The 2020s have been rocky to say the least, with a global pandemic stopping film production and changing how artists approach their work. Apart from that, political polarization is more widespread, globalization is reaching its tipping point for many, people are becoming more chronically online, strikes further disrupted Hollywood filmmaking and all of this exacerbated the changing trends in film viewing due to streaming. It would be an understatement to say that lots of films deal with these new or reemerging anxieties headfirst. For me, the best films are the ones that either engage with these ideas in unconventional ways without self-aggrandizing, or that explore deeply personal thoughts that can be extrapolated to more general anxieties. In both cases, they take full advantage of the audiovisual medium of cinema, be that through film or digital photography.

Despite being a longer-than-usual list of 25 films, there are tons that got left out that I still want to highlight. Among the more prolific and iconic filmmakers of the 2020s: Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi is one of its rising stars. Only one of his films made the list, but Evil Does Not Exist (2023) and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) are great formal experiments with a lot on their minds regarding humanity, the environment and fate. Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo is the most prolific of all, with 10 films so far in this decade, and again only one of his films made the list. But In Front of Your Face (2021), The Novelist’s Film (2022), In Water (2023) and What Does That Nature Say to You (2025) are all amazingly low-key in their explorations of the human condition in Korean society, with a distinctly Rohmerian flair.

The festival circuit also brought some gems I wanted to shout-out. 2023’s Palme D’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet is a brash but thoughtful exploration on truth and the legal systems’ difficulty in finding it. To a lesser extent, this year’s Palme, Jafar Panahi It Was Just an Accident is the great moral parable of our times. From Venice, two Golden Lion winners are worth mentioning: Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door (2024) and Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother (2025), which see established masters engage in later in life ideas surrounding family and mortality.

Other filmmakers I want to shout out: Hamaguchi’s mentor Kiyoshi Kurosawa made one of the best thrillers in Cloud (2024), which will feature in another list soon. M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap (2024) is an amazing meta-exploration of fatherhood and compartmentalization. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron (2023) and Robert Zemeckis’s Here (2024) are all major late-style works from master filmmakers. Slow cinema masters Kelly Reichardt and Albert Serra have films in this list, but on the outside were The Mastermind (2024) and Pacifiction (2022), two formally strange and deeply political works with different kinds of targets, both personal and institutional.

Finally, Chinese master filmmaker Jia Zhangke combined fiction and documentary footage of over 20 years to make Caught by the Tides (2024), maybe the most ambitious formal experiment of the decade that almost made this list. If there ever was one honorable mention, it would be this one.

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25. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)

Production from the United States. Released in 2023.

Maybe the most classical or straightforward of the whole bunch, this is nonetheless a major work from Kelly Fremon Craig, in a style that may be most related to her producer James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets). I never read Judy Blume’s work as a kid, but that doesn’t take away from this film’s simple beauties: of a little girl coming of age and a mature exploration of religion and familial expectations. Rachel McAdams gives so much by withholding emotion, and that final scene between mother and daughter always brought me to tears, even though I never lived through that event myself. That’s powerful emotional filmmaking.

24. Anora (dir. Sean Baker)

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

So far, the best Palme D’Or winner of this decade, and the best Best Picture Oscar winner of this decade. Many people on either side of the political spectrum are put off by its subject matter or perceived politics, and immediately reject it. However, Anora has a much sweeter and sadder core. It’s Pretty Woman for the new era: one of limited opportunities and mass economic inequalities that lead to institutional failure. In keeping with powerful endings, Sean Baker ends his point by cutting to black and showing the title cards without any music. Despite the frenetic energy, there is no consolation or distraction after the final cry.

23. La Chimera (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)

Production from Italy. Released in 2023.

Alice Rohrwacher’s style is inspired in equal parts by Pasolini’s sociopolitical conscience and Fellini’s freeform approach, the two of them being among Italy’s great masters. Here, she uses those inspirations within the structure of a fable to tell the story grave robbers and the spiritual and political arguments that exist within that world to justify or reject the practice all together. Rohrwacher’s political inclinations are very present here, as it was in her previous -also great- film Happy as Lazzaro. There are people who occupy property of others, who form communities, who question what belongs to whom. All of the political musings are in the service of a more personal exploration of humanity, centered on Josh O’Connor’s performance and a gut punch of a final scene.

22. The Shrouds (dir. David Cronenberg)

Production from France and Canada. Released in 2024.

Perhaps no filmmaker is as influential as David Cronenberg is right now, with the rise of body horror as a ruse for political statements that often come short of fully grasping Cronenberg’s thematic depth. (see The Substance or Titane). The Shrouds is all about grief, and its close relation to conspiracy, and Cronenberg again uses a pretty ingenious high concept to explore ideas regarding the relationship to technology, to the dead, art as a way to grasp or control certain events, among other many ideas. Add to that the meta-textual element of Cronenberg’s own recent experience with grief, and the main character being styled after the director. What fun.

21. Dry Leaf (dir. Alexandre Koberidze)

Production from Germany and Georgia. Released in 2025.

The most recent film on my list hasn’t even theatrically released in the US (it’s coming soon in March 2026). It is also the hardest to grasp and pin down. Yet, this very slow and repetitive search for a missing daughter filmed with a very low-resolution camera is sort of intoxicating, and paradoxically very filled with detail in its impressionistic digital brushstrokes. The film also employs lots of elements of magical realism, possibly as a way to curb its own budget constraints. Still, it yields a very powerful experimental film that is difficult to forget. Koberidze’s other film this decade, What Do We See When We Look At the Sky? , is very different in its visual presentation, but watching it will give viewers an understanding of what to expect: slow meditations on life, with tons of soccer references, and an overall sense of magic.

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20. Nope (dir. Jordan Peele)

Production from the United States. Released in 2022.

The best blockbuster film released so far is also Peele’s greatest film -yes, even better than his breakthrough Get Out-. This alien invasion movie that calls back to Spielberg’s Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is filled with depths that audience can choose to explore if they so choose. The surface is rather simple: an alien predator consuming humans. But beyond that, it’s about cinema, African American contributions to the medium, humanity’s relationship to spectacle, how they use and exploit their own trauma, and so much more. This is also one of the best cast films of the decade. Everyone brings their A game and is perfectly suited for their roles, especially Keke Palmer.

19. Last Summer (dir. Catherine Breillat)

Production from France. Released in 2023.

Leave it to Breillat to blur the lines between the socially acceptable and unacceptable when understanding a woman’s unique perspective in life. This story is a hard one: of a married woman -who works as an attorney representing victims of parental abuse- who starts a sexual relationship with her step-son. It is all very hard to bear at times, but is grounded in Léa Drucker’s knock-out performance of two faces of one woman trying to give into her impulses while maintaining control and dominance at all costs, even if it means ruining lives.

18. Showing Up (dir. Kelly Reichardt)

Production from the United States. Released in 2022.

The Kelly Reichardt that did make it to this list is her simplest effort this decade: of an artist in Portland working, dealing with her family, and putting up her art show. In a very Reichardt fashion, the film revels in seeing Michelle Williams do the physical work of creating her sculptures, while the rest of the ensemble cast that rounds out the film, especially Hong Chau as her friend/landlord/rival, bring so much energy and quirkiness to the whole endeavor. Returning to final scenes, this film has a very simple one, but that feels truly transcendent and stuck with me years after watching the film.

17. City Hall (dir. Frederick Wiseman)

Production from the United States. Released in 2020.

The first documentary on this list, from none other than the master of American documentaries Frederick Wiseman. City Hall focuses on the city of Boston and its efforts to serve all corners of its communities. What struck me the most was the amount of talking that occupied the film’s space. Be that in committees for policy making or speeches by Mayor Marty Walsh, most of the film was about the conversation and not necessarily the work itself. And even when there was work, they had speeches from Walsh as a center focus. It may suggest two things, jointly or separately: that most of policymaking revolves around getting people to understand and agree to certain positions and that governing requires that consensus to be effective, or that city government is ill-equipped because of its focus on overly-involving. Whichever the case, this is a fascinating portrait of Walsh, his government and the city at large.

16. Trenque Lauquen (dir. Laura Citarella)

Production from Argentina and Germany. Released in 2022.

Whoever said films needed to focus on one single idea clearly never understood how boundless the art form could be. That is true for all films produced by El Pampero, the Argentinian collective known for its masterpiece La Flor, and with Trenque Lauquen, it maintains that freedom while contextualizing it in a story of a woman seeking her own identity, independence and lack of definition. Laura Paredes is the central figure, but I wouldn’t say that she grounds the film. Rather, she releases multiple balloons to develop into their own stories for other men to galvanize over, only to pop them and focus on new balloons. This 4-hour film has a lot of story and creativity, and more than enough ideas to power through them.

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15. Juror #2 (dir. Clint Eastwood)

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

“Sometimes the truth isn’t justice” is possibly one of the best lines written for an American film in years, and such a clear summation of political concerns on both sides of the aisle. To some, Juror #2 feels like a glorified episode of a legal drama because of its subject matter and Eastwood’s own commonly-mentioned economic style of filmmaking. What he does yield, however, are very authentic performances from his entire cast, particularly from Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette as the leads. At its center, the film asks what is the legal system meant to protect, and leaves the audience to engage with the question without answering. Masterful stuff.

14. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (dir. Radu Jude)

Production from Romania. Released in 2023.

Radu Jude is another of the current era’s defining voices, with a penchant for direct address and fourth wall breaking in a similar way to Jean-Luc Godard, the same knack for including a multitude of references from high and low art, and an understanding of this decade’s lack of attention spans. Do Not Expect Too Much… is a deeply political work, equal parts dark comedy and tragedy, that follows a production assistant as she interviews victims of workplace accidents for safety PSAs. The film moves from its gorgeous black and white film photography to handheld livestreams to callbacks to past Romanian cinema. Jude’s done some very interesting -albeit profane- work with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn and Dracula, but this one shines above because of its cohesion despite the chaos.

13. Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)

Production from the United States. Released in 2023.

Annie Baker’s theater work is all about silences, with relatively few words that bring about most of the meaning she tries to convey. What surprised me about her feature debut was how deftly she translated her language to cinema, with lots of beautiful shots, a hypnotizing sound mix and editing choices that seem simple but convey a lot of meaning. At the center of this story is the complex relationship between mother and daughter, and more importantly, the daughter regarding her mother and not being able to fully know her.

12. Afternoons of Solitude (dir. Albert Serra)

Production from Spain. Released in 2024.

I already used the word ‘hypnotizing’ for the prior film in this list, but if it were to apply to anything this decade, it would be to Albert Serra’s documentary Afternoons of Solitude, which squarely focuses on Andrés Roca Rey before, during and after bullfights, without context or much differentiation between them. Serra doesn’t hold anything back and leaves it all for the audience to witness, which is sometimes gruesome. He also provides no commentary: it’s just the footage to speak for itself. In viewing it, though, I found it to be a fascinating exploration of extreme masculinity, its frivolity and the rituals these men adopt to acclaim their own power over nature.

11. Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells)

Production from the United Kingdom and the United States. Released in 2022.

Within the trend of personal/autobiographical filmmaking, Charlotte Wells gave maybe its best version in Aftersun: a memory piece of a week-long trip between father and daughter, all contextualized by the daughter, now older, trying to understand her father through the footage and fill in the gaps. The best parts of this film lie in its construction: we know that all the video footage is real, but the rest is all how the daughter interprets her father’s feelings and evolving sadness. This is another one of those endings that define the decade in film. Under Pressure by Queen never got more emotional than this.

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10. By the Stream (dir. Hong Sang-soo)

Production from the Republic of Korea. Released in 2024.

The Hong Sang-soo film that stuck with me is one that did not focus on formal or stylistic innovation, but rather stuck to a dense and detail-filled story of cancel culture, censorship, selfish intentions and dealing with disappointment. At the film’s center is Hong’s wife and muse, Kim Min-hee, who asks her uncle to complete a stage production in an all-girls school after an incident with the previous director. Hong establishes each changing day with shots of Kim’s character drawing next to the river, which itself is a metaphor for finding meaning or hidden depths to certain people. The truth is, despite disappointment, sometimes there’s nothing there to find, or that good deeds could outweigh some kind of selfish intention.

9. Benediction (dir. Terence Davies)

Production from the United Kingdom and the United States. Released in 2021.

Terence Davies is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever grace this Earth. His final feature before his passing combines his late career focus on poets with more non-linear personal explorations of religion and homosexuality. The focus here is Sigfried Sasoon, a war poet who lived a relatively open life as a gay man until he married a woman and completely gave into his religion. The film cross-cuts between multiple timelines and recites some of his poetry, alongside that of close acquaintances. Ultimately, the film is about the loneliness that comes with living between two worlds, and the ending, which recites Disabled by Wilfred Owen, is the hardest gut punch of any film in recent memory. Masterful work from a master filmmaker deeply interested in his homosexuality and Catholic upbringing.

8. Asteroid City (dir. Wes Anderson)

Production from the United States. Released in 2023.

Wes Anderson is deeply misunderstood as filmmaker of style over substance. While it is true that he has probably the most recognizable aesthetic in the current era, he uses these tools to create distance with his audience, and later surprise with a strange, unexplainable surge of emotion. Sometimes his themes are political or institutional, other times personal. Here, it’s existential. It’s about art, performance, grief, nuclear war, and everything in between. At it’s center though, Anderson invites the audience to give into the extreme artificiality of the film’s form and style, and still to continue feeling… to keep telling the story, despite not knowing what it’s about. Because meaning sometimes is not about thought but rather feeling.

7. Our Body (dir. Claire Simon)

Production from France. Released in 2023.

The best documentary I’ve seen so far this decade takes an approach similar to Frederick Wiseman in its exploration of a gynecological ward within a Paris hospital, with brief moments of personal participation by the director herself to elevate the material far beyond its initial pleasures. It goes around all phases of life, from pregnancy and birth to cancer and the problems that come with aging. And while it shows a competent hospital staff trying to do the best they can, it still shows the limits to human action. And above all, like Wiseman’s work, it focuses on communication, this time between doctor and patient, as a core part of providing healthcare services. It’s long, simple and deeply moving.

6. Crimes of the Future (dir. David Cronenberg)

Production from Canada, France, Greece and the United Kingdom. Released in 2022.

The second Cronenberg film on this list -and the only filmmaker to have more than one film featured here- is in line with The Shrouds’s use of body horror high concepts to explore deeper themes. While the former is defined by grief, Crimes of the Future is deeply philosophical, serving as an exploration of a world where pain and infection doesn’t exist, and how humanity evolves into finding new ways for pleasure or self-expression. It is also a meditation on evolution, entering a debate on humanity maintaining its current state of function or accepting the chaos of morphing into something new. I initially disliked this film for being too weird and not being very plot-forward. But subsequent viewings have revealed the infinite layers in Cronenberg’s storytelling, and the ideas and arguments he presents onscreen without ever talking down to his audience.

5. The Secret Agent (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

Production from Brazil, France, Netherlands and Germany. Released in 2025.

Talk about a film with layers, it is very hard to explain why I like this film so much without reveling too much about the film. It’s already in theaters in the US and coming soon to Latin America in a couple of months. The Secret Agent is about many things. It starts -and it’s sold- as a political thriller, of a person fleeing from certain persecution from an enemy during the Brazilian dictatorship. However, in keeping with Mendonça’s concerns as a filmmaker, it is more about history than anything else, and the artifacts that exist to allow people in the future to remember and tell stories like they are. There are also nods to Brazil’s own issues of societal divide and its history that I don’t even have access to, and I still find all of this to be an amazing exploration of a place in time, of a person seeking to remember and afterwards being remembered, and the power institutions have to engage thoughtfully with historical events and set the record straight. I cannot wait to see this film again.

4. The Beast (dir. Bertrand Bonello)

Production from France. Released in 2023.

Bonello’s dystopian masterpiece uses three timelines to show a woman terrified of giving herself into vulnerability and feeling, and waiting until its too late, creating her own self-fulfilling prophecy. Léa Seydoux fully commits to her three performances here, and Bonello integrates that sense of dread in a way that feels very contemporary: through constant notifications, people following in strange places, normality feeling off. The best symbol I could find was that of water as a response to fire. People are so scared of connecting that they would rather drown in a horrible death than risk being burned just a little. Maybe that is what Bonello found interesting within Henry James’ novella, and which are exacerbated by today’s unpredictability.

3. May December (dir. Todd Haynes)

Production from the United States. Released in 2023.

I’ve already written a lot about the magic of this film, and Todd Haynes’ work in general -with particular deference towards Carol and Safe- but May December is so deceptively complex that there is still lots of meat to discover and chew on years after first watching the film and gasping at the melodramatic movements of the plot. It is ultimately a tragedy on many levels, firstly on a man who is unable to grow despite ‘consenting’ to an act at a young age. It’s about a system that exploits tragedy for clicks and views. It’s about the ego of certain people who run through whoever it takes to achieve authenticity that is inherently worthless. This is another perfectly cast film, with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore leaning into their screen types for unexpected results, and with Charles Melton being the true discovery and one of the best performances by an actor in recent years. In the end, this film gives into the cynicism that people feel now, that we are all out for something, or want to protect our self-image at all costs.

