A Real Bug’s Life. This National Geographic miniseries on Disney+ uses macrophotography to capture tiny insects in dramatized settings, supplemented by Awkwafina’s affable narration.
Monsters, Inc. Before ever even seeing the movie, the two year old got absolutely transfixed by a figurine of Mike Wazowski (or as he calls him: “Mike Kadowki”), so we had to watch this and Monsters University. Good stuff!
The Book with No Pictures. The seven year old is back into this great (non)picture book in a big way, something that keeps happening.
Daniel Tiger. Still the toddler’s go-to, to the point where the “Brush Your Teeth with Daniel Tiger” video became part of his bedtime routine to distract him enough to let us brush his teeth.
Ada Twist, Scientist. As kids shows go, this Netflix one based on the “Questioneers” book series by Andrea Beaty is better than the average if only because of its emphasis on science, imagination, and teamwork. The seven year old recently said he wants to be a scientist when he grows up, and books/shows like this are probably a big part why.
I say this as both a librarian who loves books and a cinephile who loves movies: Do not read the book before seeing the movie.
I cannot emphasize this enough.
Whenever there’s a new movie coming out that’s based on a book, people will think “Oh, I gotta read that so I’m ready for the movie.”
Why? Ready for what? Knowing all the characters and important story beats and plot twists ahead of time doesn’t make you ready for anything except disappointment.
The movie is never the same as the book. Whether it’s better or worse or something in between, either way it’s a completely different art form that did not get your full attention because you were constantly comparing it to the book.
When you save the book for after the movie, it’s like getting an extended director’s cut that includes so much more material, and lets you dive into that world even deeper with characters and details that weren’t captured on screen. Sometimes that experience will cause some whiplash or dissonance with what you saw in the movie, but remember: it’s different by design. Embrace that and lean in!
There are tons of books about filmmaking and filmmakers, but I have a particular appreciation for books written about just one specific movie. These microhistories (a genre I love) go deep on their film’s influences, development, production, and extended cultural relevance, and through that can tell us a lot about the power of cinema beyond opening weekend.
Because I’m a psycho, I’ve slowly been accumulating a list of all the books I could find that fall into this category. Some are written by people involved with the film’s production, while others are by journalists or critics. I’ve read several of them but far from all, so this list is aspirational as much as informational.
See below for what I’ve gathered thus far, listed alphabetically by film title. I also created a list on Letterboxd and will update both as I discover more. Let me know if I’m missing any!
There’s just no way I wasn’t gonna go for this, a sincere coming-of-age story with timeless and universal themes at its center like friendship, love, and taking the next step at the precipice of adulthood. Kudos to director Jared Isaac and cinematographer Brandon Somerhalder for so lovingly capturing summer in the Northwoods of the upper Midwest, where the lakes and forests and sand dunes play host to the kind of playful and probing conversations that only a group of eighteen year olds untainted by cynicism can hold.
19. Blue Moon
Ethan Hawke is an all-time talker, whether as a podcast guest, motivational speaker, or at the helm of a Richard Linklater movie as he’s been many times—including here in one of his best performances as the renowned Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart. More of a filmed play than cinematic achievement, this is a showcase of great writing and great actors who bring it to life.
18. Eephus
On top of being a great fall movie, baseball movie, and hangout movie, Carson Lund’s indie about the last game being played at a rec stadium by an amateur league before its destruction is a touching tribute to the things we hold onto. I know Interstellar already beat it to death, but the Dylan Thomas poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” is an excellent readalike.
17. Bugonia
Essentially a two-hander between Emma Stone as a pharma executive who may or may not be an alien and Jesse Plemons as a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps her, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest has a few images/moments I’ll be thinking about for a long time. And while I’m eager for Stone and Lanthimos to find new creative partners after four straight movies together, there’s no denying their complete commitment to a kind of acidic absurdity that’s unique in contemporary cinema.
16. Presence
Steven Soderbergh described the conceit of this low-budget haunted-house thriller—one of two films he released this year—as “the camera is the ghost.” It’s a high-concept, solid-execution kind of movie, which I’ll take any day of the week. Also a great double feature with Here, another unjustly maligned single-house story.
15. Marty Supreme
Basically a sports movie (in a good way) set in 1950s New York City with ‘80s music, Josh Safdie’s electrifying, quasi-nonfictional saga of table tennis hustler Marty Mauser triggered the disconcerting feeling of half-hating and half-rooting for a narcissist who creates a lot of wreckage on his quest—but also a lot of fist-pump moments.
14. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
We’re in a rather challenging phase of parenthood at the moment, so this visceral, Safdie-esque anxiety dream of a movie from writer-director Mary Bronstein (who’s married to Marty Supreme co-writer Ronald Bronstein) starring Rose Byrne as a beleaguered mother really spoke to me. (As did the various men featured throughout, but in a “well, at least I’m not that bad” kind of way.)
13. Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson’s latest Benoit Blanc mystery returns to the gothic roots of Knives Out with another elaborate whodunit, this time with Josh O’Connor as a former boxer turned Catholic priest at the center. During the press tour Johnson revealed insights from his evangelical past that not only made me appreciate him even more as a writer and filmmaker, but also explain why this was a shoo-in for my Best 21st Century Religion Movies list.
12. It Was Just An Accident
In this Jafar Panahi film that’s part morality play, part screwball comedy, part skin-tingling thriller, a makeshift group of former Iranian political prisoners wrestle with whether to exact revenge on their captor. How each ensnared person deals with this dilemma is how all of us would. Somehow this was my first Panahi picture, but it won’t be the last.
11. The Assessment
It’s been a minute since a movie gave me as many belly laughs of recognition as chills up my spine like this one did. Set in a dystopian near-future when reproduction is strictly regulated by the state and prospective parents must pass an immersive seven-day assessment, Fleur Fortuné’s directorial debut establishes a rather Villeneuvean tone and aesthetic early on—sleek, serious, slightly sci-fi—only to puncture it with very relatable vignettes depicting the harsh realities of child-rearing, while also addressing the pain of wanting to raise a child but being unable to do so.
10. A Little Prayer
Twenty years after his feature debut Junebug scored an Oscar nomination for Amy Adams, writer/director Angus MacLachlan revisits similar ground here with a quiet, unpretentious dramedy tightly focused on the domestic travails of a small-town family reckoning with each other and themselves. Jane Levy gives a quiet knockout of a performance as the unassuming daughter-in-law, whose endearing relationship with David Strathairn’s patriarch forms the emotional anchor of the film.
9. The Naked Gun
Cheers to a movie that knows exactly what it is and how to be that for just the right amount of time—in this case a joke-a-minute reboot of the classic Leslie Nielsen spoof from Lonely Islander Akiva Schaffer. Casting Liam Neeson was an inspired choice given his ability to blend gruff gravitas with solid comedy chops. I still giggle about random bits months later.
8. The Summer Book
Writer-director Charlie McDowell beautifully captures the spirit of Swedish-Finnish author (and Moomin creator) Tove Jansson’s autobiographical novel, which is not an easy feat given the book’s languorous vibe and sparse plot. If you’re willing to dive in and surrender to its gentle, deliberately paced wavelength, you’ll be rewarded with a moving, nature-drenched meditation on loss, parenting, and coming of age before you’re ready to.
7. Sinners
This has several A+, capital-C Cinematic sequences that had me thinking “Here we go, hell yeah.” It’s always a pleasure to watch an exciting original story told within genre traditions by a talented auteur with a point of view and brought to vibrant life with visual panache by a kickass cast and crew. How blessed we are to be alive at the same exact time stories like this are channeled through conjurers of the cinematic arts like Ryan Coogler.
6. The Testament of Ann Lee
A biopic has to try really hard to avoid the pitfalls of the genre for me to enjoy it. While this technically does fit the bill as a cradle-to-grave story of the founder of the Shakers movement, any stumble it makes just subsumes itself into an ecstatic communal dance of a film—the likes of which I’ve just never seen (or heard) before. Amanda Seyfried FTW.
5. The Condor Daughter
A discovery from the Chicago International Film Festival, this story of an Andean midwife’s apprentice caught between following her indigenous traditions and pursuing her dreams in the big city knocked with me out with its stunning natural-light cinematography, incisive cultural commentary, and captivating stillness.
4. Weapons
I’m typically a matinee guy but I stayed up past my bedtime to go see this in a theater, and I’m glad I did because we were all in this thing together. (I’ll never forget experiencing that nighttime car scene. IYKYK.) The confidence with which writer-director Zach Cregger both establishes a world and propels us through it is such a thrill to behold. And it’s why this former horror scaredy cat now has season tickets to whatever screwed-up stories Cregger comes up with next.
3. Black Bag
“Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in a Steven Soderbergh spy thriller” is all I needed to know before wanting to see Black Bag, which not only lives up to the potential of that combination but elevates beyond it thanks to its stylistic choices and delightfully twisty story. It’s a dinner-party-worthy meal of a movie with delicious, edge-of-your-seat drama.
2. Train Dreams
My word if this kaleidoscopic fable of the life of an early 20th century logger isn’t a gosh-darn movie. There’s just nothing like seeing real humans walking amongst real trees with real sunlight and firelight on their faces, experiencing real joys and tragedies and the fleeting moments in between of feeling connected to it all. Shame it’s destined for the Netflix abyss and not the biggest screens possible.
