TheVictoriousV_Listicle_Blurbs

While I'm not quite as ecstatic about Poor Things as when I first saw it, this is still unimpeachably excellent and, provided it premiered in 2024 for you as it did for me, easily the best Lanthimos film of the year.

Is it the best of his entire catalog? I suppose it depends on what you're looking for. It doesn't have quite the uncanny vibe of his The Lobster or The Killing of a Sacred Deer (for that, you want Kinds of Kindness, the other Lanthimos title of the year), but in terms of production design, camera work (the swirly-bokeh shots in this are absolutely dazzling), and just art direction in general, it's fair to say that it's Lanthimos' finest, if not one of the best movies ever made.

The movie explores all kinds of facets of society -- through a sort of steampunk Fantasy prism -- and while I understand criticisms that it has a shallow view on a lot of things, this makes sense for the story, in which a woman with the brain of a child (namely her own fetus' brain, inserted into her head by a mad scientist) is exposed to the dark truths of reality; inundated with all sorts of ideas that she does not know how to make sense of. As you can tell (in case you've somehow missed this film), it is also quite the original story, Frankenstein homages notwithstanding.

No matter how you feel about its themes -- or that big question of whether it has actually "earned" being called feminist -- it is impossible to deny its performances. Yes, Gladstone deserved the Oscar and yes, I liked Emma Stone's performance in The Curse just a tad more, but her performance as Bella Baxter (the precision of its expressions, body language, inflections, et al.) still deserves to be studied in acting classes for years to come. I do hope she and Lanthimos keep cooking together.

A sort of coming-of-age "analog horror" film, I Saw the TV Glow has bolstered Jane Schoenbrun as one of the finest filmmakers of the new generation; one who represents a whole new cinematic movement of hitherto suppressed voices. (I've seen people mention this movie alongside Vera Drew's The People's Joker -- which, in spite of highly different tones, makes sense.)

While there are issues with its pacing, it cannot be overstated what this one will (very likely) mean for film history; how it captures something essential to not only the transgender experience but to the anxieties of the Millennial condition (using motifs from one of reclusive Millennials' favorite pastimes, Creepypastas, to do so) and the escapism we seek in nostalgia -- and also, sometimes, ARG theorizing about the things we grew up with. People have avoided the film out of fear of not relating to its LGBTQ allegory, but this is, ultimately, a movie about self-discovery; of releasing your true self in spite of the boxes that the rest of the world wishes to put you in. Surely we all fathom this experience?

While it didn't wind up being my favorite horror movie of the year, it still contains some singularly terrifying moments that I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

From a simple glance, you would never guess that Hundreds of Beavers is one of the best comedies of the entire decade -- and I don't mean solely in the sense that it made me laugh as hard as it did. Here is an unbridled live-action cartoon of a film that gives us (A) honestly pretty rigorous world-building that suggests a certain logic to its wacky setting -- and how its cartoon rules operate, e.g what happens when one whistles too close to a woodpecker -- and (B) some of the highest-level filmmaking effort we've ever seen from a next-to-no-budget production.

I mean it, folks! This is, however cheap and "fake" it may look, as far from a lazy production as can be; from the storyboarding level to the execution, this is about as masterful as slapstick comedy gets, both in terms of the creativity of the setpieces and the structure/rhythm of the gags.

It feels like Chaplin as mixed with Looney Tunes (at their best and most violent) and old video games, yet it's one of the most sincerely original movies to be made in many years. The moment it starts to feel somewhat repetitive and possibly too long, it treats us to a new series of clever visual gags and/or a fun addition to the story, like when our hero, fur trapper Jean Kayak, kills a few too many animals, and beaver versions of Holmes and Watson begin to investigate.

This is, in short, a fantastic film. Please watch it, and realize that if you only pay attention to the biggest, most expensive -- and expensively advertised -- movies of the year, this is the gold that remains unfound.