A Baker's Dozen Movies From 2024
The 13 movies I saw in theaters
Head’s up! This email contains many large images. How could it not, it’s about movies! Big images means that you’ll need to open this email in a browser or on the app in order to read the whole thing. It’ll look better that way too, trust me. Without any further ado, here are the 13 movies, both old and new, that I saw in theaters in 2024.
Poor Things
Where: Brooklyn Academy of Music
With: Jack, Eli, Madison, Grace, Kate & Walt
My only plan for the first day of 2024 was to see a movie. Even with such a light schedule, I arrived too late to join the rest of my friends and instead sat in the back of the packed theater. One of the other attendee’s filling out the room spent the whole movie in a single sustained guffaw. Though undoubtably annoying, I suspect this IRL laugh track played the same role the canned ones do on TV. I had a great time seeing Poor Things in the theater, I found the colors lively, the performances entertaining, and the dialogue creative. But by the time it started collecting trophies in award season I was already unsure of whether it was worth all the expended oxygen. A stylish, crowd-pleasing, professional product.
American Fiction
Where: Brooklyn Academy of Music
With: ~*My Girlfriend*~
~*My Girlfriend*~ lent me Percival Everett’s The Trees early on in our relationship. Great book, reminded me of Paranoia Agent. When we went to see American Fiction on a rainy January day while she was visiting from Chicago neither of us were aware of the movie’s connection to Everett until the credits. American Fiction in its totality is as pleasant a surprise as the Everett reveal was to the two of us. Nowhere near as itchy to press people’s buttons as the trailer made it out to be. Instead it’s a pretty even-keeled and measured consideration of the relationship between author, subject, and audience. Jeffrey Wright is a great actor and should be given the green-light for any Gene Hackman style roles coming down the pipeline.
Dune: Part Two
Where: AMC Empire 25
With: The Boys (Eli, Henry, & Alex)
The Boys and I convened early on a rainy Saturday morning to see Dune: Part Two in IMAX because I had to make it to a gig playing drums for a high school production of Guys & Dolls at the northern most end of the Bronx later that day. Some of my fellow band members were themselves high school students. When I told one such student that I liked the movie and thought that Austin Butler had the sauce she replied that “Austin Butler is corny” with the confidence of someone describing the weather and refused to elaborate. Well, sometimes you need to be a little corny to make a movie as desperate to be cool as Dune: Part Two work. Don’t get me wrong, had a great time, loved the worms, but my initial complaints about Dune: Part One feeling a little overly buttoned up hold just as true here. Even if things didn’t get as trippy as I’d have liked, Part Two does feature a more noticeable editorial hand from Denis Villeneuve. I think his decision to make Chiani explicitly split with Paul at the end of the move over their ideological commitments is a smart move, and underlines the anti-imperial reading of the material since fans are inherently sympathetic to Zendaya… as they should be!
Dogville
Where: Nitehawk Prospect Park
With: Many Gay Men
One weekend I got an email from Nitehawk offering me a discounted ticket to Lars Von Trier’s Dogville. I’d never gotten around to seeing Dogville even when I went through my early-20s fascination with Lars Von Trier, and I’m always down for a discount so I snapped up a ticket without even bothering to look at the details. When I arrived at the theater I realized Nitehawk were screening Dogville as part of a mini-series of films staring Nicole Kidman. So while I expected to be one of only a handful of disheveled weirdos per my experience at the last Trier I’d seen in person I was instead in a packed house with a much higher standard of personal grooming. As I sat crouched like a gremlin for the nearly three hour duration of Dogville I had a second realization that Yorgos Lanthimos must thank his lucky stars every night that Trier is no longer in favor. The cheap provocations of Poor Things wither in the face of both Trier’s dramatic sadism and thematic rigor. Though Kidman receives no shortage of on-screen punishment, the real target of Trier’s cruelty is America itself. A Christ allegory where the savior is an Australian smokeshow and God is a Nietzschean mob boss played by James Caan.
Civil War
Where: Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn
With: Two old ladies who remarked “this is gonna happen any day now” several times
Here’s another movie that could have ended with “Young Americans” if Alex Garland were a little more honest with himself about the kind of movie he was making. Civil War is at its heart a dirty little exploitation film in the vein of The Purge, drawing from real life 21st century American political anxieties (Portland Maoists, men in Hawaiian shirts with huge guns, a reference to “the antifa massacre”, etc) and providing it’s audience visceral kicks in the form of mil-spec proficiency porn and watching a Trump stand-in get shot in the face. However, all of this greasy fun is watered down by Garland’s fixation on the his own class of image makers rather than characters with real skin in the game. Maybe I’d be more amenable to this version of the story were I not so fresh off of reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography, but I’d take a movie about that pair of snarky gay snipers over this one any day.
Challengers
Where: Cobble Hill Cinema
With: ~*My Girlfriend*~
Another rainy day, another movie about Zendaya bringing the best out of brooding white guys. Come for the sexy tennis, stay for the Reznor & Ross score that takes it all the way back to 1989. It’s funny, I love stuff *about* tennis but the sport itself remains only a curiosity for me. Hard to think of a sport that works just as well as a literary subject as a cinematic one. On the page it works as psychological exercise, essentially chess at high speed. On screen it’s all erotic. Bodies moving and people watching those bodies move. Look, the camera is undoubtably doing A LOT in this movie, and whether that works for you depends on whether you enjoy being a big dumb baby sometimes. Me, I started going “yippie! wahoo!” silently in my brain during every second of that whole “the ball is the camera” bit at the end. I’m not above the simple pleasures of movie-going.
Altered States
Where: Film Forum
With: A bunch of jabronies who couldn’t stop laughing at everything.