1. One Battle After Another
The more I think about Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest saga the more I love it. Synthesizing the ambitious scope of There Will Be Blood with the propulsive dramedy of Punch-Drunk Love—the two other PTA films I love that also have crazy-good scores, lead performances, and supporting casts among other things—One Battle After Another feels both set out of time and fiercely of the current moment. To quote Bob: Life, man. Life! (Double feature that comes to mind: Anora, a similarly ambitious, distinctively three-act saga with chases and violence and slapstick comedy and a scrappy rebel just trying to survive against brutal systemic forces. “American Girl” indeed.)
Still haven’t seen:Sentimental Value, Hamnet, Frankenstein, The Secret Agent
These days our two year old has taken to saying, “What you say, papa?” To which I reply: “I say that what you say… is what I say.” Which is, of course, from the iconic ’90s masterpiece Newsies.
This is just one of countless examples of me dropping quotes and cultural references my boys (and usually my wife) don’t understand. It’s to the point where once my seven year old realizes I’ve quoted something yet again, he’ll roll his eyes and say, “Papa with his quotes…” Such is the plight of a movie-addled dad. Though I prefer to think of this skill less as brainrot and more as brainripe.
(Bonus: When the two year old grabs a banana I call him Mr. Bananagrabber.)
Alan Jacobs wrote about his admiration for two “enormously complex projects that only became possible after the Industrial Revolution”: the manufacturing and logistical challenges the Allies faced in World War II leading up to D-Day and the studio system in the classic Hollywood era:
It’s hard for me to imagine how D-Day did not end in utter catastrophe — I struggle to comprehend how it even got underway; and I still can’t quite believe that movies come together the way they do. …
Maybe my fascination has something to do with the fact that these large collaborative projects are so completely unlike what I do. I once said to a film director I know that I don’t see how movies ever get made, and he replied that in making a movie he has “so much help” from smart and skilled people — he doesn’t understand how I can just sit in a room and write books. But when I’m sitting in a room writing a book I am not accountable to or answerable to anyone else: I only have to manage Me.
He cites two anecdotes about General Dwight Eisenhower and director Sidney Lumet that encapsulate the seemingly impossible complexity of these jobs and show how some people are just better fit for them than others. Read the whole post.
Steven Soderbergh in an interview talking about the grammar of filmmaking:
There’s a certain way you put a sentence together to get the idea across; you can fuck with that, but at a certain point you fuck with it so much the idea is lost. That applies to almost any form.
When I’m on set or thinking about a story, making sure that the audience is engaged and that I’m also excited, I have to fight through the sensation of, “Oh my god, another fucking over-the-shoulder shot.” I have to push through that and go, “You’re building a sentence. Getting upset when you have to shoot an over-the-shoulder shot is like getting upset at using the word ‘and’ or ‘the’ in a sentence. It has to be done. It’s part of the grammar.”
Joined my buddy Nicole Kidman at AMC for a 9:15am showing of Marty Supreme. Don’t think I’ve ever done such an early showtime before, but it’s a great way to start the day.
Here’s a snapshot of what this year looked like for me:
Honestly, just keeping up with everything between two active boys, my day job, a part-time job I added in the fall, and everything else life is throwing at us has been a lot. I’m grateful for everything we have and the joys of this particular stage, and I’m eager to see how the next stage will look.
This blog turned 19 years old. Thanks for reading, whoever and wherever you are. Some favorite posts I wrote this year:
Christmas music. ‘Tis the season! Some newer albums I’ve been enjoying: Happy Golden Days by The Arcadian Wild, Sleigher by Ben Folds, and Family Christmas Album Vol. II by The Oh Hellos.
Homestar Runner. I didn’t realize this web series was still around, but browsing the website was a blast from my high-school past when this became an early-2000s pre-social media viral phenomenon. Episode #4 of Teen Girl Squad contains two quotes that remain with me to this day: “Y’all are so wack.” “Wiggidy-wack?” “Nope, just regular type”. And: “Grood. I mean good. And great. Great and good.”
Little Old You by The Okee Dokee Brothers. A new Okee Dokee Brothers album is like a national holiday in our household, so we’re very much enjoying this new one. Favorite track so far: “Apple of My Eye”
Death By Lightning. This Netflix miniseries adaptation of Candace Millard’s Death of the Republic (one of the best books of the 2010s) is textbook Chad, and also kind of a silly melodrama. If I didn’t know its context and backstory I would have so many questions about this stranger-than-fiction saga.
Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company by Patrick McGee. I can’t remember which blogger recommended it, but this book is a fascinating history of Apple’s place in the global economy over the last 30 years. I’d forgetten how much the one-two punch of the iPod and iTunes for Windows skyrocketed Apple into the stratosphere. RIP to my beloved 3rd generation iPod Classic 🥲
Forward by The Swell Season. I’m enjoying this new album from Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, which feels like a spiritual sequel to Once.
