Monthly Archives: January 2025

Editorials

The Show Must Go On – Why it’s Important for Hollywood to Still Do Events After the Tragic LA Fires

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In the earliest days of 2025, the City of Los Angeles was struck by a long feared tragedy that has devastated the community.  Two massive fires broke out in the townships of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, both of which grew to enormous size and ferocity due to a wind storm event that was strong even by the standards of the yearly Santa Ana winds that the area normally experiences.  As a resident of the City of Angels myself, I can attest to the intensity of these winds on the night of January 7th.  But I was lucky to be in a part of the city that was spared the worst of the destruction; the only impact I felt was power being out in my neighborhood for a couple of days.  Pacific Palisades and Altadena were not so lucky.  Both communities saw near total destruction, with over a thousand structures burned to the ground; mostly homes and a few structures of historic importance to the city.  And the impact on the people who lived there is immeasurable.  It affected many ranges of residents, from the affluent who resided in beach side mansions in the Palisades to middle and working class citizens living in the foothills of Altadena.  It is estimated this will be one of the costliest disasters ever in the United States, with so many properties reduced to smoldering ruins; a fact that will also be consequential for the entirety of Los Angeles, the state of California, and the United States for many years beyond.  As the fires dissipate, the next important thing to do next is to decide how we rebuild.  Many things will need to be done, especially in deciding the infrastructure needed to help prevent something like this from happening again, especially with climate change making weather events more extreme, like the wind storm that fanned the flames in the first place.  But also, the question is also being put forward about how quickly we should be moving on in the wake of such a tragedy.

The thing about the fire happening in a community such as the Pacific Palisades is that many of the victims involved who lost their homes in the inferno are also professionals in the movie industry.  Movie stars, producers, writers, directors and agents were all among the people who called the Palisades home, and they of course were overwhelmingly affected by this disaster.  Of course, the scale of the loss varies.  For some, the fire in the Palisades may have taken away one of many residences that some of the most affluent owned.  But for others, they lost everything in the fire; an entire livelihood gone up in smoke.  And those residents will have to see their lives put into an upheaval, as they will be displaced for a while, which could affect their work in the business.  The hope is that many of them will be covered by insurance, but with home insurers pulling out of the state because of the increased threats of wildfires, it’s not a certainty that everyone will get reimbursed.  Because of all the disruption to the livelihoods of professionals in the business, there has been a significant slowdown of productions going on in the City of Los Angeles, which has already seen a downturn in film shoots post-pandemic.  Of course it would be a bad thing to pressure the people who lost their homes to quickly get back to work.  It’s going to take time for people to adjust, and the humane thing is to give them the time they need.  But, there’s also the fact that this is a city dependent on the film industry to help boost other businesses that make up the life blood of the community.  The unfortunate thing is that this tragedy has occurred at one of the worst possible times for the Hollywood community, which is Awards season.  At a time when the industry is gearing up to put on the show of the year.

This has led to the belief from some that Awards season should be either indefinitely postponed or outright cancelled in response to the tragic fires.  Some events have indeed been cancelled out of respect to the people who lost their homes, though these have been some of the less high profile ones.  It’s another question whether something as big as the Oscars should also be cancelled, but it’s something people within the industry have been floating out there.  One of the reasons people want to see the Oscars cancelled is because many of the voting body of the Academy were among those who lost their homes in the fires, and it is believed that putting the pressure on them to spend this time casting their votes for this year’s race would be in bad taste.  Now, not all voting members may feel that way, including ones directly involved in the tragedy, but it is something that certainly can’t be dismissed either.  For now, the Oscars are still scheduled for March 2nd of this year, but the voting deadline was extended an extra week to accommodate those affected by the fires.  The Oscar nominations came out this week as promised but later than planned, so it looks like things are full steam ahead, but there are considerations being made about the ceremony itself.  Some believe that it will also be in bad taste to have the usual glitz and glamour showcase that the Oscars usually are in the wake of the tragedy.  Plans are now calling for a toned down show that may also be turned into a fundraiser to help those in need.  One of the big changes already discussed is the elimination of extravagant stage performances for the Best Song nominees, which is a shame given that two of the best such performances have happened in the last two Oscars, with “Naatu Naatu” from RRR (2022) and “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie (2023).  We’ll have to see whether or not it’s a strategy that works, but it’s also a situation that the Oscars have been through before.

There’s something inspirationally resilient about the Oscars; the fact that it’s an institution that still stands even through significant moments of upheaval in our nation’s history.  From it’s inception in 1927, the show kept being put on every year without fail, all the way through the Depression and also through World War II.  Even the Olympics can say that.  Of course, during the War, the industry had to deal with many of their professionals putting their lives on hold to serve overseas, so to put on the Oscars each year, the ceremony evolved into something else, which became a way to promote the war effort and in a familiar plan to what we are seeing right now, used to fund raise by selling war bonds.  The Post-War years saw the Oscars return to it’s usual glitz and glamour for the next half century, but a national tragedy would cause another adjustment for the pageantry of the show.  The 9/11 attacks made Hollywood reconsider their plans for the ceremony in the show the following year.  The show opened with a solemn reminder of the tragedy, with Tom Cruise delivering an opening address stressing the importance of using art to deal with trauma, and the show included many tributes to the city of New York that suffered the horrific attack.  It was a ceremony about solidarity for a broken nation, though sadly it would be short lived as the War on Terror that followed would divide us once again.  The Oscars also saw a major disruption again with the Covid-19 pandemic.  Though the ceremony of 2021 was still put on, it was done so in a smaller venue (Los Angeles’ Union Station) with fewer guests spaced further apart in accordance with socially distancing.  It was also held a full two months later than originally planned, mid-way through the month of April.  And yet with all the barriers in place, the Oscars still managed to not skip a single year.

The one big difference this year is that the tragedy of the LA fires is that they hit much closer to home.  World War II and even the 9/11 attacks were certainly felt by the industry, but the city itself remained unharmed and people still went about their lives.  The fires on the other hand have left many within the industry directly affected, and that has put the city itself into a tough place.  A significant portion of the movie industry are not ready to just pivot into awards season mode.  It’s easy for many to dismiss the Palisades fire victims because many of them were disproportionately wealthy, but that’s not the case for the most part.  There were middle to lower class victims of the fires too.  One of the housing developments lost in the fire was a mobile home park just off of the Pacific Coast Highway that borders the Palisades community, and many of those residents were not among the rich and famous.  Also, the loss of so many homes in the area affects a lot of the downstream industries that serviced the Palisades, like landscaping workers, housekeepers, and assistants who served the residents of the community.  It’s those downstream services that are now feeling the effects of the fires that ravaged this community.  They have seen a significant clientele desolated, and it’s affecting their bottom line because there is nothing in place to compensate for that usually reliable income.  The same goes for Altadena, which is even more desolated by this tragedy.  Not only did Altadena lose a great many homes in their residential areas, but also the town center with it’s collection of mom and pop stores and businesses got lost in the fire.  It’s a scar on that community that may never be healed, as a whole chunk of their history is now gone.  The famous faces you see on the news are only a small part of the tragedy, and even those who didn’t lose their homes in the fire are going to be feeling the after effects for a while as so much business in this town was tied into these communities.

But there is the argument that putting things on hold out of sympathy would be making the situation even worse.  So much of the industry is tied into awards season, and cancelling the show would do more bad than good.  A lot of below the line workers look forward every year to staging the Oscars.  These include stagehands, lighting technicians, camera technicians, security details, caterers and photographers.  And that’s just for the show itself.  In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, you have tailor and dressmakers across the city prepping things to wear for all the people who will be attending the ceremony, as well as publicists and marketing teams working hard to push their clients’ films towards Awards season wins.  For all these below the line workers, the Awards season is essential to their yearly income.  They can count on the Oscars to be presented every year without a hitch, and they plan all of their activity that year around this certainty.  Suddenly cancelling the Oscars would either mean money would go to waste on products already spent with no chance of recouping, or budgets would have to be cut in the back half of the year to account for the shortfall that occurred because of no ceremony being held.  It would be especially disruptive for boutique businesses that are trying to advance in the competitive Hollywood industry.  Hollywood isn’t just a movie making business, but an industry that supports many other disciplines in the creative arts.  And awards season is one of the primary engines of what keeps the industry going.  It may not have a major downstream effect if something like a luncheon or a press event gets cancelled due to a tragedy, but cancelling something as vital as the Oscars would definitely be a disruption.

