Favourite Movies of 2025

The Oscars are today and while I do write about my favourite movies every year, I thought this year we would do something different. Instead of the typical Best Actor/Actress/Director etc. awards, let’s offer something else. Let’s offer awards for movies that rarely get recognition by the Academy. Let’s offer awards for Best Action, Best Horror, and Best Comedy, then add Best No One Saw This, and Best Pre-2025.  

For ‘2025 movies’, we are limiting ourselves to 2025 theatrical releases, which means if a movie came out at a 2024 film festival, but got a 2025 theatrical release, it is eligible. These are also only movies I saw – there are many I didn’t get to. I watched 271 movies in calendar 2025 and 109 of them were released in 2025. There are only so many hours in the day.  

There are going to be five nominees in each of the five categories.

The Rumble in the Bronx Award for Best Action Movie

Sisu: Road to Revenge

Director: Jalmari Helander

Starring: Jorma Tommila

This is the sequel to 2023’s revenge action movie ‘Sisu’ and if anyone hasn’t seen it, it’s on Netflix right now. The basic premise is a Finnish man named Aatami Korpi is searching for gold in Finland during World War 2. Korpi’s entire family was killed earlier in the war by the Red Army, and then he went on a one-man mission to hunt down as many enemies as possible. Then the Nazis piss him off, and you can imagine what the rest of the movie is like.

‘Sisu: Road to Revenge’ picks up in 1946. Korpi has returned to the house where his family was killed, and he’s determined to de-construct the house and take the materials to another area of Finland to rebuild. When the Soviets find out Korpi is alive, they send men to kill him, and you can imagine what the rest of the movie is like.

These are over-the-top action movies not in the same action style as ‘John Wick’, but very much in the spirit of ‘how is this guy not dead?’. I mean, where else are you going to see a guy blowing gasoline into a tank engine that has dynamite strapped to the back of it so he can do a front flip in the tank to cross a border?

Right? Right.

Demon City

Director: Seiji Tanaka

Starring: Toma Ikuta, Masahiro Higashide

In order to enjoy an action movie, the first question I ask myself is ‘did I enjoy the action?’ It seems straightforward, but sometimes we may forget that action movies need to have good action.  

‘Demon City’ is an adaptation of a famous Japanese manga (I had never heard of it). It is another revenge action movie where Shûhei Sakata (played by Ikuta) sees his family murdered (of course) and is also shot. He wakes up from his coma over 10 years later and the revenge narrative starts.

You know how an action is a good action movie? When you watch dozens of action movies every year and you see something you’ve never seen before. Have you ever seen someone stab a fire extinguisher with a butcher knife and then throw the fire extinguisher at someone’s knee? Well:

The action scenes in this movie absolutely rock. Is the story very familiar? Yes. Do dozens of people get violently stabbed in stylish ways? Also, yes.  

Last Bullet

Director: Guillaume Pierret

Starring: Alban Lenoir, Stéfi Celma

Netflix is a treasure trove of non-English action movies, and the Lost Bullet trilogy is included. Coming from France, the Lost Bullet movies (Lost Bullet, Lost Bullet 2, and now Last Bullet) focus on a man named Lino, who worked as a car mechanic. But he builds armoured cars for criminals, is eventually arrested, and when he’s released, he has to work for the police as a mechanic to reinforce their cars.

Last Bullet is about tidying up hanging threads and taking care of corrupt cops. It is an action movie, but the action mostly revolves around incredible (and practical) car chase sequences. Have you ever seen someone soup up a tow truck so it can unleash a barrage of explosives on the cars behind them? Well:

The entire trilogy is full of thrilling car chases, but ‘Last Bullet’ one-ups everything in the two movies that came before it.

Warfare

Directors: Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland

Starring: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter

This qualifies as an action movie in that it is a war movie about Navy SEALs getting trapped in enemy territory during the Iraq War. It is a true story and there are action sequences, but the purpose of the movie isn’t the action, it’s the time between the action. It is about how a squad interacts and passes time when they’re not getting grenades lobbed at them or are covering from machine gun fire. The action sequences are harrowing, and the most memorable parts, but that’s not the focus of the movie.

I won’t add video here because it doesn’t really need it. If you’ve seen any war movie about Afghanistan or Iraq, you have a good idea what the action looks like. But the action isn’t the point, and that’s what elevates ‘Warfare’ above so many from that era of war movies.  

Ballerina

Director: Len Wiseman

Starring: Ana de Armas, Gabriel Byrne

‘Ballerina’ is an entry in the ‘John Wick’ franchise focusing on Eve (Ana de Armas) and her ascension from a ballerina to an assassin. I think there are two things true about ‘Ballerina’:

  1. It is too long. If they cut the entire storyline involving Eve’s sister, nothing is lost, and it’s 20 minutes shorter. If this movie is a tight 1 hour, 45 minutes rather than over 2 hours, it’d be better off.
  2. The action sequences are phenomenal and stand up to nearly anything from the ‘John Wick’ main franchise, particularly anything from the first two movies.

The scene of the flame thrower vs. the fire hose is the one we see in trailers and social media, but the grenade fight also stands out. Eve is trying to buy weapons as John Wick does in the earlier movies, but is ambushed. She is only able to grab some grenades to defend herself, and it is a sequence full of kills like this:

Oh yeah. That’s the good stuff.

The Candyman Award for Best Horror Movie

Note: It should be said that Sinners, Weapons, and 28 Years Later are three of the best horror movies of 2025. However, they were all massive success at the box office and are all being celebrated with awards. We will set them aside to focus on lesser-known titles.

The Ugly Stepsister

Director: Emilie Blitchfeldt

Starring: Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Loch Næss

One of the best horror movies of the decade, ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ is a Norwegian black-comedy horror based on Cinderalla. It is about the expectations on young girls/women as far as their looks are concerned, and this is a horror movie, so think about what extreme measures might be taken in the name of beauty and success in a horror movie; it’s much worse than you think.

I won’t link a video here – this film genuinely grossed me out at times – but there is the infamous slipper scene from Cinderella. The twist here is that the feet of Elvira, our main character, don’t fit the slipper. Then we get this:

The subsequent 15 minutes are… something. It is not a movie for the squeamish – I watch dozens of horror movies every year and ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ is one of very few that made my stomach churn. But the grossness is the horror element; the actual movie is vey well directed, written, and acted. Like I said, it’s one of the best of the decade.  

Presence

Director: Steven Soderbergh

Starring: Lucy Liu, Julia Fox

The hook for this movie is that it all takes place in one house, and the film is shot from the perspective of the titular Presence, or the ghost haunting the house. It is an admittedly slow-burn of a movie, but it’s also under 1 hour, 30 minutes long, so it’s not wasting your time.

There is no need for a video here because the third act is where everything starts to come together and it shouldn’t be ruined here. There are few horror movies that can make it feel like I stopped breathing for 20 minutes, and the third act of ‘Presence’ did exactly that. It doesn’t rely on gore or violence, opting to build tension and dread before it explodes. If that is more your style of horror movie, this is definitely at the top of the watch list.

Companion

Director: Drew Hancock

Starring: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid

In a glimpse of either the Now or the Not-Too-Distant-Future, ‘Companion’ is a horror/thriller about life-like AI robots purchased by human beings to be the boyfriend/girlfriend/whatever of the human being. This movie starts with Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) going to a lake house to spend a weekend with friends. There are a handful of twists in this movie, so we won’t link videos or still images because just about anything relevant would spoil the movie, but given what is going on in the real world around us, it is either timely or too late. Regardless, the movie itself is excellent and one of the best of 2025.

V/H/S Halloween

Director: Anna Zlokovic, Paco Plaza, and Others

Starring: Samantha Cochran, Teo Planell, and Others

For those unfamiliar, the ‘V/H/S’ series are annual releases that are an anthology of short horror movies. Sometimes there are over-arching themes, and like most anthologies, some of the stories are much better than the others.

That is true for ‘V/H/S Halloween’ where there is an over-lapping story/theme across each of the short movies, but the individual movies vary in quality. Personally, the two that stuck out are Coochie Coochie Coo and Ut Supra Sic Infra. The first is about a pair of high school students who are trick or treating and get trapped in a house of horrors, and the second is about the investigation of a mass murder. Personally, I am a fan of ‘there is something wrong with this house’-type of horror movies, and Coochie Coochie Coo does that:

Getting trapped in a house and thinking you found the front door, but the front door has disappeared? Oof. Tough luck.

Again, some of the short films work better than others, but ‘V/H/S Halloween’ is, from start to finish, one of the better of the franchise.

Bring Her Back

Director: Danny and Michael Philippou

Starring: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt

Full disclosure: horror movies as explorations of trauma rarely land for me. It takes very sharp writing and very good acting to get me invested because so many of this ilk absolutely suck pond water.

‘Bring Her Back’ does not suck pond water. In fact, it is one of the trauma-exploration movies that works very well. Two orphaned stepsiblings are taken in by a woman (Laura, played by Hawkins) who had a daughter die years earlier, and is currently fostering a young, mute boy named Oliver. Laura is still grieving her dead child, the title of this movie is ‘Bring Her Back’, and this grieving woman now has three more children in her care. You can probably guess where this goes.

There are a few effective sequences of genuine horror in the movie, but what makes it work is the young actors who play the stepsiblings. They are great together whether caring for or yelling at each other, and it brings both warmth and distance to a movie that needs it. Hawkins is tremendous as a desperate, grieving mother, and the step-siblings are tremendous as kids trying to survive tragedy and thrive together.   

The Animal House Award for Best Comedy

The Naked Gun

Director: Akiva Schaeffer

Starring: Liam Neeson, Pamela Anderson

What made the original ‘Naked Gun’ movies work was that Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor who played his role very seriously but they are extremely silly movies. Getting that tone right isn’t easy, but Neeson nailed it and the jokes/writing backed him up. There is no need to spoil the funniest parts, but there is a good running gag about people constantly handing him a cup of coffee no matter where he is, like this:

And like this:

These are a couple very stupid gags, and there is a plethora of them in this movie, but it also has a few laugh-out-loud sequences. It may not be as good as the absolute best of the Nielsen movies, but this is probably as good as you can get.

Friendship

Director: Andrew DeYoung

Starring: Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd

Fans of Robinson’s work on ‘I Think You Should Leave,’  ‘Detroiters,’ or ‘The Chair Company’ will enjoy Friendship. It is a movie about, uh, friendship, and specifically friendship of middle-aged guys and what it means when one person doesn’t want to spend time with the other anymore.

Full disclosure: I found Robinson’s television work to be much better than this movie. There are some genuinely funny sequences, but it veers more towards dark/sad comedy than it does towards the typical goofy/outlandish comedy that Robinson is known for. That can make it hit-or-miss for audiences, but there is a ‘Subway’ sequence – like, the sandwich store – that was about the funniest thing I saw in a movie in 2025. This is good, not great, but a good comedy is perfectly fine by me.

One of Them Days

Director: Lawrence Lamont

Starring: Keke Palmer, SZA

In any buddy comedy movie, if the buddies don’t have both great chemistry together and great comedic chops individually, the movie falls apart. The best thing about ‘One of Them Days’ is that there is great chemistry between Palmer and SZA, and both have great comedic chops. Any of the great writing aside – and there is – those two are what make it a sublime comedy.

Set over the course of a single day, ‘One of Them Days’ is about Palmer and SZA needing to raise money to pay rent because SZA’s boyfriend blew their money instead of paying it to the landlord. The chemistry and chops are evident throughout, and this scene with SZA’s boyfriend is just one example:

“I can make it wave at me” is a good line, but the delivery from SZA is what makes it great, and this is the kind of thing that permeates the whole movie. Not only one of the best comedies of the year, but one of the best of the decade.  

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Director: Rian Johnson

Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor

This one probably doesn’t need much of an introduction. If you’ve seen any of the ‘Knives Out’ movies, you’ve probably seen this one. It is functionally a comedy, but this might be the least funny of the trilogy. That isn’t a diss, either; the heartbeat of the movie is the heart in the characters and performances from both Craig and O’Connor (especially the latter). There are silly characters as there are in any Knives Out movie, which is why it can be designated at least partially a comedy, but it is a movie about faith, or the lack of it, among other things. It is a great movie, I’m just not sure it’s a great comedy, but because it has comedic elements, the fact that it’s a great movie means it has to be listed here.

The Roses

Director: Jay Roach

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman

Sometimes, a movie takes you by surprise. There was some Sunday afternoon I had free time, was seeing what was streaming, and saw this. I like both Cumberbatch and Colman, and I remember seeing some trailers, so I gave it a shot, and absolutely loved it.