Thanks to a few large coronal mass ejections from the sun, Chicagoland was treated to a brilliant display of aurora borealis tonight, which I attempted to capture through the trees outside our front door:
Don’t think I’ve ever seen it in person before, so that was neat.
Also neat? (Stay with me here…) If you zoom in on the top photo you’ll see the star Vega at dead center, which was way brighter in person. In the 1997 movie Contact, Vega was where the mysterious alien radio signal was coming from. And in the 2000 movie Frequency, the Northern Lights were the catalyst for the mysterious time-traveling radio signal.
Ipso facto, whether it’s aliens or geomagnetism or something else wonderfully mysterious, whatever is going on tonight should serve as the basis of a crossover sequel to both of these great movies.
The Naked Gun (2025). Cheers to a movie that knows exactly what it is and how to be that for just the right amount of time. Still giggling about random bits from this days later.
Weapons. I’m typically a matinee guy but I stayed up past my bedtime to go see this in a theater, and I’m glad I did. We were in whatever you call this thing together.
A Little Prayer. The kind of movie that inspires you to listen more intently to the birds singing outside your window in the morning, or linger longer at a park bench. ‘Twas a pleasure chatting with the writer/director Angus MacLachlan about this movie, Jane Levy’s knockout performance, and more.
Lost in the Stream: How Algorithms Redefined the Way Movies Are Made and Watched by Jeff Rauseo. Wrote a review of this over at Cinema Sugar.
The Assessment. It’s been a minute since a movie gave me as many belly laughs of recognition as chills up my spine like this one did.
Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell’s acquired a bit of a divisive reputation, but he remains a great writer with unique and insightful perspectives. Not to mention a great podcast guest.
Eephus. Gonna be a great autumnal rewatch.
Sinners. This has several A+, capital-C Cinema sequences that had me thinking “Here we go, hell yeah.” It also had a lot of stitching around them that perhaps a rewatch will feel more seamless but on the first go seemed to stick out a little. Overall though, an absolute pleasure to see an original film by an amazing auteur and inspired creative team.
What do you do when you encounter the impossible? Something that doesn’t compute with your understanding of reality and drastically challenges your worldview?
You can ignore or deny it, confident the existing story you tell yourself can render any mystery or inconsistency meaningless to your everyday life. You can resent it and lash out in anger, yearning for the time before this thing crashed into your conscience and caused irrevocable change. You can also lean into it, treating it not as a threat but as a thread that needs just the slightest tug to unravel.
On my journey away from the religion of my youth, I did all three pretty much at the same time. And not only that, but I saw those very same dynamics play out among the three core characters in Max Barbakow’s 2020 film Palm Springs—a terrific time-loop comedy (and one of the best movies of the 21st century) with a lot on its mind.
A magical combo of humor and humanity
There are many reasons I fell for Palm Springs when I first saw it. The rock-solid execution of a smart, cohesive script. The magical combination of goofy comedy, heartfelt drama, mind-shifting philosophy, and a soupçon of sci-fi. The kickass cast with great chemistry keeping a high concept grounded in humanity, all within a 90-minute runtime.
Its obvious inspiration is Groundhog Day, which has Bill Murray’s Phil repeating the same day over and over again until he learns to be a better person, falls in love, and then manages to escape the loop for reasons just as mysterious as how he got stuck in the first place. But Palm Springs takes this concept deeper in two ways.
First, there’s more people in the loop. Nyles (Andy Samberg) has been stuck for a long time when we first meet him as the underdressed, overserved, and clearly jaded boyfriend of a bridesmaid at a Palm Springs resort wedding. Then there’s Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the equally jaded maid of honor who hits it off with Nyles but accidentally follows him through the loop’s mysterious portal. And there’s also Roy (J.K. Simmons), another wedding guest Nyles had clumsily invited into the loop while under the influence. How these three deal with each other and their circumstances is the core of the movie, and a pleasure to watch unfold.
The other way Palm Springs sets itself apart is how it treats the time loop. More than just a setting for the characters’ self-discovery or catalyst for conflict, it becomes a force unto itself—something that both teaches and torments the film’s triumvirate of trapped time travelers, and ultimately gives them meaning even as they attempt to escape it.
In other words: the time loop is a religion.
On suffering existence
In the book Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious, the writer David Dark explores one etymology of the word religion (fitting there isn’t One True Meaning of the word), which comes from the Latin religare, meaning “to bind fast” or tie together. Dark uses this understanding to interpret religion as a “controlling story”—something we bind or devote ourselves to that provides boundaries to our beliefs and gives our earthly existence greater meaning.
That’s what Christianity was for me. Growing up in a conservative Christian household, I went to church regularly and lived out the staples of a Christian upbringing: weekly youth group, summer camp, Bible studies, mission trips, See You At The Pole (Google it), True Love Waits (don’t Google it).