Going into this awards season, the considerations for the victims of the fires should certainly be met, but also the idea that the awards should be cancelled for the sake of good taste is also a bad idea.  I believe that the plan to scale things back a bit is not a terrible idea.  You definitely don’t want to put on the air of disrespect by pretending that nothing had happened.  I think you are definitely going to see a lot of praise for first responders who helped put out the fires, with some of them maybe being invited onstage at the ceremony itself for a round of applause.  The call for the show to be a fundraiser for charity is also a good thing, as it allows for anyone watching the show to contribute towards helping those in need.  What Hollywood definitely needs to do is to walk that fine line of honoring itself and also not making the tragedy something that is self-serving for themselves.  The people in that room wearing extravagant suits and dresses will be doing alright.  The show just needs to put a spotlight on those who were most affected by the fires.  And at the same time, also show that Hollywood is still as vibrant as it’s always been; that they are ready for making the future a lot better.  Like tragedies before, with 9/11 and Covid, the resilience of the movies and the Oscars has helped the world to heal before and it can happen again.  While we acknowledge the human cost of this tragedy, we should also celebrate the films that we love that help us move forward.  That’s what this awards season in particular should do.  Make us remember why a place like Hollywood is so important to our culture and why it’s important to recognize and support the ones who keep it moving, especially those whose work remains largely unseen by the general public.

A lot of lessons are going to be learned from these devastating fires.  It definitely shows how much we are at the mercy of climate change, and that incidents like this sadly will become more common.  We definitely need to take climate seriously and build up infrastructure to deal with it’s changes.  Fire stations also need to be funded much better than they are and firefighters, who do so much thankless work every single day, should be paid much better as well.  There also needs to be accountability over how we rebuild from this disaster, as insurance fraud is rampant and many people are not getting compensated the way they should in the wake of devastating tragedies.  Also, the price gouging that landlords are putting on renters all across the city in the wake of this disaster needs to end.  Hollywood is just one industry within the City of Los Angeles that is feeling the residual effects of this disaster, and the long term repercussions will be around for decades.  Who knows what kind of effect the inhalation of smoke from these fires may have on the health of Angelinos in the years ahead.  It’s going to be a long recovery period, one that may be even worse because of the shenanigans going on in Washington, but that’s a rant that I’d rather not get into.  The one thing that I wish I can pass on to my readers is that you continue to show support for those who suffered in this tragedy by not just giving what you can to charity, but also to keep supporting the movies that the victims of the fires had a hand in making.  The continued success of movies and TV shows made in Hollywood will help ensure that many of those who lost their livelihoods in the fire will have a chance to rebuild with continued employment in a vibrant and thriving industry.   It’s not just the wealthy movie stars that need help, it’s all the below the line workers who are dependent on the industry not missing a beat that are very much need of support.  Like a phoenix from the ashes, Hollywood will thrive again, and that’s why it’s important for events like the Oscars to still move forward.

Movie Reviews

Wolf Man – Review

No other studio can claim to be the one and only home of cinema’s greatest monsters as Universal Studios has become.  Going back to their early years, it can be said that Movie Monsters made Universal what it is today.  Whether it’s Frankenstein’s Monster, Count Dracula, the Invisible Man or the Creature from the Black Lagoon, these monsters are an institution that Universal proudly claims as their own.  But, apart from the Creature from the Black Lagoon which is an original cinematic creation, none of the other movie monsters belong solely to Universal, mostly originating from literary sources well before cinema existed.  So, to keep their profile up as the kings of monster movies, Universal has had to find new ways to refresh their stable of monster characters for new generations.  One of the most ill-fated attempts to bring Universal Monsters back to the big screen was the bungled attempt at creating a Marvel style Cinematic Universe that tied all the monsters together called Dark Universe.  Universal had high hopes that they could sustain a blockbuster cinematic universe based around their monsters, and they were getting many big names on board to participate, including casting Javier Bardem for their Wolf Man and Johnny Depp as the Invisible Man.  Unfortunately, the Dark Universe flamed out fast due to the failure of The Mummy (2017), which even the star power of Tom Cruise couldn’t save.  The Wolf Man and Invisible Man films were quickly scrapped before they even started cameras rolling, and the Dark Universe was effectively deader than Dracula in less than a year.  With the future of the Universal Monsters in limbo, the studio needed to find a new path forward to help revitalize these characters again.  And they found their savior in a surprising collaborator that would turn out to be the ideal shepherds in giving new life for these monsters; a production company called Blumhouse.

Blumhouse, the company founded by producer Jason Blum, revolutionized the horror movie genre by putting an emphasis on economically made horror films that were more auteur driven.  Because their films were more experimental and cost a fraction of what other horror films were made with, Blumhouse managed to consistently turn a profit and this got the attention of Hollywood who saw their blueprint for success as a perfect way to revitalize a horror genre that had become bloated and stagnant.  Universal, who wanted to save face from the failure of the Dark Universe and bring new life to their monster properties, were eager to partner with Blumhouse, and so an exclusive pact was made by the two entities.  Blumhouse would now have the backing of a major studio, while Universal would have proven horror powerhouse managing their characters in a way that would peak audience interest again.  One of the key new horror filmmakers to emerge within the Blumhouse family was Australian actor turned director Leigh Whannell.  Whannell developed his horror resume as the writer for some of James Wan’s most notable films in the genre, namely Saw (2004) and Insidious (2010).  Starting with Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015) he has been directing and writing horror films, and was given the opportunity by Blumhouse to launch their new partnership with Universal in re-imagining their stable of classic monsters.  His first feature under this experiment was a modern re-telling of The Invisible Man (2020).  Though the film had it’s box office run cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic, it still managed to land well with both critics and audiences.  People praised it’s fresh take on the classic movie monster, with it’s POV shifted to the vicitim of the Invisible Man (an unforgettable Elisabeth Moss) whose story became an effective allegory about domestic violence committed on women.  For his follow-up, Whannell is now getting the chance to take on another classic Universal Monster with his re-imagining of the Wolf Man (2025).  The only question is, can it live up to the bold new take that we saw in The Invisible Man, or does it fall short and makes the Blumhouse experiment unfortunately short-lived.

The film opens 30 years in the past, where a young boy named Blake (Zac Chandler) is taken out hunting with his father Grady (Sam Jaeger).  Grady is tough on his son, wanting him to take the idea of hunting and survival in the wild seriously.  While deep in the woods in a secluded valley in the Oregon mountains, the encounter a mysterious creature that is unlike anything else they’ve seen before; something like a wolf, but one that can stand up straight like a human.  The close encounter spooks Grady and Blake, and they quickly retreat from the forest.  Locals consider Grady crazy, but he’s determined to get proof of what he saw.  Cut forward to the present day, grown up Blake (Christopher Abbott) is now a father himself, to a young girl named Ginger (Matilda Firth).  Both Blake and Ginger have a strong bond with each other, with Blake demonstrating a more compassionate hand at parenting than his father.  Ginger’s mom, Charlotte (Julia Garner) on the other hand is too pre-occupied with work to be invested in her daughters life, and it causes some friction between them as well as with Blake.  One day, Blake receives the news that his father, who has been missing for quite some time, has now been legally declared dead by authorities in the State of Oregon, and that Blake has now inherited the farm house that they used to live in 30 years ago.  Blake convinces his wife and daughter that they should get away from the city and stay at the farm for a couple of weeks in order to reconnect as a family.  On their way there, Blake swerves off the road after seeing a scary looking creature in the middle of the road.  After their camper crashes, Blake tries to escape the vehicle, but ends up getting his arm slashed by the same beast that caused him to crash in the first place.  They safely make it to the farm house, but while inside, Blake begins to feel very sick.  Over time, his illness worsens, upsetting his family.  More and more his body becomes more twisted and beast like, and he can no longer communicate with his family.  As the night goes further on, Charlotte and Ginger have to come to terms that their protector himself may in fact attack them as he slowly turns into a Wolf Man.