2. Drive My Car (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Production from Japan. Released in 2021

While Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Evil Does Not Exist both could qualify as defining works from Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi, both pale in comparison to the truly titanic film that is Drive My Car. Mixed together from many stories by Murakami and integrating Hamaguchi’s own directing philosophy to the theater, this film tracks a theater director as he mounts a production of Uncle Vanya amid living through tough personal times. What stuck to me the most was the use of language as a barrier to try connection, which later comes back crawling to real life as the director finds friendship in unexpected places. This film feels novelistic, and has multiple moving parts that all come together beautifully by the end. Despite being very visually-oriented, the true value of this film is in its dramatic construction.

1. Memoria (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Production from Colombia, Thailand, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Mexico and Qatar. Released in 2021.

Apichatpong (or Joe as many call him) is the defining master of the 21st Century so far. Every feature film he has released is so rich with complexity, with personal and Thai history, both spiritual and oddly indebted to New Hollywood, that he is impossible to pin down or compare to. Blissfully Yours started one of the great cinematic runs with an exploration on pleasure and relaxation after 40 minutes of stress. And then, Tropical Malady and Syndromes and a Century became two of the most celebrated works of the Aughts. Then, he arguably became the best Palme D’or winner ever, and by far the best film of the 2010s, with Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a formally daring exploration of film and spirituality as seen through different reels and film styles.

All of this is to say that his first foray into filmmaking outside his native Thailand had many worried that he would fall into certain traps and expectations set by international audiences. However, he still pulled through with another masterpiece, this time set in Colombia, starring Tilda Swinton, and focusing on sound as a construct, sense, and source of emotion. It starts out as a high concept of Swinton’s character listening to a loud thud. She then spends much of the runtime trying to understand what she is listening to and why, eventually falling into esoteric, spiritual and emotional territory, using possibly the best sound mix put to film. Everything about this film is mesmerizing, and while I watched it at home, I hope to see it soon on the big screen to fully grasp its audiovisual pleasures. No one is doing it like Apichatpong.

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If you missed my first dispatch, I’m attaching the link here:

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From here on, I’ll write about the other five films I watched:

After watching It Was Just an Accident on Friday, I went back the very next day to watch probably the most unique film out of the bunch: Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions. This American documentary essay hybrid film is form-breaking, as much inspired by Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave, as well as hip-hop and jazz music, in how it plays with form and ‘samples’ material from other films and media to pursue this film’s ends. It works as a big thing: an exploration of art through the African American perspective, both historical through archival footage, using direct address and encyclopedic materials, an Afro-Futurist fictional section, and so much more. Kahlil Joseph worked as a visual artist and curated BLKNWS as an installation years ago, imagining the past and future centered around people who descended from Africa.

It was fascinating to watch and even more so in the Q&A where Joseph, his wife and producer and one of the stars, explain the whole process behind making the film in terms of form. This film is ultimately about so much, however, that it leaves its edges blurred. I was much more interested in how this was made, than the end product itself and its thematic content.

The next day, I watched Bi Gan’s highly anticipated Resurrection, a film so indebted to its own history, and to the virtuosic style of the director that it is almost impossible not to admire the lengths he goes to. The film is set in a future where people achieved immortality at the cost of never dreaming again, and follows a man (Jackson Yee) who continues to dream despite the prohibition, and a woman (Shu Qi), seemingly an agent of the authorities, who leads him to a path of his eternal rest. Despite this log-line description, the film is actually five separate short stories, combined with an epilogue, that tell different stories, inspired by the history of film. The first story -and by far the best one in my opinion- is a silent film that pays homage to Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis. This section employs visual maximalism to its fullest, combining frames within frames, colors and everything in between. The next stories are inspired by 50s noir, spiritual journeys, family crime dramas, and eventually the stylish 90s Hong Kong films that Bi Gan references using an extended long shot. Everything it does is very impressive, and he does manage to create meaning within the frames, but the stories are uneven, with the first, fourth and fifth being very, very good, and the rest not so much. More than any other film, I appreciated seeing this one in a very big screen at the Alice Tully Hall.

If Resurrection is all about using cinema to break or challenge the form, then Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent uses a language deeply indebted to his cinephilia to tell a more recognizable story of political struggle. Somewhere I read that Mendonça’s film is formally similar to Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood. And while I may agree in how it moves through characters, cinema and historical moments in 1977 Recife, its core has more thematic concerns than just pure pastiche. The film follows a person who is for some reason persecuted by people connected with the government -I give this vague description intentionally- but it is so much more than that. At its center, it is a film about archiving, recorded and oral history, and the value of artifacts over time. Out of all of Mendonça’s films that I’ve seen, this is the best one yet, because it is by far his most entertaining while being the most concerned with that central theme, which Mendonça includes in both Aquarius and Pictures of Ghosts. This may be my favorite film out of the festival.

Following up the Latin American film was another concerned with its own history and the director’s thematic preoccupations: Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel’s Nuestra Tierra. If you’ve read my posts for a while, you know how much Martel means to me. She is maybe Latin America’s greatest living filmmaker, who has made four consecutive feature films that are formally daring, filled with images and sounds that are glued to my head, all concerned with Argentina’s own history and the bourgeoisie’s ignorance of their own imposition over the native communities. Nuestra Tierra is Martel’s first documentary, and follows the trial of three white men who participated in the killing of native leader Javier Chocobar. It is a relatively straightforward documentary, but which contains certain moments of brilliance, including the best use of drone shots I’ve ever seen in film. She has such a capacity to capture certain images and sounds to hypnotize, I don’t know how she does it. The film is ultimately good, but I did also feel that her talents are best used when she is exploring a narrative feature, as she uses a more experimental and sensory language to tell her stories.

Of note, she participated in the best Q&A I saw at the entire festival. She was very much focused on the part of Nuestra Tierra that seemed to concern her the most, bureaucracy, and the struggle to put more steps into processes to deny certain people their rights. She has such a way of expressing herself and is so clear in her ideas, it’s no wonder that she is such a respected thinker in filmmaking circles. She was even honored at the festival as the main speaker of the Amos Vogel Lecture, a big deal in itself.

To cap off my experience, I took a train to the Museum of the Moving Image (NYFF’s partner venue in Queens) to watch the Centerpiece Film: Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, also the winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. This triptych of family relations follows three different family reunions and are concerned with the difficulties of children’s relationships to their parents, their certain unknowability, an incapacity to fully express oneself with them, and the love that can exist despite the complications, even if people don’t recognize it as love. If was one of the weirder and off-beat films I saw, but one I enjoyed a great deal and was also one of my favorites. Jarmusch is a great director of actors, and of creating a sort of visual poetry. With such a big main cast with varying talents, it functioned better than I thought it would. It served as a fun double feature with What Does That Nature Say to You?, which I saw the week prior.

In all, I saw 11 films. Of the varied kinds of stories, family was certainly a central theme. The importance and difficulty of these relationships resonated through Dry Leaf, Sentimental Value, Sound of Falling, What Does that Nature Say to You?, The Secret Agent and Father Mother Sister Brother. It seems that maybe it is also a central theme for the year in film, as PTA’s One Battle After Another also integrates family relationships into this story. In recent decades, more focus was put on a certain chosen family of people who align in values, goals or views. Here, though, it is the inherent struggle of different people related by blood that gives these films life. It is learning to bridge differences and understand how different people express their love, to learn to forgive, to say things left unsaid before.

I hope to return to this film festival -with a bigger film pass- in the future.

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Another feature of the NYFF is that it is mostly concerned with the filmmakers. Most screenings have Q&As with directors where they get a chance to explain -or not- their intentions in framing or presenting the film in a certain way. Actors can appear, but that’s usually when the film is campaigning for Oscars, which does happen but not as much as one would think.

In this first report from the NYFF, I’ll briefly write about the first six films I’ve watched, with some other details from the filmmakers if applicable.

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The first film I watched was the Opening Night film: Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, which premiered earlier at the Venice Film Festival. This one is a TÁR-esque cancel culture drama starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edeberi, that takes place in Yale’s philosophy department and follows a professor who grapples with sexual assault allegations made by her star student against her close colleague. Reviews have not been kind to this one, and I can understand why. Guadagnino is all about style, and his best films usually lean on style as much as he can to create something enthralling, like in Challengers or Call Me By Your Name. Here, however, Guadagnino directly references Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, two directors who are more decidedly psychological and writerly, and of course, his style-over-substance tendencies don’t go over that well with these comparisons. The one thing I will say is that this film is never preachy, and has something to criticize about every single character in the frame. Guadagnino holds no prisoners in a sense, and I can admire his commitment to exploring how politics frame personal perception, and vice versa. Not his best, but also not nearly as bad as I thought.

Like most other big film festivals, NYFF has a section dedicated to experimental cinema, called Currents. The second film I watched was the only one I booked within this section: Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Koberidze is a Georgian filmmaker who loves stillness, contemplation, magical realism, and soccer. His previous film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? integrated all of these elements, and used a simple love story to reflect on cinema, the city of Kutaisi and its people. Dry Leaf also integrates these four elements, and is dedicated to observing Georgia as a whole through the framework of a road movie -particularly its countryside- with the important caveat that it was shot using an old Sony Ericcson phone. This means, the entire film is highly pixelated and difficult to see clearly. What that reveals, though, is the beauty of landscapes as if they were impressionist paintings.

Throughout the film’s daunting 3-hour runtime, a father and his invisible companion look for his lost daughter by visiting every town, and the form serves to suggest their myopic view of the beauty that’s in front of them. The end, however, brings it all together beautifully. After the film ended, I got a chance to see Koberidze at the Q&A with his brother, who composed the score. Their approach was deceptively simple, and they gave no easy answers, as they talked about integrating everything they saw on the road while filming with their father. Dry Leaf is the best film I’ve seen in the festival so far.

A day later, I returned to Lincoln Center for three films that I watched back to back. The first was Sentimental Value by Norwegian director Joachim Trier, the director who previously made The Worst Person in the World. The film previously won the Grand Prix at Cannes (i.e., 2nd place). This screening also featured his co-writer Eskil Vogt and the entire main cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning. They are all charming, and that shows in what is a very funny comedy drama about the value of art to heal, family relations, and filmmaking. However, I wouldn’t say that the film is a definitive success. It works very well as a skit comedy, as each sequence seems to be tied to a particular moment that more often than not ends in a funny gag, but it doesn’t coalesce. In the Q&A, Trier and Vogt talked about how they wrote in fragments, and not the whole story, and it definitely shows. In The Worst Person in the World, that segmented structure worked very well, because at its core was the psychological exploration of the main character and her inability to figure herself out. Here however, the segmentation is not thematically justified. There are lots of strong moments delivered by the entire cast -I wouldn’t be surprised if they all managed to get Oscar nominations- but it never turns out to be more than the sum of its parts.

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Right after, I saw another Cannes winner: Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, a German film which shared the Jury Prize (i.e., third place) in Cannes with Oliver Laxe’s Sirat (a film also featured in the festival but that I watched months earlier in Madrid). Sound of Falling follows four generations of women living in the same home across different time periods, and is dedicated to giving a wide portrait of womenhood, many times through suffering but oftentimes through joy. I also had mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, the filmmaking is remarkable, as Schilinski is able to frame a coherent story through effective editing that ties them up pretty well in the end, and through her virtuoso filmmaking of big, lush movements. On the other hand, there isn’t much meat under the surface. The complex framing leads to a simple understanding of these women’s lives, desires and fears. In Schilinski’s Q&A, the talked about these elements and emphasized the importance of understanding the commonalities of the women’s struggles. She definitely is a great filmmaker at the very start of her career, so it’s all upwards from here. Time will tell how I end up feeling about this one.

To end my three movie day, I saw the simplest but most delightful out film out of the bunch: Korean master Hong Sang-soo’s What Does That Nature Say to You, a meet-the-parents comedy drama with a focus on poetry as a proxy for competence. This film premiered earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival. The festival organizers said that Hong could not attend the festival as he is a new father with his partner and muse Kim Min-hee -some of you may know her from The Handmaiden- and the director was supposed to make a video introduction for the film, but instead he showed a two-second video of a tree. It was very funny in how unexpected it was, and I guess I could say the same applies for the film, that follows up on Hong’s By the Stream to create a straightforward dramatic play, instead of the more formal and stylistic experimentations of his most recent oeuvre. While it is more low-key than my favorites of his, this is still a very effective film by any standard, and proof that Hong is the best out of all the South Korean filmmakers, and one of the masters of 21st Century cinema.

To cap off the first week, I watched the Cannes Palme D’Or winner: Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident. Panahi was supposed to attend the festival and have a Q&A. He couldn’t attend, and in his stead, the film’s French producers recounted the entire filmmaking process, which was fascinating because Panahi is banned from filmmaking in Iran. They talked about how they shot everything in secret, how they didn’t use scripts, how they were raided and that the film was saved because the police confiscated the camera instead of the computer, etc. Besides those stories, which will surely aid the producers in campaigning the film for Oscars, the film itself stands on its own two feet. It Was Just an Accident is a morality play about characters deciding how to grapple with a person who tortured them in anti-government crackdowns in the past. It is very simply structured, but effective because of how it goes about raising its questions, the humanity shown throughout, but the also the truth that any choice leads to bad consequences. There are no easy answers when dealing with authoritarian governments, and Panahi knows it firsthand and lays it all out.

And that’s it for the first week of the festival. I still have another one to go, filled with other prominent films from the world. I’ll report back once I’ve seen all of them.

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It is also pretty accessible as an action chase movie, though it is so much more and so much weirder than that. So if you can understand the politics as just an element or setting of the movie, and not the movie itself, everyone can watch and enjoy it.

Be advised that it’s better to go in blind to watch this film. I’m not fully spoiling, but I needed to write about specific plot details to make my review coherent. So again, seek out the film is you haven’t, it’s available in theaters everywhere.

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Collective Action, Piece by Piece: Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another

Production from the United States. Released in 2025.

It is all too common to feel disconnected from newer generations, to feel that they don’t know how good they have it, or that they’re not doing enough to effect change. It is also common to feel that for older generations, that they gave up too quickly and failed to understand the current struggle. It’s too easy to feel hopeless, that no one person has stood up to challenge those we see opposed with our own morals or beliefs, however polarizing they may be. But the truth is a little more nuanced, and hopeful than this… or at least that’s what Paul Thomas Anderson seems to believe, that the goodness of people and individual small efforts go a long way to effect positive change, no matter the time period, the person, or their respective generation. This optimism may seem jarring given Anderson’s complicated filmography, but it ultimately works when put in context with the current reality and the rest of his work in One Battle After Another.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s reputation precedes him. The cinephile community canonized him as one of the leading cinematic voices of the current generation, and at least half of his films are usually included in discussions around the best films of their time, from Boogie Nights and Magnolia in the 90s, to The Master and Phantom Thread in the 2010s, and especially There Will Be Blood. But to pin down his particular voice or auteurial intent proves to be a tricky challenge. His stories usually lack a clear plot, his themes operate under multiple levels of complexity, his characters can seem both deeply crass yet lovable, his tone is erratic, absurdist and cynical, yet somewhat emotional at its core. If I were to describe his influences, it is both the sui generis works of Robert Altman, but also freneticism of Jonathan Demme. There is a lot to unpack to what his films bring to the table, and though his newest film is decidedly more commercial, it still manages to operate in this level of complexity to satisfying effect.

To get to it, One Battle After Another is simple enough to understand: a very modern rehash of John Ford’s The Searchers, where a father (Leonardo DiCaprio) desperately seeks to reunite with his daughter (newcomer Chase Infiniti) after an old enemy (Sean Penn) reemerges to disrupt their lives. This logline and structure, however, does a complete disservice to everything that this film is: an action-adventure, stoner comedy, absurdist flick, chase thriller, political drama, all packaged into the Hollywood blockbuster formula. It also takes loose inspiration from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, a similarly absurdist novel about ex revolutionaries in the 80s grappling with the new generation.

It begins before there is even a daughter to worry for, about two decades earlier, where DiCaprio’s character is a member of the revolutionary group ‘The French 75’, mostly led by Perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Teyana Taylor. This first section of the film essentially belongs to her, and technically is the one that feels most like a Paul Thomas Anderson film. It has a dreamy, almost impressionistic flow, and is fully immersed in the operations of left-leaning revolutionaries as they apply direct action to fulfill political goals, without much focus for plot. Taylor’s loud natural-feeling performance is contrasted then and there with Penn’s highly stylized performance as the Colonel Lockjaw, which adds to this part’s tonal whiplash, but it still works. It shows Perfidia’s activism, her journey to motherhood, and her complicated individualism, which is shown not only in her role as a mother but also her political work. She did good work, and she seemed genuinely engaged in her politics, but was it for the thrill, her own self-aggrandizement? Can both be true? In any sense, she makes a tough decision that haunts DiCaprio’s character, and colors the rest of the film for all the rest of the cast.