I didn’t do all of this reluctantly—I was a true believer. From childhood all the way through adolescence, college, and into my mid-twenties, the Jesus story provided the foundation of how I understood the world and myself. It was the lens through which I saw and interpreted the things I loved doing like reading, writing, listening to and making music, and watching movies. Even as I wrestled with the inconsistencies of the Bible and grew frustrated with the hypocrisies of religious figures and church doctrine, I maintained an earnest devotion to the notion that faith superseded all other earthly forces and permeated everything we understand about existence.
For Nyles, Sarah, and Roy, the time loop has in effect become their religion, their controlling story. Not only because they’re literally controlled by its parameters and seemingly powerless to escape, but also in a larger sense in that they all come to discover a kind of teleological understanding of the loop and the meaning they’ve derived from it. Nyles shares his with Sarah in one exchange:
NYLES: I don’t know what it is. It could be life, it could be death. It might be a dream. I might be imagining you, you might be imagining me. It could be purgatory or a glitch in the simulation that we’re both in. I don’t know. So I decided a while ago to sort of give up and stop trying to make sense of things altogether, because the only way to really live in this is to embrace the fact that nothing matters.
SARAH: Well, then what’s the point of living?
NYLES: Well, we kind of have no choice but to live, so I think your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence.
Each of them suffer their existence in different ways, all of which felt exquisitely familiar to me because I lived out all of them during my long journey out of my original controlling story.
Nyles has surrendered to his circumstances, comfortable in the literal and metaphorical pool he’s been swimming in for so long that he doesn’t even remember his life from before, or fathom the possibility of leaving his present one. Likewise, I’d grown so familiar with the beats and boundaries of my controlling story that the thought of forming a new one felt inconceivable, even dangerous.
In contrast to Nyles, Roy feels tormented by his circumstances and takes out his anger on Nyles as retribution for trapping him in an ever-presence he can’t escape. And while I wasn’t perpetrating vengeful acts of violence like Roy, I often felt disturbed by the destabilizing effects such deep-seated change had on my worldview and resented losing the comforts a controlling story provides. “I’m not going to see my kids grow up,” Roy later laments to Nyles at his home in Irvine, revealing that his anger was just grief in disguise—his way of dealing with the pain of being severed from his own life and concept of reality. Yet now, awash in contentment with his fate, Roy implores Nyles to seek out a similar peace: “You gotta find your Irvine.”
Sarah, meanwhile, is wracked with guilt over a haunting mistake she now has to relive over and over again, and despite coming to enjoy her time in the loop with Nyles she eventually hits a breaking point and resolves to figure out the mechanics of the time loop (which she later determines is “a box of energy”) in order to escape it. Similarly, as I grew more claustrophobic within my own metaphysical box, I ultimately found a way beyond it through curiosity. I entered a period of voracious reading, when I was drawn to books about psychology, science, human history, and other topics that spoke to the big-picture questions I was pondering. Slowly but surely, the discoveries I was making gave me new lenses to look through and see what had been there the whole time, like the Benjamin Franklin spectacles in National Treasure.
I wasn’t trying to destroy my existing worldview, and there wasn’t one particular thing that pushed me over the edge. Just a long series of small nudges that only when I looked back after a long while had accumulated into a big distance from where I’d started: a book here, a revelatory podcast there, the small epiphanies and paradoxes compounded slowly over years until they proved too overwhelming to ignore.
A nonsensical new story
There’s an idea in cognitive science that human consciousness is merely a story the brain tells itself. Humans are meaning-making machines—we crave relief from the chaos of existence and will find or create meaning however we can as a way to make sense of the nonsensical.
Palm Springs features three people who lived a nonsensical new story together, day after day, trying and failing and giving up and trying again to find meaning in the messiness. It’s the kind of movie that inspires me as a work of art and as a cri de coeur for a better, more wholehearted life.
(It’s a cruel irony indeed that a movie about purgatory remains caught in a different kind of purgatory, where “streaming exclusives” can’t break free from their digital dungeons into the freedom of physical media. #ReleaseThePalmSpringsBluray!)
We all have a controlling story. It could be ancient (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) or au courant (hello Peloton partisans, Bitcoin bros, and Disney Adults). Mine has changed, and yours probably has too. It has to, or else I don’t think you’re really living.
Ideally you have someone who can change with you too. I was fortunate to have a life partner throughout this journey who had shared a similar controlling story yet was just as ready as I was to, like Nyles and Sarah, take a scary step into a new one together.
“At least you have each other,” Roy tells Nyles about Sarah’s entry into the loop. “Nothing worse than going through this shit alone.”
Dark makes a similar conclusion in his book: “People come to consciousness in relationship. This is the phenomenon—oh, how it enlivens a heart!—of shared meaning.”