One thing that the movie has to contend with is the familiarity of the Wolf Man in cinema.  Lon Chaney Jr. famously brought the character to life originally on the big screen in 1941’s The Wolf Man.  Universal would once again revisit the character with the 2010 film starring Benicio Del Toro.  Both films are notable for setting the story within a Victorian setting, which Leigh Whannell departs from in his mostly original, modern adaptation of the classic story.  Here he leaves foggy, cold England for foggy, cold Oregon, which ultimately still works thematically for this story.  In general, Leigh makes quite a few changes to the overall character that I would say mostly benefits the story as a whole.  The thing that I like the most about the movie is the way it handles the transformation of the Blake into a Wolf Man.  It still follows the mythology that we all know, where the wolf’s curse is like a contagion; once you’ve been attacked by a Wolf Man and survive, you become one yourself.  The thing that this movie does different is that it’s not an instantaneous change.  Blake gradually turns into the Wolf Man, with the movie really selling us on the fact that it is a painful process.  The middle section of this movie, where most of the transformation is happening, is the strongest part, where you slowly see Blake’s humanity slipping away with every new wolf trait he develops.  It starts with a stronger sense of smell, then acute hearing, and then ultimately seeing the world through a broader color spectrum in a stunning visual.  The movie treats the tragedy of this Wolf Man curse more seriously than most other versions of this story we’ve seen, and it’s also fairly bleak about it too.  There’s no salvation for Blake; no reversal after the light of a full moon is gone.  Once he’s been bled by the creature, he’s already doomed.

The problem that keeps the movie from being a bigger success is that after the transformation happens, the movie gets a bit repetitive.  With the focus shifted to the characters of Charlotte and Ginger, they unfortunately spend the whole rest of the movie on the run from both Blake and the other Wolf Man haunting the woods around the farm.  There’s no more development to their characters other than that.  The movie could have played more into the mother and the daughter mending their strained relationship through the shared ordeal, but the movie doesn’t make a lot of time for that.  Instead, it sort of pads the run time, with the characters making decisions to run and hide in different ways.  The go outside for a bit, than run back into the farm house, then back outside again, and then back into the house.  The repetition of the third act really begins to undermine the stronger parts of the story found in the film’s first half.  None of it is bad per say, it makes you wish that the film had just a little bit more to say other than having it’s two main heroines constantly be put into harms’ way.  It’s a downgrade from what Whannell was able to do with The Invisible Man, which really did a great job of building the tension of the movie into something fresh and unexpected.  It was a movie that took the familiar movie monster and took the story in a different direction than what you’d expect, which really enhanced the tension and the fear factor as well.  There’s beginnings of some good ideas in the early part of this movie, and some of them lead to a great re-imagining of the wolf man’s transformation, but when the movie decides it wants to go into an action movie climax, that’s where it definitely falls short.

One the things that definitely holds the movie together are the performances.  Christopher Abbott in particular really shines in what is very much a demanding role.  A lot of the success of the transformation scenes has to come from the effectiveness of the performance of the actor.  Abbott does a great job of portraying a man going through a terrifying and painful transformation.  The best part of this is that he never goes over the top with any of it.  When he is dealing with the most painful parts of his transformation, he characterizes it like a man drowning in a deep fever, balled up and trembling.  And once he goes into the final steps of his transformation, he believably portrays the physicality of a wild creature.  There’s a chilling moment early on before he makes his full transformation, where he begins gnawing at his open wound on his arm, like how a real wolf would tackle a piece of meat.  It’s a moment in the performance where an actor could get the physicality wrong, and it shows that Christopher Abbott must have studied up on how to act like a wolf in that scene.  The make-up effects are pretty convincing too, which follows in the proud tradition of the Wolf Man being a ground-breaking character in the art of prosthetic make-up, going all the way back to when Cheney played him.  Abbott completely disappears once the creature takes his final form, and it’s a testament to the make-up artists and Abbott’s committed physical acting that helps to make the transformation feel believably realistic.  Julia Garner’s character may be a tad underwritten, but she still does a fine job acting in this role.  I like the fact that she refrains from going over the top in her more frightened scenes.  The way she plays it, as someone who tries to remain in control even as she is paralyzed with fear, is just the right angle to take with the character.  Matilda Firth also works well enough as Ginger, helping her feel natural as the child in this scenario.  She’s sweet, but not saccharine or creepy, which is the binary dynamic that most children in horror movies tend to fall on either side of.  The movie overall has a very limited cast to work with, and thankfully the three main players here all have strong on screen chemistry with each other.

While Leigh Whannell’s adaptation of the Wolf Man may lack something in it’s storytelling, it makes up for some of that with it’s style.  Whannell does some really creative things with this re-telling of the familiar story, particularly in the visuals and with the sound-editing.  One of the best visual ideas is in showing shifting perspectives between the characters once Blake begins his transformation.  This really helps to sell the horrifying change that is going on with his body.  He begins to have the eyesight of a wolf, which allows him to see things through an infrared spectrum.  He’s better able to see things in the dark, and all the colors are take on a weird psychedelic look too.  There’s a really effective scene where it shifts from his family’s perspective, where Charlotte and Ginger are hiding within pitch black darkness inside of a barn and the camera moves away from them and shifts midway through the shot into the night vision of Blake’s POV before shifting back to the darkness again, all in a oner shot.  The way that they use sound in the movie is also incredible.  The films does an effective job of creating the cacophony of exaggerated sound that Blake now hears after his transformation, and how he no longer can hear his family speak to him clearly anymore.  There’s also a grotesque, crunchiness to the sounds his body makes when the bones inside of him change during the transformation.  And once he is in wolf mode, the movie makes his deep breath growling sound all the more otherworldly.  There’s a lot of great craft put to use in this movie, and Whannell succeeds in grounding his Wolf Man story in an almost realistic portrayal.  You really get the visceral feel of the horrific transformation that Blake goes through, and it does builds the fear up of what this creature ultimately becomes, with something that both feels of the natural world but also out of pure fantasy as well.

Overall, Leigh Whannell does a good job of giving the classic character of the Wolf Man a fresh new portrayal on the big screen.  It does seem like he was overly concerned with getting the transformation part right, and the rest was treated more as an afterthought.  When Blake goes through his transformation, it’s where the movie works the best, and it’s a testament to the make-up effects team, the visual and audio effects engineers, and Christopher Abbott all delivering together for making this a more engaging experience overall.  It’s only when Leigh Whannell takes the movie into the repetitive final act that you see the shortcomings of this adaptation, because it ultimately leads nowhere.  The Invisible Man ultimately stood out much better because of the unexpected turns it took with it’s story, which also gave us an interesting twist on the narrative you wouldn’t have seen in any other version.  Ultimately, this Wolf Man does go down the road you expect it to, and that is disappointing, given all the other things it gets right.  The surprising thing is that it’s a very bleak take on the story.  There’s no salvation for Blake; once he’s infected, he’s done for, and the movie is a sad march to death for him as you see his humanity slip away.  Not every horror movie needs to have a message to it, but I would’ve liked to see the film present some idea of what this arc for Blake was all about.  Was it saying something about inherited trauma, and how violence is passed down through generations?  I just wish there was a more clever edge to this story.  In the end, it’s definitely a strong presentation of style, as Whannell does a great job with setting up atmosphere and giving a visceral portrayal of the horrific Wolf Man transformation.  It makes me wonder what other fresh new takes we’ll see of Universal’s Movie Monsters from Blumhouse in the coming years.  This movie, and to a greater extant The Invisible Man, demonstrate that it was a good idea for Universal to make Blumhouse the caretakers of these characters.  Let’s hope that both studios continue to do brave new things with these classic movie monsters so that more generations can continue to appreciate these icons for years to come.  It’s not a perfect horror adaptation, but it can still work as a howling good time with some really terrifying and effective horror elements there to give us a good fright.

Rating: 7/10

The Director's Chair

The Director’s Chair – Don Bluth

There are a number of animators who manage to rise up to the ranks of directors that become household names.  Today, you see the likes of Brad Bird, Chris Sanders, Pete Doctor, or the team of Christopher Miller and Phil Lord become well known in the film industry beyond just the field of animation.  But for the longest time, being an animation director was not much of a step above just being an animator.  The early days of animation often left the director’s name out of the credits of the cartoons that ran in theaters alongside feature films, and the only name associated with the shorts were the names of the people who own the studios that made them.  When you saw a short cartoon, you would be seeing a Disney Cartoon, or a Fleischer Cartoon.  Warner Brothers didn’t even have a name attached to their shorts, just calling them Looney Tunes or Merry Melodies instead.  It was only in the post-War years where animation directors were given more credit, but even still, they were known mostly just to animation aficionados.  Chuck Jones emerged out of the Looney Tunes shorts factory to carve out his own name in animation, particularly with his work on the holiday short How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966).  Wolfgang Reitherman, one of Walt Disney’s treasured Nine Old Men, would take the reigns of animation at the studio, directing most of the features at Disney after Walt’s death, from The Jungle Book (1967) to The Rescuers (1977).  And of course, Richard Williams was becoming a legend in the animation world for a movie he would never finish called The Thief and the Cobbler.  But, household named directors from the animation world has been a relatively new thing, and even in this case, it’s still a rarity.  An animation director that you can really point out as the person who helped to break through and make a name for himself both in animation and in Hollywood in general was an ambitious animation pioneer named Don Bluth.

