Thursday, January 02, 2025

The Movies of 2024

 If I have a New Year's resolution this year, it's to watch more New-to-Me stuff.  I watch too much stuff over and over.  Maybe it's anxiety.   Maybe it's not having the attention span to watch new stuff, all the time, especially in the busy parts of our year.

I watched some new stuff.  Shyam doesn't seem to mind when I take myself to a movie somewhere in the middle of the week.  I try to hit out local theater, a little family-owned indie called Athens Movie Palace, as often as I can.  I also hit a good number of new things with her, and with my nephew, who wanted to see a couple things this year that I probably wouldn't have gone to see on my own.

A few that I really liked from this past year:

The Thicket

I was glad to catch this one on the Big Screen.  An adaptation of the novel by Joe R. Lansdale, it's a bleak, beautifully shot western buzzsaw of a movie.  A pet project of Peter Dinklage, who stars, it's one of the better meetings of actor and material that I've run across in a while.  He seems tailor made for Lansdale, whose sensibilities are as much Flannery O'Connor's and H.P. Lovecraft's as they are Louis L'Amour or Zane Grey.  The real treat in this flick, though, was Juliette Lewis, as Cut Throat Bill.  She chews and grimaces through her lines, and seems more the daughter of Geoffrey in this flick than any other.  A villain, through and through, she manages to wring out more sympathy for the devil than in Lansdale's source material.  She's great, and it's a performance that deserves award attention, but probably won't get any.

Saturday Night

I liked this one a lot more than most.  There are performances I loved.  Lamorne Morris is great as Garrett Morris--probably my favorite performance of the year.  And it had me convinced that I'd missed a familial relationship (they're not related).  Cory Michael Smith offers a smarmy and surprisingly human Chevy Chase, who manages to turn from heel to babyface in the middle of an excoriation from JK Simmons' Milton Berle (also excellent).  

It's flawed.  But I liked the frenetic energy looking to channel Aaron Sorkin and Robert Altman at the same time.  It's not entirely accurate, and a liberty taken in an ice skating conversation with Belushi and Gilda Radner was a little hammy handed,  And yeah...that Jim Henson portrayal was certainly a choice.

But I liked this one.

Civil War

Another one that I think I liked more than most people.  And maybe I liked it because it pissed off the couple in MAGA hats who watched the flick in the same theater as me.

I dunno.  I think it speaks to the weird "Alpha Male" energy that gravitates to MAGA.  I think this movie is a sad, cautionary tale.  And to that weird segment of American society that thinks they'd welcome a Civil War....you really need to be careful what you wish for.  The side effects end up being more of a problem than what you perceived as the issue before.....

I Saw the TV Glow

Justice Smith just seems to understand his assignments.  I enjoy watching him work.

Cuckoo

I just liked how this one felt.  Nice 70's throwback vibe.  I enjoyed this one more than I thought......

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