Black Bag. Felt great to see an honest-to-god movie in the theater with a delightfully twisty plot and inspired casting that made me feel as warm and fuzzy as the film’s lighting. Wouldn’t be surprised to find this on my best-of-2025 list.
The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson. Turns out there was a lot of drama leading up to the Civil War…
Lincoln. Rewatched this after finishing The Demon of Unrest as a kind of Civil War bookend. Daniel Day-Lewis’s win for Best Actor might be the most deserving Oscar ever awarded.
The Pitt. Been watching this Max series that’s an unofficial ER reboot and my hat is off to anyone who chooses to become and remain an emergency nurse.
A Complete Unknown. I’m not a dyed-in-the-wool Dylan fan like many white dudes around my age and above, so perhaps that’s why I didn’t fall for this as hard as others, Chalamet’s excellent performance aside.
Parasite. Yes this is dramatic and tragic and twisted and all that, but it’s also so damn funny. “Leave it—free fumigation.” 💀💀💀
Mary Poppins Returns. No one can touch Julie Andrews’ singing voice, but Emily Blunt really nails the other Poppins vibes.
Though I usually do a Top 10 with some honorable mentions, once this year’s list of honorable mentions creeped past 10 movies I figured why not just do a full top 20? The more movies the merrier.
Here are the 2024 dramas, documentaries, dystopias, debuts, and other delights I dug.
A funny and sometimes wistful sci-fi remix of When Harry Met Sally that doesn’t overstay its welcome. Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari are a winning pair and fun hang as the will-they-won’t-they leads.
19. Peacock
Echoing the deliciously deadpan humor of Force Majeure, this debut feature from German filmmaker Bernhard Wenger follows a man so talented at blending into the fictions of his work that when his personal life begins to suffer, his ensuing existential crisis has him questioning his entire reality. It’s a darkly absurd and deliberately paced dramedy that serves as a wake-up call to people pleasers everywhere.
18. Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory
A really nice discovery thanks to the chance to interview the director Justin Johnson. Spotlighting Johnson’s parents and the secretive prosthetic nipple business they started after his mom’s breast cancer diagnosis, this documentary also reckons with his conservative Christian upbringing in Wisconsin and subsequent religious deconstruction in a wholesome and humane way. Really nice portrait of family, faith, and life’s contradictions.
17. The Greatest Night in Pop
I’d heard “We Are the World” like everyone else, and knew vaguely that it was sung by famous musicians. But until watching this documentary I had no idea about its background or the logistics of making it happen, let alone the insane star wattage it harnessed in one room. Fascinating to watch the dynamics play out among these very different artists and personalities during an all-nighter for the ages.
16. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
We told our six year old we were going to watch the new Wallace & Gromit movie. “I don’t want to,” he said, “they are far too silly.” We still watched it, and guess who was laughing and totally locked in the whole time? Me, that’s who. And also our six year old. Anyway, any Aardman joint should automatically win Best Picture given how insanely difficult it is to make any stop-motion animated feature film, let alone a great one.
15. Conclave
How Edward Berger turned ecclesiastical proceedings into a pulpy, beautifully shot mystery thriller better than it has rights to be shows just how powerful cinema is as an art form. And watching Ralph Fiennes play a character who’s basically the opposite of his role as Gustave in The Grand Budapest Hotel shows just how compelling powerful actors can be.
14. Rebel Ridge
Jeremy Saulnier knows how to make a damn thriller. In this latest pot-boiler, a former Marine has his bag of cash unjustly seized by local police, instigating his one-man revenge plot where with every slight escalation and provocation the stakes get higher and your heart beats faster. Civil asset forfeiture reform now!
13. Dìdi
I like the Google summary of this: “an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love his mom.” As someone who was only a few years older than Dìdi was in the movie, I found much of this both very relatable (hello AIM and MySpace Top 8 and Motion City Soundtrack needle-drops) and also painful to realize how much I saw my own 13-year-old self in Dìdi’s adolescent angst.
12. September 5
A worthy ancestor of Spotlight in how it dramatizes a real-life moment of media ethics and production colliding with a dark chapter in history, in this case the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. For me the tactility of the period technology—analog phones, walkie-talkies, film cameras, buttons and knobs, typewriters, hand-lettered TV chyrons—made this even better and more thrilling than it would have been if set during our current digital era.
11. Challengers
I rather flippantly called this “your typical sports movie featuring a throuple of sweaty, smirking scumbags swirling into a sadomasochistic, psychosexual spiral.” Which I think is accurate but also doesn’t make clear how fun and funny this movie is in spite of (or rather because of) that. If tennis is a relationship, as Zendaya’s Tashi claims in the movie, then this tennis/relationship movie is worth the commitment.