This is a remake (re-imagining?) of a movie from the 1980s based on a novel, and it’s about the division of a married oddball couple. That division starts with Cumberbatch’s character Theo going from successful architect to industry pariah after a terrible incident with a building he designed, and his wife Ivy (Colman’s character) going from a stay-at-home mom to world-renowned restauranteur. The role-swap leaves Theo at home to raise their kids, which makes Ivy jealous because he gets to spend all his time with them, while Theo gets jealous of Ivy’s professional success.

There is both physical comedy and sharp barbs traded between Theo and Ivy, and that mixture is what elevated it for me. It didn’t seem to land with critics, but it landed for me, and the dark comedy worked extremely well in this.  

The Green Knight Award for Best No One Saw This Movie, But You Should

The Ugly Stepsister

Director: Emilie Blitchfeldt

Starring: Lea Myren, Thea Sofie Lock Næss

We already discussed ‘The Ugly Stepsister’ earlier so we won’t take up time here. It is an elite horror movie, though anyone with a squeamish stomach may not enjoy it.

Demon City

Director: Seiji Tanaka

Starring: Toma Ikuta, Masahiro Higashide

This is another movie we’ve discussed, so we won’t go long. Narratively, there is nothing here that reinvents the revenge-action genre, but the action sequences are simply fantastic, and that’s the most important part of any action movie.

The Assessment

Director: Fleur Fortuné

Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, Alicia Vikander, Himesh Patel

As someone without kids, movies about having kids have a tough time landing with me. ‘The Assessment’ not only landed with me, but cracked me in the face with a sack of doorknobs.

In a dystopian future where adults are, wait for it, assessed for their suitability to have children, two would-be parents (Olsen’s character Mia and Patel’s character Aaryan) get a visit from Virginia (Vikander’s character), who is the person doing the assessing. Virginia will live with the couple for seven days to judge their suitability. The twist is that Virginia begins acting like a small child. She throws tantrums, destroys things, refuses to eat supper (or eats it as small children do), and generally pushes the potential parents to their absolute limits. Watching Vikander, a woman in her mid-30s, act like a four-year-old is worth the price of admission alone:

Watching the mental state of the parents be stressed to its breaking point as Virginia acts like this day after day is an unforgettable experience. There is so much more to the movie than just Vikander acting like a toddler, but it’s what puts it over the top.

Dream Eater

Director: Jay Drakulic, Alex Lee Williams, Mallory Drumm

Starring: Alex Lee Williams, Mallory Drumm

Canadian horror movies are alive and well, and ‘Dream Eater’ is one of the latest entrants that proves this maxim. In this film, a boyfriend and girlfriend go to a remote cabin – always a great idea – because the boyfriend (Alex, played by Alex Lee Williams) has a type of insomnia. They want an isolated location to study his sleep habits – another great idea – and it starts to dawn on them that there is a supernatural force at work. This is a movie that thrives on atmosphere and tension rather than blood and gore, so again, if that is your type of horror movie, check this out.  

The Toxic Avenger

Director: Macon Blair

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Peter Tremblay

It is a wonder if this movie would have been a much bigger success 10 years ago when Dinklage was at the height of his fame, but the remake of ‘The Toxic Avenger’ was nonetheless wildly entertaining.

Dinklage’s character is Winston, a single parent doing his best to raise his stepson after his mother dies, but Winston is dying from a disease, and they live in a town where a pharmaceutical company is doing irreparable harm to the environment. After being thrown in some toxic waste, Dinklage becomes the titular Toxic Avenger, hellbent on exposing the company for its horrific deeds while he’s built as a folk hero by the people around town despite his grotesque appearance.

This is functionally a body horror, but it’s played much more as a comedy, and the two genres blend very well. The theme of corporate corruption and destruction is obvious, but it’s Dinklage as ‘Toxie’ that makes the movie really work.

The Matrix Award for Best Pre-2025 Movie

All About Eve (1950)

Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter

A movie I should have seen years ago, ‘All About Eve’ features Eve (Anne Baxter) as a young up-and-coming star on Broadway with Margo (Bette Davis) as the older performer who is on the downside of her career. Eve burrows her way into Margo’s life, trying to replace Margo as the top star on Broadway. This has long been considered an all-time classic, and once I finally saw it, I understood why.

The Handmaiden (2016)

Director: Park Chan-wook

Starring: Kim Min-hee, Kim Tae-Ri

The basic premise is that a rich Japanese woman named Lady Hideko (Min-hee) hires a younger woman named Nam Sook-hee (Tae-ri) to be her handmaiden. The hook is that the new handmaiden has been sent by a con man to work her way into the household so that the con man can eventually marry Lady Hideko and take her fortune. That is the basic premise.

What the movie is actually about would require a short story-length article on its own. This is about con men and wealth, desire, sexuality, and about a half-dozen other descriptors. Whatever you think this movie is really about, it’s about 10 more things, and sometimes those kinds of movies lose themselves and don’t tie together. ‘The Handmaiden’ is an exception, and it is exceptional as a result.

Satan’s Slaves (2017)

Director: Joko Anwar

Starring: Tara Basro, Bront Palarae

In 1980s Indonesia, a family lives together in a house. Simple enough. The mother has an illness, and the resulting healthcare costs are bankrupting the family. Familiar enough. The mother dies and then all hell breaks loose. Now we’re cooking.

Without spoiling much, this is a horror movie about a cult, but it’s also about how siblings band together in the face of tragedy. The father is out of the house for most of the movie trying to resolve their financial situation, so the kids have to take care of themselves and the threats they face. It is unsettling and unrelenting, a combination that grabs the audience by the throat and doesn’t let go for 90 minutes.

Inherit The Wind (1960)

Director: Stanley Kramer

Starring: Spencer Tracey, Friedrich March

In one of Tracey’s final performances (he only made four movies after this), he stars as a lawyer named Henry Drummond who goes to a small town in the 1920s to defend a man charged with teaching Charles Darwin to the kids in his class. A movie about faith and free speech, it shines when the characters give their soliloquies because both the writing and acting are razor-sharp across the board.

The final scene in the courtroom, as with all good courtroom movies, is the stand-out, but the ideas of what can be said and what can be taught were a hot-button topic in the 1920s, the 1960s, and still today. Tracey helps elevate any movie, but the secondary characters and the script bring it all together in a very tidy, thoughtful package.

The Shadow Strays (2024)

Director: Timo Tjahjanto

Starring: Aurora Ribeiro, Hana Malasan

An Indonesian action movie from 2024, a young assassin named 13 (Ribeiro) investigates the death of a neighbour because she has becomes friends with that neighbour’s son. The investigation, as with many movies of this ilk, reveals a larger web of crime, and 13 starts killing her way to the top.

As with Demon City, the action in The Shadow Strays is what makes it a great action movie. Have you ever seen someone break a baseball bat in half and then cut someone’s throat with it? Well:

Notice how she doesn’t use the end of the baseball bat that’s in her hand after she breaks it in half. She grabs the half out of his hand and then goes for the throat. It’s the little things that really make action movies sing.

This is just one 10-second clip in a movie where dozens of bad guys die in elegantly horrific ways. Anyone in search of a great action movie that actually has a compelling story and good actors, look no further.

Die Hard With A Vengeance, Jurassic World Rebirth, And Trusting The Audience

Successful movies strike a balance between letting the audience know what’s going on through things like exposition or internal monologue and trusting the audience to figure things out. And, as an audience, we also want both. We want to be told where the story and characters stand, and what the rest of the film might hold. But we also want to feel like we’re participating in the movie. It is the magic of a genre like ‘whodunit’ murder mysteries: We are trying to solve the case alongside, and hopefully ahead, of the investigator.

It is easy to throw the balance off. The right amount of exposition or internal monologuing contrasted with character building gives us a glimpse into the future, but because we’ve figured it out for ourselves, we’re excited to find out if we’re right. People love being right. Too much exposition or internal monologuing doesn’t just give away what we’re yet to see, but it makes us feel stupid, talked-down to, or both.

We do have to give writers a bit of slack here because striking that balance can be hard, especially with a modern audience that is constantly checking baseball scores or Twitter during the movie. Large blockbusters also have to appeal to countries outside of North America, so using certain slang or phrases common here would miss the mark in audiences from Czechia to China.

Watching Die Hard With A Vengeance a few days ago, one scene really stuck out to me as something that builds anticipation and trusts the audience to figure it out. It isn’t even complicated, but when the payoff hits, it hits in a big way.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the third Die Hard movie in a while, our heroes are John McClane (Bruce Willis) and Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson). The hook of the movie is that the villain is making John and Zeus solve a bunch of riddles in locations all around New York City, and any failure to comply results in bombs detonating. One is a word riddle as follows:

As I was going to St. Ives,

I met a man with seven wives,

Each wife had seven sacks,

Each sack had seven cats,

Each cat had seven kits:

Kits, cats, sacks, and wives,

How many were there going to St. Ives?

It isn’t a math problem, it’s a word problem, and they figure out it’s just one person (the very first line). We are being primed by the writers that this isn’t necessarily a full-blown action movie, but one that requires some mental dexterity. Not long after is the second puzzle, which is a math problem, and something they also solve.

At this point, McClane figures out that the villain isn’t just messing with him, but distracting the cops from the real purpose, and that’s a gold heist from the Federal Reserve in New York. The villain and his group are all European (many/most former East Germans) and of the ones we do meet, it is obvious that English is their second language. At this point, we know the following:

  • McClane not only is a shoot-‘em-up cop, but one with mental acuity.
  • The writers are encouraging us to solve the problems alongside McClane.
  • American English is not the native language of our bad guys.   

That’s what makes the scene where McClane goes to investigate the Federal Reserve so smart.

The villains have taken over the Federal Reserve (all the cops in New York are searching for bombs), so the security at the front desk is one of the bad guys pretending to be security. He offers to show McClane the basement to investigate (they are planning to kill him, of course), which McClane accepts. As they’re walking to the elevator and making small talk, the bad guy says this about the weather:

Of course, anyone with American (or Canadian) English as their first language knows the expression is ‘rain like cats and dogs’. The villain reverses the two animals, and that’s the first giveaway.

Once they get into the elevator, and the small talk continues, the same bad guy mentions he avoids taking the stairs on a hot day like they’re enduring, followed up with this:

‘Lift’ is the term used in the United Kingdom to describe the elevator. Almost anyone watching this movie in 1995 in North America would not use the word ‘lift’ to describe an elevator. They would just say elevator. That the bad guy uses the term ‘lift’ is another clue for McClane that this security guard isn’t from the Bronx.

The final clue is the badge number from one of the bad-guy cops as it’s the same badge number from someone McClane met earlier in the movie, and this isn’t him. But because of the first two English slip-ups, we already know what McClane knows, and then the action portion of this scene begins.

This isn’t complicated. It is one idiom expressed in an incorrect manner and one word that is a synonym for elevator but would not be used by an American-born security guard in New York. Those two bits of information allow the audience to solve the puzzle ahead of McClane, make us feel smart, and build anticipation for the ensuing gun fight, all while allowing McClane to use his mental sharpness to figure out what’s going on before pulling out his gun.

This is in direct contrast to Jurassic World Rebirth, which came out this past week. To be clear: I enjoyed myself watching the movie and thought some of the dinosaur scenes were very, very well done. The acting from most of the cast is great, too.

But the ending is infuriating. Without spoiling anything, our lead character is Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johansson. She is a mercenary who is hired to retrieve dinosaur DNA. The first act of the movie goes to great lengths to show us that she’s about getting paid, and not about morality. But this is a Hollywood movie, so she goes on an arc to go from a mercenary focused on finances to a person trying to uplift the world around her.

The final scene involves her making a decision that would hurt her financially but help people around her. As an audience, we just spent two hours with her and watched her go on this journey. We know what decision she’s going to make. But the final bit of dialogue in the movie is her saying out loud, and quite clearly, exactly what she’s going to do. It is completely unnecessary. We have seen her eschew her cold, calculating, dollar-driven persona in the first act and evolve to the person she is in the third act. There is no reasonable interpretation of what decision she’s going to make at the end other than she will help people. AND YET, for some reason, she has to say it out loud for everyone. Maybe things in blockbuster movies have to be, for lack of a better word, dumbed down to appeal to as many people as possible, but it’s hard to imagine that if they left that line of dialogue out that there would be any noticeable percentage of the audience assuming that the Zora Bennett character would just fuck everyone over. It is insulting to anyone who just spent their money and took hours out of their day to enjoy the movie.

And it is an enjoyable movie. There are things I don’t like about it other than that bit at the end, but by and large, it’s a fun movie to sit down with for two hours. But that ending feels like something a host would say at the end of a TV program for 3-year-olds. Studios, writers, and filmmakers need to trust their audience, or they risk losing them in the future.   