Cut to 16 years later, where virtually nothing has changed politically, and Anderson seems to ask: what was it all for if nothing’s changed? Did the past generation fail? DiCaprio’s Bob and Infiniti’s Willa are now in the fictional town of Baktan Cross, a sanctuary city with lots of immigrants. Bob and Willa are separated, Lockjaw comes back to attack, and Bob sets out to find his daughter. What felt very interesting is that Bob is an extremely imperfect character. He fails at every turn, is unable to remember codes from his past, fumbles his way around and is generally ill-prepared to handle the new threat. Yet what is so endearing is that he never stops trying to do good by his daughter. And in a way, that is the whole point once again. His individualism doesn’t matter.

That is also proven by Benicio Del Toro’s Sergio, the standout of the film, who is Willa’s karate sensei and sort of a community leader in Baktan Cross. Lockjaw’s attack also becomes an immigration crackdown, and through Anderson’s virtuoso filmmaking, the viewer gets to witness with thrilling movement and detail how the whole community rallies to save vulnerable people from detention, and how all of them help Bob. The French 75 have less activities, but the sense of community and the wish to help each other is seen clearly in Baktan Cross. One might view this as political, and it very well may be, but more than that it is Anderson’s effort to humanize everyone and show them as, again, people trying to do the good, even if they fail. It all also feels very naturalistic, in deep contrast to Penn’s character Lockjaw and his whole arc. The villain organization is treated in a wholly different way: it is absurd and almost laugh out loud funny in how they use language to mask their true intentions as white supremacists. All of them are very off-key, and that’s most represented in Lockjaw, who is shown as human because of his raw, deep, feral insecurities in his manliness.

For Willa, everything seems to happen to her, except for the climax. Every change and positive moment comes from disparate people who take their time to do good, similar to the people that help Bob. It is not her individualism that saves her. All that follows, and the final confrontation, is very thrilling to watch. Michael Bauman knows how to shoot frenetic action and also frame beautiful stills, particularly one that calls back to, again, The Searchers. And Jonny Greenwood’s dissonant compositions do well to state the emotional and absurdist mood of the film. Anderson has a pretty good crew behind him to tell his big story. The end, however, is the one that left me with the most open questions. It is not ambiguous or tragic. It is very, very schmaltzy almost as if Spielberg directed the film, which put me off the first time I watched it. It seemed too clean, too classic, too normal to fit in what was until that moment a weird blockbuster. But with some (brief) time after watching, I maybe understand that it is again a hopeful look into the future. Things may not change immediately, but community is strengthened by people wanting to do good, and with that understanding between generations, the world becomes a better place.

Anderson’s films always change with time, as they continue to reveal their layers the more they linger in the public consciousness. The Master, for example, was very off-putting to me the first time, and I now consider it to be, by far, his best film. While One Battle After Another does not seem as complex as The Master or There Will Be Blood or Phantom Threat, time will tell if it similarly reveals its inner layers. And the pieces are there, it is not only a father-daughter movie, but also one of immigration, activism, community, individualism, blood ties and much more. I still need to get used to that Hollywood ending, let’s see how it changes with time.

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So it’s been a few months since I posted here, just wanted to update on how things have changed. I am now living in New York City pursuing a master’s degree, and while the degree itself has nothing to do with cinema, this city definitely does. The past three months have been a lot between organizing myself in Caracas and getting used to the city here, but I hope to post regularly again from now on. Now that I’m here, some things will maybe be different.

The main thing is that the release calendar is way different here from the one in Caracas, so I will be able to see most films a bit earlier than usual, and therefore review them. This especially applies for any films that are vying for Oscars next year. Another main thing is that, with access to so many repertory theaters, I will have the chance to see old films on the big screen, so maybe I can review these films too with a more educated view on how they are supposed to be seen.

For now, I just want to share some of the stuff I’ve been able to see and do while here, which includes about six visits to commercial movie theaters to see new releases (Eddington, Weapons, The History of Sound, Honey Don’t, Caught Stealing and Highest 2 Lowest). All of that’s been fun, and particularly Eddintgton was a really interesting watch in my first night in New York at 10:30PM, but the true bright spots have been elsewhere: two this week to be exact.

The first experience was through Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The museum organized a complete retrospective of Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman’s work, which started last Thursday with her magnum opus: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The screening included words by MoMA directors and Akerman’s sister before witnessing three hours and fifteen minutes of a woman keeping her house together, peeling potatoes, cleaning, shopping, and working until she violently reacts.

I first saw Jeanne Dielman a couple of years ago at home after Sight & Sound crowned it as the Greatest Film of All Time according to film critics and academics. Even though I admired the film in that first watch, it was unfair to judge it in those terms, as I was easily distracted while watching, checking my phone or answering calls from people within my house, or even with my viewing area having external light interrupt the experience. It made me miss all the signs that she was cracking out of her routine before her eventual explosion in the film’s closing minutes.

Here, though, the film was all I could see and think about, and it was impossible to miss all the details that Akerman planted throughout. It was a completely enriching experience made all the better by MoMA’s film crowd, most of whom knew Akerman’s work and audibly reacted each time she said something funny or gasped as she made each mistake. It was a truly great experience which made me appreciate this film and cement it as one of the very best in my mind (confirming the Sight & Sound’s appreciation for it, jokes aside).

The other main experience I had was on Saturday, when I had the opportunity to visit the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in Astoria, Queens. The museum is filled with different exhibits featuring different film series (including a whole dedicated area to the Mission: Impossible franchise), techniques such as puppet work through film and 2D animation, areas dedicated to the crafts (including a great section on The Exorcist’s makeup and The Silence of the Lambs’s production design and concept art.

My favorite part of the museum was, however, a whole section on how director Todd Haynes (one of my personal favorite directors) creates image books to drive the visual language of his films and explain to his collaborators on how to execute his vision. Part of the exhibit was the whole picture book of May December (one of the best films of the decade) and sections of his pictures for his other films, including I’m Not There, Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven and his debut Superstar: A Karen Carpenter Story.

Outside of the exhibit area, the true reason I visited MoMI was because it organized a retrospective of English director Terence Davies’s filmography, also one of my personal favorites, dearly missed. That day, I got to see Distant Voices, Still Lives, his first feature film (outside of his trilogy of thematically-connected shorts that he later cut into one film) which like all of his early work, uses a non-linear structure based on memory logic to explore his family history, particularly that of fatherly abuse and the communal power of music to connect and bring joy.

To my surprise, the editorial director of MoMI, Michael Koresky, gave a few words before the screening began, and the film itself was presented in its original 35mm print (a first time for me seeing a movie through an old film reel). Koresky is a film critic I greatly admire and influenced in a way how I approach, think about and write about film. He founded Reverse Shot, my favorite film publication, and always has a way of expressing his complicated ideas surrounding film in such a clear manner. It was great to see him talk about a film that is one of his favorites (and mine). The film itself, I have few words to describe my feelings towards it. It is better to just see it and then process and feel through. Davies’s early work is where he shines the most.

So what’s next for my film journey here? There are still many films from the retrospectives left to screen at MoMA and MoMI, which I intend to go to. There are also many repertory theaters that I still have not been to and should, like the Metrograph Theater in Chinatown, the IFC Center, Film Forum, among others.

Finally, and most importantly, I will attend the New York Film Festival, organized by Film at Lincoln Center in about three weeks! I will have the chance to see six films, which I will choose today at noon. For now, I am most excited about Lucrecia Martel’s new film, her first documentary Nuestra Tierra. But I will share my thought and feelings about this one and the rest I’m able to see when the time comes.

I hope to be able to post more through here, and share my film-related experiences of possibly the greatest city to be a cinephile.

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Another interesting fact about Rohmer is that he usually worked through film series: multiple films with stories independent from each other but that follow a similar thematic or aesthetic pattern. His first series was Contes Moraux, or Six Moral Tales, which explored the pathetic psychological hoops that men go through to justify their own attraction to women, even when they are engaged in some way to their ‘ideal women’. Add to that that each film continued to develop on these themes, to end in a satisfying climax. The second series, Comedies and Proverbs, framed comedies of errors through multiple common French proverbs. And with Tales of the Four Seasons, arguably my favorite of his series, he frames stories of love, fate and human connection, with his simple visual flare, amazing dialogue (literally no one does it better) and the use of each season to thematically connect to the story at hand. If Six Moral Tales was all about a man’s internal dialogue, Tales of the Four Seasons has a looser feel, less about dissecting love than discovering it on its own terms.

Rohmer’s first film in the series is A Tale of Springtime (1990), which uses the spring to signal new possibilities for love, even if they’re not certain. It centers around Jeanne, a philosophy teacher, who drifts into the orbit of Natacha, a young woman eager to play matchmaker between her and her father, who shifts through multiple young girlfriends and is currently dating Eve (who Natacha dislikes). This film is all about emotional manipulation, as all characters feign niceness to each other, gauging each other’s words and reactions, until a trip to the country makes them confront these manipulations at face value. I would say it is my least favorite of the four films, but it is still very good on its own terms.

If Springtime is about potential, A Tale of Winter (1992) is about faith—not just religious faith, but the stubborn belief in love against all odds. Félicité, a hairdresser, spends years pining for a man she lost due to a wording error, clinging to the hope they will reunite. Rohmer’s winter is a season of waiting, of life suspended. As with most Rohmer films, he lays the character’s imperfections in plain sight but he never judges them. With Félicité, he paints her as being filled with imperfections and contradictions, being both very pragmatic in her treatment of her two potential suitors, and still longing for the summer love that will bring her happiness. Part of the film’s brilliance is in its refusal to dismiss Félicité’s longing as foolish; instead, it treats her patience as its own kind of wisdom.

A Summer’s Tale (1996) is Rohmer’s most personal film according to him, his most celebrated within the series and probably the most relatable: a portrait of indecision as a form of self-sabotage. The film follows Gaspard, a musician who spends his vacation torn between three women, each representing a different path his life could take. The Breton seaside where Rohmer films is beautifully colored and inviting, but by framing the story in the days of the summer: it is a reminder that he is wasting his time by failing to commit, and be emotionally responsible. This film contains maybe my favorite scene in any Rohmer film: one where Gaspard finishes writing his sea shanty and performs it with one of his potential girlfriends. These moments of bliss fill Gaspard’s summer, followed by complications either by that same girl or another one approaching him romantically. By failing to make a choice, he is more or less dooming himself. The summer is beautiful but filled with potential not consummated.

Finally, A Tale of Autumn (1998), my favorite of the four films, is about finding love at middle age. The film follows Magali (played to perfection by Rohmer regular Béatrice Romand), a widowed winemaker who resists her friends’ attempts to set her up (another Rohmer regular Marie Rivière and the younger Alexia Portal), only to stumble into love through a series of comic misunderstandings. Here, Rohmer’s central metaphor is in the wine itself: appreciated more as it ages, yet made more complex for the palette. Both friends are well-intentioned in setting up Magali for love in her middle age, yet both go about completely different ways to make that happen, with one being direct and not necessarily attentive to the suitor being a match, and the other taking her time to find a suitable candidate, and generate a spontaneous interaction.

The magic of these films lies in the art of conversation as drama. Rohmer’s characters talk—about music, philosophy, morality, their own insecurities—but their words often obscure more than they reveal. The real action happens in the pauses, the glances (a particular reaction shot of Alexia Portal’s character in A Tale of Autumn still haunts me), the way a character might fiddle with a wine glass instead of answering a question. Rohmer’s camera lingers on these moments, finding tension in the everyday. In an era of straightforward romances and meet-cutes, Rohmer’s four films feel very much of a different time and energy. These are love stories with ideas that go beyond the couple being together or not in the end. Like the best of films, their power lies in their layers of subtlety and thematic depth. Finding love that fits one’s ideals may be hard, but there’s nothing like the power of a good conversation to find it, or at least come closer to adjacent emotional truths.

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And in the blockbuster side, there is Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which has become some sort of a commercial sensation and could maybe become an Oscar contender in the fall. Go watch it in theaters if you haven’t, I don’t spoil anything important here, but just to be safe.

Smart, Sensual, Conventional: Ryan Coogler’s Sinners

Production from the United States. Released in 2025.

Ryan Coogler’s career has been interesting for many reasons. He has leaned into the modern Hollywood blockbuster machine while retaining some form of auteurist aura. Most of his films exist within well-established IP franchises. And in most of them he uses the opportunity to explore complex personal or political ideas. So in general, it would seem that he elevates his work beyond his material. Yet for some reason, it always feels a little incomplete for me. In Black Panther, for example, the very real debate between isolationism and global collaboration for justice is very prescient, and Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger was initially an interesting villain, but the film deprived him of any more dimensions in the final act where he becomes outright monstrous to remind viewers of who to root for. Its sequel, Wakanda Forever, was a complete mess from start to finish with Coogler being tasked to set up a bunch of future series within the franchise, and the obvious complication of Chadwick Boseman’s untimely demise, but at the very core of the film was an extremely interesting geopolitical and philosophical debate surrounding the responsibility to protect, duties of collaboration between similar countries, and how other countries -for the film global powers- deliberately leverage chaos for more power.

So in a sense, I always found that Coogler was a little too smart for working within pre-established frameworks, yet doubted if he could escape that kind of filmmaking. Then comes Sinners, his first original film since his debut feature Fruitvale Station, a sprawling action horror film set in the Jim Crow South that may or may not dip into the supernatural. And the question for me was: does Coogler escape the pre-set blockbuster trappings when given the final cut for a film? And the answer is no, but in some form yes.

Sinners is about two identical twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) who after some time seemingly working for Capone in Chicago, return to their home in the Mississippi Delta to start a juke joint. The film takes its time to introduce its ensemble cast and lay the groundwork for the middle and end. There’s Mary, played by Hailee Steinfeld, a white woman with some African American heritage who grew up with the brothers and had a close relationship to Stack; Annie, played by Wunmi Mosaku, Smoke’s estranged wife who grieves their lost son; Delta Slim, a musician played by Delroy Lindo; Yao and Li Jun Li as the Chows, Chinese shopkeepers in the area; and most importantly for the plot and maybe central to the story: Sammie or “Preacher Boy” played by newcomer Miles Canton, a supernaturally gifted musician and cousin to Smoke and Stack. It’s a lot to set up in a short time, but it was entertaining seeing the brothers reconnect with everyone and trying to open the juke joint that same night.

The film is at its very best in the middle section, when all of the characters converge in the joint the brothers bought and opened. It is in this part that this film leans into what is probably its best part: the music, led by Ludwig Göransson (composer for Black Panther and Oppenheimer) who also executive produced the film. Much of the film’s mythology is informed by blues music and Irish folk, as the kind of music that connects with the past and the future. And the film quite literalizes this idea in what is in my opinion the best sequence of the film, where Coogler takes a page from the dream ballets of The Red Shoes and Classic Hollywood musicals to combine multiple styles of music and dance into one single scene. The anachronisms present are thoughtful and enhance everything else present.

However, after that, the film reverts to classical Hollywood conventions and I would even say that it reverts to some of the now recognizable MCU conventions, with the mirror image antagonist and the assembly of heroes into an epic battle within a single take, even the very frustrating dark lighting at times. The difference here is that there are very clear horror elements instead of being cheeky comedy, but they are still there. In fact, it makes the first act seem lesser than by comparison, because it also becomes a victim of convention. Make no mistake that Coogler made a very well-made film with a lot of ideas, which I will get into next, but for all of his original story and his having final cut, it all seems too conventional.

The ideas surrounding the film are, not surprisingly, very interesting. The racism of the Jim Crow South is very, but it takes a backseat to the duality of man in confronting their demons, literalized by Michael B. Jordan’s dual performance. It is about facing those demons to make the best of oneself and their art -as art is informed in a way by suffering- as Sammie has to decide to do when hinted in the film’s first frames. It is about community, but facing the cost of having a community, with all of its lack of virtue. It is about redemption, and what redemption could mean for a person, may they be God-fearing or not. It is about art and music, and its power to unite even the most divided communities. It is about so many things, and it does cohere (especially in its dream ballet and in the very final moments of the film), but the genre elements for me failed to cohere in the same way that the masters of horror and suspense made with their works.

To put context, the antagonistic forces of the film are somehow attracted to that supernatural power of music. But it all seems like an excuse to keep the action going, instead of being informed by artistic intent and theme. When John Carpenter introduces horror elements in his conventional films, it is a reflection of the extreme paranoia of the time and the refusal of people and countries to trust each other (see The Thing). When David Cronenberg creates mutant children who kill in The Brood, it is a reflection of his own divorce and how destructive it feels for them, their daughter and the people around them. When Kiyoshi Kurosawa creates a serial killer of ghosts, they are a reflection of the extreme isolation people feel in the modern era (see Cure and Pulse). When even Jordan Peele creates a UFO, it is more about the history of cinema, Black people in Hollywood and ownership and control (see Nope). You see where I’m going here. In my view the best genre filmmakers use its conventions and alter them for their own gains.