10. My Old Ass
How many boxes did this check for me? Let me count: ☑ Earnest, bittersweet coming-of-age dramedy ☑ Light magical realism ☑ Frequency and Arrival homage ☑ Includes Little Women motif ☑ Birkenstocks-wearing character named Chad Can’t wait to see what star Maisy Stella and writer-director Megan Park do next.
9. Here
To paraphrase Doc Brown, the critics crapping on this Robert Zemeckis adaptation of Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel (one of the best books of the 2010s) just weren’t thinking fourth-dimensionally. We live in time, people! You can’t fathom how much has happened throughout human history and prehistory on the very patch of earth you’re standing on now because it’s awesomely unknowable! The movie lovingly portrays the book’s intra-panel time-jumping, its timeless themes of life and death and love and loss, and its deft intertwining of the everyday and eternal—all while rocking an Alan Silvestri score that goes right for the jugular. And I’m here for that.
8. Dune: Part Two
I couldn’t see Dune in theaters so I was happy to be able to see this one on a big screen. It’s a sequel that very much stands on its own as a stunningly rendered experience while simultaneously bearing structural burdens that middle sequels often have. Still, anytime I can see big, weird, tactile, religion-infused spectacle like this is a good time for me.
7. Good One
In stark contrast to the bombast of Dune: Part Two, India Donaldson’s debut feature about a teenaged girl on a hiking trip with her dad and his friend thrives in the smallest gestures and pauses and looks—in what’s said and left unsaid. It’s Reichardt-core to the core: quietly portentous, nature-drenched, and oh so gently damning of parental obtusity.
6. Saturday Night
It’s hard not to be impressed by how Jason Reitman pulled off depicting in real time the 90 minutes before the first episode of SNL in 1975, complete with spot-on portrayals of the original cast and other figures. In that way it’s like the groovy ‘70s love child of Steve Jobs and Birdman. (It’s also a fascinating double feature with September 5, the other 2024 film set backstage of a seismic mid-‘70s television event.) More fables about the beautifully chaotic process of making art, please and thank you!
5. Civil War
One criterion for making my best-of lists is being something I just couldn’t shake. That’s definitely true for Alex Garland’s latest, which depicts a United States embroiled in a violent civil war and a crew of journalists trying to interview the embattled president. I find the criticism about the ideological vagueness of the different political factions to be beside the point—what matters is how different individuals choose to engage with the turmoil, from a young photojournalist compelled to capture frontline combat to a store employee blithely dismissing the conflict altogether. Let’s hope this doesn’t become more prescient than it already is.
4. Nickel Boys
Sure-handed, tough-minded, clear-eyed, and full-hearted, RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel takes cinema’s power as an empathy machine to the extreme with its first-person POV perspective, strapping us along for a turbulent yet touching ride along with two friends weathering life at a Florida boarding school. I found this to be in accidental conversation with the next movie on this list, both being searing 2024 films that dramatize the triumphs and travails of mid-20th century Black life.
3. Soundtrack to a Coup d’État
As a lover of history and jazz, this documentary spotlighting famous ‘50s jazz musicians and their role in the Cold War geopolitics surrounding Congo’s push for independence bebopped me right on the nose. It plays out much like a jazz track, with different people trading solos and the frequent context-setting intertitles like punchy drum riffs and an ensemble of colorful characters making the whole thing sing. As sharp and smooth as a Miles Davis solo, and a revelation for the documentary form.
2. Anora
From Tangerine (a favorite of 2015) to The Florida Project (my #1 of 2017) to Red Rocket (a favorite of 2022) and now this Palme d’Or-winning tale of a Brooklyn sex worker’s misadventures with a Russian oligarch’s son, Sean Baker has become American cinema’s most reliable anthropologist of the restless strivers and scrappy survivors at society’s margins. How this turns from high-flying Cinderella story to shambolic chase movie to gut-wrenching character study feels like a crossover of Scorsese with the Dardenne brothers, but also a continuation of Baker’s characteristically compassionate yet clear-eyed treatment of even his most challenging characters.
1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
If Fury Road was the New Testament of George Miller’s Mad Max saga, bringing redemption to both the story’s characters and the action genre itself, then Furiosa is its Old Testament: brutal, beguiling, mercurial, and thrillingly epic. Call it a Pentateuch for a new (post-apocalyptic) age. Also really interesting to rewatch this right before another Fury Road rewatch as it provided the backstory to Furiosa’s journey and the events of Fury Road that I didn’t have the first (several) times watching it. In that way Fury Road felt more like the sequel/conclusion to Furiosa than vice versa, and made me appreciate both even more. This whole saga is a really rich text on gender, power, politics, and what we do to survive.