‘The Last of Us’ Finally Feels Like a Video Game Adaptation

The first season of The Last of Us was truly a marvel. It earned an 83 rating on Metacritic, which is tremendous for any television or movie property (Everything, Everywhere All At Once won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and has an 81 rating), while earning 24 (!) Primetime Emmy nominations. It is a standard ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’ story with Pedro Pascal’s character (Joel) being a father figure to Bella Ramsey’s character (Ellie). It is a post-apocalyptic road trip with the two that goes deep into their individual characters, their relationship, as well as the world around them – the third episode with Bill and Frank, two older men who find love with each other in this utter hellscape, is one of the best episodes of television this decade.

For all those reasons, expectations were high for Season 2 and a large part of the season delivered extremely well. The second episode – the attack on the town of Jackson – is a breathtaking 60 minutes from start to finish. The fifth episode – which shows the depths of Ellie’s descent – is a wonderful performance from Ramsey. The sixth episode – the flashback with Joel and Ellie – is both crushing and darkly hopeful.

Despite the few great-to-incredible episodes in the second season, the finale felt like a letdown. For a series that went through painstaking lengths to develop inter-personal relationships and take its time with critical set pieces, it felt rushed. There were also some puzzling decisions from Ellie, who is now our main character. A lot of it felt grating, and it took me a couple days to figure out why that was, and then it hit like a lead pipe to the knee: This is a video game adaptation.

Violent video game adaptations like The Last of Us bring a problem specific to that genre of movie, and it’s that the main characters can’t die. Well, they can, and Joel has a golf club sticking out of his neck to prove it, but all the characters can’t die, because that just ends the show. In a video game, if you die, you restart at a checkpoint or, at worst, at the beginning of the game. Unless your television show involves some magical elements, which The Last of Us does not, then your main character can’t die. It changes the equation. In a video game, you may die a handful of times trying to beat a particular level. You make uninformed or stupid choices, get your throat ripped out, start over, and try to advance a little further the second time. That process is repeated until you beat the level, and you start again at the next one.

Television shows like this cannot operate like that. Every decision is life-or-death for the characters because there are no continues, there are no revivals, and there are no time rewinds. While video game players need to continually learn to advance in the game, they can play the characters in a way completely different from how characters in a TV show.

And that brings us to Ellie. By this point in the story, she’s 19 years old. While we shouldn’t expect optimal decision-making from a 19-year-old, it isn’t as if people that age are incapable of learning lessons. In fact, that’s one of the most important aspects of being that age. And it also isn’t as if the fungus-fueled apocalypse just happened a month ago – Ellie has lived her entire life under these circumstances. She had to grow up a lot faster than most 19-year-olds in TV shows, and she also had a mentor in Joel (as well as some others around Jackson).

That is why writing Ellie as just a bumbling dumbass was unbelievably frustrating to watch throughout the season. Once Joel is killed by Abby, here is what Ellie does:

  • Lies in her plea the Jackson council to send a group of people after Abby to get their revenge. This plea comes after the town of Jackson has been decimated by an attack by the Cordyceps.
  • Is ill-equipped and without a plan to get to Abby in Seattle, both of which are supplied by Dina.
  • After finding out Dina is pregnant, she continues with Dina rather than just leaving Seattle altogether.
  • Agrees to take a shortcut to the hospital with Dina through an area they know will have infected inside rather than taking time to look for a long way around. Mind you, this is after she finds out Dina is pregnant.
  • Wants to try to save a Seraphite boy from six armed WLF soldiers in the middle of a warzone.
  • Jumps into a small boat during a low-grade hurricane to navigate her way to the Ferris wheel (Abby’s supposed location). After her boat flips, and Ellie barely makes it to shore, she’s kidnapped and about to be murdered by some Seraphites. One deus ex machina later, and Ellis is freed. She then finds another boat and gets right back on the water.
  • She gets the drop on two of Abby’s co-conspirators in Owen and Mel. Owen makes a movie for a gun, Ellie shoots him dead, but the bullet goes through him and strikes Mel in the neck, and she slowly bleeds out as we and Ellie find out Mel is pregnant. This leads Abby back to Ellie, and Abby kills Jesse.

All that is the problem. Yes, Ellie is 19 years old and immune to infections. In a way, she’s designed not to die in this kind of show. And making bad decisions that hurt people around you while on a revenge quest is a very common trope. None of that is the issue with Season 2, and the finale specifically.

It is the sheer volume of monumentally stupid decisions that is the problem. It isn’t that Ellie is an unlikeable character (those are some of the best characters on TV) or that she’s hell-bent on revenge (that is a tried-and-true genre). It isn’t as if she lacks training because she got that both with Joel and other people around Jackson. It is that Ellie repeatedly makes idiotic choices as if she’s a person controlling a character in a video game and not a young adult who has lived her entire life in an apocalyptic hellscape where any number of things can kill her, or the people she cares about, at any given moment. It is truly some late-season Game of Thrones ‘Dany kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet’-type of writing that torpedoed what is otherwise a tremendous television show.

What the ‘Mission: Impossible’ Franchise Tells Us About Tom Cruise, Filmmaking, and Movie History

With Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning being released this weekend, now is a good time to go through the entire series. We aren’t doing a recap, review, or analysis of the series, though. Not really. What we’re doing instead is following along the entries in the franchise, ranging from 1996 to present day, and how they tell us all we need to know about the career of Tom Cruise, the character of Ethan Hunt, and Hollywood cinema writ large.

Mission: Impossible (1996)

The original in the franchise, or the reboot of the TV show anyway, was released in May of 1996. It was a monster box office hit, finishing third that year in domestic gross at nearly $181-million, or more than double that in present-day value. It also feels like both the end of an era and the beginning of the next one.

To be clear: this is an excellent movie that holds up very well. As an espionage thriller, it does have its humour (especially in the first 15-20 minutes) with great action set pieces, but it nears the end the star-driven drama or thriller in Hollywood. Cruise had done a bunch of those (both The Firm and A Few Good Men were released 3-4 years earlier) and those genres were successful vehicles. Just from the 1993-1995 era alone, even aside from those aforementioned Cruise movies, there were entries like The Fugitive, Indecent Proposal, In the Line of Fire, Clear and Present Danger, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, and Crimson Tide which all finished top-10 at the domestic box office in their respective years. Put Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, or Demi Moore in a drama/thriller, and you probably had a box-office smash on your hands.

That ended after 1996. Once we get to 1997, the box-office smashes that get closest to those genres are Air Force One or Face/Off, which could qualify, but also lean more towards shoot-‘em-up-action. (Sidebar: in the first M:I movie, Cruise doesn’t shoot a gun at any point. As with all good espionage thrillers, this is a movie about relationships and brains over brawn.) There were a couple big successes before the end of the century – Titanic especially, and Good Will Hunting as well – but by the time we get to 1999, there is a Star Wars prequel, an Austin Powers sequel, and a Toy Story sequel in the top-4 at the box office. The successful original stories bent more horror (The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project) or comedy (Big Daddy and Runaway Bride). Once we get to the early 2000s, it’s Harry Potter, Spider-Man, more Star Wars, and kids movies. There is still a successful drama-thriller entry here and there, but the mid-90s gold rush is gone.  

While 1996 can be used as a delineation point in the types of movies audiences will abandon or consume in the coming years, it’s also about this time that the use of computers/technology comes to the forefront. It isn’t as if movies had never focused on computers – hell, WarGames came out in 1983 – but they were infrequent, and the use of computers as an integral part of everything starts at this time. In 1995, we got Goldeneye, and in 1997 we got Men In Black. Before the century was over, The Matrix was released and the technology floodgates really opened.

That is why it’s cheesy, in a way, to return to this Mission: Impossible entry. Hollywood was still figuring out how computers were actually going to be used in their movies, and how to present that to an audience that was largely still learning to use computers themselves. It is why we have scenes like the fake fire at CIA headquarters where Ving Rhames’ character (Luther), the greatest hacker in the world, has to type ‘ACTIVATE ALARM’ on the screen to let the audience know what’s happening:

There are a bunch of scenes like this: Ethan Hunt typing ‘Job 314’ as a search string; Luther typing ‘SEND JAMMING SIGNAL’ in giant letters on his laptop to jam phone cells, and so on. I mean, there is even a giant ‘INTRUSION COUNTERMEASURES’ sign inside the CIA vault:

This is very reminiscent of Dr. No, the first James Bond movie released 34 years earlier:

I would say the sign in the CIA vault is an homage if it weren’t for all the instances of very obviously and clearly displaying on computer screens what the person at the computer was doing. As cheesy as it is, it does allow the audience to clearly follow along with what they’re seeing, a point we’ll return to later.

The next 10 years sees Hollywood not only adjust what kinds of movies are made, which is why this first M:I movie is a vestige of a long-gone era, but marks the start of the decline of Cruise as the vehicle of a drama/thriller. Cruise stars in Jerry Maguire later in 1996, which is a hit, but he spends over a year filming his next movie (Eyes Wide Shut) and the landscape has changed by 1999. In fact, after Jerry Maguire and until Top Gun: Maverick in 2022, the only Cruise movies that finish in the top-20 by domestic box office are Mission: Impossible sequels or directed by Steven Spielberg (Minority Report and War of the Worlds).

All this makes Mission: Impossible one of the most fascinating movies of the last 50 years. Not only for the movie itself, but what it tells us about movie-making and movie-viewing shifts in English-speaking countries generally, and Tom Cruise’s career specifically.

Mission: Impossible II (2000)

By the time we get to the second M:I movie, it is four years later. Cruise started filming Eyes Wide Shut in late 1996 and it didn’t wrap until March of 1998. As we just outlined, in the interim, there were rapid changes in both audience viewing habits and the way movies were being made, so this was Cruise doing his first post-drama/thriller movie. And we can all say this about the second Mission: Impossible: it was certainly a movie that was made and released.

This one was directed by John Woo, and he had just had a couple of big successes with Face/Off and Broken Arrow. And the action sequences in this movie are still good, but it’s the story and the writing that makes it suffer, which is why it’s at the bottom of the list for the franchise. What made the first movie so special was the espionage-thriller aspect, showing Hunt’s strategic thinking, which was complemented by a couple of great action sequences. Neither of those are really apparent in this movie. This is more, ‘What if Jean-Claude Van Damme spoke perfect American English and was in a Fast And The Furious movie’ and less, ‘this is a movie about the world’s greatest spy’. It is a Cool Guy Slowly Walks Away From Explosion-type of movie, considering there’s a literal slow-motion scene of him driving a motorcycle through the wreck of a car that just blew up:

But, like the first film, it’s an important entry because Cruise very quickly moves away from being that type of action star. In his future action movies, he either gets his ass kicked often (the M:I entries) or is the quiet badass (Jack Reacher). It takes a bit more time, but this marks the end of him being the Arnold Schwarzenegger-type of action star and more the Bruce Willis-type of action star.

The same thing is going on in Hollywood, generally speaking. The last of the Pierce Brosnan-led James Bond movies is released in 2002 (Die Another Day). It is generally panned and doesn’t crack the top-10 at the domestic box office. This forces the Bond creative team to re-think their approach, hire a new Bond, and take the franchise in a fresh direction. We get a reboot with a grittier Bond (we’ll get to that in a second) and it’s a resounding success. Schwarzenegger has moved to politics as that style of action star goes away – same with Sylvester Stallone. Audiences don’t want the super-cool action hero who always does everything right, and the second Mission: Impossible movie is the last time Cruise will inhabit that type of role for at least 20 years, if not forever.

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Depending on who you talk to, this is the best of the original trilogy, though I’m still partial to the original. At the time of release, it has been a full decade since that original, and it’s very obvious how much has changed. The opening scene is from the back half of the movie, and has Hunt tied up in a chair across from Michelle Monaghan’s character (Julia), whom we learn is his fiancée, with Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the villain and threatening her life. The scene is taking place in a grimy industrial setting with a hand-held camera shaking like it’s attached to a bobblehead. The grit-ification of cinema in the 2000s – we already mentioned the Bond franchise, and the same happens with Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy – is readily apparent here. For the most part, it does work, so it’s not as if it is all for nothing.

This is also where, as mentioned earlier, the era of Cruise getting his ass kicked, or playing the quiet assassin/killer, is in full swing. It kind of starts with Minority Report in 2002, continues here, and extends to the present day. The action star of the 80s and 90s is not the action star of the 2000s, and Cruise makes that adjustment.

It also ties into his off-screen problems. Cruise, a longtime Scientologist, was caught up in controversy with a regular basis at this time:

  • In 2005, he got into a public tiff with Brooke Shields when Cruise criticized her for using anti-depressants to help with post-partum depression. Cruise also denigrated psychiatry in general, which seems to have led to a split with director Steven Spielberg.
  • After Cruise’s marriage with Nicole Kidman fell apart in a very public way, he started dating Katie Holmes in 2005. We all remember the couch-jumping incident on Oprah Winfrey’s show.
  • The nature of scientology itself were becoming more and more available to the public, which included mysterious deaths and disappearances.