That isn’t to say that Coogler doesn’t know what he is doing. He is an extremely capable technical filmmaker with a lot of ideas, most similar to Christopher Nolan in that combination of blockbuster and interesting ideas. Yet like Nolan, Coogler doesn’t marry his filmmaking to thematic and artistic intent. He first and foremost wants his audience to have a good time. So what does this mean for Sinners? It means that it is a very entertaining genre film that I’m sure that most people will enjoy, as I did to some extent. I just hope that in the next opportunity he gets to make original material, he makes a true artistic statement.

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Since my focus has been on current films and there is sort of a drought now, I wanted to take a chance to write about the film. I already wrote about Martel last year, but I’ll just do a deeper dive of Zama, and maybe take the opportunity to explore other films from the 2010s that have stayed with me in some form.

Post-Colonial Despair: Lucrecia Martel’s Zama

Production from Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, France, Lebanon, Netherlands and the United States. Released in 2017.

Lucrecia Martel is an auteur of sensory storytelling. She is as much concerned with the sound design of the film as a conduit for storytelling as the images she captures to fill those sounds with. In her debut feature La Ciénaga, Martel eschewed any normal kind of storytelling of family problems by instead showing the downfall of the bourgeois through confused looks, sounds of moving pool chairs, splashing sounds and rain. Her two subsequent films, The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman, both take place in Salta, Argentina (Martel’s home town) and are still wholly original works that are intentionally vague in their direct storytelling to give more weight to her sensory overload.

Zama is in some ways a clear departure from previous work, as it is a literary adaptation, which some could have been alerted to as seeing her doing more conventional storytelling. That is far from the truth. Set in a Spanish colony during the late 18th Century, the film follows Don Diego de Zama, a worker of the Spanish crown who longs to return to his home in Lerma. While the book is narrated in the first person, has a very clearly unreliable narrator and is very structured in its execution, Martel uses other techniques to achieve a similar effect of a man in crisis.

The book is clearly divided into three chapters following Zama in three different years in his life, each focusing on different frustrations that he has, the first being sexual as he pines for a married woman of higher status -while he himself is married to a woman in Lerma-, the second is economic as he struggles to keep afloat and provide for close ones in his job, and the third is spiritual as Zama goes to great lengths to escape his plight and comes to terms with his own purpose and disappointment in life. Martel always being one to respect the viewers’ intelligence, never makes clear divides in each chapter -which are very much there in the film- but rather uses musical cues and establishing shots to act as elipses between years. That way, she keeps the story going and keeps the central idea of Zama’s plight as one cohesive narrative instead of three different ones. Martel shows how by stripping a man clear of what society defines him as, it eventually leads to him going to extreme lengths to prove himself. And she never spells it out: when the closing moments see the cowardly man trying to make a brash decision, it is a pitiful one that was fully justified by his previous experiences.

Di Benedetto’s book used Zama’s internal dialogue to show the irony of a colonizer desperate to leave the place he controls, both out of disrespect and desperation. Martel takes that reading of the book one step further by taking a look at postcolonial malaise. This focus was always a part of Martel’s oeuvre, albeit more in the background as a hidden thematic focus of her work (see: my thoughts on The Headless Woman). There were always indigenous characters in the background of her films just filling the space and virtually being ignored by the bourgeois characters that she put front and center. In Zama, these subtextual elements come to the forefront, as she directly puts the title character in a position of colonial power, disposing of the indigenous people who lived in it first, and who longs to leave the colony he sees as a prison. Isn’t it funny that he is desperate to leave a place his community wants desperately to keep? Martel definitely thinks so.

The sound design achieves the best use by Martel so far, and is very smart in how she manages to create unique soundscapes that are as interesting to listen to as they inform the viewer of thematic intent. When we listen to the repetition of creaking wood, it indicates some sort of sexual frustration and lack of privacy felt by the main character. When we listen to the swooshing sounds of fish swimming, they match Zama’s wish to leave against the tide (posed at the very beginning of the film). The indigenous characters emit repeated sounds that feel as if they are objects, because in the mind of the colonialists -and every other of Martel’s characters in her films- they are just that: objects. They first peck at Zama for inappropriately looking at their naked bodies, then they insult his disinterest by repeating the same words to him.

Some describe the final 30 minutes of the film as the closest Martel has come to directing an action film, as an indigenous community captures and neutralizes a Spanish expedition that Zama participates in to hunt for a notorious criminal. After they are let go of, the criminal captures Zama and requests his assistance in obtaining precious minerals held by the Spanish Crown in the area. Martel’s sequences deftly capture the incompetence of the Spanish soldiers who participate, adding to her themes of postcolonial malaise and personal dissatisfaction, but more interestingly, she maintains verbatim one of Zama’s closing statements in the book, when he chooses to speak truthfully about the lack of precious minerals instead of saving his own life -which he sees as beyond saving- and says: “I will do what no one else did for me. I will say no to your hopes.”

The indigenous community appears one final time, repeating (again with Martel’s sound design) the closing question: “¿Quieres vivir?” Maybe one might think that it is hopeful, but by never recognizing what made him so miserable in the first place, Zama is beyond saving or living. He is permanently in a state of arrested development, as is a whole community that never recognizes the humanity of the native inhabitants of the land.

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Cool Spies, Cooler International Relations: Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag

Production from the United States. Released in 2025.

Steven Soderbergh is possibly one of the most bizarre and original directors working in mainstream Hollywood today. No one has a CV as varied and eclectic as he does: directing entertaining genre pictures as well as formally and stylistically inventive works that push the boundaries of what the medium can do (not philosophically but rather aesthetically and logistically). Add to that the content of his oeuvre, which is characterized by being very contemporary in its political machinations, and you’ve got a director not afraid to operate as weirdly and in the forefront as he can. Unsane innovated by being filmed using an iPhone, Kimi tackled the dangers of surveillance while being a fully-fledged COVID production, The Laundromat directly tackled the abuses within the financial system and ended with Meryl Streep in a direct address advocating for reforms of political campaign finance laws, and Contagion was recently hailed as being very ahead of its time in his the international community handled pandemics.

This year, we got two films by Soderbergh: Presence, which falls under his formal experimentation category as it uses floating camera movements to act as a ghost/character in a twist to the haunted house story. It lacked any political statement, but it more than made up for it with an interesting narrative and formal conceit to create a deeply unsettling feeling. And then, we got Black Bag, a spy thriller/marriage drama akin to the more entertaining part of Soderbergh’s work (the Ocean’s films) that also tackles interesting topics within international affairs and inaction as a politically convenient move.

The film stars Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as George and Kathryn, two spies working for the British government. At the very beginning George receives a tip that one of five spies (including Kathryn) may be a traitor. The rest of these possible traitors are played by a great supporting cast comprised of Tom Burke (The Souvenir, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Marisa Abela (Back in Black, Industry) and Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton). In that sense, it becomes sort of a spy thriller to see who is the defector and why, but it is also a treatise on relationships, as George and Kathryn’s marriage (envied by the espionage workforce) is tested because of this possibility.

On the personal/marriage level, the exploration is quite interesting. The espionage world is presented as one where infidelity is the norm. As a lot of information regarding work is classified, they can just say “black bag” when they cannot share information, and of course they can just say that when they are fooling around with other people, keeping their personal business hidden. However, George and Kathryn make it work because of their absolute devotion to one another, knowing where their personal loyalties lie, and knowing that they are always watching each other, and being content with it. For George, he feels that asking his wife a question regarding her work is insulting her intelligence and violating trust, so he’d rather verify and help her out indirectly than compromise her in any way.

Fassbender, in a way, pulls off the best performance of the film as the usually stoic but loving husband, who slowly breaks down as he realizes that Katheryn may be in a way compromised, and he looks for ways to keep her out of harm’s way. His eyes, in particular, make incremental changes as the stakes become more complex. As for Blanchett’s performance, she doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary (which is still a lot because she is one of the best to ever do it). What she manages to do is convey an incredible energy of cool and calm that extends to her work: first to make the audience question her intentions, but later to reaffirm her commitment to her husband. She would kill for him, after all. And the fact that neither of them doubts it is what makes their arrangement work. They never compete with each other, but strive to make each other better, directly or indirectly.

As for the political component, it is more lowkey but still interesting to explore. In essence, the ‘plot’ that Kathryn may or may not be implicated in is one of destabilizing Russia, which may be of interest for the British government and the West, but in a way that kills thousands civilians in the process. Ultimately, the parties who wish for this kind of event to happen do so in the name of the West, but I think Soderbergh is in a way questioning all sides who cause and later prevent this from happening. If some claim Russia to be a threat to their people, is destabilization moral? If others prevent it, is it out of care for the innocent victims, or is it rather for political convenience/to ensure some sort of stability (if ill fated in the long term). There is Soderbergh’s claim to modern international politics: one which because of Iraq heavily limits foreign intervention but questions if there are some instances where direct action is acceptable or morally right. Maybe there aren’t any, but by embracing detached/globalized politics, there isn’t any room for much else.

All of those elements are there for viewers to touch upon or completely ignore, as Black Bag is very entertaining on its own as George slowly uncovers the conspiracies surrounding him. In essence though, this entertaining film has a lot more on its mind. It's maybe too short and too obvious to transcend and become truly great, and I do think that Presence (the other Soderbergh film) is a little more interesting. Nonetheless, this kind of original old school filmmaking is too rare and greatly appreciated any time it comes back.

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If any reader has suggestions for films to write about, let me know, I’d love to hear more ideas.

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Wacky Inequality: Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17

Production from the United States and the Republic of Korea. Released in 2025.

Bong Joon-ho has always been a director who used genre filmmaking very skillfully to explore truths regarding systemic injustice and inequality. Sometimes it yields powerful and subtle explorations that do not point any fingers but feel inevitable through their empathy (i.e., Parasite) while others are content with surface level buffoonery. Whichever the case, Bong knows how to frame these kinds of stories and present them with skill, heart and intention. Sadly, in this case, Mickey 17 follows the lineage of his other English-language features, which is to say: on the nose and a bit off. It’s still serviceable filmmaking, but lacks the magic and subtlety of his best films.

Mickey 17 follows Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson, who signs up to become an expendable in a space mission. This means that he consents to be reprinted each time he dies, which would allow scientists to carry out multiple experiments on him, for the good of mankind. He is the first one out to harsh environments to test out for diseases, he is the first to consume certain foods with growth hormones to test his reactions, he is chastised if someone else dies in a mission instead of him. In essence, he becomes the lowest in the social food chain, a person who is printed to die.

Of course this brings all kinds of questions, like why would someone consent to this kind of life, which Bong of course answers with his view of the world. One where loan sharks reign supreme and kill their debtors with impunity, one where the Earth becomes uninhabitable due to the climate crisis making the rain contain waste and garbage, and one where the possibilities of finding a good job are close to none. In short, he had to become expendable if he wanted to survive, and the conditions for living were so low that the people tacitly accepted this deterioration of the social contract while ignoring those in power who benefit from it.

The problem is that the movie has the opportunity to be about this and explore how the act of consenting is not really a choice but a consequence of a lack of choices, and a condition that should be prohibited as lots of activities are considered illegal. But it doesn’t. Or at least, it is just one of many things it chooses to focus on, because it also explores the inevitable dynamic of clones in a world that deems multiple clones existing a travesty, it explores handling the unknown with foreign creatures -as a metaphor for other countries or cultures different from our own-, and it explores the role of megalomaniac political leaders. Some are more interesting than others, particularly the one regarding clones thanks in large part to Pattinson, but the rest feels half-baked.

Pattinson, in particular, proves to be an amazing performer in his dual role of Mickeys. With his weird voice changes -something he is now known for with his other films The Boy and the Heron, The Batman, The Lighthouse, etc- he manages to make his character pathetic and endearing, and his doppelgänger still both but with a more manic and aggressive energy that the first version we meet lacks. In this balance lies Mickey’s main arc of asserting his own humanity within a system that denies it, even though he does have a support system with his girlfriend, played by Naome Ackie (she’s fun and competent as well).

My main gripe is with Mark Ruffalo and his performance as Kenneth Marshall, a failed politician who, empowered by a megachurch corporation, starts the space expedition to a new planet where the film takes place. Again, by subtly referring to a megachurch as the donor, the film had the opportunity to explore the influence of monetized fanatical religion and politics and the inconvenient combination of the two -as well as its conflict of interest-. Yet, it is just mentioned in passing, and Ruffalo’s performance is so clearly made to reference the current President of the US that it seems off putting. It is as if he is incapable of mining for nuance because he feels that he has the obligation to show the world what a disgusting person the President is. And while some may agree, it doesn’t make for an interesting performance or film (see: Sebastian Stan’s far superior work as the President as he rose to become a powerful businessman).

I miss the early days of Ruffalo’s career. He was amazing in You Can Count on Me and Zodiac. But after Marvel, he just seems to be relying on the most superficial comedy possible, when his talent as a performer is much deeper than that. Ditto Toni Collete, but to a lesser extent. She plays the wife of Marshall who is clearly more competent than he is, despite her being pretty silly as well. However, the film doesn’t let her go far enough with her craziness, choosing instead to let her obsess over banalities -funny the first time, got old quick-.

This obvious comparison with current political times becomes very apparent as Marshall antagonizes the ‘creepers’ who are the native inhabitants of the planet they arrive in. I won’t say how it ends, but instead of focusing on political intrigue (what may have been a clearer end point to such a heavy handed political film) the film chooses a more action packed route which made it seem more like a space opera. It does create the most emotional moments, though. With heavy-lifting in the viewers’ logic, but it manages to reach an emotional climax and conclusion. Mickey 17 may not be Bong’s best outing, and despite its many flaws, there are still things to enjoy because of his clear filmmaking talent and Pattinson’s zany performance. It is an affirmation of human dignity in an increasingly unequal world where the wants of the few outweigh the needs of the many.

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So what actually happened? What were the best and worst moments? I’ll share my thoughts below:

Anora was the big winner and performed above expectations.

The predicted winner of the night, Anora brought home the Best Picture award, alongside Best Director and Original Screenplay for Sean Baker. Apart from these, Baker also won Best Film Editing (upsetting Conclave which was seen by many as the favorite) and a very deserved Best Actress award for Mikey Madison, who shocked many as they thought Demi Moore would win for The Substance.

This crop of best picture nominees was not the best by any measure, and would not compare to the previous year’s set. Nickel Boys probably deserved to win the award more in my eyes, for its formal and thematic achievement, but it had virtually no chance as it just got two nominations. Anora was the only other truly great film (The Brutalist, I’m Still Here and The Substance had flaws but were also pretty good on their own, not something I can say for the rest).

Madison in particular I do celebrate for being both loud and nuanced, sometimes at the same time. Demi Moore was amazing in The Substance but her acting was mostly externalized in her frowns as she succumbed to her own self-loathing. Fernanda Torres, another great nominated performance, relied on silence and her eyes to portray and withhold in a film all about quiet defiance. Madison used in some ways what made both performances great: she was perfectly apt to the physical comedy Baker used in the home invasion sequence, nailed the accent and was skilled enough in Ani’s line of work to make her acting feel more naturalistic, while withholding all of the creeping doubt and insecurity that defined her third act explosion. Just amazing work.

I do celebrate all of Baker’s wins, but maybe I think that Brady Corbet and Coralie Fargeat’s works were a greater directorial achievement for what they set out to do. Baker relied on tropes of classic cinema and his tried and true brand of social realism to make his film, while Corbet and Fargeat sought out existing genres (i.e., the great American novel and the body horror genres) to make something fresh. Still, Baker’s win is great for what was the best film out of the five directing nominees.

The Brutalist won three awards.

The Brutalist performed as expected and took three awards: Best Actor for Adrien Brody, Best Cinematography for Lol Crowley and Best Original Score for Daniel Blumberg, all deserving in my eyes. Just the first sequence explains why the film would win for cinematography and score: the repeating leitmotif signaling delusions of grandeur while a handheld camera followed the protagonist out of the ship to see an upside down Statue of Liberty. Great stuff.

Some thought Timothée Chalamet would beat out Brody for his work as Bob Dylan on A Complete Unknown. His was also a good performance in a film that was not that good, mainly because of its script. If the film focused on Dylan’s complicated relationship to Joan Baez, the film would have had more coherence and mined for the best parts of Chalamet and Monica Barbaro’s performances. Nevertheless, Brody was the deserving winner.

International films had a big night, though not as big as last year.

• Flow, a small wordless Latvian animated film about a cat surviving a flood, won the award for Best Animated Feature, beating out The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2. While the latter films’ animations are a wonder to behold, both had their flaws (particularly The Wild Robot). Flow maybe signals again the international nature of the Academy now, and is a good sign for the democratization of film, as Flow was made using a widely available resource on a small budget by a small team in Eastern Europe. Due to its formal conceit, Flow does not have the thematic complexity to transcend, but its immersion and commitment to not anthropomorphize the animals leads to a fresh film that kids of all ages should watch.

• Despite all of the controversies surrounding the film, Emilia Pérez, the most nominated film of the night with 13, managed to hold on to its two most predictable awards: Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña and Best Original Song for El Mal. Saldaña’s performance was the best part of Emilia Pérez and her speech was one of the most felt of the night. Yet, I couldn’t help but think that Monica Barbaro or Ariana Grande would have made better winners. Still, what was once a sure thing in the International Feature category, Emilia Pérez lost to the more deserving I’m Still Here, the Brazilian entry (which was also nominated for Picture and Actress).