Don Bluth began his animation career right out of college working as an inbetweener at Disney.  After a couple years, he was made an assistant animator for Disney Nine Old Man legend John Lounsbery and he got to contribute to the animation of movies like Sleeping Beauty (1959).  He left Disney not long after that to go on a mission for the Morman Church, and after that he did a lot of freelance work as a layout artist for Filmation.  In 1971, he returned to Disney to work alongside his old colleague John Lounsbery on films such as Robin Hood (1973) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977).  He was promoted to directing animator The Rescuers, and many believed that with the upcoming retirements of the aging Nine Old Men that Bluth would be one of the heirs to the Disney Animation studio now that the old guard was leaving.  Sadly, his mentor John Lounsbery also passed away suddenly during this time.  Bluth was also butting heads with the higher ups at Disney, voicing his displeasure at their lack of creativity during the post-Disney years and relying on safe projects like Pete’s Dragon (1978).  While Bluth was working on the Nativity themed short, The Small One (1978), him and a team of his fellow Disney animators were covertly working on a secret independent project called Banjo, The Woodpile Cat (1979).  Disney was not happy with Bluth’s independent work, and Bluth decided that his time at the Disney Studio was over.  He quit and took a huge chunk of the Disney Animation staff with him, leaving Disney’s animation department devastated.  Bluth, along with his key cohorts Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy, established Don Bluth Productions and they began work on their first feature as an independent studio, called The Secret of NIMH (1982).  Eventually getting released by MGM, NIMH was a huge success for Bluth and established him as rising star in animation.  Soon after, Steven Spielberg became interested in working with Bluth, and he signed with Amblin Productions for a two film deal, making An American Tail (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988).  It was an opportune time for him, with his rise and Disney’s struggles with The Black Cauldron (1985).  It looked like Bluth would soon become the biggest name in animation since Walt himself.  And then something changed.  After All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Bluth’s track record got spotty just as Disney was beginning their Renaissance.  He got a second chance in the late 90’s with a new set up at 20th Century Fox, making the ambitious musical fantasy Anastasia (1997) but even this was short lived as the studio closed after the failure of Titan A.E. (2000).  Bluth hasn’t directed a feature since.  Below is a look at the different spotlights of his animation style and a career, and how they continue to define him as a key figure in animation.

1.

DARKER THEMES IN FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT

Of all the things that drove Don Bluth away from Disney it was perhaps his belief that the studio had abandoned it’s roots that became the biggest area of contention.  Bluth believed that Disney should’ve been taking bigger risks in the post-Walt years, citing the way that Disney’s earliest films were bigger gambles than the play-it-safe films that they were making at the time.  In particular, he believed that animation shouldn’t be afraid to tackle darker themes and tones.  Disney’s earliest movies all had moments that were much darker and sometimes terrifying, such as “Night on Bald Mountain” in Fantasia (1940) or the Pleasure Island sequence in Pinocchio (1940).  With Disney making films like The Aristocats (1970) and The Rescuers (1977), it was clear that they were retreating away from scary moments and were catering to a much younger crowd.  For Bluth, he believed that there was a way to make animation darker and more mature without alienating family audiences.  The very first film he worked on, The Secret of NIMH, is perhaps the best illustration of his mission statement.  The film is harrowing and at times violent, but it still maintains a sense of enchantment that young children could still be invested in, and it had it’s own colorful cast of animal characters to keep the story whimsical too.  The slate of films Don Bluth made during the 80’s in many ways continued this blend of family friendly warmth spiced with a hint of danger and at times scary imagery.  But, also Bluth was also not afraid of bringing in a bit of tragic consequences into his stories as well; something he took inspiration from in early Disney movies.  It’s undeniable that the death of Littlefoot’s mother in The Land Before Time was inspired by the similar loss of a parent in Disney’s Bambi (1942), and it also may have later inspired a similar moment in Disney’s own The Lion King (1994).  It was this commitment to bringing animation back to it’s riskier roots that helped to distinguish Don Bluth’s movies from those of other animation studios.  It’s kind of ironic that at the same time Bluth was flourishing with his darker themed movies that Disney tried to do the same with their film The Black Cauldron, and they failed miserably.  It was definitely a power shift in animation that no one had expected.

2.

HIGHLY EXPRESSIVE ANIMATION

Don Bluth is one of the animation icons with a very unique way of drawing movement into his characters.  You can see it’s beginning in some of his work at Disney, with characters like Elliot the Dragon in Pete’s Dragon, where he animates his characters with a lot of expressive movement, particularly with the mouths.  The lip flaps of his characters are distinctively exaggerated, which at times can look a little strange.  You don’t get a lot of subtlety in his character animation, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.  It’s yet another element that sets his movies apart from those of Disney and other studios, as every character in his films are all drawn in that distinctive Don Bluth way.  But, even minus the subtlety, the characters that he does bring to life make up for all that with enormous personality.  Fivel from An American Tail for instance stands out with that highly expressive animation because it fits with his personality as a restless child.  The manic expressions he animates also work well with some of the physical comedy, particularly in a movie like All Dogs Go to Heaven which has a lot of slapstick moments.  But, when he needs to bring more emotion to a scene, his team can deliver that as well.  There are some truly heartbreaking moments in An American Tail and The Land Before Time that Bluth’s animation definitely manages to nail down.  Unfortunately over time, his films would lose some of that manic spontaneity and become more complacent as he tried to attempt more natural animation in an attempt to catch up to Disney during their Renaissance.  Thumbelina (1995) featured the least exaggerated animation of his filmography, and of course it is the dullest movie he ever made.  He also attempted subtlety with Anastasia (1997), but at least it was more balanced with a more substantial budget and some more creative freedom used on the less subtle animation of the villain Rasputin.  Still, the Don Bluth style of animation is truly unique and unlike any other style found in animation anywhere else.

3.

EMBRACE OF THE BIZARRE AND RANDOM

One tradition in animation that Bluth continued to hold onto in his films was the use of songs to tell his story.  The Secret of NIMH avoided musical numbers, but An American Tail fully embraced the trope, and the majority of his films since also continued to act as musicals; the exceptions being The Land Before Time and Titan A.E.  But it’s in these musical numbers that we see Don Bluth really branch out into some surreal territory.  In a sense, this is another thing that he was inspired by early Disney, as he seemed to particularly be drawn to the weird and over the top musical sequences that some of those early films would delve into every now and then.  In particular, I think he was deeply influenced by the “Pink Elephants” sequence in Dumbo (1941), and it’s surreal dreamlike presentation.  All Dogs Go to Heaven in particular has some of the oddest musical sequences found in any animated movie.  Set aside that he had actor Burt Reynolds do his own singing as the main character Charlie (a strange choice on it’s own), but the movie stops dead in it’s tracks halfway through the film so that there can be a Busby Berkeley style musical number with a giant, big-lipped singing alligator (voiced by the late great Ken Page of Oogie Boogie fame).  And beyond that strange musical sequence, Bluth seemed to follow that up with a whole movie based around random musical sequences called Rock-a-Doodle (1991).  Even in the more straightforward Anastasia you get a musical sequence like the villain song “In the Dark of the Night” where Bluth is able to let things get a little strange for a bit.  There’s something definitely appealing about how his movies don’t have to follow a logical path, because animation allows for creative flights of fantasy to take place.  For some of the greatest random creativity seen in any Bluth animation though, the best place is to find it is not on the big screen but rather the arcade.  Bluth was a pioneer in video gaming as well as in cinematic animation with the creation of the Laserdisc based Dragon’s Lair (1983) and Space Ace (1983) video games.  These fully animated playable movies feature some of the most insanely bizarre animation that Don Bluth’s studio ever made, and they are truly something wonderful to behold.

4.