All this was starting to make Cruise unlikeable to the public, so being an action star who makes all the right choices and never really loses wasn’t palatable. This third M:I movie features him being a guy who is constantly getting his ass beat until he triumphs at the end. That becomes a bit more typical of him for the next 20 years.

It isn’t dissimilar from what we see from Nolan’s Batman: Begins. In that movie, Bruce Wayne goes overseas for years, constantly gets beat during his training, and devolves so far as to be this-close to shooting the guy who shot his parents. He even has to be rescued by Alfred at one point after being exposed to a psychological toxin. That Bruce Wayne loses, or is lost, at nearly every turn until the final 30 minutes. The same is true for Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III.

This is the end of the first half of Cruise’s career, especially after Paramount breaks away from him in 2006, and most of it is self-inflicted. He does a few smaller movies, tries a return in Knight & Day, but really the only thing that stands out from his next five years is his cameo in Tropic Thunder. Otherwise, the 2006-2011 period is Cruise receding into the background and starting his image rehabilitation.  

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011)

The fourth M:I movie may not be a favourite of franchise fans, but it does feature arguably his coolest stunt when he climbs the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (which he actually did). It also is very illustrative of not only where Cruise’s career was at that time, but where Hollywood was and is.

It is easy to forget how star-studded the third M:I movie is. There is Keri Russell just a few years removed from Felicity, there is Laurence Fishburne coming off his run in The Matrix trilogy, and Seymour Hoffman is coming off an extended late 90s-to-mid 2000s run of playing several excellent supporting characters (including 1999’s Magnolia with Cruise). With the rest of the supporting cast, it’s a true ensemble of great, notable actors.

That isn’t the case with the fourth Mission: Impossible movie while Cruise’s reputation is still being rebuilt. There is Jeremy Renner, who is on a very good run of movies at this time, but Simon Pegg is a returning character, Paula Patton was a supporting character in a couple of good movies but was nowhere near Keri Russell’ recognizability in the mid-2000s, while Michael Nyqvist and Vladimir Mashkov were unknowns to American audiences. This is not a cast that would have been in a Tom Cruise action movie 10 years earlier. Hell, the second movie had Anthony Hopkins!

Where the filming takes place is also key to the fourth movie. Here are the primary filming locations for each of the first four films:

  • One: England, Czechia
  • Two: Australia
  • Three: Italy
  • Four: India, Russia, United Arab Emirates

Interesting, yeah?

Aside from the 2010s being notable for the rise of the superhero movie, it is also notable for the rise in foreign influence on Western productions. China becomes a huge market for those superhero movies, to the point where Avengers: Endgame got a quarter of its total box office from that country:

As for this movie, specifically, it opened the Dubai International Film Festival in late 2011. It also reportedly got “… production support in the city equivalent to a financial rebate of some 30% of their local spending.” This type of financial incentive has always been around, to a degree, but it becomes more of a battle not only for places like the UAE, but Ireland, England, New Zealand, Canada, Eastern Europe, and on and on. That trend started around this time, and now top streamers like Netflix and Amazon have over two-thirds of their new movie/television productions being non-American productions.

The fourth movie is a success but is also the start of something new entirely. Cruise is no longer the suave action star of the 1990s and early 2000s, mostly because audiences won’t let him be that. It is the rehabbing of his image from someone who is promoting his very controversial religion, to the point where he’s essentially excommunicated from Hollywood, to where he’s today affectionately referred to as Mr. Movies. It also is a herald of movies featuring American actors, with American directors and writers, being filmed in, or partly financed by, countries that aren’t exactly staunch allies of America.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (2015)

The year is now 2015 and Cruise is a decade removed from the 2005 couch-jumping incident and most of the controversies that put him on a lot of shit lists. Since Ghost Protocol, Cruise has been in Jack Reacher, Oblivion, and Edge of Tomorrow. None are absolute box-office smashes, but their production budgets (per Wikipedia) amount to $358-million and the total box office take for those three movies is about $881-million. Even factoring in the hidden costs of marketing, they made money. What is also notable is that those three movies heavily relied on the international box office for success:

MovieDomestic BoxInternational BoxInternational %
Jack Reacher$80.1M$138.3M63.3%
Oblivion$89.1M$197.1M68.9%
Edge of Tomorrow$100.2M$276.8M73.4%

American audiences may not have been all the way back in on Cruise, but international audiences certainly were.

Those three movies, and then Rogue Nation in 2015, is a four-year run that culminates mostly in Cruise’s image rehabilitation. He isn’t back to where he was 15 years earlier (yet), but there are modest box office successes, one critically acclaimed movie in Edge of Tomorrow, and then Rogue Nation, which is a smash hit. It is arguably the best movie in the franchise to that point and gives us the Cruise he needs to be for audiences: The guy who is over-matched, gets his ass kicked, but pulls it off at the end. He is chasing a terrorist group known as The Syndicate, which was created by the English intelligence community but then went rogue. No one believes him, so it’s the belief in himself, and his team’s belief in him, that allows them to succeed.

This is all part of Cruise’s image rehabbing. He is telling audiences that he’s willing to get his ass kicked, and perform death-defying stunts, but they need to trust him to get the job done. It is very effective.

We also get the introduction of the most important non-Cruise character in this franchise, and that’s Rebecca Ferguson’s character of Ilsa Faust. She is an English spy working against Hunt but eventually falls for him and the way he treats his team. They are borrowing straight from The Fast and the Furious franchise here:  Hunt’s team aren’t co-workers, they are family. In this way, Ilsa Faust just isn’t a lethal, sexy assassin introduced to be a foe-turned-friend-turned-lover(?) of Hunt’s, but is a stand-in for the audience. If we chose to not let Cruise rehab his image and charm us back into our seats at the cinema, his movie career would effectively be over. But this is still Tom Cruise, so she falls for him, and so do we.

This movie also gets away from production in places like Russia and the UAE, returning to London while also going to Casablanca and Austria. They are globe-trotting, and this time it’s with countries friendly to the United States.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Cruise makes a few unsuccessful movies after Rogue Nation, but returns to Ethan Hunt in 2018’s Fallout, which is probably the best movie in the franchise (at time of writing, I haven’t seen Final Reckoning, but Fallout sports an 87 rating on Metacritic).

Gone is Jeremy Renner’s character, but all of Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Alec Baldwin, and Rebecca Ferguson are back. Sean Harris returns from Rogue Nation as the head of The Syndicate while Henry Cavill (Agent Walker) is introduced as the heavy, and Harris’ secret operative. There are also the introductions of Angela Bassett and Vanessa Kirby (White Widow), as well as the re-introduction of Michelle Monaghan (Hunt’s wife from the third movie). Tom Cruise is nearly all the way back, almost fully image-rehabbed from the mid-2000s, and this type of star-studded ensemble cast is more reminiscent of the second and third movies than the fourth and fifth movies.

Also back in the franchise are the humour elements. While the previous couple of Mission: Impossible movies give us physical comedy from Cruise in the Wile E. Coyote kind of way, this brings actual dialogue humour. The second scene in the movie is Hunt and Benji looking to make an exchange with criminals, but gives us this exchange of Hunt telling Benji to relax:

It isn’t laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it is the writers knowing they can be a little more playful with Cruise. His image has improved to the point where audiences can laugh with Cruise, and not just at him.

In its own way, Fallout is a kind of return to the very first movie. Remember how they had to type out ‘ACTIVATE JAMMING SIGNAL’ or have a sign that says ‘INTRUDER COUNTERMEASURES ON/OFF’ to help audiences follow along? While each movie does this to some extent, it is a frequent occurrence in Fallout, like later in the same scene just mentioned where Benji is testing plutonium cores to make sure they’re actually plutonium, and we can tell that’s what he’s doing, but he explains it anyway:

Then there is the scene in the plane with Hunt and Walker where Hunt is explaining that their target is wearing an ID band that they can track with their phones. Hunt then repeats that last point:

When Hunt meets with the White Widow later, she states the plan is for Hunt to jail-break Harris’ villain character from the last movie. There is an exposition scene telling us who Harris’ character is (Solomon Lane) even though he was the villain in the most recent franchise entry:

In the final act of the film, as the team is driving into the village to stop the nuclear bombs, Benji explains all the steps needed to deactivate the bombs. Then the team repeats the steps back so the audience can follow along:

One important thing Fallout does so well is that it demonstrates the IMF team is over-matched, but they have the smarts and the will to outwit and out-grit the villains. Those smarts are repeated on the screen to make sure the audience knows what’s going on, and that makes us feel smart. We feel as if we could be part of that IMF team because duh, of course that rod detects radiation or that ID band leads us to the target. We knew that. Of course we knew that. Because we’re smart.

This repetition of key actions is something modern blockbusters have all done, to some degree, but is critical to spy-thriller blockbusters specifically. What makes these movies special is the intelligence of the characters, because that’s what allows them to win the day, but if the audience can’t follow along with what’s happening, they will feel as if the movie is too high-concept. This way, the movie can show the characters be smart and make the audience feel smart without talking down to us. It is a brilliant piece of movie-making that can turn a spy-thriller like this be a box-office smash, even if the franchise has become known for its excellent action stunts.

Just think of the Marvel movies of the late 2010s. There were extended sequences or dialogue scenes that clearly explained how they’re going to go back in time, or prevent Thanos’ invasion, or whatever else. It demonstrates the intelligence of the characters while bringing the viewers along for the ride.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning (2023)

There is no need to go long here because by now, Cruise is fully back. Top Gun: Maverick released in 2022 and earned nearly $1.5-billion at the box office, the second biggest movie of the year, and was the sign that film-going had returned post-pandemic (using that term loosely here). It brings back old favourite characters, introduces new ones, and sets Hunt’s path for 2025’s Final Reckoning. The mid-2000s are a distant memory.

Some people call Cruise the last movie star, which may or may not be true. What is undeniable is that there isn’t another actor like him from the post-Classic Hollywood generation. So many stars of the 80s and 90s – Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Willis, De Niro – just never translated to modern audiences, at least not consistently. Cruise did, and he did it with a full, decade-long image rehab to climb back from effectively being a radioactive plutonium core himself to the avatar of blockbuster movies in the 2020s. Beyond that, the entire history of action-spy movies over the last 30 years can be told through the Mission: Impossible franchise, and a large chunk of the Hollywood story overall. The Marvel Cinematic Universe may have changed modern blockbusters, but the Mission: Impossible franchise clarifies those changes for the audience, something its best movies do individually. Even the history of the Mission: Impossible franchise explains the modern history of Hollywood blockbusters, so maybe there isn’t a more apt nickname for Cruise than Mr. Movies.

Far Better Than I Deserved: Visual Storytelling In John Wick

The signature Hollywood action movie series to debut this century (setting aside superhero movies, which are their own genre) is undoubtedly John Wick. The first in the franchise, released in 2014, was not only a financial success with $129-million in global box office against a $20-million budget, but a critical one as well: John Wick generated 77% positive reviews at Metacritic and holds an 86% at Rotten Tomatoes. While the action sequences are exceptionally well done, and the hallmark of the entire series, it’s what is shown to us before the titular character fires a single bullet that sets up the rest of the movie.

The movie opens with a slow-rolling SUV crashing into a concrete loading dock, and the SUV is absolutely mangled. Also mangled is Keanu Reeves, who crawls out of the vehicle wearing a suit that is covered in blood:

As this man is sitting up against the loading ramp, we get two shots that establish the foundation of our character.  

The first is a wedding ring on his blood-soaked left hand. Then the man takes a smart phone out of his pocket, and as he’s sitting against that ramp, presumably dying from his injuries, the one thing he does is watch a video of a woman on a beach:

Given that he seems to be bleeding out, we’ve seen the wedding ring, and he watches a video of the woman rather than call her, the implication is the video is of his wife and she’s dead. At one point in this video, she says, “What are you doing, John?” so we now have a good idea that this is our main character, John Wick.

From the first images of the movie to the moment he watches the video, a grand total of 41 seconds has passed. In those 41 seconds, we know (or have a pretty good idea) he’s been in a very violent fight (if it was just a car accident, he probably doesn’t drive away bleeding like that), that he’s slowly dying, and he was married but his wife is deceased.

Wick slumps over and it cuts to the John Wick title card. During the title card, we hear a bedside alarm buzzing, which wakes him up and he shuts off. Then we get two more important shots. 

The first shot is photos of either Wick, his wife, or both in frames on a ledge that he passes on the way to the kitchen. Director Chad Stahelski makes sure to capture Wick’s face in the reflection as he walks by to tell us that he’s not only thinking about her, but he’s still trapped by those memories:  

When people lose loved ones, they often leave up photos of the deceased, so this doesn’t help illuminate exactly when his wife died. It is the next shot, when he goes to the bathroom, that provides more context.

