My aggressive power-walk through 2024 films I haven’t reviewed continues today with films that earned significant acclaim and/or positive reviews, to the point that you might have seen them on some best-of-the-year lists or as nominees of reputable award bodies. But, notably, none of the below received Academy Award nominations. Those are coming next.
Many of the below films are ones I’d like to write full reviews for, but I’ve come to realize that “I haven’t yet” usually becomes “I won’t,” particularly during the award season rush. Maybe someday on a couple of these.
2024 Mini-Review Roundup:
- Part 1: The Panned
- Part 2: The Shrugged
- Part 3: The Debuted
- Part 4: The Snubbed
The Greatest Night in Pop
At some point “the footage is just too good” trumps “toothless puff piece.” This doc isn’t really a great specimen of the form, and it has some pacing issues, but it made me so deliriously happy to watch. It reveals the famous “check your egos at the door” recording session of “We Are the World” to be much stranger and more volatile than you’d guess from watching the music video, with at least fifteen little moments that made me laugh out loud. (None are better than when Stevie Wonder tries to get Swahili added to the chorus, which pisses off Waylon Jennings so much he leaves the studio, only for someone to point out to Stevie that they don’t speak Swahili in Ethiopia. Truly a beautiful series of escalating gags.)
My biggest regret is that they didn’t interview more people who were there and include more B-roll clips. I would watch a three hour cut of this with every interview quote, every weird moment caught on camera, every botched solo recording. Show me Al Jarreau chugging wine and stumbling around. What was Billy Joel thinking this whole time? When the singers spontaneously started signing each others’ lyrics sheets, who did Steve Perry approach? Cut out some of the setup exposition that makes at least a third of the documentary and give us more of the night itself and people’s reactions.
My second biggest regret is that it’s just too nice. A lot of listeners hate the song nowadays and a lot of the musicians there resented each other now and then. So why didn’t more of that bile come out? Do we really need to use kiddie gloves on a #1 hit from 40 years ago just because it raised a lot of money for starving kids back in the day? (The real answer is Lionel Richie is one of the doc’s producer and he probably wouldn’t let this footage out without some understanding “We Are the World” would be treated with reverence, as he considers the song one of his biggest legacies.)
Anyways, it’s still a deliriously fun watch that provides a strangely intimate lens on some of the most influential pop/rock musicians ever (poor awkward Bob Dylan) and emphasizes how something like this couldn’t have happened before or since. 1985 was the right moment for such lovably goofy boondoggle of a song.
Special shoutout to my fellow Meniere’s Disease sufferer Huey Lewis, who comes across as a really likable guy.
Is It Good? Very Good (6/8)
(You can hear me discuss this doc and “We Are the World” in more depth on an episode of The Goods: A Film Podcast.)
Between the Temples
I knew I was going to love this as soon as the first bar scene, when the word “mudslide” is said 15 increasingly hilarious times. But even that didn’t prepare me for how much I laughed during this film’s (slightly overlong) 110 minutes. The climax is a scenario of apocalyptic second-hand embarrassment, but under the film’s cruel surface is a lot of compassion and acute observations about grief and unexpected connections. It’s a great script and rendered with perfect tone by writer-director Nathan Silver.
Most movies of this ilk would settle for a soft focus, observational visual schema and move on. Between the Temples weaponizes this, with blunt-force close-ups that feel like standing in an elevator with someone who is leaning into your personal space. On top of the visceral discomfort the cinematography catalyzes, it also sets up some great jokes in the editing — the space surrounding the camera’s subject is not always clear, so another character’s presence or blocking can be almost a jump scare.
The cherry on top is the sound design, which is ramped up to 11: the horrid squelching of people chewing food makes every meal scene a hysterical nightmare, and there’s a recurring door squeak that’s the funniest bit of foley in years. It sounds like the gates of hell bursting open every time.
Every cast member is wonderful. We’ve known from his Wes Anderson work that Jason Schwartzman can handle deadpan loser grief, as he does with aplomb here. But Carol Kane is even better, touching and loopy without drifting into whimsy wacky land.
