Welcome to my second annual winter review round-up. In the preamble to last year’s round-up, I wrote that I was trying out the format as a way to mitigate not publishing much because the events of 2023 had me in an acute state of agita and melancholy. Spoiler alert: the events of 2024 didn’t exactly help to improve my precarious mental and emotional stability.
While I simply couldn’t get it together enough to publish regularly in the waning months of last year, I nevertheless feasted on the glut of end-of-year titles. I played catch-up as much as I could in preparation for contributing nominations and final votes for awards as a member of two critics organizations.
Presented below are capsule reviews of a slew of titles I saw in my end-of-year scramble to see as much as possible before voting and preparing my top ten titles of the year. (Flying Spaghetti Monster willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll publish that best-of 2024 list next week.) These capsule reviews are arranged in the order in which I saw the movies, over the course of a month or so. Without further ado, let’s get to the round-up:
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In The Power of the Dog, New Zealand director Jane Campion has crafted a searing examination of masculinity and the societal expectations that come along with that word, all set against a stunning western landscape. When, in voiceover narration, a character asks in the opening seconds of the film, “For what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her,” he’s asking the central question of the film. What kind of men does our society produce, and why?
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Hidden Figures is a great example of a fascinating story told in an uninspired way. The title of the film hints at how important the true-life subject matter is. It tells the tale of people who made critical contributions to the success of a defining moment in human history, but who went unrecognized because of their second-class status. They are finally getting the credit they deserve, but it’s a shame that the style doesn’t do the content justice. The movie indulges in every biopic cliché imaginable. The way it handles race issues of the early 1960s is similarly flawed. Missing are the nuanced shades of gray that made a movie like Selma so rich. Instead, Hidden Figures focuses on easy crowd pleasing moments that are cathartic, to be sure, but that lack the subtle nuance that would make them emotionally complex and satisfying. It’s A Beautiful Mind meets The Help, with all the problems of both.
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Midnight Special is many things. It’s a moody science fiction throw back in the vein of E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s an intense on-the-run movie which takes place over the space of a few frantic days. It shows the destructive force of religious cults, and the extreme measures true believers will go to in the name of their convictions. Ultimately, Midnight Special is a tightly wound tale of a father and mother who will do anything for their child, who is at the heart of it all.
Director Jeff Nichols’ first two films, Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, are both meditations on American families in the process of breaking down. In the former, years of uneasy pressure between two sets of half-brothers in Arkansas come to a boil when the patriarch of the two clans suddenly dies. The latter examines a man in Ohio whose family must face the consequences of his slow descent into mental illness. So it’s no surprise that family is at the core of Nichols’ fourth and latest film, as well.
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