As he’s about to wash up, the camera pans over to the sink next to him and there is a brush, some cream and lotion, soap, and more:

Leaving photos up is one thing, but leaving his wife’s entire morning/nighttime routine next to the bathroom sink tells us hers was a recent passing. If this had been months, he likely would have cleared those away by now, so this grief/sadness is still very fresh for him.

Now we get the full story. In a flashback after the bathroom scene, we hear a pinging sound while Wick and his wife are together somewhere on a boardwalk. She collapses and the scene cuts to Wick walking into her hospital room where she’s laying unconscious with the pinging sound being machines registering her heartbeat:

We don’t really need this, right? We know they were married, we know he loved her, and we know she’s dead. It is what happens next that makes this scene so necessary.

Wick leans over the hospital bed and kisses his wife on the forehead. After he does that, he looks over his shoulder at the doctor standing behind him, and the doctor gives him a nod:

The doctor then moves behind the machine that shows her vitals and seems to unplug something. A few seconds later, she flatlines and the alarm starts blinking red:

Not only did Wick lose his wife whom he loved very much, but he had to pull the plug on her. That is a whole other level of tragedy.

We are shown his wife’s funeral (on a rainy day, no less), and there’s a man standing at a distance after everyone leaves. John goes to talk to him:

This is the first time we have any character on the screen say a word. Given that this is his wife’s funeral, and that this man (Willem Dafoe) is the first person Wick talks to, it is safe to assume this is someone close to him in some way. After sharing condolences and a bit of wisdom on life, Dafoe says he’s, “Just checking up on an old friend.” They shake hands and part ways.

To this point, we haven’t seen Wick show much emotion outside of appearing to be crying the moment his wife flatlines. The way the scene is shot, though, his hair is covering his face and it’s hard to tell, so the message here is he’s trying to keep his emotions in check, or hidden, through the worst days of his life. 

After a brief scene of the funeral reception, Wick gets a package at the door. Attached to the package is a note. The package and the note are from his wife, who prepared all this before she died. The note says that he still needs something or someone to love. There are two key points of this scene.

First off, this scene is lit up. It is nighttime, but there are bright lights on in the room:

From the initial car crash scene to the bedroom/kitchen/bathroom scenes, to the hospital, to the funeral, it is all some variation of dark/grey/dull white. There is no colour outside of flashbacks of time spent with his wife, like this:

That we are only giving some brightness when he’s with his wife, or she’s trying to reach out to him in some way, only reinforces how much she really meant, and still means, to him.

The package delivered is a crate and in that crate is a puppy named Daisy. On the first night with the dog, Wick makes a bed out of a blanket on the floor for Daisy. The next morning, Daisy hops on the bed and starts licking his face. It is an adorable scene, but also one that helps drive home what his wife told him in the note she left: He needs something to love and take care of. We are told this by his wife, but not only does Daisy wake him up by licking his face, she does it a few seconds before his alarm goes off. It starts ringing as he’s about to get out of bed:

At the beginning of the movie, the first scene after the title card is Wick being woken up by his alarm. Now, he’s being woken up by something he cares about.

After feeding the dog and letting it do its business on the lawn, Wick gets ready for the day. There is another brief, but crucial, scene where he’s putting on his jacket and walking past the same ledge of photos shown earlier just after his wife died. Only this time, instead of Stahelski framing Wick’s face in the photos, when John was still weighed down by his grief, he is walking towards the camera, past the photos, and he barely glances at them:

This isn’t to say that he’s not thinking about his wife – no one moves on that fast. But he’s no longer trapped by grief. Daisy has now given something else to think about, to care about, and to love, and it’s not only something we’re told in the note but shown by the director.

From the moment we’re shown the car crash that opens the movie, to the time Wick is putting on his jacket as he walks past those photos, about nine minutes have passed. We get one brief conversation with Dafoe’s character at the funeral, John saying a few words to his dog, a voiceover of his wife reading the note, and that’s it. There are a handful of lines, but here is what we are told visually:  

  • A man, who falls out of his SUV after a slow-rolling crash, is slowly bleeding to death from what was likely a vicious fight.   
  • This man is John Wick and he was married. Watching a video of her as he’s bleeding to death tells us not only is she dead, and not only that they were married, but that he truly, genuinely loved her.
  • It isn’t as if his wife simply died from an accident, but Wick had to make the impossible decision to pull the plug on her.
  • Before the accident and after his wife’s death, John hadn’t been able to move on. He is still looking at photos of her and hasn’t cleaned her cream/lotion/soap from the bathroom counter.
  • The use of colour in various scenes indicates what his life is like when she’s dead and what his life was like when she, or some part of her, was still alive.
  • The dog that his wife gifts him has truly given him something for which to wake up in the morning, rather than being woken up by a ringing alarm.  
  • This dog has helped him not necessarily move on from his wife’s passing but give him some reprieve and companionship as he tries to make it through the next day.

Finally, the use of colour comes into play one more time. Wick meets the Russian gangsters at the gas station and in the next scene, they break into his house, kick the shit out of him, and kill his dog. When this happens, there is still colour in the scene:

The next morning, after Wick buries Daisy, he is cleaning the blood off the floor. With that final remnant of his wife buried in the backyard, the colours are dulled once again:  

There is a scene later in the movie when Wick tells the head of the Russian mob that when they killed his dog, they killed the only chance he had at an opportunity to grieve un-alone. That cements for anyone in the audience who didn’t pick up on this colour change an hour earlier, because that had been made clear to us.  

From here on out is where John Wick turns into the action movie we know it to be. There is still a lot of visual storytelling through action sequences, the way scenes are presented, and further use of colour palettes. The reason John Wick can give us 90 minutes of great action sequences is it takes the first nine minutes of the movie to tell us everything we need to know about our main character. The action scenes are what made the John Wick series an extremely successful franchise both financially and critically, but visual storytelling like this is what elevates it from a great action movie to a classic piece of modern filmmaking.

98 Seconds: Visual Storytelling in Rear Window

“Frankly, I hate dialogue.”

That is a quote from director Denis Villeneuve, who is currently on a five-movie run of Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049, Dune, and Dune: Part Two. He is one of the best in the world at what he does, and, for him, what is on the screen holds weight in a movie, not what is said. It is his opinion, he has certainly earned the right to say that, and perhaps the best movies bring both great visuals and great dialogue. All the same, movies are a visual medium, and dialogue is not necessary, or even desirable, to tell a story.  

Rear Window, the Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece from 1954, has held up for over 70 years for a number of reasons, and one of them is how Hitchcock uses visuals. It isn’t unique to this one Hitchcock movie, but it is one that stands out because of how efficient it is.

The movie begins with the credits over the titular rear window as the shades are being drawn open, telling us where the movie is taking place:

All the credits take a total of 65 seconds to get through, and then the camera slowly moves through the window and pans around the courtyard before bringing us back into the apartment. This takes 55 seconds and establishes both the audience’s point of view (the apartment/rear window) and the stage we’ll be observing (the apartment courtyard). What happens in the next 98 seconds sets up the entire movie. 

With the surroundings established, the very first shot is of a man who is sleeping with a lot of sweat on his brow:

The camera then cuts to the thermometer, which shows us that the temperature is in the mid-90s:

So, it is a very hot day. The importance is that we know this is a movie from the 1950s that will focus on the goings-on in the apartments surrounding the courtyard, so the neighbours will have their windows and curtains open.

Moving on, the camera pans up to an apartment with a man who is shaving while listening to the radio. On the radio is an advertisement where the voice says, “Men, are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel tired and run-down? Do you have that listless feeling…” and then the man turns the dial:

This could just be a random advertisement on a radio that means nothing. However, the entire opening sequence to this point has had music in the background, and the music cuts out as we’re about to get our glimpse of the single man in the apartment.

The music from the soundtrack being cut forces the audience to listen to the radio advertisement, which means it is important to listen to. By the nature of the ad read, the man’s reaction to it, and Hitchcock cutting out the music to get us to hear it, we know this is a man in his 40s who is unhappy with his life in some way. Seeing as the first shot when panning around was of the man sleeping with sweat on his brow, being unhappy in his 40s could apply to him, too.

Moving on, we get to a sleeping couple waking up outside on the fire escape because of the heat:

While it could just help hammer home that it’s hot in the apartments – and it is – this also tells us it’s the morning. In other words, it isn’t mid-90s temperatures at 2 PM, but as the day is starting, so it’s going to get even worse.

After that, we move to the apartment with the blonde woman stretching as she’s making breakfast:

Hitchcock’s affinity for (obsession with?) blonde women aside, these few seconds lets the audience know this woman is at least a dancer of some type, if not a stage performer. Also, that her apartment is in the middle of the frame when looking out Stewart’s window tells us that a blonde woman is at the centre of his life.  

On the transition back inside, we get a quick glimpse of young neighbourhood kids chasing a water truck:

This helps reinforce how hot it is at the time of the morning, driving home that a lot of people in these apartments will have their windows – and thus their curtains – open most of the time.

Now we’ve moved back inside, and we see the same man we saw earlier, and he seems to be in a wheelchair:

Given we’ve seen this man twice, and the director is shooting everything from this apartment, we can assume that this is our protagonist (though anyone who knows who Jimmy Stewart is/was will know that anyway).

After showing us Stewart again, we pan down to see why he’s in the wheelchair:

That cast not only tells us why he’s in the wheelchair but his name: L.B. Jeffries. Also, because we know it’s the morning thanks to the couple sleeping on the fire escape, we know Jeffries slept in his wheelchair next to the window.

The very next camera movement by Hitchcock is to another camera, this one for photographs, and it’s smashed to hell:

Hitchcock pans up a little bit and we see two racing cars in a mid-crash still shot: 

We have seen Stewart in a wheelchair with a cast on his leg, a broken camera, and a photo of two cars on a racetrack in the midst of a big crash. The inference is that Stewart is a photographer who gets close to the action but paid for it this time with a broken leg.

Hitchcock moves the camera upward and we see another photo, this time of a big fire/explosion from which people are running away while Stewart, now established as a photographer, is presumably taking the picture:

The camera keeps panning over more photos, this time giving us two in one shot with the one on the right being a war zone of some sort (given the era, either Korea or World War 2), and the one on the left appearing to be a bomb test:

After showing us the photos on his wall, the camera pans over other photography cameras (including one that will show up later):

And then settles on the negative photo of a woman in a frame on his table:

All the photos we’ve seen up to this point have been on Stewart’s apartment wall, and all bunched together. This photo, of this woman, is by itself on his table. This photo of this woman isn’t just a snapshot that he took on assignment somewhere – this woman means something to him.

Finally, the next camera movement goes to a stack of magazines, the one on top with Grace Kelly on the cover and ‘Paris Fashions’ on the lower right-hand side:

The cover of the magazine lets us know the woman that we saw in the photo is Grace Kelly’s character (Lisa Fremont). Seeing as this is the 1950s and Stewart’s character is a photographer who likes to get close to the action, it seems unlikely he’d own a bunch of fashion magazines. However, that stack of fashion magazines with the woman at the centre of his life on the cover indicates that he’s buying magazines where she’s writing or contributing in some way.   

From the moment we see Stewart’s character for the first time with all the sweat on his face, to the moment we see Kelly’s character on the cover of the magazine, a total of 98 seconds has elapsed in the movie. Here is what Hitchcock tells us, with absolutely no dialogue from characters, in those 98 seconds:

  • It is blistering hot outside. Because these are small apartments in the 1950s, the people around the courtyard will have the windows/curtains of their apartments open.
  • The man listening to the radio in his apartment, judging by his reaction to the ad about men over 40 years old feeling down, is a man over 40 years old and feeling down. By extension, we can apply this to Stewart’s character.
  • A couple sleeping on the fire escape wake up to an alarm, so we know it’s early in the morning. That the temperature is around 94 degrees this early in the morning tells us it is going to be blistering hot all day.
  • The blonde woman making breakfast is stretching and very limber, so she’s a dancer or stage performer. But that her apartment is in the middle of all the apartments when looking out Stewart’s rear window lets us know a blonde woman is at the centre of his life and this movie.  
  • Stewart is in the apartment where the director’s camera is situated, so he’s our main character. He is also in a wheelchair with a broken leg and his name is L.B. Jeffries.
  • A broken camera with a photo on the wall of two cars in the middle of a big car wreck almost certainly means Stewart’s character is a photographer who was injured while covering that car race a little too closely.
  • More photos on the wall of explosions, fires, and war zones, on top of that car crash, tells us that Stewart’s character isn’t just a photographer who goes anywhere. He is someone who loves action and danger and is willing to put himself at great risk to take these pictures.
  • The lone photo on his table is a blonde woman who, judging by the stack of magazines next to her picture, is a fashion writer and is very special to L.B. Jeffries.