CONTEMPORARY FANTASY

One of the common threads in Don Bluth’s movies is the presence of magic found in the present, or near present day.  Unlike Disney films that relied on adaptations of well known (and public domain) fairy tales dating back to their very beginning with the likes of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Bluth’s movies were mostly original stories, or based on a recent YA novel like The Secret of NIMH.  Even with the more contemporary settings, his movies are still filled with magical elements that take advantage of the limitless potential of the animated medium.  All Dogs Go to Heaven literally has the manifestations of Heaven and Hell brought to life in the story, with Hell being especially terrifyingly realized in the infamous “Charlie’s Nightmare” sequence found in the movie.  Magic also plays a significant part of Rock-a-Doodle, with a live action human boy named Edmond being transformed into an animated kitty cat by a sorcerer owl named the Duke (voiced by Christopher Plummer), in one of the many bizarre elements of that movie.  You even have the cross section of magic and real world events play out in Anastasia, with the Russian Revolution getting an assist from a magical curse cast by Rasputin on the Romanov family.  Quite a few of Bluth’s movies take on these fantasy elements, even in grounded films like An American Tail, where a storm at sea even takes on the appearance of a monster at one point.  But, only in one case did he ever attempt to adapt a known fairy tale, the aforementioned Thumbelina.  For the most part, he uses magic as a way of giving his own original story ideas a more inventive element that allows for more flights of fantasy in animation.  Sometimes it works to the movies’ benefit, like the imaginative All Dogs Go to Heaven or the bizarrely fascinating Rock-a-Doodle.  But then there is the film A Troll in Central Park where the fantasy feels a bit lazy.  Even still, it’s clear that Don Bluth found it essential for his movies to have a good amount of magic within their stories, and it often made his films that much more entertaining.

5.

JOURNEYS OF SELF-DISCOVERY

One other story element that Don Bluth would include as a part of his movies is the journey towards self-discovery for his characters.  In most of his movies, his character set out for a destination or goal, and in the process gain a further understanding of who they are and how powerful they can be.  This is something that especially defines the story of Mrs. Brisby, the main heroine of The Secret of NIMH, who goes from a concerned mother trying to protect her children to wielding a powerful magical force by the film’s end, something that she never realized she was capable of until she had no other choice but to act.  For some of his main characters, he sends them on literal journeys.  Fivel becomes separated from his family and must navigate his way through his new home in America in order to find them again.  The Land Before Time sends the orphaned Littlefoot on a journey to find the Great Valley and along the way he meets other stranded misfits like himself who must rely upon each other in order to survive, and in the process, they become an inseperable unit themselves.  For these characters, they are coming of age stories, as the young protagonists must learn to grow up fast in order to survive on their own.  For the character of Anastasia, she literally is on a “Journey to the Past” to rediscover who she was before she lost her memories of childhood, which might connect her to being the long lost Romanov princess.  But you also see these self discovery journeys happen in a reverse direction, where a scoundrel like Charlie in All Dogs Go to Heaven begins to change his ways after literally having a brush with Death.  The reason why Don Bluth seems drawn to these kinds of stories is because they are always a valuable way of building his characters.  The best animated movies always involve the character wanting to have something, which is something that definitely defined the films of Disney’s Renaissance.  But for Bluth’s movies, it ties back to his attraction to darker themes in his films, as he sets out to really put his characters through the wringer.  His characters must go through a lot of darkness before they see the light, and for the most part that journey will inevitably change them.  Littlefoot becomes a leader by the end of his ordeal.  Fivel, much wiser and closer to his family.  And Charlie learns the meaning of sacrifice and acceptance of his ultimate fate.  For a lot of young animation fans that grew up on his movies, we still look at his movies as some of the most enriching and life-affirming tales ever put into animated life.

It’s unfortunate that Don Bluth wasn’t able to sustain the momentum that he had during his early years as an independent animation director.  That run of the 1980’s is still iconic to a generation of animation fans.  It’s strange that he only partnered with Spielberg for just those two films, An American Tail and The Land Before Time.  There’s never been an explanation for why they fell out of that partnership, but had he stayed at Amblin beyond those films, who knows how different the animation landscape would have been in the years that followed.  Bluth might have been able to sustain his creative output in the renewed competition he faced during the 1990’s with the Disney Renaissance.  Strangely enough, his abrupt departure from Disney may have actually benefitted Disney more in the long run, because when he took a whole generation of animators with him, it was the new recruits just out of CalArts that stepped up to take the reigns of Disney Animation.  The young and eager to show what they were made of animators at Disney soon put a ton of new creative effort into movies like The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994), which would change the animation landscape even more than what Don Bluth was doing.  Throughout the 1990’s, it was Bluth that was having to play catch-up, and the quality of his films unfortunately suffered.  Then came the new threat of computer animation pioneered by Pixar, which a traditionalist animator like Don Bluth had no answer to.  Titan A.E. was an attempt to bridge both worlds, with hand drawn characters existing in computer animated environments, but it’s an experiment that didn’t pan out.  Since then, Bluth has retreated mostly out of the animation industry as a whole.  With his studio closed, he has since only done small commissioned projects, such as the short The Gift of the Hoopoe (2009), made for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  He did launch a Kickstarter campaign with his longtime producer Gary Goldman to get a new animated feature based on the game Dragon’s Lair made, but sadly even after reaching his initial funding goal, not much movement has been made on getting the project off the ground.  And with Bluth now in his mid-80’s, it’s becoming more unlikely that we’ll see him get a chance to direct one last film.  But, he still remains a beloved figure in the world of animation.  He’s even reconciled with Disney, and has been a welcomed guest back on the lot, with many current talent there crediting him as an inspiration.  Indeed, without his push for more challenging animation in the early part of his career, who knows where animation today would be.  The Disney Renaissance certainly would not have happened they way it did had he not shaken up the establishment in the first place.  That in itself makes him an essential figure in the history of the animated medium, and at the same time he has been an imaginative voice that created some truly beloved classics in the process.  His journey has been it’s own American Tale, and like the lovable characters he made popular in his films, he was an underdog worth rooting for.

Top Ten Lists

Top Ten Movies of 2024

The year that has passed has now been entered into the history books, and with 2024 behind us it’s time to look back at how the year went as a whole.  For Hollywood, it was a recovery year, after the strikes of 2023 brought the industry to a dramatic halt.  Some of the effects of those strikes were immediately apparent, but the long term effects may take years to fully manifest, but 2024 overall represented a year of adaptation for both the production side as well as the exhibition side.  Hollywood continued to move around their films on the calendar, with some of the most anticipated movies of the previous year finally getting their release in the last year.  Movie theaters also had to get more creative in the last year in order to bring audiences in more frequently due to the backlog of new movies that the strikes created.  This was the year where novelty popcorn buckets suddenly became a viral craze, with the ridiculous designs for Dune: Part Two’s and Deadpool & Wolverine’s buckets getting social media attention for which one looked more like a adult oriented product.  Regardless of the oddities of the designs, these must buy items were a welcome money generator for movie theaters in need of extra income, and more importantly it prompted more people to come to the movies again.  We saw the revivals of struggling brands like Disney, Pixar and Marvel, all getting huge box office wins this year.  The indie film market also saw a major boost, with indie labels like Neon and A24 seeing their biggest box office successes ever in 2024.  And then there was the record breaking Thanksgiving weekend this year, which saw Wicked, Gladiator II, and Moana 2 almost pulling off another Barbenheimer effect with their shared success.  So, while there are still a number of problems that are plaguing the movie business overall, there are also a number of positive signs about the resiliency of the cinematic experience.  And the hope is that many of those positive signs continue into the next year and beyond.

Of course, like every year, I’s sharing my personal picks for the Top 10 Movies of the year, as well as my choices for the bottom 5.  This year I broke my own personal record of seeing over 120 movies in a theater setting, so I had a very wide pool to choose from.  A couple of the movies that made my list were very easy, but there were a few hard cuts as well.  So, below are the honorable mention movies that I think are worth spotlighting, listed in alphabetical order: A Real Pain, The Apprentice, Bird, Blitz, Boy Kills World, Challengers, Conclave, Deadpool & Wolverine, Flow, Hit Man, Juror #2, Kinds of Kindness, Maria, Monkey Man, Nickel Boys, Nosferatu, Queer, Saturday Night, Sing Sing, Strange Darling, Thelma, Wicked, and The Wild Robot.  All of these movies are definitely worth seeing if you can, but the 10 selected below were the ones that stuck with me the most over the course of the year.  So, let’s take a look at my picks for the Top Ten Movies of 2024.