• The Substance, despite losing out in Best Actress, still managed to win for Makeup and Hairstyling. A very deserving win for a film that depended so much on its gross-out moments.

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Other winners.

• Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor for his work in A Real Pain. His performance was pretty good and he mastered his unnerving archetype as brash and emotional. I would have liked it if Jeremy Strong or Guy Pierce won this award. The irony in each of their performances and their commitment to the bit led to amazing portrayals of pathetic characters, true or fictional.

• Conclave won Best Adapted Screenplay. This category was particularly weak this year, but Nickel Boys should have won this award. Managing to make a book fully cinematic is a feat on its own, and by making the story focus less on suffering while still putting the suffering front and center, it both defied and honored the tropes of African American suffering to find something more profound. Conclave had none of that. Just a nothing sandwich of a film that relied on unwarranted twists and turns for entertainment’s sake (which is ok, I guess, but doesn’t make for good art).

• The two big blockbusters Wicked and Dune: Part Two, won two awards each in the technical categories. Wicked won for costumes and production design, and it makes sense in the fantasy world which relied on physically constructed and colorful sets to win here. Dune won for sound and VFX, and again, it made sense for an auteur-driven blockbuster to win for a film that was so committed to its technical craft. These films are not great and have not grown as well in my mind as the time has passed, but for what it's worth, both went beyond the greenscreen disasters of current Marvel films to deliver something more genuine. So kudos to them for that.

• Finally, The Only Girl in the Orchestra won Best Documentary Short, In the Shadow of the Cypress won Best Animated Short, and I’m Not a Robot won Best Live Action Short. Haven’t watched any of these, so I have nothing interesting to say here.

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Films going home empty handed.

• A Complete Unknown did not win a single award last night. Not something I’ll lose any sleep on, it had the workings of an acceptable film with competent direction and acting, but with a script that bloated the story and made no moments feel earned.

• Nosferatu didn’t win anything, with its four nominations in technical categories. While it is not the great film mid-brow critics and film twitter want to convince you that it is, its craft was pretty good, if not overtly dark. Robert Eggers will get more chances to direct studio films.

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Apart from all this, this was overall a pretty good ceremony. Conan O’Brien was an amazing host, his bits were pretty good and his opening monologue was very, very funny:

My favorite speeches:

(despite the film, great speech)

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I kept my list to 10, plus an honorable mention. So I’ll give a shout-out to some films I liked a lot that didn’t make it to my list. There were huge and ambitious efforts that while very entertaining and ripe with ideas stumbled a bit in execution but were no less worthy in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. The indie drama had a lot of bright spots with Hong Sang-soo’s A Traveler’s Needs basking in poetry and the interpretation of language and emotion through Isabelle Huppert’s silly performance, India Donaldson’s Good One exploring complicated familial dynamics and the mismatch between generations in understanding uncomfortable or traumatic events, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths reckoning with family trauma with amazing central performances aided by the director’s style of workshopping his scripts, and Kaziz Radwanski’s Matt and Mara, which very subtly tracked a marriage falling apart with the arrival of an old friend of the past. Mati Diop made my favorite documentary of last year with Dahomey, which took a very academic and conflicted look into the repatriation of cultural artifacts. Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers was probably one of the most entertaining films of the year, Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man was more successful in exploring self-hatred than The Substance, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Chime was the Japanese master’s style broken down to its bare essentials.

Apart from these shout-outs, I wanted to particularly note Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimera, an amazing exploration of grief, culture, legacy and exploitation with the look and feel of a folktale, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, an amazing treatise on compartmentalization that had one of the smartest casting decisions to inform the story’s themes in a more meta manner. Both films were close to making it to my top 10, and while that means absolutely nothing, why not just make a special mention for them here.

Now, here is my top 10 of 2024:

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Honorable Mention: Here (dir. Robert Zemeckis)

Production from the United States.

Unfairly maligned for the bad rep that Zemeckis has gotten in the past few years, most people dismissed this film as another gimmick from the director who famously is much more inclined to innovate with technology in film as much as he can. I will also add that the backlash towards Forrest Gump has also creeped into people’s appreciation of this one. Here, however, is completely different. While also relying on technological advancements to fade in and out of time periods, and use CGI to make the central actors (Tom Hanks and Robin Wright) look younger or older, the intent behind this film is much more profound. Forrest Gump was a very dynamic celebration of the American Dream and its project. Here, on the other hand, is much more somber, particularly in exploring the false promise of success that baby boomers were fed after the war, and through comparisons to multiple other successful people that occupied the same place in the past and in the future. It amalgamates the essence of America into one single frame that morphs through rectangles and frames within frames, and when the camera finally moves, it is almost as if the entire tension of the film is released. It’s the most flawed film on this list, but maybe the most sincere.

Here is available to rent on VOD and to stream on Netflix in the US.

10. Anora (dir. Sean Baker)

Production from the United States.

Many American filmmakers try and fail to capture the dynamic, movement and essence that Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman films. One particular movement which aesthetically veered to the frontiers was that of the Safdies, Janicza Bravo and Sean Baker, the last of which mastered multiple genres with the flair of modern American filmmakers with Anora. It is a romantic comedy, a screwball comedy and sobering tragedy at the same time, with each act adopting each of these genres. What makes this film stand apart, however, is in its empathy for the central character, played with flair and vulnerability by Mikey Madison, and the dramatic irony of the audience knowing what is about to happen, yet still rooting for her. There was no way out for her, not in a world where extreme wealth gives people a free pass to get what they want when they want it. The presence of Russian billionaires is telling, because many people would think: ‘but this is America, oligarchs cannot just come in and do what they want’. Well, not in this America. And Baker knows it.

Anora is currently in theaters and available to rent on VOD.

9. Last Summer (dir. Catherine Breillat)

Production from France.

Babygirl may have been all the rage in December in some circles, but another film completely blew its socks off using taboo relationships to explore abuses in power dynamics while having empathy with women trying to escape their own ennui. Last Summer is this film, and it explores a family lawyer played by Léa Drucker who represents victims of sexual abuse within families… and she starts an affair with her own stepson. While some may find it comparable to May December, I see both as completely different. Both explore the inherent power dynamic of a relationship where one person (the woman) is significantly older than the other, but where May December also uses the opportunity to explore people’s obsession with scandal as a form of exploitation, Last Summer gives the central character a more human feel, without judgement. That is not to say that she is forgiven by the filmmaker, she does awful things in the second half which are brought with equal attention, but director Catherine Breillat’s focus is much more nuanced than just administering a condemnation. A truly provocative film, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head, feeling empathy, pity and disgust for Anne, the protagonist.

Last Summer is available to stream on the Criterion Channel.

8. All We Imagine as Light (dir. Payal Kapadia)

Production from India, Netherlands and Luxembourg.

Payal Kapadia is a filmmaker who knows how to combine romance with political struggle. Her first film, the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, framed the student protests in the Film and Television Institute of India in an epistolary manner, with fictional letters written by a girl to her significant other. Combining both makes sense to her, as being able to express one’s love freely is a form of rebellion. In All We Imagine as Light, her first fiction feature, widens the canvas to explore three women from different generations who learn to let go of their own prejudices and fears to support each other. That sounds simple enough, but Kapadia’s frames are impossibly beautiful to behold, and her insistence on keeping documentary elements enriches the film as it becomes about their own relationship to Mumbai, the city of illusions. When the three characters eventually come together in a trip to the seaside, they are able to get past their own limitations to live their lives in different forms. Anu, the youngest, falls in love. Parvathy is liberated by being accepted in her community instead of being kicked out of her home in Mumbai. And Prabha, the central character, frees herself figuratively from an arranged marriage to a man with whom she hasn’t spoken in years. It’s simple, but effective filmmaking.

All We Imagine as Light is available to rent on VOD.

7. Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Production from Japan.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s previous films were all so reliant on structure, building up a story with clear plot points and managing a propeller release to tie up all loose ends. While his visual style is also important, his writing mostly took center stage. The opposite is true in his most recent film, which is purposely vague in its intentions up until its final moments which left me baffled. Evil Does Not Exist is an environmental parable centering on the inhabitants of Mizubiki Village in Japan, whose balance is threatened when a company seeks to build a glamping company there. Despite seeming to have a clear morality, Hamaguchi twists the viewers’ perception at every turn, questioning the villagers’ moral upstanding over the natural resources, while also taking the time to humanize the workers of the glamping site and making note of their good intentions. The best parts of the film are Hamaguchi’s attention to visual detail, establishing motifs and letting the images speak for themselves at the very end, and composer Eiko Ishibashi’s music, which instills each image with melancholy and dread.

Evil Does Not Exist is available to stream on the Criterion Channel, and on Mubi Latin America.

6. Juror #2 (dir. Clint Eastwood)

Production from the United States.

So much more than a simple legal drama, Clint Eastwood made a deeply cynical film that questioned what American institutions are meant to protect, and the systems in place to uphold the nation’s supposed values. The film centers on two people on opposite sides of the viewers’ sympathy. Justin, the juror, is going to have a baby and seems well-intentioned, while the first the viewer sees of Faith, the prosecutor, is a call stating that she needs to win the domestic violence case to win her election as district attorney. What then happens is a switch in perspective, as Justin comes to abandon his own values, justifying his self-interest in a nation meant to protect a family instead of a delinquent, while Faith realizes that her understanding was wrong and needs correcting. The final conversation is especially prescient in making a clear jab at politicians using ‘family’ to justify atrocious acts, and the final frame is golden. This is the legal drama for our times, one unconcerned with law or procedure as Anatomy of a Murder or 12 Angry Men, but with questions regarding the limits to morality.

Juror #2 is available to stream on Max.

5. The Room Next Door (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)

Production from Spain.

Almodóvar has always been hit or miss with me. His penchant for melodrama sometimes drives him to make shocking choices which end up alienating me, and his endings more often than not have left me cold after so many twists and turns. That was not the case with The Room Next Door, about a woman who wishes to die with dignity, in a film that becomes an affirmation of living with dignity. Tilda Swinton stars as Martha, a war journalist who is battling terminal cancer, and Julianne Moore also stars as Ingrid, an author who reconnects with Martha to accompany her in her final days. The sets are immaculate, Almodóvar’s sense of humor is sparingly but effectively used, and the entire story and its detours all add to what a life truly worth living is, and how a terminal illness can stop a person from living those moments. Moore and Swinton are very sensible and never overdo it with their performances, and the film takes its time to feed into their dynamic and also introduce more elements to what life with dignity can mean, politically. Despite all this, it never feels on the nose. It is truly a great work by a master whose films I don’t usually love.

The Room Next Door is still not available to stream or rent.

4. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (dir. Radu Jude)

Production from Romania.

Raunchy and profane yet very formally and stylistically forward and thematically intelligent, this film is a repudiation of late stage capitalism in how it dehumanizes the very people who are a part of its structure. Centering on Angela, a production assistant in a film company hired to make a work safety video, this film inserts multiple other elements that make up its ideas. Most of it is Angela driving through Bucharest to film audition videos which go for too long and risks her own safety by being too tired, and other times Angela airs her frustrations by taking on an alter ego of Bobita, using an Andrew Tate filter to speak vulgarities. And other times, it crosscuts with a 1981 film Angela merge mai departe about a female taxi driver, mainly to critique and compare, and maybe to say that the 80s film’s presentation is cleaned out to not mess with the dictators who were in control at the time. This combination of aesthetics and deconstruction of film form takes an even darker twist in the final act as all of it is all abandoned in favor of a single take drawn out, as the viewer gets to watch as a company exploits workers by tricking them into making false confessions. Radu Jude is kind of a genius in his own way, profanities and all.

Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World is available to stream on Mubi.

3. Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)

Production from the United States.

Before becoming a filmmaker, Annie Baker was already a celebrated playwright who won a Pulitzer Prize and had many of her plays produced Off-Broadway. Her style emphasizes silence above everything else, and many of her admirers cite this as making her work transcend. It is no surprise then that her debut feature avoids the trappings of many theater-people turned directors (e.g., tons of blocking and tons of dialogue). Instead, Baker’s film, shot with great attention to detail by Maria von Hausswolff, focuses on composition, light, and the ambient, natural sounds of Amherst, Massachusetts. She focuses her story on 11 year-old Lacy and her relationship with her single mother, played by Julianne Nicholson. Baker’s great success is in making this simple story completely cinematic, with one scene involving a disappearance making the viewer question if what they saw was real or if Lacy invented it. Growing up is falling out of love with the idea of parents as perfect beings. In the summer of 1991, Lacy’s gaze is meant to see just that: how imperfect -but also how human- her mother is.

Janet Planet is available to rent on VOD, and to stream on Max in the US.

2. Nickel Boys (dir. RaMell Ross)

Production from the United States.

How genius was it that a smart way to reinvent the civil rights story was by putting viewers in the characters’ eyes in the literal sense, and by doing so putting the focus away from the political and into the emotional and spiritual (while still being very politically-engaged)? RaMell Ross is sort of creating a new cinematic language with this style, taking advantage of the first-person POV to compose beautiful shots while emphasizing movement and small details that usually go unnoticed otherwise. This also helps in diverting attention away from the systematic injustice that occurs within the reform school that the boys are locked into. The film takes note of it, and suffers through it, but its focus lies elsewhere. Ross also keeps his documentary-roots in through archival footage to put context politically, specially regarding those injustices. Focusing on two characters with different views of the world, only to later combine the two in a figurative sense, Nickel Boys is straightforward yet dense with ideas, both thematic and visual.

Nickel Boys is available to rent on VOD.

1. The Beast (dir. Bertrand Bonello)

Production from France.

The best experience I had in a movie theater, and the one film I have constantly thought about since it was released earlier this year. The Beast combines styles and ideas from different times, and references other directors’ work, particularly Scorsese and Lynch. And people may say the film is about a lot of things: artificial intelligence, incels, nostalgia, floods, over-stimulation. Yet, broken down to its bare essentials, The Beast is a love story presented as a horror film. It is about people afraid to be vulnerable because of what might happen to their ego or self-worth if it goes awry. And it is about the utter dread of losing out on love once it is all gone. Léa Seydoux does triple duty playing three different characters falling in love with different versions of George McKay, and when they finally embrace, horror ensues. This film is truly bizarre, but it is undeniable in its creativity and thematic complexity. For now, my favorite film of 2024.

The Beast is available to stream on the Criterion Channel, and on Mubi Latin America.

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None of these short reviews spoil the films (I’m Still Here does contain more plot details but it’s a true story so there’s no any new information to spoil), so feel free to read them without having watched them yet.

Directly to the Eyes: RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

A radical use of style is nothing new in cinema. Using the camera in new or innovative ways to tell a story is as common as discovering or perfecting specific camera angles, zooms, cuts or fades to inform what is happening in the story. Done badly, creative use of style can be seen as a gimmick, as many people feel now with the one-shot films like 1917 and Birdman, which are made as if to suggest that everything in the film happened within one single take (with the help of creative cuts to mask it). Done well, however, and it unlocks something new entirely and a new kind of cinematic language. Just three months ago, Robert Zemeckis, a filmmaker famous -or infamous- for always looking for ways to innovate with technology in cinema, made the much maligned Here, which I found to be a deeply profound exploration of a generation held back by its own fear and complacency, while comparing that generation to multiple others with their own issues but always finding ways to show their passions. The trick for Zemeckis was to just have one camera angle, and use frames within frames to change the setting and time in nonlinear fashion. This wasn’t however, the most creative film of 2024, not in the slightest.

That’s where RaMell Ross’s newest film comes in, which is filmed almost entirely in the first person, meaning that what the viewer is watching is what the main characters are viewing directly. This allows for a more sensorial experience, attuned to the nature of human memory and the little details that we regard even if they seem unimportant, and to perceive their emotions more directly, by looking at other actors with whom the main characters have a conversation, or by feeling what the POV characters are feeling with camera movements. Ross’s first film was the 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which was deeply sensorial in its construction, following a predominantly African American community live their lives, with no specific thematic purpose other than finding the beauty inherent to the little moments and stressing their three-dimensionality. Despite Nickel Boys being a fiction film -with certain moments of non-fiction brought through archival footage- that three-dimensionality and beauty is very much there, and to the point of the form, which in less skilled hands, might have seemed more tired than anything else.

Nickel Boys follows Elwood and Turner, two kids who by circumstance, end up in a Florida reform school during the Jim Crow era. It is based on the novel of (almost) the same name by Colson Whitehead, who is a very acclaimed author in his own right and previously wrote The Underground Railroad. The important thing here is that, despite seeming like a story about suffering, it is more a story about life, the beauty of its little details, and the act of remembering. By allowing Elwood and Turner to both look directly at the camera and be an extension of it through reactions -and amazing work by cinematographer Jomo Fray- Ross is insisting on them being their own persons, apart from the situation they are entangled in and the trauma that is born from it. They live through the segregation, the torture, the mistreatment and the systemic injustice, but the most vibrant moments of the film come from leaves falling, riding a bike, watching people from a bus, an embrace by a grandmother and more. And by insisting on having the perspective by the characters’ eyes, it allows for both immaculately composed shots (e.g., all of the reflection shots shown in the film) and moments that seem almost taken out of a documentary, treating the cinéma vérité camera as a character reacting.