We find out that Stewart is an adrenaline-fueled photographer stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg who probably isn’t happy with his life right now. He is almost certainly in love with a blonde woman who is at the centre of his life but by his very nature he can’t help but be interested in the strangers (and world) around him. It is also going to be a blistering hot day/week/weekend in the city, so it’ll be easier for Stewart, who is sleeping in his wheelchair at night, to spy on his neighbours.

All this in 98 seconds without a word from an on-screen character.

There is a lot of great dialogue in Rear Window, whether it’s Thelma Ritter’s massage therapist character talking about common sense, or the relationship between Stewart and Kelly itself. All that certainly crackles and helps elevate this movie to an all-time classic. But Hitchcock’s efficiency with establishing everything the audience needs to know about the main characters and the environment around them, in a span of 98 seconds, using nothing but visuals and one radio advertisement, is a big part of what makes this movie an all-time classic. That efficiency helps give room for the movie to breathe, for those subsequent dialogue sequences to be fully-fleshed out, and for us to jump right into the action. It is a movie that holds the audience’s hand and also trusts them to pick up on these visual clues. It has stood the test of time and is a gold standard in visual storytelling.

Five ‘Best’ Movies of 2024

Last year, there were four year-end movie posts on this blog: One for the ‘best’ movies of 2023, one for favourite movies of 2023, one for best pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023, and one for favourite pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023. We are doing the same thing for 2024, and today’s edition is the ‘best’ movies of the year.

When it comes to discerning between ‘best’ and ‘favourite’, there is sometimes an overlap. However, I think there are movies that are excellent (for technical reasons, for writing, for acting, or usually a combination of the three) that I likely wouldn’t spend a Friday night to sit down and re-watch, and those are the ‘best’. Then there are movies where I would absolutely throw on for a re-watch at midnight when I just want to enjoy relax, and those are ‘favourites’. Clear? Hope so.

The five ‘best’ movies released before 2024 that I watched this year was already covered, as was my five ‘favourite’ movies released before 2024. We recently went over my ‘favourite’ movies of 2024, too.

A quick note: there are a handful of movies I haven’t had a chance to see. The local movie theatre generally only shows blockbuster-type movies, so there a lot of smaller films that haven’t been sent to streaming/on-demand yet which I haven’t been able to enjoy. For example, The Brutalist and Sing Sing weren’t released here. This list is incomplete, but when it also gives them a chance to be recognized in next year’s column of pre-2025 movies.

Are we all set? Great. In no particular order, here are what I thought were the five best movies from 2024 with a handful of honourable mentions at the end.

The Substance

Director: Coralie Fargaet

Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley

This movie appeared in the ‘Honourable Mentions’ section of my favourite movies, but this was unquestionably one of the best movies I saw from 2024. As mentioned in that earlier post, this movie features Moore’s character (Elisabeth) as an aging TV star who is being replaced by a younger option. When in a hospital, she is told of a mysterious substance that can produce a younger version of herself. Elisabeth takes the bait, but what she doesn’t realize is the younger version is literally spawned from her own body, creating a duplicate. The two halves cannot exist at the same time, so they take turns as one lives in the real world while the other is locked in a bathroom just laying on the floor, alive but unable to move.  

As one can imagine, the tension grows between the two halves as both want to continue living their lives and that tension is what propels the movie. The overarching theme of beauty standards in Hollywood (and for women in general) is apparent throughout, but it also delves into what we do today borrowing from tomorrow, as well as the unceasing march of time. This is a body-horror movie, and a particularly gruesome one at that. It won’t play well for all audiences, but the directing, performances, and effects all align for a tremendous feature.

Major awards shows typically don’t favour horror movies, so this is unlikely to garner the attention it should, but there were very few movies that had an impact on me like ‘The Substance’ did. While this is from a woman’s perspective, there are themes that apply to everyone, and that’s what elevates it from a specific genre to a wide-audience appeal.

Red Rooms

Director: Pascal Plante

Starring: Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin

This was also in the ‘Honourable Mentions’ section of my favourite movies, and while I did enjoy it tremendously, the difficult subject matter is what kept it from being one of my truly favourite movies of the year. By the same token, that subject matter is what made it one of the best movies of the year, and one that cannot be recommended enough.

In this story, the characters of Kelly-Anne (Gariépy) and Clémentine (Babin) are two women obsessed with a murder trial in Québec, Canada. It is a particularly vicious murder trial as the accused is a man who abducted high school girls and then auctioned off internet streams of their severe torture and subsequent murder. The women both appear to think that the man is being falsely accused and there is a lot of tension between them and the case, the parents of the deceased children and those women, as well as within themselves. It is a brutal look at obsession and the disassociation that goes along with that level of obsession.

To be clear: Not everyone will appreciate, let alone enjoy, this movie. It is not an easy watch, and has a couple of scenes that will churn the sternest of stomachs. But it is incredibly well-made, well-acted, and has timely themes running throughout. It is a small, French-Canadian movie, but one of the best of 2024. 

Society of the Snow

Director: J.A. Bayona

Starring: Enzo Vogrinic, Matias Recalt

Society of the Snow was technically released at the end of 2023 but in a limited fashion before being released to the wider public on streaming in early January of 2024, so that’s why it finds its way here.

This movie is a re-telling of the Uruguayan soccer team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in 1972. Some people may be familiar with the movie Alive from 1993 which covered the same story, but this version takes it to a whole other level.

There are few movies that can pull off two polar extremes in the same film with such a deft touch, but this one does exactly that. It shows the extreme some of the players had to go through to stay alive in order to be rescued, and that includes cannibalism. It also shows them working together to try and survive, a remnant of their time together as sports teammates and friends. It doesn’t have its tougher spots glossed-up as can happen with Hollywood-produced movies, which is what makes this Spanish production a difficult, yet triumphant watch.

Another movie that falls in the “not for everyone” bucket, Society of the Snow shows the range of (in)humanity we possess in the direst situations, and the performances match that difficult theme. It is a long movie, but not a slow movie, and one of the best of the year.  

Dune Part 2

Director: Denis Villeneuve    

Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya

Sometimes, a movie with a big budget, marquee director, and great cast that makes a lot of money at the box office really is that good. We saw that with Oppenheimer in 2023, and we saw it again with Dune Part 2 in 2024.

Having re-watched this recently, what stood out was how it improved on everything the first instalment did well. The set pieces were bigger and more dramatic, the performances were tremendous across the board, the world was expanded, and it was visually stunning at nearly every turn. It told the story through what we saw on the screen, and not necessarily what was spoken by the characters, and that is the mark of a wildly successful cinematic experience. This was in my ‘Favourites of 2024’ column, and in it the part where Paul Atreides rides the sand worm was mentioned. That is still one of the best moments I’ve had in a movie theatre in recent memory.

Aside from what an achievement this was as a film, it will also be a movie that is looked back on in 20 years that announced the next generation of great actors. Chalamet, Zendaya, Florence Pugh, and Austin Butler were all outstanding, and it really does feel like a baton-passing moment for Hollywood. It sets a high bar for the third edition, whenever that comes, but this is a near-perfect movie on its own.

Anora

Director: Sean Baker

Starring: Mikey Madison, Mark Edelshteyn

This is another movie that updates a classic as Anora is a modern riff on Pretty Woman where Madison’s character (Anora) is an exotic dancer/sex worker who becomes entwined with a wealthy, young Russian man named Ivan (Edelshteyn’s character). One thing leads to another, they get married, and then things really take off.

While this may riff on Pretty Woman, this isn’t an early-90s rom-com. This is a movie that investigates a lot of themes, particularly for American audiences, ranging from foreign economic pressure, to the ability of the lower class to rise up the ladder, to internal desire for a change in circumstances (and all that goes along with following through), among others. It also does a very good job at blending genres, fluidly moving between a rom-com, a thriller, a drama, and often a meld of the three. Sometimes, small Movie Festival entries are overrated, especially to wider audiences – Anora is definitely not one of them.

The one thing that bothered me is that it is a 140-minute runtime and it’s clear where this is going about 30 minutes in. What helps me overlook that is that Madison’s performance is legitimately one of the best of the year, the middle-third of the movie plays almost like a slapstick comedy, and it is beautifully shot and written. It doesn’t feel slow at any point and is genuinely one of the best of 2024.

*

Okay, those are at the top, so let’s get to some honourable mentions.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Director: George Miller

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth

To be clear: this is an expertly made film that has a few exhilarating sequences like the opening motorcycle chase, the attack on Gastown, and the War Rig fight. It is not a slow movie and Taylor-Joy and Hemsworth provide polar-opposite performances that complement each other very well. All the same, it’s hard to not compare it to Fury Road, which might be the most well-made movie of the 21st century. It is a notch below its predecessor, where Dune Part 2 improved on its first outing.

Juror #2

Director: Clint Eastwood

Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette

It is a shame this was sent straight to streaming (it had an extremely limited theatrical release). It feels like a movie that is so good that it would have had legs for a long(ish) run in cinemas, but I digress. This is a different vision on the classic 12 Angry Men formula about how a single juror can change the mind of an entire jury, but the key twist is shown early on, and that provides the tension that is maintained throughout the film. This is truly one of the best dramas of the year, and one of Eastwood’s best movies since Million Dollar Baby.

The Fall Guy

Director: David Leitch

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt

Ever want to watch a well-made action movie that is funny throughout? This is the one. It plays as an ode to stunt performers and a lot of the stunts are practically done, which gives the film a feel that a lot of modern action movies do not. Add that to charming and funny performances from both Gosling and Blunt, and this might be the most enjoyable popcorn flick of the year. It is great to just throw on, enjoy for two hours, and then never think of again. I want to say that we should get more movies like this, but it’s hard to say if that’ll be the case.

Nosferatu

Director: Robert Eggers

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp

A re-telling/re-imagining/not-quite-either of the classic vampire movie, Nosferatu is a stunning movie. Everything from the performances from Depp and Skarsgård, to the way it’s shot by Eggers, to the switch of colour palettes, to the excruciating(ly good) sound design, this is a true cinematic experience. A bit of the story can fall a little flat, which is why this didn’t make it into my top-5, but it is unquestionably one of the best movies to see on a big screen from 2024. This would have made it to my honourable mentions list for ‘favourite of 2024’ had I seen it sooner than the very end of December.

Challengers

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Starring: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor

Sometimes, you do ‘have to hand it to them’. While romantic dramas are typically not my flavour of movie, the narrative structure of Challengers helps provide the tension that holds from beginning to end, and the performances from the three leads (the two named plus Mike Faist) carry an excellent film. The soundtrack is one of the most memorable of the year and helps provide another dimension to a movie that has a lot of them already. It was a good year for Zendaya, and it started with this.

Rebel Ridge

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Starring: Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson

If Juror #2 is a successful update on 12 Angry Men, then Rebel Ridge is a successful update of Rambo. It features Pierre’s character (Terry) who heads to a small town with a bag of cash to post bail for his cousin. He is pulled over on his bike by the police, who seize his money in a civil forfeiture situation. After some shenanigans from the cops regarding bail and prison transfers, things eventually escalate to the point where Terry and the police are embroiled in a battle that goes far beyond just Terry’s current situation. It expertly covers a very real situation too many people find themselves in, and Pierre’s performance carries the weight of the movie.

Civil War

Director: Alex Garland

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaney

This was included in my ‘favourites of 2024’, and it holds up as one of the best of the year, too. We won’t go long here because it was already covered in that prior post, but I think we’ll look back in 10 years and wonder why this movie didn’t get more love from both critics and audiences.

Woman of the Hour

Director: Anna Kendrick

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Alcala

This was also on the ‘favourites of 2024’ list so again, we won’t have a big discussion here. But this real-life story about the serial killer that went on ‘The Dating Game’ television show is a tense 90-minute thriller that was very well done. It is one of those movies that makes you want to see what Kendrick does next.

In A Violent Nature

Director: Chris Nash

Starring: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic

A third movie that was featured in my ‘favourites of 2024’ column, this is a Teenager Campers Get Terrorized And Murdered By A Supernatural Being movie. Those have been done to death (pun!), but this is a fresh twist on that familiar trope and is one of the best horror movies of the last couple of years.

Five ‘Favourite’ Movies of 2024

Last year, there were four year-end movie posts here: One for the ‘best’ movies of 2023, one for favourite movies of 2023, one for best pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023, and one for favourite pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023. We are doing the same thing for 2024, and today’s edition is ‘favourite’ movies of 2024.   

When it comes to discerning between ‘best’ and ‘favourite’, there is sometimes an overlap. However, I think there are movies that are excellent (for technical reasons, for writing, for acting, or usually a combination of the three) that I likely wouldn’t spend a Friday night to sit down and re-watch, and those are the ‘best’. Then there are movies where I would absolutely throw on for a re-watch at midnight when I just want to enjoy myself, and those are ‘favourites’. Clear? Hope so.