10.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Directed by Rose Glass

Starting off with the first of multiple A24 movies you’ll see on this list (it was a very good year for them), this sophomore directorial effort from Rose Glass was also the year’s most interesting love story as well.  Set in a grimy New Mexico town in the 1980’s, the movie presents a romance between a lady bodybuilder and the daughter of the local crime kingpin.  During the course of the movie, both girls have to confront the bad pasts that they’ve been trying hard to break away from, which leads them down some dark roads.  And yet all the while, there is an almost fairy tale aspect to their love affair that helps to pull them through.  The movie feels very much like a gritty and yet quirky crime thriller that would have come from the likes of the Coen Brothers in their early days, but director Rose Glass is also not afraid to take things in a surreal direction, blurring the lines with what’s real and what’s not in some very inspired hallucinatory moments.  But what helps this movie stand out is the cast.  Kristen Stewart continues to impress in her post-Twilight career as a risk-taking actress, and this film finally gives her a chance to play a queer romantic lead in a film, opposite Katy O’Biren who delivers a star making role as the bodybuilder that she falls in love with.  Ed Harris also delivers an amazing and terrifying performance as the crime family patriarch and father to Stewart’s character, standing out as one of the best cinematic villains of the year.  But it’s the twists and turns that Rose Glass takes with this story that make the whole experience truly unique and memorable.  It’s also strangely magical in the end and works in that oddball way that only an A24 movie could pull off.  The chemistry between the two leads really pulls it all together and it becomes oddly sweet by the end, even though the journey there can get strange at times.  It shows that not all the best love stories need to be rose tinted and elegant.  They can also involve a lot of bullets and blood as well.

9.

CIVIL WAR

Directed by Alex Garland

2024 was a contentious year to say the least when it came to politics in America.  Every election year is as well, but tensions this year have been especially high.  Into this tempest came a new movie from Alex Garland, a filmmaker known for making some provocative movies in the past through the lens of science fiction, and the subject for his new film was as big of a lightning rod you could build in year such as this one.  Many people tried to pick apart the movie to decide what kind of message it was going to deliver about the state of the world as it is right now, and the answer to that was, nothing.  Civil War was a very misunderstood movie that was not about the politics today, or of any era for that matter.  It uses a hypothetical scenario about a modern day Civil War breaking out in the United States as a backdrop for the narrative that Alex Garland was really interested in telling, which was about wartime journalism.  Garland depicts the daily grind of what war photographers and on the scene investigators go through in order to chronicle a war as it happens.  They are there in the thick of it, standing behind the firing lines all in the pursuit of capturing the reality of what war is like.  Sometimes they are doing it for the sake of preserving the truth, while some are doing it purely for the adrenaline rush.  But with the characters portrayed by Wagner Moura, Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny and Stephen McKinely Henderson, we witness the often unsung bravery that these individuals display in order to witness war and make sure that history is captured.  I especially like the way that Garland breaks up the mayhem of the battle scenes with the silent abruptness of a camera’s snap shot.  In these moments, we are given a window into what is behind those snapshots of war that we see printed in a newspaper or tagged onto a webpage, and it makes us consider the toll of war and the dangerous life that war journalists have.  The politics of this movie really are irrelevant, though there are slight hints about where the director stands on current events.  What matters in this movie is the affects that war has on the people in the middle of it, and the reason the movie sets it’s conflict in a modern day American setting is because we so far have not seen this kind of carnage on our own door step in a modern era, and the hope that this movie delivers is that we can hopefully avoid it again.

8.

PERFECT DAYS

Directed by Wim Wenders

Technically, this was a 2023 film that only finally got a wide release in 2024, but even still, my first viewing was in this last calendar year and it managed to stick with me all the way to the end.   This was last year’s nominee for the Oscar for International Feature from Japan, but it was directed by a legendary German director Wim Wenders in a strange confluence of cinematic forces.  The filmmaker behind classics like Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1988) applies the same grounded but poetic style to this tale about a Japanese man who cleans public toilets for a living.  There isn’t a whole lot of drama at play in this film; it merely observes the daily life of this man who takes his civil service seriously and enjoys the simple comforts of his life.  The only drama comes out of the unexpected arrival of his estranged niece, who forces her uncle out of his simple routine, though not in a way that fundamentally shifts his overall life.  It’s a profound film that speaks a lot about the simple things that make an impact in our lives, including something as simple as a game of Tic-Tac-Toe with a complete stranger you never meet.  Wenders apparently was inspired to make this movie after his visit to Tokyo where he was astonished by the variety and creative designs of the public restrooms found throughout the city, and it led him to craft this story about the kind of person who would be tasked with upkeeping these public facilities.  Honestly, you’ve never seen a movie film public toilets in such loving way and that’s part of the charm of this movie.  In addition, actor Koji Yakusho (who won the Best Actor award at Cannes in 2023 for this film) delivers a beautifully soulful performance as the caretaker Hirayama.  Wenders also fills the movie with a great soundtrack of classic rock standards, including the Lou Reed song that gives the movie it’s title.  Definitely the coziest watch of 2024 and a great life affirming piece of cinema that people will hopefully get to discover more in the years ahead.

7.

DUNE: PART TWO

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

Denis Villeneuve and Warner Brothers took a major risk when they began production on the movie Dune (2021).  Villeneuve split the famous Frank Herbert sci-fi novel into two parts, and only got Warner Brothers to greenlight the first part.  That meant that the completion of the story was contingent on the success of the first movie; which was a major departure from other franchise productions like The Lord of the Rings, which had all the films produced together.  Had Dune not succeeded, we may have been left with an awkward, unresolved half of a complete story.  To make matters worse, the first Dune had to deal with the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw it’s release delayed a year and was truncated by the dual streaming and theatrical release plan that Warner Brothers enacted under the failed Project Popcorn in 2021.  Thankfully, the movie gained enough critical and box office success to convince Warner to greenlight Part Two, so that we could finally see the complete vision of Herbert’s legendary narrative.  But, the strike made a further delay in the completion of this cinematic epic, and it was finally released in the Spring of 2024.  Thankfully, it was all worth the wait as Denis Villeneuve managed to land the plane successfully and complete the story that he had long dreamed of bringing to life on the screen.  Dune: Part Two more than lives up to the promise of it’s predecessor, and surpasses it in many ways.  It’s bolder visually, has an even grander epic heft to it, and even has moments of great emotion between it’s characters.  All the returning cast is at the top of their game, with Timothee Chalamet continuing his win streak as a movie star on the rise.  Zendaya has the most significant upgrade in her screen time in this film, and she brings a lot to the character Chani that helps to elevate her presence in the series.  But perhaps the most surprising standout is Austin Butler playing the villainous Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, one of the best cinematic villains to emerge in a big Hollywood film in a long time.  Denis also ups the ante in the scale of the film, with the iconic worm riding sequence being an especially epic experience to witness on a big screen, preferably in IMAX.  Far and away the strongest cinematic achievement from mainstream Hollywood in a year that surprising delivered very well in terms of popcorn entertainment.

6.

HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS

Directed by Mike Cheslik

There’s always that one movie that takes you by surprise every year that demands attention because it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.  This high concept comedy is one of those films, as it is a strange beast of a film.  It’s also one of the most inventive movies I have seen in quite some time.  And to make things even better, it’s gut-bustingly funny as well.  The movie has the aesthetic of a silent film, but mixed with the cartoonish antics of a Looney Tunes cartoon.  The main protagonist, an apple famer named Jean Kayak (played by a hilarious Ryland Brickson Cole Tews) seeks revenge against a pack of beavers that destroyed his apple jack brewing business, and over the course of several chaotic scenes of hijinks, he learns that the critters are more cunning than he thought.  The whole movie is a beautifully created homage to the cartoons of classic Looney Tunes, as well as to the silent classics of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, but it’s also an impressive feat of cinematic storytelling as well.  Through some clever cinematic tricks, the movie comes pretty close to feeling like a cartoon brought to life.  The funniest part is that all the animals are depicted with mascot costumes, adding to the surreal absurdity of the whole piece.  The antics are hilariously chaotic and at times also surprisingly mean-spirited as well, in a good way.  It’s also refreshing to see a comedy that uses visual gags as the primary means of making us laugh, rather than inane banter that we see most comedies today using.  We’ve kind of lost the art of visual comedy over the years, where the filmmakers use the cinematic tricks to get a laugh; something that the silent masters pioneered, but were also carried along into the latter half of the 20th century by great comedians such as Jacques Tati and Mel Brooks.  Hopefully Hundreds of Beavers is that kind of transformative comedy that inspires more filmmakers to try more inventive visual gags in the future.  Easily the year’s best comedy, and I’m already happy to see that the film is already generating a cult following.