I’m itching to get carried away in the rating; but it’s just a little bit too insubstantial and cringe-inducing for me to put it in a pantheon just yet. I try to save “Exceptionally Good” and higher for home runs, pieces of art, and Certified Dan Classics — and I’m definitely tempted here. Maybe I’ll get there when I rewatch it. But, no question, Between the Temples is one of my favorite films of 2024.
Is It Good? Very Good (6/8)
Challengers
The purity of Challengers is appealing to me. It’s almost old-fashioned. It is a screenplay- and character-driven original drama film without a high concept, from a script by Justin Kuritzkes that’s just a little too cute with its nonlinear chronology but otherwise an excellent story. (Though it’s still his second-best piece of cinematic writing.) The theme of tennis rivals as a proxy for sexual rivalry is terrifically realized.
I haven’t gone deep on Luca Guadagnino‘s filmography, but my theory that he rips as a director has held up through three films. Some of the stylistic touches here are outstanding. This is especially true of the finale, which ranks as one of the best scenes of the year, pushing tennis = homoerotic sexual tussle to its limit with some real bravura filmmaking.
I need to see it again (and very much plan to) before I determine if it’s more than the sum of its parts, i.e. an actual great film, or just exactly equal to the sum of its parts. But those parts are considerable, so Challengers is a triumph either way: great score, great editing, solid acting, high energy. A grand slam?
Is It Good? Very Good (6/8)
Dahomey
Dahomey is much more complicated than its logline would suggest — this is no mere chronicle of repatriated art exhibits, nor even an argument in favor of repatriation, but a meditation upon the very nature of sacred art, told from the perspective of the art itself. Mati Diop’s camera depicts the transfer of the art with sterility bordering on indifference: clips of packing and unpacking boxes; narration of impersonal descriptors of material and quality by museum workers and restorers. But it finds passion and color in the mirrored images of nature and ordinary people: motion and glimmers and gauzy textures. Waves crash and people scuttle.
The point, I guess, is that the core of art is not the product itself, but the spirit and desire in people it represents. To Diop, it is more profound that people care about reclaiming cultural artifacts than the reclamation itself is.
It’s ironic, perhaps — or maybe just fitting? — that a documentary “about” historical art is so artful itself, yet so ambivalent about the pieces of art it investigates.
Even with a provocative idea and a brisk 68 minute runtime, Dahomey is a bit thin on material. It doesn’t wear out its welcome or approach boredom, but it lands its blow with a gentle thump, not a knockout punch. Ultimately, it feels like what it is: a compelling but minor side project of a visionary talent in Mati Diop.
Is It Good? Good (5/8)
Daughters
Daughters is the biggest Oscar snub of the year, in my opinion. It’s a wrenching documentary about incarcerated dads. For most of the runtime I thought it was mistitled — “Fathers” would have been better. Then the final fifteen minutes roll around, a flash forward one year, then three years, and the daughters have changed. Some dads have returned home, some are still in prison, unable to do anything but wait. One dad gets a sentence of 30 years, his kids’ childhood destined to complete without him. We start to understand why the older girls had been so reticent and guarded in comparison to the younger ones earlier in the doc. We see it happening in fast-motion to Aubrey, who grows less precocious and enthusiastic with each check-in. “Daughters” was indeed the right title. The dehumanization of the American prison system is undefeated.
I started out ambivalent to the film’s refusal to discuss what crimes each inmate was in for. It keeps the focus on the lovely ceremony of the father-daughter dance. But it does scrub away some of the darkness and complexity of these characters — how do they reckon with being dads in a society that has labeled them unfit for freedom due to their misdeeds? So, too, the movie steers clear of other mistakes the dads might have made: How present and loving were they when they were outside the walls?