The five ‘best’ movies released before 2024 that I watched this year was already covered, as was my five ‘favourite’ movies released before 2024. Today, we’re going to cover my five ‘favourite’ movies from 2024 proper.

A quick note: there are a handful of movies I really haven’t had a chance to see. The local movie theatre generally only shows blockbuster-type movies, so there a lot of smaller films that haven’t been sent to streaming/on-demand yet that I haven’t been able to enjoy. For example, movies like Anora and The Brutalist weren’t/aren’t going to be released here, while there are a few that hopefully make their way in the next two weeks like Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown, and Babygirl. This list is incomplete, but when it also gives them a chance to be recognized in next year’s column of pre-2025 movies.

Are we all set? Great. Here are my five favourite movies from 2024 in no particular order.

Civil War

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaney

Director: Alex Garland

In fairness, this was one of the movies I was looking forward to most in 2024, and it delivered. The short of it is that this is set in near-future America that has devolved into a civil war separated by territories like the West, a Florida alliance, an area that covers much of the north/northeast, and so on. It follows a group of journalists who make their way to Washington, D.C. in anticipation of the tyrannical government and President being deposed by these forces, and all the brutality that they see on their trip. It features arguably one of the most tense scenes in any movie this year when they stumbled upon a small cadre of soldiers who are literally filling up a mass grave.  

Once in a while, there is a movie that comes along that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go for two hours – Civil War is exactly that. It not only envisions what a breakdown like this would resemble, but also the role the media has in not only covering these events, but also feeding into the worst side of humanity while doing it. The connection, or, rather, the disconnection between the media’s humanity and their desire to cover such an inhuman circumstance is at the centre of this movie, and it’s hard to think of a recent example that does it as well as this movie does.

It isn’t a joyful experience, but it is an incredibly well-made, well-acted, and taught thriller/drama that keeps your nails dug into your seat. It is one of the few movies from this year that I’ve already made a point to re-watch and could see myself doing so again soon.

Alien: Romulus

Starring: Cailee Spaney, David Jonsson

Director: Fede Álvarez

The first Alien movie in seven years brings the franchise back to its roots, which is effectively a group of people in space trapped on a ship that has our titular aliens roaming about. This isn’t like recent Prometheus/Covenant entries that focus more on origins and existentialism, but simply plays more like a haunted house movie where a group of young people steal a ship to try and escape their dreary lives on a mining planet, and then find this ship has alien life forms that want to kill them all.

There are two things that work well about this movie. First, the fact that so much of it uses practical effects rather than leaning into computer graphics makes it feel grounded. It is easy for science-fiction filmmakers to get caught up in trying to look science-fiction-y and forgetting they are making a movie. The real sets, the (mostly) practical aliens, and so on make it feel like a true horror movie set in space rather than a computer game.

The second thing is the acting. Spaney is great in this, as she was in Civil War, but Jonsson is one of the stand-out performers not only of this movie, but of the year. He plays a synthetic robot/human, and he has to span a lot of emotions, ticks, and deliveries as his character (d)evolves. He brings the movie from Very Good to Excellent.

Romulus was a critical success, a commercial success, and an exciting re-entry to the Alien world. Some of the easter eggs/callbacks bothered some people, but not me because they largely served a purpose in the movie besides ‘hey did you see that in the background?’ From the directing, to the story, to the acting, to the effects, all worked together in a delightful, if terrifying, symphony.

Terrifier 3

Starring: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton

Director: Damien Leone

The second edition of this series was in my column on favourite pre-2024 movies, and now the third one is feature here. For the uninitiated, Terrifier is a horror movie franchise that started as part of an anthology over a decade ago, but has now evolved into three films that have been growing in grandeur with each entry: The first movie was reportedly made on a budget of around $50,000 that was crowdfunded, the second had a budget of $250,000, and this third one was up to $2 million. The series has now grossed over $100 million at the box office in total.

Art The Clown is the villain of this movie, which is set at Christmastime as LaVera’s character (Sienna) is released from a mental hospital following her showdown with Art at the end of the second movie. The hook is that Art is a supernatural clown that takes great pleasure in not just murdering his victims, but torturing them both physically and psychologically, often to great lengths, and sometimes simultaneously. Each movie is wildly violent and frequently, erm, terrifying, and each movie usually features one set piece that really stands out from the rest in terms of its outlandish grotesqueness. Terrifier 3 might feature two of them, depending on what bothers you the most to see on a movie screen.  

Leone, as the director, clearly is saying something about the audience given the over-the-top violence perpetrated by a clown named Art, but the audiences love it, and so do I. This is definitely not a horror movie for anyone bordering on squeamish, but it is superbly made using mostly practical effects, which seems impossible with their level of financing, but they always pull it off – it looks like a $40 million horror movie on a fraction of the budget. The story is good, the acting is great, and the kill sequences are amazing. Not much more we can ask for from a horror movie.

MadS

Starring: Lucille Guillaume, Milton Riche

Director: David Moreau

Sometimes, a movie you’ve never heard of, thus for which you had no expectations, absolutely bowls you over, and that’s what MadS did to me. Maybe because it is a French film that went straight to streaming (I think it can be rented on Amazon but it was released on Shudder), it didn’t seem to get much traction online, but this was arguably the best, and my favourite, horror movie from 2024.

MadS was shot in one long, continuous 90-minute take with no cuts (for real). The entire film occurs in that 90-minute span, so it grabs your attention about five minutes in and holds your attention throughout.

It all starts with Riche’s character (Romain, a wealthy teenager) buying drugs from a dealer, and then driving off. A couple minutes later, he sees a woman on the side of the road who seems hurt, so he stops for her, and she jumps in the car. She is unable to speak, has a tape recorder on her saying she has some sort of virus, and is clearly in a lot of distress, but Romain is freaking out and doesn’t understand what she’s trying to explain. One thing leads to another, and she bashes her own head in until she dies, but Romain can’t go to the police because of the drugs in his car, so he goes home. The sickness is passed on to Romain and it acts as sort of a zombie-type virus. It takes time for the effects to present themselves, so Romain goes to a birthday party where he starts to lose his mind, growing increasingly agitated and violent, and he spreads the virus to other partygoers, including his ex-girlfriend. Things continue from there as the virus starts spreading around their town and the army gets called in, devolving into utter chaos.

It is hard to overstate how much I loved this movie. A genuine one-take movie that is so well choreographed, so tense, and so well-acted seems impossible, but Moreau pulled it off. One of the best horror movies of the last five years.

Woman of the Hour

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Daniel Zovatto

Director: Anna Kendrick

Rarely does a movie with a lot of hype live up to that hype, but Kendrick’s debut as a director does exactly that. Like MadS, it is a crisp 90-minute movie that doesn’t take many detours and that helps hold the audience’s attention from start to finish. There is no bloat here, or unnecessary flashbacks, or anything of the sort. Everything in the movie serves a purpose, so while it is short by contemporary standards, it is by no means unfulfilling.

Woman of the Hour is based on the true story of Zovatto’s character (Rodney) who was a serial killer in the 1970s and appeared on the television show ‘The Dating Game’. Yes, that really happened: A serial killer in the middle of his killing spree took some time to go on ‘The Dating Game’. It is a wild world in which we live.

Kendrick’s character (Sheryl) is an aspiring actress in Los Angeles who accepts a job to go on ‘The Dating Game’ as the woman interviewing the men. Long story short, but she makes a connection with serial-killing Rodney, and they go on a date after the show. The story revolves not only around Rodney’s killing/raping spree, but Sheryl’s experience trying to make it as an actress in the 1970s, and how all of this intersects. It is easy for a movie with these themes to feel heavy-handed, but Kendrick handles it deftly, which is why it works so well.

Using the true story as a base, while also expanding the themes, makes Woman of the Hour feel like a complete movie that is dramatic, tense, and has a point of view without coming off as preachy. If this is Kendrick’s debut as a director, it’s exciting to think of where she’ll be five movies from now.

Some Honourable Mentions

The movie year of 2024 was good, not great, but there were a lot of movies that stood out to me as both very good, and very re-watchable. Let’s touch on seven of those quickly.

The Piano Lesson

Starring: John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler

Director: Malcolm Washington

An adaptation of a play from the 1980s that is set during the Great Depression, it is (mostly) a one-room drama about a Black family’s connection (or lack thereof) to a piano, and their family’s history. It isn’t a straight-forward drama that has been typical Oscar bait over the last decade (or more), which is why it stands out so well. The acting alone is worth the watch, and Deadwyler turns in one of the best performances of the year.  

Dune: Part 2

Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya

Director: Denis Villeneuve

This one probably doesn’t need much introduction as it was one of the biggest movies of 2024, and the second in a trilogy that started in 2021. The turn of Chalamet’s character (Paul Atreides) through the film goes very well in tandem with the exceptional set pieces directed by Villeneuve – Paul riding the giant sand worm was legitimately one of my favourite cinema-going experiences of the year, if not my absolute favourite.

Red Rooms

Starring: Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin

Director: Pascal Plante

A French-Canadian movie about two women who closely follow a grisly murder case in Québec, and are unhealthily obsessed with the murderer, Red Rooms was one of the most unpleasant movies of the year, but in a good (bad?) way. It is about the obsession with true crime, obsession in general, and how the modern world can disconnect us from our humanity. Gariépy is outstanding and this is another one of the great thriller-dramas of 2024.

City Hunter

Starring: Ryôhei Suzuki, Misato Morita

Ever want to watch an action movie that both feels modern in the way it is shot/choreographed, but also a throwback to the action movies from the 1980s-1990s heyday? Look no further. It might not pass for all audiences (it is based on a manga that hyper-sexualizes some of the women), but it is genuinely just a lot of fun with good action sequences. An enjoyable way to spend 100 minutes with your brain shut off.

In A Violent Nature

Starring: Ry Barrett, Andrea Pavlovic

Director: Chris Nash

Another Canadian entry, In A Violent Nature was one of my most anticipated horror movies of 2024, and it did not disappoint. Were it not for MadS, then this would be the most inventive horror movie of the year. In A Violent Nature is a standard ‘vengeful spirit returns from the dead to hunt teens in the woods’ setup, but the hook is that almost the entire movie is shot from the killer’s point of view, kind of like a video game. It also features arguably the most grisly kill scene in any movie from 2024, which is saying something considering Terrifier 3 exists. Canadian horror movies have been on a big upswing in recent years.

The Substance

Starring: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley

Director: Coralie Fargeat

This will probably show up on my ‘Best of 2024’ list, because it was probably the best movie I saw this year. The Substance features Moore’s character (Elisabeth) as an aging television star who is being replaced, but she finds out about this substance that can make her young again. The hook is that the substance makes a double of her, and that double wants to effectively take over her life. It revolves around the theme of beauty standards for women, and how we borrow from tomorrow to pay for today, but holds up as one of the most effective body-horror films of the century.

My Old Ass

Starring: Maisy Stella, Aubrey Plaza

Director: Megan Park

My Old Ass has a simple premise: What if you could talk to an older, future version of yourself? What would you ask them, what would you want to know, and (importantly) what wouldn’t you want to know? This was way, way more heartfelt than I was expecting, and it just struck me in a way few other movies from 2024 did. It is billed as a coming-of-age comedy-drama, but works as well for 18-year-olds as it does 38-year-olds.  

Five ‘Favourite’ Pre-2024 Movies I Watched In 2024

Last year, there were four year-end movie posts: one for the ‘best’ movies of 2023, one for favourite movies of 2023, one for best pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023, and one for favourite pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023. We are going to do the same thing for 2024, and today we’ll move to my five ‘favourite’ movies I watched in 2024 that were released before this year. Go check out the post on my five ‘best’ movies I watched in 2024 that were released prior to this year.

When it comes to discerning between ‘best’ and ‘favourite’, there is sometimes an overlap. However, I think there are movies that are excellent (for technical reasons, for writing, for acting, or usually a combination of the three) that I likely wouldn’t spend a Friday night to sit down and re-watch, and those are the ‘best’. Then there are movies where I would absolutely throw on for a re-watch at midnight when I just want to enjoy myself, and those are ‘favourites’. Clear? Hope so.

Anyway, here are my five favourite movies I watched in 2024 that were released before 2024.

Mad Heidi (Action/Comedy, 2022)

Starring: Alice Lucy, Casper Van Dien

Director: Johannen Hartmann

Ever put on a movie based on its premise, it’s not what you thought it’d be, and it’s even better than you could have imagined? That is ‘Mad Heidi’.