5.

GHOSTLIGHT

Directed by Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson

This little seen film that emerged from this year’s Sundance Film Festival managed to be one of the most surprising dramas of the year, and a profound statement about the healing power of art.  The film centers around a family that is broken apart by a recent tragedy and they find surprising solace in the form of theater, after the father ends up joining a small acting troop that’s putting on a staging of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.  The film stars Chicago based theater actor Keith Kupferer in a breakthrough role as the grieving father, and the deconstruction of his rough exterior through the embrace of performance is superbly conveyed in his work here, giving his character a very grounded and vulnerable presence.  His performance is matched by the actors playing his family, who just so happen to be Keith’s real life wife and daughter, Tara Mallen and Kathrine Mallen Kupferer respectively.  This real life family of actors are all astounding, and they are complimented very well by a scene-stealing Dolly De Leon (Triangle of Sadness) as the head of the theater troop.  Their journey towards staging the play, as well as the confrontation they face with regard to their past tragedy is all delivered in this movie with a beautifully poignant sense of authenticity.  And the finale of the film is going to knock a lot of people over with it’s emotional wallop; a tearjerker in the best sense of the word.  Keith Kupferer has been playing bit parts in Chicago shot films for many years, including The Dark Knight (2008) and Road to Perdition (2002) as well as a variety of TV appearances in addition to his acclaimed stage work.  Ghostlight is his first ever lead role in a movie, and he makes the most of that opportunity.  Hopefully Hollywood takes notice and gives him more substantive roles in the future, along with this talented family.  It’s a performance that I wish more people had seen as the film sadly had a very limited release.  It left an impact on this critic, and I hope more people discover it in the years ahead.

4.

LONGLEGS

Directed by Osgood Perkins

2024 was the year where I discovered my preferred type of horror movie.  I watched more new horror movies this year than in any year prior, and the film that stood out the most showed me that I have an inclination for slow-burn, atmospheric horror.  That movie was the new film from Osgood Perkins called Longlegs.  This film is definitely not your standard, shlocky horror flick.  There is a surprising lack of gore in most of the film, and for the most part it’s also free of other horror clichés like jump scares.  What it has instead is a very methodical pace to it that starts things off quiet and foreboding, before escalating more and more through the film until it hits a crescendo at the climax.  And that’s the kind of horror that I vibe with; one that envelopes you in that sense of building dread.  It’s been described as Satanic Silence of the Lambs, and that’s a worthy comparison to make.  It has that same kind of unsettling undertone of the Oscar-winning Silence of the Lambs, but also combines it with much more of a paranormal element.  Demonic possession is a genuine thing in this movie as we come to learn, and the slow-build of that realization also helps to make it’s emergence all the more creepy.  And speaking of creepy, Nicholas Cage gives a truly terrifying performance as the titular Satan worshipping serial killer, showing us that his over the top style of acting can indeed work wonders in a role that’s tailor made for it.  Osgood Perkins comes from a strong pedigree of horror filmmaking, as his father Anthony was famous for playing Norman Bates in Psycho (1960).  This is his most successful film to date and it shows that he indeed is one of the most interesting voices in horror filmmaking right now.  Too many horror films intend to shock us rather than scare us, and Perkins has created the first film that I’ve seen in a while that’s truly scared me.  Much like great horror classics such as The Exorcist (1973), Longlegs feels like you are actually witnessing true evil on the screen, and it’s not done with any flash, but rather with a carefully constructed sense of foreboding atmosphere.  I know it’ll be horror movies like this one that I’ll be pursuing more in the future, because it’s the one that hit that sweet spot of terror in my imagination.  Hopefully, Osgood Perkins will continue to be one of those filmmakers that continues to deliver in that terrifying mode of horror cinema in the years ahead.

3.

INSIDE OUT 2

Directed by Kelsey Mann

This past year also marked a triumphant return of one of the vanguard names in animation.  Pixar Animation has had one of the roughest rides of the decade so far, suffering a sudden halt to the release of their film Onward (2020) in the early days of the pandemic, and then having their parent studio Disney use them as a guinea pig in the early years of the streaming wars, with movies like Soul (2020), Luca (2021) and Turning Red (2022) all being denied theatrical runs and being dumped onto Disney+ instead, all the while the other animated films from the studio got to play in theaters.  This was a sad mistreatment of an animation brand that had once been the envy of all of Hollywood.  Now Pixar had to claw back their way to the top, and it didn’t help that movies like Lightyear (2022) and Elemental (2023) underperformed.  It should be understood, Pixar was still making great movies, but they were being denied the chance to prove themselves again in a post-pandemic market.  Thankfully, a savior came in the form of a sequel to one of their most beloved films.  Inside Out 2 not only reversed the fortunes of Pixar Animation, it broke every possible record there is for an animated film.  Grossing over $1.6 billion worldwide, the movie was the undisputed champ of the 2024 box office, and proof once again that Pixar is a force to be reckoned with.  And it deserves it too, as Inside Out 2 not only matches it’s beloved predecessor, but even surpasses it in many ways.  One of the best improvements with this film is that it makes the character of Riley, the girl whose mind is the home of the emotions that are the stars of the movie, a much more rounded character.  You really feel her agency a lot more in this film, and she becomes more relatable as she goes through her awkward puberty phase.  The returning emotion characters are all great and given even more weight in this story, but the newer emotions are just as interesting too.  The character of Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke) may be the best new addition to this movie, as she becomes a truly chaotic new force that raises the stakes in this story.  It’s easy to see why this movie was such a box office juggernaut, because it helped remind everyone what we love about Pixar movies in the first place; their commitment to emotional story-telling and visual innovation.  It’s profound in all the right moments, while also being immensely funny along the way.  And Disney definitely owes Pixar an apology for underestimating their value as a key part of their company.

2.

ANORA

Directed by Sean Baker

Sean Baker has been a filmmaker to watch over the last decade, and he’s been a re-occurring presence on my top ten lists ever since 2017’s The Florida Project.  This year, he released what may be his most assertive film yet with Anora.  It’s definitely the one that has gotten the industry’s notice the most of all his movies, as he became the first American filmmaker to win the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in over a decade; the last being Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life (2011).  Since then, the movie has been building up a lot of awards season buzz, and it’s very much deserved.  Sean Baker definitely is a filmmaker with a distinct style and interest, focusing on people who live just on the fringe of the American dream (such as the outskirts of Hollywood in 2015’s Tangerine and outside of Disney World in The Florida Project) in a neo-realistic mode of storytelling.  Anora certainly has those elements too, but Baker also delivers here with a more polished, assured production.  Filming with 35 mm stock rather than his usual digital cam or 16 mm graininess, he manages to create a vibrant looking film that still retains the neo-realist character of his earlier films.  At it’s center is a breakout performance from Mikey Madison in a star-making role as a New York stripper who falls madly in love with the wrong boy, and quickly get entangled in his dangerous world of oligarchs and criminals, though they have their hands full trying to control her too.  Its a performance that will almost certainly earn her a well deserved Oscar nomination.  Her performance as the title character is a force of nature, and she continues the same tradition of compelling, flawed characters that are always at the center of Baker’s movies.  It’s also impressive how well Baker manages shifting tones in this movie, as the film evolves from a quirky romantic dramedy in it’s early moments to full on farce in the second act to a somewhat melancholy and tragic denouement in it’s final scene.  Sean Baker is a director who maintains a signature style, but is also showing a lot of growth as a storyteller and filmmaker as he takes on more complex stories.  Anora is his most profound cinematic statement yet, and it’s easy to see why so many people (including myself) see it as one of the best cinematic achievements of the year.  It will be interesting to see if the Academy agrees as well.

And my choice for the best movie of 2024 is…

1.