My mistake for sitting near the back of Film Forum, which is apparently where the unserious assholes gather. I should have sat near the front with the serious old folks. At least being around the buffoons made me less embarrassed for audibly going “ohhhhh” when the cover for Streetcleaner flashed on the screen during one of the acid trip sequences. Probably would have loved this if I saw it at age 17. Didn’t live up to the hype.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Where: Alamo Drafthouse
With: Pretty much no one
Dragged myy feet to this one in theaters, for reasons that I still can’t explain. I somehow had the premonition that I’d disagree with both the people that thought this was better than Fury Road (not possible) and the people who hated on it for being nothing like Fury Road (impossible standard). I guess it was hard to muster up the energy to see what would probably average out to a pretty good time with no buzz behind it during a summer where I was mostly having a pretty bad time. By the time I did make it to the theaters Furiosa had already been declared dead on arrival. Free from the burdens anyone’s expectations except my own, I settled in and mostly enjoyed myself. That first act? Legit incredible. Scratched the exact “all action/exposition is for chumps” itch that Fury Road did a decade earlier. But once the rest of the movie kicked into gear I couldn’t shake the feeling that despite being real cool, real creative, and real well-made Furiosa was mostly comprised of the stuff Fury Road sacrificed out of necessity to achieve its singular excellence. This one is appreciably its own thing, and I respect that, but I won’t pretend it wasn’t a little bit of a let down.
High And Low
Where: The Music Box
With: ~*My Girlfriend*~
My summer wasn’t all bad. For my birthday I flew out to Chicago for the weekend to hang out with ~*My Girlfriend*~ and had a great time. On my birthday itself we caught an early morning screening of High And Low at my favorite movie theater in the city (and maybe the country?). Later we listened to Purple Haze by Cam’ron and then she took me out for fancy pizza for dinner. Great day. I got the feeling that there were several other guys cashing in their goodwill with their partners in the theater. No one would dispute that one of Kurosawa’s chief skills as a film maker was packing a whole bunch of dudes into one space. This was my first time seeing High And Low on the big screen and let me tell ya, that extra visual real estate really makes Kurosawa’s blocking sing. This is the second time I’ve made someone watch High And Low on my birthday, after former roommate Preston and I hunkered down to watch it on my 30th during the summer of COVID. This time was a lot more fun.
Trap
Where: An Egyptian Themed AMC outside of Washington, DC
With: Jack
Bellows went on a mini-tour of the East Coast opening for Terror Pigeon last summer. Baltimore and Washington D.C. are practically right next to each other, so we killed time at the movies. This is one of my favorite tour traditions. It does a movie a lot of favors when it fulfills its purpose simply by being a comfortable place to sit for a few hours. Jack and I elected to watch Trap while Oliver bounced around a few different theaters. Trap is a fascinating movie. It is a parade of interesting sentences (“I owe a lot to The Thinker”) and equally interesting shots. Like the results or not, but nothing in this movie feels prefabricated. The only thing that isn’t memorable is Lady Raven’s music. In fact it’s genuinely alarming how quickly her songs fade from your mind even a scene later. It’s bonkers that I’ve seen Trap, a movie with an album’s worth of original songs in it, twice and not a single chorus has stuck with me. The eerie facelessness of the music only makes the image of dads being rounded up by the cops all the more surreal. Clearly a movie with a lot on its mind.
Alien: Romulus
Where: The Alpine
With: The Boys (Eli & Alex)
Back from tour, I linked up with the boys to see the new Alien on an absolute scorcher. This is the second time Alex and I have seen a new Alien in theaters. The two of us saw Covenant together after watching the Cleveland Cavaliers narrowly fail to beat Kevin Durant (the NBA’s perfect lifeform) and the Golden State Warriors in game three of the 2017 finals. Eli, well, that guy is down for any old genre junk (complimentary). This is not a very good movie, but I had a good time. Alien as a franchise is so stuffed with interesting ideas that you’d have to go out of your way to not turn in something at least worth a few drinks of conversation at the bar afterwards. The accusations that this installment has no personality of its own strike me as shortsighted. With enough time, Romulus will reveal itself to be unmistakably a product of its era. Debt-laden zoomers try and scam their job only to be caught in a series of video-gamey horror puzzles and confronted with a lack reproductive autonomy while an unwanted AI avatar jabbers useless instructions at them. The bored teenagers at our showing did not find the call back lines even remotely funny. Neither did we.
Anora
Where: The Logan Theater
With: ~*My Girlfriend*~
The first movie I saw in theaters after moving to Chicago. ~*My Girlfriend*~ and I originally planned to see The Substance but misunderstood the schedule and had to make a last minute change of plans to see this instead. Honestly, a happy accident. I am a bit of wimp when it comes to body horror and am equally a sucker for depictions of deep Brooklyn. In the excitement around this movie I sensed a longing for the high of Uncut Gems at the end of 2019. I am not as convinced of Sean Baker’s NY bona fides as I am the Safdies. Anora is fast, funny, and hot but it gets by on shorthand. I don’t share the strong feelings others have had in either direction about the movie.
A Real Pain
Where: Another, different AMC
With: ~*My Girlfriend*~ and DJ
Final movie of the year. I remember thinking it was chilly then. How naive I was. We’ve been watching a lot of Succession in the house lately, so we were both curious to see Kieran Culkan take on a different character. A movie designed to inspire smart but polite conversation at the dinner table, but not to be anyone’s favorite movie. At times it feels like an occasion to promote tourism to Poland, but it does that job with grace. Culkan and Eisenberg are both great and feel like real dudes I know of their age and ilk, even if their hot and cold temperaments are dialed up for dramatic effect. A pretty good movie to end a pretty good year at the movies.