I am a fan of revenge action movies, so when I saw the premise of this movie – a girlfriend goes on a revenge mission to kill the people who killed her boyfriend – I was in. But it’s much zanier than that: This movie takes place in a fictional dystopian Switzerland where the government is a narco-bureaucracy, but instead of drugs, it’s cheese. They are a cheese cartel and bring the hammer down on anyone caught illegally trading. They bring the hammer down on Heidi’s boyfriend, so she plots and executes her revenge.

It is even crazier than I’m making it out to be – at one point, Heidi says, “Yodel me this,” as she stabs some guy in the balls. She kills another man with an accordion. It is absolutely batshit in the most perfect way and was one of the most pleasantly surprising movies in recent memory.

If you have 90 minutes some night, and are looking for mindless fun, this is (was?) on Prime. It is completely absurd, but it knows it’s absurd, and that’s what makes it work so well.

Roman Holiday (Comedy/Romance, 1953)

Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Gregory Peck

Director: William Wyler

In a typical setup from this era of Hollywood, Hepburn’s character (Ann) is a princess from a non-specified European country. Bored of her life, she escapes her confines one night, falls asleep in public, and is found by Peck’s character (Joe Bradley). He doesn’t recognize her at first, but when he does, he realizes he could have the scoop/interview of a lifetime. The rest of the movie is a metaphorical (and sometimes actual) dance between Ann and Joe as he shifts between a reporter trying to get an interview and a guy falling in love with his subject while Ann tries to enjoy a life outside of her royal duties. 

Listen, I’m a sucker for movies set in old European cities, and I’m a sucker for romantic comedies from the post-WW2/pre-Vietnam War era. Put them together, and here we are. The way that Ann’s characteristics bleed into Joe’s, and vice versa, is a prime example of how two people can have a profound impact on each other in such a short period, and the performances from Hepburn and Peck are, erm, impeccable. It is a gold standard for romcoms, and holds up as well today as it did 70 years ago.   

Audition (Horror, 1999)

Starring: Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina

Director: Takashi Miike

There is an odd premise to ‘Audition’ but the idea behind that story is an interesting one. In short, Ishibashi’s character (Shigeharu Aoyama) is a middle-aged man whose wife dies at the beginning of the movie. Years later, at the urging of his son, he tries to start dating again. That is when he concocts a pretty bad idea: He and a film-producing friend set up an audition for a movie that will never get made with the real purpose of finding another (younger) wife for Shigeharu. One of the women auditioning is Shiina’s character (Asami Yamazaki), and Shigeharu falls hard for her immediately.

As the movie wears on, Asami’s story starts to come apart. Her former music producer is missing, Shigeharu finds her former place of employment the scene of a murder, she disappears after they take a vacation together, and so on. We eventually find out Asami’s backstory (hint: It’s very unpleasant) and this is where the movie takes a hard turn into the horror. We won’t spoil the second half of the film here, but it’s safe to say Asami is absolutely not who Shigeharu thought she was.

The idea of this movie comes down to this: At what point is a transgression worthy of not only some type of revenge, but death. The final act is brutal and tense. It is a near-perfect horror movie from start to finish.  

Terrifier 2 (Horror, 2022)

Starring: Lauren LaVera, David Howard Thornton

Director: Damien Leone

Full disclosure: I had never heard of the ‘Terrifier’ series until this year. I have now seen all three instalments. Where to begin.

The original ‘Terrifier’ movie introduces (or re-introduces, as he was in an anthology film years ago) Art The Clown, a psychotic, other-worldly clown that not only hunts and murders his victims, but goes to extreme (and extremely gruesome) lengths to torture them. The second instalment picks up where the first left off as Art is revived and goes back on a killing spree. LaVera’s character (Sienna Shaw) and her brother Jonathan (played by Elliott Fulham) are the targets for Art, but there is a high body count in between him and them.

This movie is, and I cannot stress this enough, not for people who dislike gory horror movies; there is one murder sequence that is about the most graphic and horrific I have ever seen, and I have seen hundreds of horror movies. I do enjoy these types of films, which might make me part of the problem (the hyper-violent murder-clown is named ‘Art’ for a reason). Whatever.

Despite being on a low budget (reported at $200K), this looks like a movie with a $20M budget, if not more; all the effects are practical, and are very, very well done. The story might strain credulity, but we’re talking about a near-impervious supernatural clown that, at one point, rips someone’s hand in half, so how much that credulity can be strained is a fair question. The ‘Terrifier’ series is probably the best violence-driven horror series since the first few ‘Saw’ movies, and this is its best entry.

Poor Things (Comedy/Sci-Fi, 2023)

Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

This came out in 2023 but wasn’t released at my local theatre, and wasn’t on streaming until well into 2024. Such is life.

‘Poor Things’ has an absolutely wild premise: Stone’s character (Bella Baxter) is a Frankenstein’s Monster-like person created by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe as Godwin Baxter) in Victorian London (unspecified, but sometime in the mid-to-late 1800s). She is brought to life in an adult body but has a child’s mind, so the hook here is what a person would act like if they had the body of a 30-year-old but the mind of a 5-year-old. And then, what would that person act like as their mind rapidly matures, catching up to their physical appearance.

Bella is brought on a vacation by Ruffalo’s character (Duncan Wedderburn) and the sheer number of laugh-out-loud sequences makes the entire movie worth it (the dinner scene on the boat in particular). It doesn’t always play for laughs, and it can get a bit weird, but there are enough twists to keep audiences guessing as to where it’s all going, and the movie is anchored by an all-time performance from Stone.

The weirdness and themes of the movie might put some people off, but the sets are vivid, the directing is aces, the performances (particularly Stone) are phenomenal, and the story resolves very well. Like ‘Mulholland Drive’ in my previous post, the nature of the filmmaking might not be for everyone, but this was exquisite from start to finish.

Five ‘Best’ Pre-2024 Movies I Watched In 2024

Last year, there were four year-end movie posts: one for the ‘best’ movies of 2023, one for favourite movies of 2023, one for best pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023, and one for favourite pre-2023 movies I watched in 2023. We are going to do the same thing for 2024, and today we’ll start with the ‘best’ movies I watched in 2024 that were released before this year.  

When it comes to discerning between ‘best’ and ‘favourite’, there is sometimes an overlap. However, I think there are movies that are excellent (for technical reasons, for writing, for acting, or usually a combination of the three) that I likely wouldn’t spend a Friday night to sit down and re-watch, and those are the ‘best’. Then there are movies where I would absolutely throw on for a re-watch at midnight when I just want to enjoy myself, and those are ‘favourites’. Clear? Hope so.

Anyway, here are the five ‘best’ movies I watched this year that weren’t from this year.

His Girl Friday (Comedy, 1940)

Starring: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell

Director: Howard Hawks

The plot is both straightforward and the right amount of preposterous that it slides perfectly into the ‘screwball comedy’ realm. Grant’s character (Walter) is a newspaper editor and Russell’s character (Hildy) is both his ex-wife and a former news reporter. Hildy is about to re-marry, Walter doesn’t feel great about it, so he convinces her to help him with one final story: A man (Earl Williams) is convicted of murder, but is likely innocent. The twist is that the convicted murderer escapes from jail and Hildy hides him in the press room. Of course, not everything goes to plan when trying to clear his name and things devolve from there.

This movie is absolutely flying when the dialogue is going. Generations before the snappy, quick-witted dialogue that was re-popularized for modern audiences by Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark character, screwball comedies like this had a dozen zingers per minute. The chemistry between Grant and Russell is palpable, the jokes oscillate between jabs and haymakers, and the physical comedy adds another dimension entirely.

Sometimes when I got back to watch an old ‘classic’, I walk away wondering what people see in the movie. This isn’t one of those cases – it holds up incredibly well 85 years later and is a genuine comedic masterpiece.

Singin’ In The Rain (Musical, 1952)

Starring: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds

Director: Gene Kelly

I watch every kind of movie that is made, but musicals are ones that are usually at the bottom of the hierarchy. Maybe that’s why ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ never made it on my screen before the age of 38. Whatever the reason, much like ‘His Girl Friday’, it’s easy to see why this movie was revered at the time, and still is to this day nearly three-quarters of a century later.

There isn’t much complicated about the premise: This is set in 1920s Hollywood as the industry is shifting from silent films to ones with sound. Kelly’s character (Don Lockwood) is working with Jean Hagen’s character (Lina Lamont) as that transition is being made, but the problem is her voice sounds like a dog’s chew toy, so they bring in Reynolds’s character (Kathy Selden) to dub over Lamont’s scenes. Of course, this a Golden Age Hollywood romantic comedy/musical, so Don falls for Kathy as Lina gets pushed to the side, and the interplay between the characters plays both as a drama and a comedy, sometimes simultaneously.

The musical numbers are not only fantastic, but they are timeless. The dialogue and chemistry between the stars is obvious, and while the characterization of Lamont might be a bit unfair by today’s standards, it gives a glimpse into what this crucial period in movie history was like at its epicentre. This is a stone-cold classic, and I’m kind of angry it took me so long to get to it.

Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961)

Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Pappard

Director: Blake Edwards

Okay, maybe this movie wouldn’t hold up well by 2024 standards – Hepburn’s character (Holly Golightly, which is an amazing character name) is an upper-class socialite who is looking to marry rich while Pappard’s character (Paul Varjak) is a struggling writer with a wealthy (older) girlfriend. The two meet when he moves into her apartment building, and the entire film revolves around a will they/won’t they scenario as they move from room to room, party to party.

Aside from the ‘marry rich’ thread that starts the movie, there is also an awful caricature of a Japanese landlord played by Mickey Rooney. Needless to say, this wouldn’t fly in 2024, and it wouldn’t have even passed the screen test in 1994.

All that aside, when watching this movie, it’s easy to see why Hepburn was one of the biggest movie stars in the world during her heyday. In every one of her scenes, she’s a gravitational force around whom everything revolves, and her quick wit absolutely crushes nearly every line delivery. She shows a bit of her dramatic side as well, but this movie is at its best when she’s playing the high-class socialite, and Hepburn gives a performance for the ages.

This movie wouldn’t pass audience standards in 2024, but it’s carried to greatness by an all-time performance from Hepburn. We need more movies (mostly) like this: Contained stories with attractive performers possessing top-notch comedic timing. The closest we’ve had recently, to my mind, was Jennifer Lawrence in ‘No Hard Feelings’. It isn’t hard to see someone like Florence Pugh or Zendaya doing the same, and bringing in a big box office because of it.

Mulholland Drive (Thriller, 2001)

Starring: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts

Director: David Lynch

I’m not sure why this slipped through the cracks, but it did, and it’s easy to see why this movie has been hailed as one of the best of this century.

This is another Hollywood-centric movie, only this time it’s Watts’s character (Betty Elms) landing in California as an aspiring actress. A woman (Rita, played by Laura Elena Herring) gets into a car accident, is suffering from amnesia, and is found by Watts in Watts’s apartment. The two of them set off to figure out what happened, so the story is straightforward enough, but as with anything made by Lynch, nothing is as straightforward as it seems.

A person’s enjoyment of ‘Mulholland Drive’ will largely depend on their enjoyment of Lynch’s work in general. He isn’t necessarily one of my favourite filmmakers, but at the least I appreciate him doing non-linear, dream-like scenes that blur between reality and fiction. It can get confusing if the audience is checking their BlueSky timeline every 10 minutes, but the resolutions hit like a 100 MPH fastball to the nose.  

Watts has to cover a lot of range in this movie, and without her doing it, the whole thing would collapse. But she is tremendous, Theroux’s character (Adam Kesher) plays well both as sympathetic and pathetic, and how all the chaotic strands tie together at the end is very fulfilling. It might not land for everyone, but this is one of the best neo-noir thrillers I have ever seen.

The Bombardment (Drama, 2022)

Starring: Alex Hogh Andersen, Fanny Bornedal

Director: Ole Bornedal

If I am a sucker for one thing, it’s comedies/romcoms set in a foreign country. If I’m a sucker for two things, it’s that, and a non-fiction war story. ‘The Bombardment’ is the latter, and it’s something to behold.

This true story from the latter months of World War 2 is set in Copenhagen, Denmark. The set up is that the English Royal Air Force is setting up for a bombing raid on the Nazi Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen. (Remember, this is still an era with manual navigators.) There are three sets of planes set to bomb the headquarters at different time intervals. During the mission, one of the lead planes clips a tower and crashes into what is effectively an elementary school that happens to be down the street from the Gestapo headquarters. The subsequent planes believe the school is the target, so they rain down their bombs on the school rather than the Gestapo. The second half of the movie is the rescue attempts to retrieve however many children are still alive but buried under the rubble.

Needless to say, this is a brutal movie to watch, but it’s very well-crafted and the story is too good (and important) to ignore. It might not hit for everyone, given the subject matter, but it is an excellent film on a subject that doesn’t often get this kind of exposure (namely, the blunders made during war that cause needless casualties).