THE BRUTALIST

Directed by Brady Corbet

This year was a year of bold statements on the big screen.  Some were big swings and misses (like Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis) but in some cases, there were a few attempts at bold filmmaking that actually connected this year.  And no other movie in 2024 managed to wow me personally as a filmgoer than this new epic from director Brady Corbet.  Watching this movie was like witnessing the birth of a new American cinema classic.  This is the kind of movie that I feel is going to be discussed in film studies for many years to come.  And even more remarkable, Brady Corbet was able to make this three and a half hour epic, complete with an overture and intermission, on a $10 million budget.  Hollywood should honestly take note of this movie and what it accomplishes, as Corbet was able to make a $10 million movie look like it cost around $100 million.  The movie reminded me a lot about another film that also topped my list the year it came out, which was Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007).  Like that movie, Corbet is able to create a profound, intimate portrait about the human experience, in this case an immigrant architect schooled in the titular style of architecture, and have it become this profound statement about the American experience and all of it’s unseen flaws.  Adrian Brody gives a remarkable performance as Laszlo Toth, the architect at the heart of the film, delivering his best work in years.  He’s also matched by a scene stealing Guy Pearce as the heartless industrialist who funds Laszlo’s vision while also taking increasing possessive control over his life.  And like all the best 3 hour plus epic movies, it’s run time breezes by because Corbet has such a strong command of the narrative that you never feel it lag once.  By the time the intermission started, I was shocked by how quickly 100 minutes had already gone by.  It’s enormously impressive how Brady Corbet can craft a movie that features very economical film tricks (shooting in places in present day Hungary that look like 1950’s Philadelphia so they don’t have to build new sets, for example) and make it feel grandiose in a way that films like The Godfather has been seen over the years.  It’s the kind of movie that Hollywood used to make before getting cold feet after the failure of Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.  The movie even stays true to the architectural style it celebrates, with the music and even the style of the opening and closing credits feeling in character.  It’s the most impressive film that I saw all year and hopefully it becomes a blueprint for a more economical way of making epic movies in the future.

So, with my Top Ten Movies out of the way, it’s time to briefly go over the Bottom Five movies that I saw this year.  Keep in mind, I technically like to avoid bad movies when I can; I chose to not watch Part Two of Zack Snyder’s awful Rebel Moon for example, after having to sit through Part One in 2023.  Given the breadth of so many movies that I saw this year, it was still unavoidable watching a few of them.  So, here are my picks for the Five Worst Movies of 2024:

5. JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX –  Consider this the year’s most disappointing film.  It was kind of stunning to see the drop off this movie faced after the enormous success of it’s predecessor. The first Joker movie made over $1 billion worldwide and got it’s star Joaquin Phoenix and Oscar win for Best Actor.  All the same people returned to make this sequel, including Phoenix and director Todd Phillips, and they were also adding Lady Gaga to the mix.  But, nothing worked.  Making it a musical was not a bad, outside-the-box idea, but the execution was severely lacking.  It doesn’t have anything profound to say about comic book movies, the glorification of violence in society, or much of anything else.  It’s just a string of prison and courtroom movie clichés mixed in with musical numbers.  By the end, the movie even provides you with the final insult that (spoiler) the Joker in this movie isn’t even the Joker that will eventually face off against the Batman.  It’s one of the biggest squandering of cinematic potential that we’ve seen from Hollywood in a while, and is only saved from the bottom of this list by having just a little bit of quality craftmanship in it’s production design, but not much else to save it.

4.  DRIVE AWAY DOLLS – This road comedy about two lesbians in trouble with the mob may be more easily dismissed if it wasn’t for the fact that this was made by one of the Coen brothers.  This movie marks the solo directorial debut of Ethan Coen, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, editor Tricia Cooke, and it’s very clear that he is not well adept at making movies on his own without his brother Joel, whose own solo effort The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) was a much better film.  The screenplay is a painful exercise in plot and dialogue, clearly showing a middle aged man trying to approximate the lingo of a younger generation, and failing.  It’s also a horrible waste of good talented actors, with Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, and Matt Damon all delivering some of the worst performances of their careers.  Hopefully it doesn’t take long for Joel and Ethan Coen to reunite and start making films as a team again, because they are clearly not cutting it solo; or at least Ethan isn’t.

3. ARGYLLE – There was a time when Matthew Vaughn could do no wrong as an action filmmaker.  From Layer Cake (2004), to Kick-Ass (2010) to Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015), he was setting himself up as one of the most inventive and entertaining action filmmakers in the business.  And then something happened that changed all that.  The Kingsman sequels that followed were nowhere near as entertaining as the first film, and things have only gotten worse with this year’s Argylle.  This should have been a strong return to form for Vaughn, taking his favorite cinematic formula of using actors not known for action roles and turning them into iconic action characters in his movies, which he was trying to do with Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell.  But neither actor had quite the same transformative performance like the one we saw from Colin Firth in Kingsman.  Instead, their performances are drowned out by a terribly overblown CGI extravaganza that never manages to connect with it’s audience.  All of the action scenes feel hollow and the comedy is stale and lifeless.  Matthew Vaughn is at that point where he should really re-consider his choice in film, because this kind of Kingsman style of quirky, violent action just isn’t cutting it anymore.

2. BORDERLANDS – Undeniably one of the laziest attempts at launching a movie franchise that I’ve seen in while.  Based on the popular video game series, this film fundamentally fails on nearly every level.  Directed by a mismatched Eli Roth, the movie feels like a poor man’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and features none of the same wit or creativity.  It’s characters are irredeemable jerks that never have that spark that allows for their edginess to be endearing.  Really talented actors, including Oscar-winners Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis, just look lost amid all the mayhem.  The film is also aesthetically ugly to look at, washed out in browns and neons that try to emulate the look of the video games, but come across as pale imitation.  At a time when video games are starting to gain some respectability in Hollywood as potential franchises worth investing in, such as with Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog, Borderlands reminds us that it is often better to leave some video games off of the big screen.

And the Worst Movie of 2024 is…

1. MADAME WEB – Thank god the Sony Spider-verse is being put out of it’s misery, because this was an especially bad year for them.  It’s bad when you can say the only highlight for them this year was the Tom Hardy starring threequel Venom: The Last Dance, and even that was a lackluster movie.  Kraven The Hunter even closed the year out with a whimper by being one of the biggest box office bombs of the year, nearly wiped out of the cineplexes in just three weeks.  But no movie demonstrated the folly of Sony’s failed attempt to build a cinematic universe around obscure characters loosely tied to Spider-Man than the movie Madame Web. This film starring Dakota Johnson as the titular character was the hardest movie sit through that I’ve had since Dear Evan Hansen (2021).  It was astoundingly bad on every level, and it nearly made me want to walk out of the theater.  It gets everything wrong; the comic book lore, the dialogue, the performances, everything.  There was no question that this movie would be my choice for worst film of the year, and it held that distinction from as early as February all the way to the end of the year.  Thankfully, it looks like Sony is putting this Spider-verse thing to rest, at least with live action as their animated films still are performing strong, and are getting ready to relinquish the full Spider-Man stable back into the creative control of Marvel themselves.  Madame Web was an astounding failure that may end up being one of the worst movies of the decade, and I hope it doesn’t get any worse than this in the years ahead.

So there you have my picks for the Best and Worst Movies of 2024.  It was an interesting year to say the least.  The big winners I would say were the indie film studios, particularly Neon and A24.  They accounted for half of the movies on my Top Ten alone (Love Lies Bleeding, Civil War, and The Brutalist for A24 and Longlegs and Anora for Neon).  It wouldn’t surprise me if these two independent labels will also be the top competitors during this upcoming awards season as well.  It wasn’t just Indie producers that had a great year either.  Disney had a spectacular year that helped to lessen the blow of the box office woes they faced in 2023, and it was led by the financial and critical triumph that was Pixar’s Inside Out 2.  Warner Brothers had a mixed year with box office bombs like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Joker: Folie a Deux being mixed in with the successes of Dune: Part Two and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.  Universal may have also found their new big franchise with the immensely successful Wicked, which may also help revive the box office potential of Broadway show adaptations in Hollywood.  The hope is that 2025 will continue to deliver on the good progress that was made in the last year.  I’m interested to see what kind of effect a movie like The Brutalist will have on Hollywood.  It’s been an industry that has been plagued with a problem of bloat, with movies costly far more to produce now than they have in any era before, and that’s leading to a reduction in what kinds of movies get produced, which in turn leads to an overall reduced number of films at the box office.  I hope The Brutalist and Anora become the dominant Awards season favorites, and that they help convince Hollywood that movies can feel grand and important again without breaking the bank to make them.  There’s a lot of lessons to learn still, and hopefully we see this kind of trend bear fruit in Hollywood in the years ahead.  So, let’s hope 2025 is another stellar year for the movies and the movie going experience.