too late for our protagonist, it introduces the miraculous Adam Pearson, who completely turns over the equation not just for the protagonist but for the audience as well—revealing the obvious fact that beauty comes only from within. The fact that this doesn’t feel cloying is this movie’s real trick. I want to party with Pearson.
Janet Planet (Annie Baker, 2024): 3/5
An ultra specific and intimate account, like reading a diary, of a young girl looking out dubiously at the world around her, especially her mother. Lyrical, fragile, and real, but would it have killed them to provide a dramatic arc of any kind?
Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, 2024): 2/5
I began by appreciating the movie’s old fashioned, unadorned efficiency, but by the end, it comes off as so square and so static. We understand the moral algebra at the 15-minute mark, and it never gets deepened or complicated—just stared at for an hour and a half.
Smile 2 (Parker Finn, 2024): 1.5/5
I watched (and dismissed and forgot) the first Smile, but I still never got the gist of the rules here. What is happening to the protagonist and how can she solve it? The movie never makes this clear, and I’m bored and mystified. This ,plus disastrous act management: the explanation that moves the action into the second act doesn’t happen until 1:17. The movie should be wrapping up and it is just now beginning, etc.
Moana 2 (David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand, Dana Ledoux Miller): 1.5/5
Moana is called to adventure, and we know she will go. But first we must endure the scene where she talks to her sister who doesn’t want her to go, talks to her mother who says she must follow her heart, talks to her father, talks to the ghost of her grandmother, sings a song, is involved in a sacred ritual involving her whole tribe, introduces three bland new characters who will go with her. Christ, just get in the fucking boat! There is a pacing problem throughout, and Jack is with me on this.
Speed Racer (Lana & Lilly Wachowski, 2008): 3.5/5
Interesting pairing with Megalopolis. Both blank check films maudit— inventive and weird, cartoonish, packed with color, and 100 percent synthetic. Both bad by any objective measure, but both essential watches for their absolute novelty in every moment. Is this the most colorful movie of all time? A dubious distinction! I’ve watched plenty of movies, but I’ve never seen this (and never hope to again).
Time and Tide (Tsui Hark, 2000): 2/5
A fragmented mise en scene, full of elisions, rack focus, freeze frames, Dutch angles, fast forwards, and gravity-defying camera moves—but seriously lacking in narrative cohesion, character development or really anything to give a shit about. At the time, this probably seemed like the future, but thank Christ it wasn’t.
Conan the Barbarian (John Milius, 1982): 2.5/5
Over-written by Milius and Oliver Stone, it’s an epic and storybook tale, where landscape, “a sense that this is a story passed down,” and a shit-ton of gravitas stand in for specific and idiosyncratic character. Dramatically bloated, self-serious, full of manliness, pain, and myth—and determined to make the most of those expensive sets to manifest large-scale images. The modern equivalent is Eggers’ The Northman or Villeneuve’s Dune—both equally hollow and figurative, thick and slow with meaning. Richard Fleischer disingenuously praises it with the adjective “Wagnerian,” and wisely swaps pretension for self-depreciation and humor in his sequel two years later.
Les Dites Cariatides, 13m (Agnes Varda, 1984): 3.5/5
Varda shows us some of the beautiful decorative statues incorporated into the buildings throughout Paris, accompanied by Offenbach, Baudelaire, and her gentle and probing observations.
Richard Fleischer Film Fest
After all these art films that I’ve watched, what does it mean to watch movies for pleasure? Fleischer distinguishes himself as an extremely talented journeyman in every genre. Not represented here (because previously watched and reviewed) are the provocative, essential, and bananas Mandingo and the grotty and horrifically unnerving 10 Rillington Place—as well as the really good George C. Scott heist drama The Last Run, and the George C. Scott/Stacey Keach 70s cop drama The New Centurions.
Armored Car Robbery, 1h8m (Richard Fleischer, 1950): 4/5
Fleisher made seven movies between 1948 and 1949. This is a wonderfully efficient and black-hearted programmer features some good police procedural stuff and outstanding images of parts of LA still covered with oil derricks. Mentions making a turn at Figueroa, east onto Jefferson, but no mention of USC. The equally efficient The Narrow Margin, also starring “that guy” Charles McCraw (see also The Birds, Spartacus, In Cold Blood, and The Killers), would follow two years later.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Richard Fleischer, 1954): 2.5/5
Part ‘under the sea’ travelogue, part musical, part kids movie complete with a clapping pet seals—and part tale of obsessive and murderous misanthrope and justice warrior James Mason (an incredible snack in a beard, white turtleneck, and salt and pepper hair). The ample underwater footage is slow and boring but possibly innovative for its time. Not much adventure occurs until the last 45 minutes when are protagonists are chased by some spear-chucking cannibals then attacked by a giant squid—easily the best sequence in the film. Set design good. Emotional intensity bad.
Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955): 4/5
Here’s a movie I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of—although maybe Reservoir Dogs comes close. In the 24-hours before a bank robbery, we get to know a constellation of 10 or so characters in a small town, plus four out-of-town thieves (including Lee Marvin), with melodramatic dramas spun around each. Then, when the bank heist plays out the next day, it means so much more because we know and care about all the players.
Between Heaven and Hell (Richard Fleischer, 1955): 3.5/5
Efficiently and effectively blows through many war-movie clichés, and at 95 minutes, not a moment is wasted. Robert Wagner is well-cast as a callow cotton plantation owner who turns out to be brave soldier (who battles PTSD) and learns better values and a love for his fellow man, in combat. Full of miliary leaders both fatherly and insane as well as cowardly lieutenants, etc.
The Vikings (Richard Fleischer, 1958): 2/5
A thin script pits two Viking half-brothers (Kurt Douglas and Tony Curtis with blue eyes and short-shorts) against one-another for the love of an English princess they have taken captive (Janet Leigh, in a series of boob-poppin’ bodices). The running time is padded out with a lot of footage of Norway, broad Viking lore and set dressing, and he-man stuff like axe-throwing and drinking beer out of animal horns by pouring it all over their face and chin while heartily laughing.
Compulsion (Richard Fleischer, 1959): 3.5/5
Love the music that codes it as a teen-spoliation movie, yet in the first minutes it demonstrates it’s a bit more than that, introducing a gleefully murderous dom/sub couple. Fleisher, the master of not showing, completely withholds the murder itself, as well as any image of the body even when the coroner is poking at it. Instead, we focus on the joy the dom takes in being part of (his own) murder investigation. All of this is 5/5 great. Unfortunately, the last third completely alters in tone and intent as lawyer Orson Welles speechifies at great length against the death penalty.
The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968): 4.5/5
A police procedural that trips realistically through the perverse corners of Boston then morphs into a psychologically intense portrait. Trippy and effective use of multiple split screens throughout. Tony Curtis, who is kept off screen for the first hour, is surprisingly good. Way ahead of its time—and an obvious influence on Zodiac, Memories of Murder, etc. This is how you follow up an historic bomb (Dr. Dolittle).
Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleischer, Toshio Masuda Kinji Fukasaku, 1970): 2/5
The first half of this Pearl Harbor drama is more interesting formally than dramatically, as two Japanese directors (including Battle Royal-director Fukusaku) shoot the Japanese portions—mostly in long-to-medium shots, with clean lines of characters, and emphasizing ceremony and formality—and Fleischer shoots the American scenes, featuring a who’s-who of actors informally bunched up and slouching around in two- and three-shots. On both sides, though, they’re just historic mannequins. The attack in the last half hour is likely cutting edge for the time but not really worth the wait.
See No Evil (Richard Fleischer, 1971): 4.5/5
A corker of a suspense piece that makes the most of the dramatic irony between what the audience knows and what Mia Farrow’s blind character knows. Farrow enters a mansion where she is staying, makes tea and goes to bed, and still Fleisher won’t tell the audience whether or not the entire family inside has been butchered and is lying around. A cold and tense English giallo and certainly one of the very best.
Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer, 1973): 3/5
Obviously, the premise lives in the public consciousness, but the film is surprisingly undramatic. Heston is a cop solving a murder, but much of the screen time is funky and sweaty world-building. It’s set in 2022, and yeah overpopulation, global warming, ghoulish corporations, women that come with the apartment, and cannibalism—that seems about right. Small roles for ancient Joseph Cotten and Edward G Robinson (playing a proud Jew) effectively emphasize the worn-out nature of the world. Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man further attest to Heaton’s penchant for apocalyptic sci-fi at this time.
Mr. Majestic (Richard Fleischer, 1974): 3.5/5
Charles Bronson gives a typically soulful and confident performance as a probably Mexican guy who gets mixed up with a mobster’s hitman (i.e., the man). All he wants to do is get his watermelons picked (complete with reference to Caesar Chavez). It’s a rare original Elmore Leonard script (that he later novelized), and it’s filmed in the wide-open fields and hills of Colorado. An easygoing thriller and small, professional pleasure, with beater cars skidding around red-dirt roads, fisticuffs, and eventually shotgun blasts to the belly. The big baddie is played broadly by Al Letteieri—Sollozzo from The Godfather, two years earlier
Conan the Destroyer (Richard Fleischer, 1984): 2.5/5
Fleisher’s light touch is immediately evident, when compared to the original film—it manages to cut out 30 minutes and all the pretension. An occasionally thrilling Dungeons and Dragons kids adventure full of swordplay, roguishly admired thieves, and a comic embrace of the ridiculous aspects of Conan. “There is a key you must find—a key only she can touch—guarded by a wizard,” a line delivered to a character who—it’s suddenly clear—is half naked, ridiculous buff, and wearing metal underwear. The big baddie in the end is completely a guy in a rubber suit, and it’s perfect.