The story is first told through the eyes of Elwood entirely, as he is a little boy, is shown to be bright and has a promising future, and is intellectually engaged with the Civil Rights movement. He fulfills the archetype of idealism. As he arrives at the reform school, and he meets Turner, the film turns to the latter’s perspective and the film then shifts between the two. In certain moments when both of them are talking, Ross makes an ode to Yasujiro Ozu, and frames the shot reverse-shot of both looking directly at the camera, as Ozu did with his actors in most of his films, most famously in Tokyo Story. Turner fulfills the opposite archetype to that of Elwood: one of pragmatism, individualism, and an unwillingness to stand up for others and engage with systemic injustice. The choice to frame the story with both of their perspectives might have seemed confusing at first, but an amalgamation and climactic reveal in the final minutes of the film completely justifies this decision in a way that elevates the film completely. Without spoiling, it was hard not to feel chills down my spine as the characters had a final interaction with Hattie, Elwood’s grandmother played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. Trauma is important to acknowledge, but it is just as important to remember the beautiful memories that came before, during and after it.

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Withholding and Release: Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here

Production from Brazil. Released in 2024.

Trying to live normally in an environment that is anything but normal always brings the risk that someday it will bite back without any warning. Without any of the assurances afforded by a correctly functioning legal system, at any moment one is at risk of having their life turned completely upside down. That is what happened about 55 years ago to the Paiva family, when the patriarch Rubens Paiva was forcibly disappeared during the military dictatorship and was never seen again. I’m Still Here, which dramatizes the moments before and after this event, follows Eunice Paiva, played by Fernanda Torres, as she grapples with all stages of grief with mostly her eyes, and later tries to reconstruct her life. The film is relatively simple in its construction and presentation, sometimes to its own detriment, but Torres’ central performance and the film’s refusal to fully explode in loud sentimentality enriches the whole experience.

Clearly structured in its three acts of normality, rock bottom and reconstruction, it feels very lived in in each of these moments. The first 40 minutes of the film explore the rich family dynamic of the Paiva couple and their five children, who live close to the beach, have friends and family constantly at their home visiting, enjoy themselves to good food and music, and generally have a good life. In private, Rubens seems to be carrying out some political operations, but that goes to the background so Salles can focus more on a happy family dynamic that will be lacking later, and Eunice will desperately try to reconstruct. In a single afternoon, the light is literally obscured from the frame within the home as Rubens is instructed to go with what seems to be the military police for questioning.

After that, the film works firmly because of Torres and her ability to withhold emotion to the rest of the ensemble but still convey her internal struggle to the viewer. Certain scenes have her just looking at other families and realizing that she will never get that part of her life back. Other scenes have her try to keep the peace at her home and withhold information, only later to have confrontations with her elder daughters about her choice to continue withholding. Interestingly, Walles decides to keep focusing on these kinds of moments, only to later jump to years later as she is already an established human rights lawyer and academic. Maybe a more interesting exploration of Eunice would have followed her rise, and maybe adding that would have made for a better film. However, I found myself drawn to the idea that the film focused on truth and acknowledgement as the central idea. She did not allow herself to grieve openly with her children because the government denied even detaining Rubens. It is only after 25 years, which the film eventually jumps to, that the acknowledgment comes with a sense of relief, and that the children, the youngest of whom were too young to understand what was happening, finally could openly discuss their feelings surrounding what happened, and realize that they all knew deep down what had happened to their father.

Despite not calling too much attention to itself, and keeping the story relatively simple and straightforward, I’m Still Here succeeds at finding emotional truths, which are especially prescient given the unchecked presence of authoritarianism worldwide and close to home. It is Walles and Torres stating very clearly that any chance at normality is virtually impossible when people are being unjustly detained, incarcerated or even murdered by those who are meant to govern according to the will of their people. The closing moments are brilliant because of Salles’ casting, as another actor enters the frame to show a character in their later years. Again, without spoiling, it brings the ideas of the film full circle, and above all, it shows that family matters above all, and are those who will always remember, despite what those in power may suggest.

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A Rejection of Sorts: Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist

Production from the United States and the United Kingdom. Released in 2024.

There is something to be said about art that revels in its own construction and presentation, that it knows it wants to be praised as a grandiose statement about the current times. And then there are those works of art that employ the white elephant aesthetic to achieve another kind of thematic statement. For Brady Corbet, a cinephile whose precocious attempts at filmmaking have yielded mixed results for many, his new film The Brutalist may be a combination of the two: a self-satisfied work of art that nevertheless is a little sneakier and weirder than it suggests to be at face value.

For a brief description, The Brutalist follows László Tóth (played by Adrien Brody) a Jewish-Hungarian architect who moves to America after World War II to rebuild his life there. He comes into contact with the wealthy Harrison Lee Van Buren (played by Guy Pierce) who eventually becomes his employer -or patron- to construct a community center in Doylestown in the memory of Van Buren’s late mother. Finally, Tóth also is trying to reunite with his wife Erzsébet (played by Felicity Jones), who was still in Budapest at the beginning of the film.

From the opening minutes, Corbet and co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold inform the viewer of the grandiose nature of the film, presenting an overture that includes music by Daniel Blumberg -with special attention given to its four-note leitmotif of epic scale-, a letter by Erzsébet confirming to László that she is alive after the war, and an unbroken handheld shot of László trying to exit the interior of the boat to finally see the Statue of Liberty upside down. It is almost too much to handle, and it serves to set the viewer firmly within the perspective of the protagonist, traumatized by his past, hopeful for what may come. Yet, the upside down statue also invites ambivalence about why this story is being told the way that it is.

In essence, The Brutalist’s focus is twofold. It is about the immigrant experience in America and a rejection of the notion that it is a nation of immigrants, at least from the 20th century onwards. It is also about art, the artist and everything in between, especially including patrons, financiers and the people who define narratives in the future. Regarding its surface-level reading, it’s pretty straightforward. In every step of László’s journey in America he is met with contempt and slight discrimination from those around him, including Audrey at the beginning, the wife of his American cousin, but later by the Van Burens, more directly by Harrison’s son (played by Joe Alwyn in his most punchable performance yet) and more severely and depressingly by Harrison himself. However, that contempt comes with a sort of resentment, as László has intellect and talent that Harrison craves and knows he lacks, but uses his wealth to catapult himself into a status he does not necessarily earn as László does. The result of that relationship is a bit shocking to process at the beginning, and I’m not sure it's all that effective because it’s a too on the nose literalization of a metaphor of exploitation, but it helps the film arrive at its conclusion that America is not welcome to all.

However, for me the much more interesting reading of the story is in its second layer of complexity: that of art, the artist and the rest of the players surrounding them. Again, that opening suggests that the viewer will be placed firmly in the point of view of László, yet it seems as if the viewer is always at an arm’s length of him, while getting more access to Erzsébet through her letters and later in how she is much more open expressing her thoughts and feelings. And with the stock footage of Pennsylvania early on, the quick cuts to other guests drinking and playing cards as László and Harrison speak at the party, and the initial vagueness as to László’s intentions regarding his next project with the community center, it almost seems too structured.

If the film employed those elements without any further explanation, it might have come out as a self-indulgent attempt from Corbet and Fastvold at creating something profound for its own sake. However, the film’s epilogue recontextualizes it entirely. Without revealing too much, there was a third party present throughout the film observing and later assuming a central role in a retrospective on László’s career, giving meaning to his central work at the Doylestown community center as a way to process trauma from the Holocaust. That interpretation makes narrative sense, but is it supposed to be true? Isn’t it rich that for a film about artistic exploitation, someone else is defining the narrative? And those final words sting and seem contradictory to the film’s entire presentation. It is a closing moment that gets more shocking the more I think about its implications, and which ties up the necessity for this story being as over-the-top and grandiose as it is. The luxury of detail provided by Corbet’s style is informed by a formal choice made at the beginning and reaffirmed at the end.

The central idea around art is that maybe an artist had an intention, but the art in the end slips out of their hands. It is a rejection of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead even though it may seem to co-opt its sentiment of individualism throughout. László may be a genius of sorts but he alone cannot do his work completely, on a physical, financial and emotional level, as many others are instrumental -for better or worse- in giving him the tools to achieve it. And peeling off another layer, architecture seems to have a lot in common with filmmaking, and for a cinephile so formally indebted to Francis Ford Coppola, Sergio Leone and Michael Cimino, and stylistically to Bernardo Bertolucci and Michelangelo Antonioni, he seems to reject some notion of the auteur. That is clear in that he shares his credit with his partner (the credits state that The Brutalist is a film by both Corbet and Fastvold), and the protagonism his crew shares with him, particularly Lol Crowley with the camera, Judy Becker with the sets, and Daniel Blumberg with the score. The person at the end of the film celebrates László as a genius auteur, but with enough irony, the viewer knows better than to take their words at face value.

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The Oscar Nominations

I already wrote about this last year, so I will repeat it again: I do not think the Oscars are the most important arbiters of quality, I frequently find myself disagreeing with their choices of nominations and awards, thinking that other people should’ve gotten nominated, let alone win entirely. With that being said, as a celebration of film, I always find myself coming back to it, and celebrate those wins I do agree with or at least celebrate, because the pedigree that comes along with those awards means more opportunities and financing for more great films from the filmmakers that I like. That happened last year with Anatomy of a Fall’s win for Original Screenplay, The Zone of Interest’s win for Best Sound, and Wes Anderson’s first win for The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar in Best Live Action Short Film.

Below you will find the main nominations, a link to all of them, and some thoughts:

BEST PICTURE

Anora (dir. Sean Baker)

The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet)
(review above)

A Complete Unknown (dir. James Mangold)
(haven’t watched it yet)

Conclave (dir. Edward Berger)

Dune: Part Two (dir. Denis Villenueve)

Emilia Pérez (dir. Jacques Audiard)
(watched it, probably won’t review it)

I’m Still Here (dir. Walter Salles)
(haven’t watched it yet)

Nickel Boys (dir. RaMell Ross)
(will probably watch it this weekend)

The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)

Wicked (dir. Jon M. Chu)

I still have three films to see, but thankfully there are some good films here. Anora and The Brutalist stand out and I’d be happy if either of them win. The Substance is good, and Dune: Part Two and Wicked are alright choices.

While I don’t think Emilia Pérez is as awful as many have stated it to be, I don’t agree with all the praise that awards bodies have given it either. It is very competent filmmaking by Audiard, who knows how to make entertaining sequences. Too bad he aimed for low-hanging fruit of two hot topic issues (the trans community and Mexico’s cartel issue) with mixed thematic results. And of course, the Spanish translations are often pretty bad, Selena Gomez’s performance is awful and the songs are unmemorable. And I already shared my thoughts on Conclave… the blandest of bland. Only considered for its higher-minded setting, but with nothing else to add.

Of course, even though Anora and The Brutalist are among my preferred films of the year, lots of better films got shut out. To name a few English-language productions: Annie Baker’s Janet Planet, Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2, Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door and even Robert Zemeckis’s Here, which was unfairly maligned by critics in my opinion.

And again, as happened last year, three big Cannes winners got lots of nominations (Anora, Emilia Pérez and The Substance). That’s good news for world cinema coming to the US (Venice competitor I’m Still Here also made it in surprisingly), but far more formally daring works got shut out, like Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist.

Best Director

Sean Baker, for Anora
Brady Corbet, for The Brutalist
James Mangold, for A Complete Unknown
Jacques Audiard, for Emilia Pérez
Coralie Fargeat, for The Substance

Still have to watch Mangold’s film, but all very competent and good nominations. Many thought Edward Berger would be here for Conclave. Thank God that wasn’t the case. I think this is Corbet’s to lose, and as far as I’m concerned, The Brutalist is one of THE directorial achievements of the year, even if some question its intentions (even I have in the days following my viewing experience). If I had any say, Jude, Bonello, Kapadia, Almodóvar and Annie Baker would have gotten some love as well.

Also, amazing that Fargeat got nominated for The Substance. Even though its script often leads the film astray, it is Fargeat’s bold vision that has kept this film in the top of mind of most viewers. Great work.

Best Actor

Adrien Brody, for The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, for A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo, for Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, for Conclave
Sebastian Stan, for The Apprentice

If not for Brody, I truly think that Josh Hartnett gave one of the best performances by an actor this year for Trap. Compartmentalization at its best and embodying the best kinds of Hitchcock villains with the fun formal twists of M. Night Shyamalan. Also of note, I agree with most people that Sebastian Stan deserved a nomination, but for his work in A Different Man. With that said, Adrien Brody should win this (unless Chalamet proves otherwise when I see the Bob Dylan film).

Best Actress

Cynthia Erivo, for Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, for Emilia Pérez
Mikey Madison, for Anora
Demi Moore, for The Substance
Fernanda Torres, for I’m Still Here

Madison and Moore are amazing and I would be very happy if either of them won. I do think Madison gives the better performance as the steadfast but slowly crumbling Ani, but Moore’s performance is also very audacious and plays against her strengths, which is hard to do.

But this was a great year for actresses. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton were amazing in The Room Next Door (in very different registers), Léa Seydoux was unsurprisingly magnetic with her three performances in The Beast, which especially got to my in the closing moments, and Léa Drucker achieves all kinds of emotions as the bored wife and monstrous mother in law turned affair partner in Last Summer.

Best Supporting Actor

Yura Borisov, for Anora
Kieran Culkin, for A Real Pain
Edward Norton, for A Complete Unknown
Guy Pierce, for The Brutalist
Jeremy Strong, for The Apprentice

Culkin will probably win, but I really hope Jeremy Strong steals this from him. He gives the best performance in The Apprentice as Roy Cohn, showing how much of a monster he was and his vulnerable side. Amazing work.

Best Supporting Actress

Monica Barbaro, for A Complete Unknown
Ariana Grande, for Wicked
Felicity Jones, for The Brutalist
Isabella Rossellini, for Conclave
Zoe Saldaña, for Emilia Pérez

No joke, Ariana Grande should win here. She steals the film completely and gives Galinda a lot more comedically than the script provided. If we want justice for Ryan Gosling losing out last year for his comic turn in Barbie, then this is it. Saldaña is the best part of Emilia Pérez and it would be nice to see her win, but Grande (and Jones) are more deserving. Still have to watch Barbaro in the Bob Dylan film, but I’ve read great things.

Also, Aubrey Plaza was amazing in Megalopolis. In a perfect world, she would be getting awards for her crazy performance there.

Best Original Screenplay

Anora
The Brutalist
A Real Pain
September 5
The Substance

Anora or The Brutalist are the good ones here. It would have been nice to see Juror #2 or Janet Planet, or even India Donaldson’s work in Good One. All better scripts than most of the nominees here (still haven’t seen September 5).

Best Adapted Screenplay

A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Nickel Boys
Sing Sing

Didn’t like any of the scripts I watch. Hoping for Nickel Boys to be good. The Room Next Door is a notable absence.

Best International Feature Film

I’m Still Here (Brazil)
The Girl with the Needle (Denmark)
Emilia Pérez (France)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)
Flow (Latvia)

Still need to watch I’m Still Here and The Girl with the Needle. Of the other shortlisted titles, I would have liked to see Mati Diop’s Dahomey (from Senegal), which was also snubbed in the documentary category. Of course, none of my favorite international films even got submitted. India got into a ton of controversy for not submitting All We Imagine as Light, even when it won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Of the three I have seen, Flow is better than the rest. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is good in its first hour but then leans too much into genre and the whole thing falls apart.

You can find the rest of the nominations here.

To end this post, here are small breakdowns for the most relevant nominees:

• Emilia Pérez met the expectations by becoming the most nominated film of the year with 13 (matching Oppenheimer last year). It could go all the way, but the backlash may prove enough to deny it a win. For now, I’m expecting it to win for Original Song (El Mal). It could also win Best Supporting Actress for Saldaña and Best International Feature, but I have a feeling that Grande and I’m Still Here could pull off upsets. Time will tell, though.

• The Brutalist is close behind with 10 nominations, as well as Wicked with mostly nominations in technical categories. The Brutalist now stands as the foil to Emilia Pérez, and should win in Director, Cinematography, Original Score, and maybe in Best Actor. It’s challenge is to convince voters that the running time is not an issue. If Felicity Jones managed to get nominated even though she appears solely in the second half, maybe it’s a point to their favor.

• A Complete Unknown over-performed with 8 nominations, which is a good sign for Chalamet’s possible Oscar win. However, I don’t expect it to win much else.

• Conclave, even with 8 nominations, underperformed as Edward Berger failed to get nominated as director. Some thought it could be a dark horse to win, but I don’t think so. It’s just too unmemorable.

• Anora got six nominations, and all that it needed to be competitive. If Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist fail to garner enough support, Anora could win. But if not, its chances to win anything are slim.