Still haven’t seen: Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, All We Imagine As Light, Wicked
Non-2024 movies I watched and enjoyed: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Populaire, Little Children, Green Room, The Thing
I’m very proud to share this list of Cinema Sugar’s Top 50 Movies of the 21st Century, something the team has worked on for months in anticipation of celebrating our favorite films from the last quarter century.
Please take a look (and share with other movie lovers!) for my short thoughts on Palm Springs, Lord of the Rings, Arrival, WALL-E, and a bunch of other movies dear to my heart.
We also picked our favorites in different subcategories. Here are mine…
Favorite film scores:
Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore
The Social Network, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
The Village, James Newton Howard
Interstellar, Hans Zimmer
Brokeback Mountain, Gustavo Santaolalla
Favorite theatergoing experiences:
Seeing Toy Story 3 with college friends right after graduation
Dressing up with high school friends to see Ocean’s Twelve
Seeing Her with my then-girlfriend (now wife) and discussing it afterward
Going blindly into—and getting blindsided by—The LEGO Movie
Getting sucked into the whirlwind of The Florida Project
Midnight Mass. Loved this Netflix limited series for the same reason I love Darren Aronofsky’s Noah: it takes literally all the Bible’s very goth elements (“drink my blood”, the terror of angels, etc.) and transposes it into a deeply human modern story.
Didi. This coming-of-age story set in 2008 featuring a teenager only a few years younger than I was at the time, so you know the use of AIM and Motion City Soundtrack songs were a bullseye for me.
Nosferatu. Been knocking off a lot of classic horror blindspots and this 1922 F.W. Murnau silent version definitely qualifies. One favorite intertitle: “The Death Ship has a new captain.” 🤘
Challengers. Just your typical sports movie featuring a throuple of sweaty, smirking scumbags swirling into a sadomasochistic, psychosexual spiral.
Fear Not!: A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies by Josh Larsen. Strongly respect Josh’s perspective as a critic and Filmspotting host, so amidst my recent foray into horror movies I thought this short book was a helpful primer on the redemptive aspects of the genre.
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen. Appreciated some historical bits in this but also skimmed over a bunch. Will it inspire me to get back into paper journaling? TBD.
Night of the Living Dead. Some wild swings between “this looks like a terrible student film” and “holy schnikes”. I knew nothing of it besides being considered the godfather of zombie movies, so all the social commentary and 1968 of it all really hit.
The Thing. My first John Carpenter movie and it was, uh, rather horrifying.
Roger Radcliffe is ultimately a supporting player in this story of dogs trying to avoid being skinned for their fur (you know, a Disney movie for kids). But as the hero of his own story, he’s an excellent example of an artist at work.
Here’s what we can learn from this eccentric English musician about a productive and fulfilling creative life.
Treat it like a job.
Roger may be a struggling artist, but he still understands the importance of routine and consistency. You can tell he puts in the hours and treats his craft like the job it is—much to his dog Pongo’s chagrin.
Take a walk.
Even a pro like Roger knows when it’s quittin’ time. Once 5 pm arrives (thanks to some sneaky time-turning by Pongo), he’s out the door with his canine companion for some fresh air and a chance to unwind.
Find the melody.
While playing around with the melody that would eventually become his hit song “Cruella de Vil”, Roger uses nonsense songs as placeholders, which his wife Anita playfully teases him for. But he insists: “Melody first, my dear, and then the lyrics.” Of course lyrics can come first in the creative process, but until you have a melody for them you don’t have a song. Whatever the creative art, figure out what you absolutely need before adding layers of complexity.
Use your life as inspiration.
Roger’s journey from struggling musician to successful hitmaker can be traced to one key moment: glomming Cruella de Vil’s name onto a half-formed melody. This bit of improvised whimsy occurred only because he was present and observant of the world around him. Same case with his second single “Dalmatian Plantation”, which, despite the problematic name, emerged out of his natural reaction to dozens of sooty dogs destroying his house.
The Infernal Machine: A True Story of Dynamite, Terror, and the Rise of the Modern Detective by Steven Johnson. Another brilliant narrative nonfiction saga from Steven Johnson that weaves multiple historical threads together to tell the riveting story of how dynamite, fingerprinting, anarchism, information science and other seemingly disparate forces all conspired to create what would become the modern surveillance state.
BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity by Ruth Whippman. Highly recommend this new book for my fellow parents of boys especially, but also anyone interested and invested in a more wholehearted masculinity.
The Bear season 3. Carmy needs to chill out and call Claire.
Civil War. Alex Garland’s latest and rather (unfortunately) timely dystopian drama shows what would happen if Ron Swanson from Parks & Recreation became president instead of Leslie Knope.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. I’d have to do some research on this, but I suspect the five-act structure of this saga could align rather nicely with the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible. Furiosa? More like Mad Moses.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Might be the most ’70s New York City movie ever?