By the end I realized it didn’t matter much. This gentle snapshot of a heart-tugging moment between daughters and imprisoned fathers is in fact a misdirection; it’s an investigation of a court and prison system that chews up people. The collateral damage for “justice” is broken families: parents and children who can’t feel each other’s touch or steady support. Rehabilitation is not just discouraged, but its opportunities actively stripped away, leaving only the most industrious and persistent with any chance to repair their damaged souls and frayed family bonds.
The film is also a tribute to the necessity and power of fatherhood — how it matters to those who it’s taken away from, how it impacts the next generation — and that’s what moved me most of all.
Is It Good? Very Good (6/8)
Megalopolis
This is 2024’s biggest, messiest, loveliest boondoggle. (Well, except Here.) Megalopolis is a walking contradiction. I have a lot of complicated and ambivalent thoughts about what works and what doesn’t, and I’d like to go deep on this film at some point. Maybe I’ll do a Coppola binge someday.
But I do have some initial reactions. The first is that it is delightful to watch a film of actual memorable images. I’ve heard the film called a “silent film with voices,” and I get it: Coppola is pulling from the fluid cinematography and striking composition from the ’20s where blocking, not dialogue, ruled the storytelling.
Second reaction is that the film has a goofy but worthy cast, especially in the lead. It’s hard to imagine a better pilot of a film that so seamlessly bounces between speculative nonsense and over-earnest arch soliloquy than Adam Driver.
My last first-blush reaction to the film is that it is more meta and introspective than I expected. It reads as a farewell to (and defense of) Coppola’s generation of New Hollywood filmmakers. He presents himself and his contemporaries as a virtuous and creative middle ground between the fusty old Bosley Crowther institutionalists and the morally and artistically bankrupt Hollywood coattail riders who came in his wake. This registers in part as a cynical takedown of poptimism and feminism and cancel culture. And yet his closing statement is to love and embrace creativity and break down barriers and pass it all down to the next generation. So, yeah, a walking contradiction.
Is It Good? Good (5/8)
Will & Harper
Will & Harper is such a good-natured look at the friendship between Will Ferrell and his trans friend Harper Steele that I can’t imagine giving it a thumbs down or feeling any cynicism towards it.
Whenever I listen to interviews or commentary tracks from the prominent SNL comedians of the 2000s now entering their golden years — Andy Samberg, Bill Hader, Seth Myers, Will Forte, Kristin Wiig, etc. — I’m generally struck by their intellectual curiosity and humility and open spirits. Maybe they’ll eventually turn into grumps (sometimes I worry Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are on the verge), but generally, regardless my feeling of their on-screen presence, I tend to like that SNL generation the more time I spend with them off-screen.
Will Ferrell represents that sea change to my eyes. Among my peers, his comedy brand is very divisive. But it’s hard to imagine the SNL classes that preceded him — the Spades and Sandlers — doing a project like this and projecting any vulnerability on this level, and I admire him for it.
The opening half of the doc is a lot of trans 101 aimed at cis people, and I actually appreciate that — both for me, who knows a lot less on the topic than I care to admit, and for the prospective wide audience who haven’t encountered a lot of trans people or queer representation in their life. It models how to be curious while still being sensitive, how to support without condescending. The easygoing charm of both leads makes this stuff go down easy. I appreciate its consideration of how someone could come out as trans so late in life, which I think is an under-discussed phenomenon.
The second half of the film is the promise of the premise — Harper visiting non-cosmopolitan places like dive bars and cheap restaurants and state parks to gauge how receptive “America” is to her transition. Will and Harper basically admit that this is a flawed premise — the presence of film cameras and one of the world’s most famous comedians does not exactly inspire cinema verite. So they go digging for social media hate, and it’s of course not hard to find.
To be honest, I started to check out as the runtime dragged on — the 114 minute length is pretty indulgent, to the point that I’m tempted to bump it down into a soft thumbs down. But it stays kind and inquisitive to the very end, and that’s really what I cared about. Its mission statement is fulfilled. My mood was boosted more than I actually enjoyed the film itself.
Is It Good? Good (5/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.