• The Substance over-performed with 5 nominations. For now, Moore looks good to win for best actress, but Fernanda Torres could upset.

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He has made many varied works, from the straightforward Blue Velvet, the spiritual and classic The Straight Story, the horrific and experimental Inland Empire and the intentionally confusing and sexually charged Lost Highway. If I had to recommend one film, I would go with Mulholland Drive, his magnum opus and one of the greatest films ever made. You can find my review here:

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Apart from Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks is also essential to understanding his sensibilities. A response to the dominant TV form at the time (the cop show and the soap opera), Lynch and Mark Frost revolutionized television with a serialized show which took a dark look at American society by humanizing the character whose death served as the show’s inciting incident. Twin Peaks: The Return was made later as a response to the dominant form of television in 2017 (revivals, fan service) which served as a big statement on American society and the qualities of evil that surround everyone. Truly, you can’t go wrong with Lynch.

With all that said, two days from now the Oscar nominations will be announced. If you care about that type of thing, be sure to watch Anora and read my review below. Even if you don’t care about the Oscars, this film won the Palme D’Or in last year’s Cannes Film Festival, so it is by default one of the most significant films of the year.

Be warned, I am spoiling the film, because I need to write about what happens to properly express my thoughts.

Screwball Downer: Sean Baker’s Anora

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

The neon-lit, frenetic, shiny, drug-laden film style now known by some as gutter poetry reached its peak in 2024. For the last decade, American indie cinema started exploring the lives of lower-income and impoverished people of multiple cultural and ethnic backgrounds with wit, fast paced dialogue, night-time neon lights and an attempt at exploring real lives of people who usually are not featured in big Hollywood productions. Leading the charge are the Safdie brothers and Sean Baker, with Janicza Bravo and even Harmony Korine to some extent. These filmmakers set out to achieve some kind of stylized realism that allowed the exploration of the characters’ true lives through their own subjective lenses. The Safdies achieved this with Good Time and most famously with Uncut Gems (with career-best work from Adam Sandler), Bravo played with form with similar inspirations for Zola, and Baker has been working towards this for his entire career, reaching its natural and most successful conclusion with Anora.

Baker became a more prominent filmmaker in 2015 when, using just iPhones, he made Tangerine, a buddy comedy that leaned into the tropes of Classic Hollywood, but through grimy settings of Los Angeles and with the buddies in question being two trans women who are sex workers. His attempt was to not define his collage of characters by their struggles, but see how they lived, made mistakes and supported each other through a single chaotic day. Much has been said as to whether Baker holds judgement for his protagonists (most of whom are sex workers), but for most of his films, I don’t seem to think so. He takes care not to valorize them, which makes for better art, but by showing them truthfully and respectfully -and by not defining them through their problems- he creates a greater picture of people living in the margins three dimensionally. His thesis seems to be to show people living in the margins and understand how difficult it is for them to get ahead in life and why they make certain choices because of that. Baker’s previous film, Red Rocket, follows a male porn star as he returns to his hometown of Texas City to get back up on his feet, and through lots of comedy, the film secretly becomes about how very marginalized communities end up voting for controversial demagogic political figures.

Anora follows Ani, an exotic dancer played by Mikey Madison, who is swept away by a relationship with Vanya (Mark Eidelstein), the son of a Russian oligarch. The film is clearly divided in its three acts, each getting progressively sadder and more nerve-wracking than the last. Not as focused on politics as his previous film, Baker instead chose to center his story on extreme wealth inequality and the damaging effects it could have on institutions, and the difficulty it creates for people to get ahead in their lives. That is shown through Ani and Madison’s performance, but also for most of the other characters who seem antagonistic at first, especially the henchmen sent by Vanya’s parents to annul their eventual marriage.

The viewer is firmly placed in Ani’s shoes, so in the first minutes of the film, we see her as she’s developed not only her skill as an exotic dancer but more importantly her social skills and cunning to expertly handle men and get the most she can. After she meets Vanya, the sheer excess shown through his wealth is too much. From his mansion in Brooklyn to the parties and last-minute trips to Las Vegas, and even his business arrangements with Ani for her work accompanying him, it seems like too much and maybe Baker gets too swept away by it, but I see it as Ani herself getting swept away by the opulence and realizing how she could be a part of this and finally get out of her current living situation.

The best parts of Madison’s performance are not when she gets too loud or has her big moments, but rather throughout when her façade briefly cracks as she realizes that she maybe got her hopes up for nothing. Yet those parts of her performance that resonate are also very present in the henchmen: Toros (Karren Karagulian), Garnik (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov). Toros especially, who is literally a priest, is at the whims of the ultra wealthy Russians who will make him pay for letting their son so carelessly get married to Ani, who they see as completely unworthy of their son. And though in the beginning the viewers may see these henchmen as extensions of some sort of Russian mob who benefit from cruelty, the rest of the film shows through quick cuts and reaction shots of their faces that they mean well. Again, not in an overly simplified way, but rather in a mutual acknowledgement that they are all getting the short end of the stick. When wealth is so extreme, the disparity is so strong that any humanity from the higher ups down seems impossible.

The sobering moments come in the third act when Vanya’s parents finally enter the frame, and the viewers see once again the dehumanizing treatment to Ani, but also to Toros, Garnik and Igor. One of the more interesting ideas surrounding the film is that one might think that these ultra wealthy Russians act like they own the country and that they can do what they want without respect for rule of law (as in Russia), and that it should not be like that in America. What I interpret from Baker is that those extreme disparities cause breaks in rule of law. If one person has unlimited resources, they can go to extreme lengths to make sure they win, and Vanya’s mother makes it clear after Ani threatens to sue for half of his assets.

After so much movement, quick edits, night lights, overlapping dialogue, and the physical comedy, all akin to the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks and Ernst Lubitsch -circling back to the beginning, Baker seems to use classic structures for contemporary impoverished communities- the final minutes come to a grinding halt. After everything happened, Ani packs up and Igor is tasked with accompanying her. His performance is also one of contrasts, showing brute force and manic energy with his body, but with his eyes yielding a much different kind of quiet role. He makes sure Ani doesn’t cause more chaos, but he sees through her and is enamored by her. In her blurb for Film Comment, legendary film critic Molly Haskell reframed Anora as a comedy of remarriage -again, another Classic Hollywood film trope- and I think I agree: he speaks to her honestly and though he wants her physically, it is not that what draws him to her, but the qualities that make her more human.

The more quiet tone between Ani and Igor reaches its limit in the final moments, where no words are said, and Ani, who has held up her façade, finally breaks down in her arms after a last-ditch effort at avoiding her emotions through her sexuality. And after so much cuts, lights, music and audiovisual stimulation, the film cuts to black, with no music, only the sounds of vehicles in the distance. The very long 150 minute journey filled with excess resulted in emptiness, not for being cheated out of a life, but for being attacked to her dignity. She was reminded of her limited opportunities, and now has to figure out what to do, with or without her potential new partner.

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For now, watch Nosferatu in theaters. If you don’t like it (as it happened to me) you will at the very least find it to be an interesting watch.

Scared for What: Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

Complete immersion is increasingly rare in big budget feature films because of an over-reliance on CGI and over-working of the special effects workers, which leads to the horribly rendered worlds of the most recent Marvel films (see: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania). So when competent filmmakers do get sizable budgets to do what they want, it is always something I will want to see. In the new wave of horror, for example, Jordan Peele is one such filmmaker who took full advantage of the studio system with Nope, a throwback to early Spielberg sci-fi horror with a deceptively intellectual twist. To a lesser extent, Ari Aster with one of the biggest budgets by A24 made Beau is Afraid, who also took full advantage by coloring his many worlds as creatively as he could (including that amazing hybrid animated sequence). For Robert Eggers (who is usually paired with the former two as the new voices of ‘elevated’ horror, immersion is kind of his whole deal.

From his first feature The Witch to The Lighthouse and The Northman, the common thread of his filmmaking style is the eerie and dark atmosphere that enraptures viewers through very meticulous research into what constitutes the mise-en-scène. He knows which kinds of wood, tools, clothes, foods and words the characters he tries to create use, and any element of the supernatural added is meant to add to the immersion he creates through historical accuracy. It is the combination of those two elements that characterize his style. Yet, my problem with him is that it seems like the immersion is not the end itself, not the story or any underlying theme.

Peele and Aster are quite the opposite, as both achieve multiple levels of complexity through their works, with Peele in particular achieving that profundity to an even smarter and deeper level with each passing film (Nope is especially amazing as a treatise on spectacle, discrimination and the history of cinema, if you choose to look between the frames). Eggers’ best work came in his debut as The Witch had more going on through the contradiction between Thomasin, her family and her true calling, but even as subsequent films used the supernatural to inform the storytelling and themes, each yielded less in terms of emotional impact, and that is what stops me from liking his most recent film Nosferatu.

Nosferatu has such a rich history in cinema. The original 1922 version of the film was itself sort of plagiarized from Dracula, the novel by Bram Stoker. The novel (and its official adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola in 1992) are epistolary in nature, and follow multiple characters as they interact with and ultimately seek to understand and destroy Dracula, a former soldier of God who after losing his wife, blasphemously denounced God and became an immortal vampire because of it. Nosferatu (1922) is significantly darker, as the vampire seems to be more like a demon who wants to consume and has no redeeming qualities. So, while Coppola made a far more romantic and classical film in 1992, F.W. Murnau, Werner Herzog and now Robert Eggers made films darker and leaning more into horror.

The story essentially is about Count Orlok (the titular vampire played by Bill Skarsgard), who is obsessed with Ellen Hutter (played by Lily-Rose Depp) and arranges for her husband (Nicholas Hoult) to go to his castle to sign the deed to land, with other intentions to later keep his wife for himself. For Eggers specifically, the thematic focus of the film was maybe one of female lust and shame, as Ellen Hutter is initially lonely and calls out for the demon to please her and give her company, which starts out the film’s chain of events. And during the film, she is gagged, tied and medicated to make sure she is not possessed by the titular vampire. Yet, a deeper reading might suggest that all of this signals the limitation of women in society to live more freely and openly. This all might have worked if Eggers were a better director of actors and if he managed to inject some emotionality into the film’s core instead of solely relying on the production design and atmosphere created by the camerawork and lighting. The technical aspects are, unsurprisingly, great, but it does not resonate enough emotionally or even intellectually. We just got a fancier repetition of a story we know, like a fancier version of a live action Disney remake.

As for the performances, I am a little conflicted on how to feel about them. A lot of the dialogue is a little silly and almost every performer -including Depp who seems to be getting raves across the board for her work- has a moment that I found unintentionally funny. That’s bad for a filmmaker as self-serious as Eggers. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, for example, I found to be truly bad, none of his line deliveries felt attuned to the tone the film was presenting, and Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgard, as well as Depp, each got little moments that felt off. Each was quite good, particularly Skarsgard with what little interiority he was given to play the titular vampire, but it all felt like a miss of direction. The only actor who I felt was flawless -and who made me question if they were better prepared to play Ellen Hutter- was Emma Corrin. They were given very little as Anna Harding, close friend of Emma, yet each moment felt completely in line with what the film was going for, they never overplayed their hand with the character of Anna.

When Coppola made Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the emotional core of the film lay in the four main characters but a lot fell on Dracula’s shoulders, as he was ultimately sympathetic despite being a clear villain. And keeping in line with Coppola’s visual maximalism he who wields with his newest Megalopolis, he found that maximalism there through the layering of frames within frames and using the novel’s epistolary nature to inform how the film conveyed its story. With Nosferatu, that visual creativity is not there, which is not a bad thing. As I wrote before, Eggers is really good at immersion through historically accurate sets combined with supernatural elements, which means that this story would be right up his alley. And visually, it’s all there, not just how he researched his sets, costumes and actions to inform how characters looked and what kind of weapons villagers used, but also in Jarin Blaschke’s camerawork, which was never too dark to signal lazy studio filmmaking (this is not lazy by any means) but rather to leverage the ample use of shadows and sparse sources of light to create terror.

With all that said, none of this matters if an audience is not able to care about the story nor its characters, or if there isn’t any emotional depth to what is happening on screen. Coppola is a director of style, but every frame is so filled with meaning that no one can accuse him of style over substance. For me, the same cannot be said about Eggers. I hope he goes back to making something as good as The Witch (with a bigger scope) or as complex as The Lighthouse (with more emotional resonance). Until then, his work comes down to pretty pictures with little depth.

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I still have some films yet to see from 2024 before publishing my official ranking. If those films are made available on time, I’ll write my list by the end of January. Until then, this next month is filled with new releases in theaters, so there will be lots to write about.

Truth and Justice: Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

The courtroom drama has many times been the conduit to explore more interesting subjects. Sometimes, it is about the nature of relationships as in Anatomy of a Fall and to some extent, Kramer vs. Kramer; other times it explores issues of social justice to varying degrees of success, as in To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia and The Trial of the Chicago Seven. However, the films of this kind that fascinate me the most are those concerned with the relationship between legal institutions and morality. One of the very best legal dramas, Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder, eschews morality altogether and makes the viewer focus on how each character uses the law to their favor to seek success for its own sake. While having a darker ending, this film ultimately serves as a triumphant statement of American institutions and the competence of small-town legal professionals when arguing their case. Another classic film, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, is unconcerned with the letter of the law and states a positive case for common American archetypes as moral for seeking the truth and justice through their own means. Both films are tonally different but favor the presumption of innocence as the ultimate guarantee afforded to the people under the law.

And then there’s Clint Eastwood, a person who as an actor represented many of those classic American archetypes, mainly in westerns. As a director, however, he challenged those perceptions of American heroes, most famously through his most celebrated film Unforgiven, where he played a former outlaw battling his demons. His skepticism is pretty clear when, in the climactic scene, the overwhelming violence in the name of ‘justice’ is horrifying rather than triumphant. That same skepticism is clear in his most recent film Juror #2 -which is also one of my favorites of his work- where conflicts of interest prevail and people’s decisions have self-serving motives.

Juror #2 follows Justin Kemp (played by Nicholas Hoult), a married man with past demons and a baby on the way who is summoned to jury duty, and realizes that he may have had a role in the crime he is being asked to decide about. His main foil is Faith Killebrew (played by Toni Collette), a prosecutor running for district attorney who is using the case to win the campaign. There are many more well known actors, like Zoey Deutch (Justin’s pregnant wife), Chris Messina (the public defender assigned to the case), J.K. Simmons, Leslie Bibb and Cedric Yarbrough (relevant jurors) and Kiefer Sutherland (a close friend of Justin and a lawyer), all who play important roles, but ultimately the center of the story is the unlikely contrast between Justin and Faith, which challenges our own expectations of what American institutions ‘should’ protect while pulling out the rug from under us.

Of course, the main moral question for Justin is: Does he save himself from possible legal trouble or does he help declare the suspect not guilty in what first seems to be a clear guilty verdict? Is it possible for him to do both? From the very beginning, Eastwood and writer Jonathan Abrams lead the viewer into sympathizing with Justin, both in his growing family, his genuine love for his wife and his recovery from addiction. And when he realizes that he may have been a perpetrator, his first instinct is to know what would happen if he confesses to clear the defendant’s name. Faith, on the other hand, is presented initially as more sinister, not because she is doing anything particularly wrong, but because she is leveraging what seems to be a terrible domestic violence case into an election victory, which might not sit well with some.

Yet, the rest of the film seems to challenge this perception while making the audience question their own allegiances to each. For Justin, guilt was only a luxury he could feel once he was out of trouble. The rest of the time he is in self-preserving mode, sometimes with tragic consequences. Some may justify him for saying that his eventual sentencing would be too harsh, and he has a family to take care of… but does that free him from what he did. If he did indeed commit a crime, even if it was an accident, doesn’t he deserve to respond for his actions? Should he get a more lenient sentence? If he takes advantage of his position as a juror, doesn’t it make him worse? Those were the kinds of questions the film raised all throughout its runtime, and especially in its closing minutes. And for Faith, the rest of the film explored her inner conflict as she realizes that she might have gotten the case wrong. Of course, being a public official running for office means compromising at least for what the electorate wants, but couldn’t the need to seek office conflict with the truth or justice? Those are the kinds of questions presented to her.

As for the rest of the characters, all have conflicts of interest, but they don’t even realize it. The forewoman wants to reach a decision at any cost to feel like she achieved something after two mistrials, one of the jurors uses her own expertise to aid the debate but exalting herself in the process, and one juror sees this case as a personal one, as the defendant is known to be a part of a gang that tragically ended his brother’s life years ago. Each has reasons to participate and decide not fully within the limitations that the legal system sets out, making the viewer question its validity. Even Simmons’ character, who seems especially qualified to investigate, says plainly that his duty as an official goes in conflict with his duty as a juror. In the end, all of them have reasons to be there, but none of them are the right reasons.

