The Film Experience

by Nathaniel R

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR © Netflix

PART 1 - In real life I am exceedingly punctual. The same is not true of my online listing life. But one of my goals for 2024 is rethinking and clarifying my lifelong need to talk about the movies. So stayed tuned but please follow on Substackd and Letterboxd and Instagram while I sort that out. I am hoping to return to writing, twice weekly. That's the goal. I've accepted that I'll never be able to do the daily churn again that kept the site lively. Bless Cláudio and the rest of the team who have filled in some of my gaps. The world has moved on (social media has replaced incessant blogging and consumption of blogging). Plus I also burned out trying to produce that much. But enough navel-gazing for the moment!

The next week at the site is dedicated to wrapping up my own long-running awards (now in their *gulp* 24th year) and talking about Oscar night (which is about to happen), so here are brief thoughts on some favourite film things of the year which I hope you'll use along with awards themselves as a 'recommended' guide when you're looking for something to watch...

TAYLOR MAC'S 24-DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC © HBO

FAVOURITE MISCELLANIA
Documentaries aren't my jam. With narrative films I'm an omnivore, hungry for any subject matter or genre, but with docs I have to be invested in the flavor to sit down for the meal. The best experience I had this year with a documentary was Taylor Mac's 24-Decade History of Popular Music. I first saw Taylor Mac perform at a gay dive bar called The Slide back in the Aughts and I've been able to see them a few times live since in very different settings. I even tried to get his costuming collaborator Machine Dazzle to do a guest gig here at TFE one year. That said, I missed this particular extravagant challenge of a performance, a 24 hour concert / history parade so it was wonderful to see excerpts and get a taste of a never-to-be-repeated moment in history (my best friend did and he still talks about this concern all the time). As Glenn detailed in his review, it's really a feat to have condensed that much footage down to under two hours and have something this filling and entertaining. The doc also served as a unexpected and delicious sequel to the Machine Dazzle "Queer Maximalism" museum exhibit from 2022 here in NYC.

I watch a lot of short films and the cream of the crop this year was Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Frankly, I think Oscar voters tend to have horrid taste in short films so I'm so grateful and stunned that they chose to celebrate his presentational, eccentric, and whimsically po-faced take on a Roald Dahl story with a nomination. If only they were as generous with Asteroid City.

Since I wasn't on the festival circuit this year, I don't have a lot to choose from in regards to my usual "best unreleased feature without a US distributor". But from the few such titles that qualify the one I'm happiest to have spent time with was the blessedly brief and poignant Spanish comedy Mamacruz in which previous Almodóvar regular Kiti Manver (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Flower of My Secret, What Have I Done To Deserve This?) just slays her role as a neglected reiigious grandmother who starts to consider exploring her sexuaity and having her first orgasm. It's just a wonderful 83 minutes; I'd see it again right now if I could!

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Each year there are 15-20ish movies outside my top ten list that I can't imagine not having in my life, as memories if not as frequent pit stops (I don't do a ton of rewatching). The following movies really played as they say. Some I only saw recently but the unifying factor is that they were all 'sticky' in that I found myself thinking about them long after the credits rolled albeit for wildly varying reasons.

Presented in extremely random order...

TALK TO ME © A24

• Talk To Me - There are so many horror films about grief but this one about a group of friends conjuring spirits as a party game is superbly paced, genuinely scary, and engagingly unpredictable.

MUTT © Strand Releasing

• Mutt - Will this feel too slight for those that stream it? In the theater this low-fi NYC set indie about a trans man, suddenly dealing with estranged loved ones in a single eventful day felt 'you are there' transporting.

• Other People's Children - Another great Virginie Efira performance in this drama about a woman's emotional life that feels like it could have been made in the 70s it's so human-scaled, naturalistic, and focused.

GODZILLA MINUS ONE © Toho Studios

• Godzilla Minus One - There have been over 30 Godzilla films so we don't want to say "Best" but... wow. Takashi Yamazaki's entry was a thrilling treat. So fun to see Godzilla as a rampaging monster again instead of like a misunderstood behemoth on the side of the 'good guys'

• Blue Jean - While this first won attention in 2022 overseas, this finely etched 80s lesbian drama crossed the ocean in 2023. Can't wait to see what all involved do next.

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Visually thrilling and restlessly inventive with shockingly strong vocal performances. If only it hadn't been half a movie and found a way to have a beginning, middle, and end.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE DEAD RECKONING PART ONE

• Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One - While the film underperformed at the domestic box office we'd like to blame it on that badly judged title. The film does actually have an ending and you don't threaten audiences with a bloated half-movie on the seventh film in a series! This proved to be one of the best in the whole franchise. So many fab action sequences and Cruise and his co-stars are as committed and fun as ever.

• Oppenheimer - I tried to resist this as a perpetual Nolan agnostlc and cinephile with a notable allergy to excessive running times but resistance proved futile in the end. The global scale / impact of the drama has obviously inspired Christopher Nolan who prefers a giant canvas from which he can stare into some kind of abyss. He's made his best film to date, give or take the smaller scale staccato young-filmmaker thrills of Memento.

ALL OF US STRANGERS © Searchlight

• All of Us Strangers -Maybe this queer ghost story errs on the side of feeling like a therapy session for the invaluable Andrew Haigh (Weekend, 45 Years) to work through some shit as a gay man of a certain age. Maybe it's also kind of amazing?

• The Zone of Interest - I won't try to outblurb anyone given all the intense smart writing about this picture. Let's just say it's only my third favourite Glazer (1 - Under the Skin 2 - Birth) but what an auteur.

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS © A24
• You Hurt My Feelings - Nicole Holofcener is not a prolific filmmaker but every damn time we see one of her contemporary comedies about ordinary people we walk out wishing she was.

• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. - That now rarest of things: a wholesome family film that's actually also a very good movie. Writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig (The Edge of Seventeen) is now two-for-two so people need to learn her name.

• Robot Dreams - The best animated film of the year (according to me). A melancholy, joyously executed, and even profound comedy about intimate relationships and the importance of letting go.

• May December - The always fascinating Todd Haynes threw another curveball with this tabloid-inspired drama... or is it a comedy... or is it a satire... or is it an acting exercize / experiment?

• Of an Age -Goran Stolevski has made three films now (You Are Not Alone, Of an Age, and the forthcoming Housekeeping for Beginnings) and they've all been very different but equally amazing.

NEXT: THE TOP TEN LIST

(probably after a few posts on the Oscars of course)