In the end, through his toned down classic style of quick cuts, Eastwood paints a wide enough canvas of a justice system riddled with flaws and conflicts, and one where the objectives seem to be to protect an image of American exceptionalism and family, even if the truth tells a different story. One character says that sometimes, the truth isn’t justice. And while Eastwood asks many questions throughout the film, this one has a clear answer. Those who use this argument are ultimately self-interested. The ending, though dour, is ultimately hopeful of what the right people can accomplish if they choose to do the right thing. With so many incentives to do the wrong thing, those people are the true heroes.

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Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life

Production from the United States. Released in 1946.

It’s quite amazing that I never finished watching this film until very recently. As possibly the most famous Christmas film, it associates the holiday celebration with the values that define American Exceptionalism. Starring the everyman Jimmy Stewart, it explores his life as he puts others’ needs first at his expense, how one mistake by a family member makes him miserable and makes him want to kill himself, how he understands his effect on others by way of a guardian angel, and ultimately the most emotionally affecting payoff ever committed to film. The entire film is good even though it has not aged as well as other contemporary films, and some parts seem drawn out. However, nothing can prepare anyone for that ending. I just want to say that I knew beforehand what it would be, but it was no use. I spent five minutes crying my eyes out.

Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows

Production from the United States. Released in 1955.

If you want to know who serves as the main inspiration for Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar and other filmmakers who lean into melodrama, the answer lies in Douglas Sirk, and mainly his most celebrated film All That Heaven Allows. The film’s main innovation was that of melding clear artificiality with real emotion, and challenging societal expectations of love through the whirlwind romance of Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson, both as archetypes that Haynes would later re-explore and challenge with Far from Heaven. In Sirk’s film, it shows how both actors and their characters go about their relationship, the social cost of pursuing it, and the ultimate triumph of their affection despite the rejection of loved ones. The color palette, immaculate sets and smart compositions its undeniable aesthetic and association to Christmas and freedom.

Billy Wilder’s The Apartment

Production from the United States. Released in 1960.

A quintessentially American film about advancement within the corporate ladder, The Apartment stops in its second act within the Christmas celebration to show just how barren in morality the people at the top are. When the less fortunate can only get ahead by sacrificing their own dignity, and where the executives revel in their own wrongdoings just because of the immense power they hold, we realize that the American Dream was never attainable in the way older generations sold it, or at least that is what director Billy Wilder thinks. Jack Lemmon and Shirley McLaine are never better in this truly bittersweet story that threads the needle between laugh-out-loud comedy and tragic resignation, but you would never feel it until after watching the film.

Éric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s

Production from France. Released in 1969.

The only film in this list to explore Catholicism and religion in some way or another, French master Éric Rohmer places his story in Christmas, around four characters, their interactions around life, relationships, morals, Christianity and academia. Here, he regards the interactions between two men and two women, one pair being Catholic and the other pair being atheist. The result is a relatively simple story with very smart ideas. What is most remarkable about Rohmer, and is something that he would later master in the 90s with the Tales of the Four Seasons, is his mastery of dialogue and blocking of actors. He achieves the almost impossible feat of making his characters say exactly the perfect words, but make everything seem so seamless and natural. It also helps that the Catholic imagery and words give this film a sense of rhythm that sets the tone for the multiple conversations that occur, especially between Jean-Louis and Maud at midnight after Christmas Mass.

Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut

Production from the United Kingdom and the United States. Released in 1999.

My favorite Kubrick film, Eyes Wide Shut is a Shakespearean drama of relationships and their fragility, sexual desire, elites, and 21st century paranoia, all wrapped around Tom Cruise’s affable but impenetrable persona, and his marriage to Nicole Kidman. All of Kubrick’s trademarks are there: his tracking shots, lighting using set elements like Christmas lights, dreamlike set design, very dark humor and above all, the ambiguity. The genius of its use of the Christmas lies in the contrast of what the celebration represents in the religious sense, and how the people who inhabit this story go about it. There are no Christian symbols anywhere, people are ‘happily married’ but constantly invited to break their vows, the city is filled with prostitutes and deviants, and the masked party is an ultimate elitist exploration of unchecked sexual impulse. Do humans need rules to contain their desires, or to live them out fully? How and when does morality play into it? Kubrick was critiqued in the past for being extremely mechanical, so his exploration of humanity through the id seems unlikely, but fitting. The result is his greatest film and one of the best ever made.

Todd Haynes’s Carol

Production from the United States. Released in 2015.

In the restrictive heteronormative society of the ‘50s in the US where homosexual relationships were such a taboo subject, two women daring to explore their own desires, and therefore their own happiness, is a clear act of rebellion. What director Todd Haynes and writer Phyllis Nagy aim to show is that by restricting people of such a freedom, being able to provide for loved ones as a human being becomes non-viable or even impossible. Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara star as Carol and Therese respectively as two women in very different stages in their lives as they come to terms with their own emotions and ultimately seek happiness the best way they can. Their male partners demand love from them, which is not something they are able to choose to give. The jewel tone color palette of Judy Becker’s production design and Sandy Powell’s costumes bring about the Christmas imagery, Ed Lachman’s shots from windows and cars show Therese longing for Carol, and the score from Carter Burwell feels related but apart from the holidays both women should feel happy in. It is the most recent film on my list, and maybe most of the readers have already watched it, but Carol holds no bars when it comes to its effusive affirmation of love as the essential element of life.

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Decorated Halls, Empty Tables: Edward Berger’s Conclave

Production from the United Kingdom and the United States. Released in 2024.

Religion and its institutions is always something that fascinates and provokes discussion, even if the content of their portrayal lacks any sense of what it has to say about it. Good representations of these institutions take a long look at their trappings and opportunities for improvement without much needed complexity, as Tom McCarthy does in Spotlight -a sentimental favorite for toning it all down except when the performances demand otherwise-. Better portrayals have far more complex ideas and themes surrounding their role in society and even take advantage of the opportunity to have religious institutions as placeholders for other issues. Recent examples can be found in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, which blends existential dread, environmental terrorism and the inherent conflict of interest between capitalism and religion. Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood explores the last point exclusively while telling the great American story. But if other people just want to take advantage of an institution to cheaply tell a story, the results are well-blended but even more jarring with time. I have the sense that filmmakers want to use these spaces to take themselves more seriously, and I fear that’s exactly what happened with Edward Berger’s Conclave.

Berger’s previous film was the 2022 remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, which was well made technically speaking but was beyond soulless in its execution, convinced of its own importance but lacking clarity in how to reconcile the classic story with the contemporary elements it decided to add. The overlong tirade of the horrors of war, along the unnecessary new subplot of Daniel Brühl’s character struggling to end the war yielded a film with no complex ideas, competent but boring filmmaking, and which failed to justify its own existence. Conclave may be an improvement, but I don’t think that’s saying much. I guess he comes from the same school of modern filmmakers that put style over substance when shooting, and even the most prominent of them (Villenueve and Guadagnino) manage to entertain and create beautiful images with some meaning in some cases. Berger needs to become a better artist if he wants high brows to take him seriously.

So onto Conclave: it is a very straightforward exploration of how the Catholic church goes about electing a new pope. It stars Ralph Fiennes as the dean of the college of Cardinals, who is tasked with organizing and carrying out the election process for the new pope, which involves multiple rounds of secret ballots until one candidate reaches the qualified majority of two thirds. The relevant candidates are the progressive Cardinal Bellini played by Stanley Tucci, the moderate Cardinal Tremblay played by John Lithgow, the far-right traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco played by Sergio Castellitto, and the socially-conservative Cardinal Adayemi played by Lucian Msamati. The film itself is structured as a mystery filled with juicy twists and turns, as new dramatic revelations render some candidates unfit and close up the voting pool, each twist more extreme than the other until a final candidate emerges as the new pope.

Political views seem very relevant, almost teasing their similar nature to the US election or other political events that occurred this year. Maybe it is by design, especially as the film reaches a moment where a person says he is choosing between the lesser evil to avoid the far right from taking power -ring any bells?-. However, the film relies too much on contrivance to make sense, and the multiple plot twists, especially the final one which deserves more scrutiny within the film, feel more like cheap shots that the filmmakers made to morally posture.

The film also tries to be about faith. The best words out of the entire film come at the beginning, when the dean Lawrence (Fiennes) makes his sermon before the election, and asks the Cardinals to choose a pope who doubts, as doubt is an essential part of faith and the beauty of Catholicism. Berger may also have wanted to focus the film more on faith, as he tries to zero in on as much religious imagery as he can and have static camera shots and pretty compositions to prove his point. Yet, the theme of faith never goes beyond the initial sermon, save for a final moment when we see Dean Lawrence directly face the wrath of God at his hubris through an attack on the building where they are voting. But the script doesn’t provide Berger more opportunities to make something meaningful out of this scene, and the images he captures never seem to grapple with artistry and only serve a functional purpose.

One thing that Berger does well is filming faces, though you could say that the actors do most of the heavy lifting. With a film that relies on actors gauging the reactions of others and creating interiority with just facial expressions, Fiennes really shines as the central character as he makes sure that the Cardinals make the best and most informed decision possible. Also of note is Isabella Rossellini in a small role as Sister Agnes, the head caterer and housekeeper of the cardinal. She spends most of her screen time just looking, and it is very effective as she tries to know what is best for the institution. She does get her big scene, but the script does her no favors as the words are too little and too heavy-handed. Still, both her and Fiennes deliver the truly good performances of the film, with the rest being competent but never memorable (much like Berger as a filmmaker).

If Conclave were not set in a religious institution, I think people would have not taken it as seriously as they are doing now, as its silly twists and turns are sloppily handled and the filmmaking is not comparable to the more formally and stylistically daring works of other filmmakers. Even if the end results are more flawed in the traditional sense, the films are way better because of their trying. Emilia Perez is of course in this bag -and far more mixed for me- but Megalopolis, a truly good film, gains its status because of how it completely goes bonkers in trying to get its point across. For now, my main compliment for Berger is that he is a competent filmmaker, but he needs so much more to become a good one.

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Both are in theaters now, so go watch them if you can. However, these reviews don’t spoil any of the two films, so don’t worry about that if you care about going in blind.

A Run-Through of Musicals: Jon M. Chu’s Wicked

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

Musicals are so interesting to explore and discuss in the context of film history. Once in the forefront of the medium during the golden age of Hollywood cinema, then put aside completely, and now coming into somewhat of a resurgence, it is interesting to explore how the filmmaking style originated and how it evolved into its current state. With Wicked, this discussion is all the more prescient as the original film iteration of the intellectual property was through arguably one of the most famous and beloved movie musicals ever made: The Wizard of Oz. Filled to the brim with technicolor glory to tell a very simple children’s story, the original film is easy to admire for its technical greatness, and sets a high bar for all that follows. In the beginning, movie musicals were all about escapism with a camera fixed on letting the mise-en-scene shine though beautiful and carefully constructed and colored sets, and with great dancers filling the scenes with lively, kinetic energy. Singin’ in the Rain is possibly the most famous example of the form and style of earlier movie musicals, using a simple story to focus on great sets, color, dancing, and of course the music. The Wizard of Oz is less so on the dancing side, but the manipulation of color and effects is some of the most influential filmmaking ever made.

Then, musicals started to become more political and socially conscious. West Side Story is a great example that never sacrificed creative filmmaking and choreography, but it was definitely darker in tone than what came before it. That grittiness and further creativity in form led to the breakdown and reconstruction of the musical. Cabaret is a great example that was overtly political with its themes surrounding the ease of fascism engulfing a country, while keeping the realism in its form: having all songs sung on a stage diegetically, with only an associative relation to what went on in the plot. Cabaret’s director Bob Fosse eventually revolutionized the movie musical with his magnum opus All That Jazz, particularly influential in Alan Heim’s editing, which used a far greater use of cuts between shots to create kineticism. The objective there was not to replace the dancing but rather to create something else entirely, a dreamlike logic akin to Federico Fellini’s 8 ½. The problem is that Hollywood studios got the wrong message from Heim’s work, they proceeded to abuse the editing process to give the impression of movement and make up for the shortcomings of dancing. Cut to today: movie musicals are overly edited, socially conscious and try to look for realism with the wrong tools.

So what does any of this have to do with Wicked? Well, its filmmaking is in part the result of everything set out before it. It largely avoided the over-editing of lesser movie musicals, made good use of the actors’ choreography with most of the dance numbers, but its camerawork is forgettable at worst -Chu’s directing work in In the Heights was far superior-. It also tried to encapsulate realism, to mixed results. In an interview, director Chu stated that he couldn’t saturate the colors as The Wizard of Oz did, because in that film, the saturation was a sign of a fantastical world whereas in Wicked, Oz had to be more grounded. To that I say: huh? The greatest movie musical ever made: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg threads the tonal needle perfectly between a downright depressing story of growing up with possibly the most beautiful sets and coloring committed to film, so if the intention was to desaturate the beautiful sets to ground the story, as people in Twitter say: open the schools!

However, the other side to that realism: telling a grounded story of both unexpected friendships, discrimination and government propaganda, is executed as good as you can expect from a Hollywood blockbuster. It is a complete success that Wicked is as good as it is. And despite Chu’s mistakes with framing and lighting, all of the other elements within the film do an amazing job of both calling back to the works of classic Hollywood with the film’s amazing practical sets, genuinely talented musical performers -not a given, just ask Russell Crowe- and love and respect for the source material.

Wicked is essentially the story of Elphaba (played by Cynthia Erivo) as she becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and her relationship to Galinda (played by Ariana Grande) as she becomes Glinda the Good. Both have amazing singing talent, but we all knew that. The big surprise was how both managed to disappear into their roles as much as they did. They never felt like famous actors portraying iconic characters, they were their characters. Erivo plays it very seriously as she uses her eyes, emphasized smartly through close-ups, to show her range of emotion, of both battling her own feelings but not helping herself. Ariana Grande is a whole different beast. Her role as Galinda is almost completely comedic, and she uses every opportunity to give more detail through hair movements, gasps, eye rolls, and then, genuine earnestness. She steals every scene she is in, which is most of the film’s runtime.

As this is an adaptation of the first act of the Broadway musical, the songs are unexpectedly catchy and fun. Some are better staged than others, with One Short Day being the very best from a directing, staging, set design and dancing standpoint, while others don’t shine as bright but still get the job done …because of Grande and Erivo. Regarding this being just one act of the film, I think some people are arguing, in bad faith, that the film dragged and the story felt incomplete. But something I have to give Chu credit for is that the film is paced seamlessly -I never felt the long runtime- and that the ending felt earned and like the closing of a full arc. There is still more to come with the second half, yet the main plot of the first film being the connection of personal growth and acceptance to standing up to authoritarianism and misinformation, was fully realized. And as the musical’s songwriter Stephen Schwartz said -I’m paraphrasing-, it is almost impossible to continue the film after Defying Gravity. That song is just so powerful in every sense that finishing the first film at that point seems like the reasonable thing to do.

Despite its clear faults, Wicked is a great time and a smart use of IP filmmaking. Maybe my emotional relationship to the material makes me like this more than I should, but frankly, I wouldn’t have liked this film at all if the filmmakers didn’t approach this with as much love and respect as they did.

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Soulless Rehash: Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II

Production from the United States. Released in 2024.

The first Gladiator was about revenge, the dream that was Rome, returning power to the people instead of perpetuating cycles of authoritarianism. Gladiator II… is basically the same thing: with a different cast, more bloated, completely illogical, and with the same core ideas and execution. That is to say: this film is creatively confused at best and bankrupt at worst.

First, the good: Denzel Washington steals the film and is arguably the only new thing that makes the film somewhat worth watching as someone who was a slave and eventually rose to a powerful position by knowing how to manipulate his relationships for personal gain. The action sequences are pretty good, with many demanding an increasing suspension of disbelief -the sharks are borderline comedic- but still effective enough to garner its thrills. Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal bring out respectable performances, even though the script does them absolutely no favors. 

The bad completely outweighs the good though. The whole conceit around Mescal's character is completely illogical, both in how he ends up where he is at the beginning of the film, and how he magically evolves emotionally when the plot demands it. It is completely outrageous and jarring to see. Connie Nielsen is back, but now as the emotional core of the film, to mixed results. The Roman emperors are caricatures with not an ounce of the interiority Joaquin Phoenix brought to the previous role.

The only thing that this film tries to do interestingly is put Mescal’s revenge on a sympathetic character (Pascal’s) which is different from the first film as it was directed towards a truly villainous character. If the film wanted to go this route, it should’ve made Pascal a dual protagonist, but instead they quickly dispatched that supposedly main plot to make the film about political change. It makes me think that this film was so processed and changed by so many people that it lost its core in the end. I am fairly mixed on the first Gladiator film, but at least it achieved some sense of coherence as it connected the story of revenge to one of political change. Here, it is as if they are polar opposites and battling for screen time and attention.

If Scott wanted to make a film about revenge while making us sympathize with the enemy, he should’ve played The Last of Us Part II to get an idea of how to do it right. If he wanted to make a film about internal corruption and change, he should’ve made Denzel Washington the protagonist and make the film about his machinations and eventual downfall because of his corrupt core. Instead, we got this film that mixed both to make it far less than the sum of its parts and is completely soulless. I would write more, but this film just isn’t that interesting.

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