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Top Ten TV Shows of 2024

This year in television was another one for the books – and a strong argument that the small screen is still putting up a fight against the big screen for ultimate supremacy. This year featured a buffet of brilliant storytelling, ambitious experiments, and, yes, some deeply unhinged guilty pleasures. From prestige dramas to reality trainwrecks, TV in 2024 proved there was something for everyone and then some. As the era of the monoculture died down, there were still some shows that broke through across watching lines. My watchlist looked like a collision of highbrow and lowbrow chaos, and honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Read More

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Top Ten Films of 2024

2024 was a complicated year for film. The aftershocks of the industry strikes were deeply felt, shifting countless productions and leaving gaps in the release calendar, just as the rise of concerns over things like A.I. really took hold. It felt like a transition year in many places. A marker between past and future with the present was anything but certain. The MCU, for instance, released only one film whereas the SSU dropped three, before dropping dead entirely. Yet, even amidst industry turbulence, a number of nothing short of remarkable films emerged—entries that will no doubt remain in rotation on the queue for years to come. It was a year of resilience and creativity, with filmmakers continuing to push boundaries, challenge conventions, and deliver unforgettable stories on the silver screen, despite the myriad challenges to the art form. Read More

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‘THE BRUTALIST’ An Intellectually Stimulating Work of Art With a Masterful Adrien Brody Turn

When Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce) meets László Tóth (Adrien Brody), he remarks—almost accusingly—that their conversation is “intellectually stimulating.” Tóth, an accomplished architect forced to flee his home country after the horrors of WWII, reflects that his love for architecture boils down to the simplicity of its form: nothing but architecture, he asserts, can be better seen than described. A cube can only be understood when it is witnessed. Van Buren’s comment seems complimentary, yet an undercurrent of foreboding and judgment tinges what could be mistaken for flattery. Perhaps it’s that this self-made American millionaire finds himself taken aback by the poetic musings of a Hungarian Brutalist architect, his sympathies and biases toward post-war Europe swirling into a hazy stew of pity and otherness. To glimpse genius in the battered face of an immigrant startles Van Buren, who is, at his core, an opportunist with a taste for fine art but a habit of sponsoring little beyond his own vanity. Read More

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Noodling Bob Dylan Biopic ‘A COMPLETE UNKNOWN’ Riffs On the Myth of the Unknowable Artist

I’ve never seen Bob Dylan live. In theory, I would love to, but I’ve been convinced that the artist whose music was such a beacon of personal resistance and revolution for me in my college years isn’t what he once was. As if by design, he deprives his audiences of the freewheeling early breakouts that largely define his career, favoring newer material—predominantly smoky R&B tracks with even smokier vocals. And yet, Bob Dylan, as presented in James Mangold’s smartly constructed and slippery biopic A Complete Unknown, has always, almost instinctually, rebelled against our expectations of him, bristling at the idea that his value as an artist is tied to his willingness to embrace any outmoded form of who he is. The Bob Dylan of today and the Bob Dylan of yesterday may be in conversation with one another, but the living continuum is not a hostage of the past. He doesn’t seek to be known, but he wants to be understood, especially for who he is in the here and now. Read More

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‘NOSFERATU’: Eggers Delivers an Instant Horror Classic That Seduces, Haunts

Evil is the plague of desire, heartache etched across time and space, in Robert Egger’s immaculately constructed gothic horror, Nosferatu. A remake that leans on this classical haunt’s impressionistic terrors as much as it engages in a century-long conversation with the story itself, mining the treasured material for new macabre corners to exploit and desecrate, Nosferatu is an artisanal implosion of Egger’s unholy but exacting storytelling sensibilities. The craft is front and center in Egger’s frigidly cold, knottily twisted reimagining of this vampiric tragedy: Jarin Blaschke’s moonlit, candle-flickering cinematography lures you into the shadows; Craig Lathrop’s meticulously haunted set designs create a tension between the living and the dead, the opulent and the otherworldly; and composer Robin Carolan’s deliciously unnerving score binds the film’s horrors into a single unholy hymn, deepening the dread that Egger’s impeccable craft brings to life. What prevails is a singular vision of demented yearning and moral corruption where you don’t dare look away from the screen for an instant—for fear of being seduced by Nosferatu’s spell—or perhaps because you already have been. Read More

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‘ANORA’ A Blistering Anti-Romance That Only Sean Baker Could Make

An up-and-coming twenty-something adult film star, a scorned Black transgender hooker, a down-on-her-luck Florida mom turning tricks, a well-endowed, washed-up male porn star, a Brooklyn stripper and sex worker—these are the protagonists of Sean Baker’s filmography, brought vividly to life in his uncompromising, deeply empathetic movies. To say he has a type is to state the obvious: the man likes to make movies about people whose work, in one form or another, is sex. And yet his subjects are all so different, so grounded in harsh realities, so uniquely broken, that to lump them together under their professions is perhaps to miss his distinctly humanist approach to storytelling. Through the lens of sex work, Baker crafts stories that reflect modern-day America in all its myriad challenges, where the boot of capitalism presses heavily upon underrepresented, working-class people like Jane (Starlet), Sin-Dee (Tangerine), Halley (The Florida Project), Mikey (Red Rocket), and Anora (Anora), each of whom struggles to find their American Dream in tragic, funny, jaded, and heartbreaking ways. Read More

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Singsong Sequel ‘JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX’ Is Provocative Anti-Entertainment

If you’re like me, when you first heard the title of Todd Phillips’ follow-up to his controversial 2019 smash hit Joker, you probably Googled “folie à deux.” It refers to a kind of shared insanity experienced by those closely connected. Pretentious? Absolutely—doubly so for a Joker sequel—but it promised more than just your standard superhero/villain fare. Especially when we learned the film would be a love story between Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck/Joker and a new take on Harley Quinn, played by none other than Lady Gaga. Then came the kicker: it’s a “jukebox musical.” Doubts redoubled. Much like the first film sparked a million think pieces, fan adoration, cultural backlash, and Oscar plaudits, Joker: Folie à Deux is sure to rile up the masses—but this time for a very different reason. It’s an aggressive form of provocative anti-entertainment. Read More

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Demi Moore is Breathtaking in Body Horror Triumph ‘THE SUBSTANCE’

Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is staring down the barrel of her 50th birthday, and her Hollywood star has more than a few cracks—both literal and metaphorical. To make matters worse, the once-popular aerobics queen just overheard her sleazy, keyed-up boss (played with pure snake oil charm by Dennis Quaid) plotting her replacement. The network wants someone younger, fresher, tighter in spandex. Enter a shadowy black-market pharma company with a miracle drug, the titular Substance, promising to rewind crucial time on Elizabeth’s biological clock. The promise is…misleading. As she drinks down the sketchy elixir of youth, she doesn’t just regain her youthful glow—she begins to lose herself, piece by horrifying piece, to the younger version she thought she so badly wanted. Read More

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Zoë Kravitz’s Electrifying ‘BLINK TWICE’ Delivers Deadly Thrills

Tech billionaire Slater King (Channing Tatum) is in the midst of a rebrand. A year after an undisclosed incident sparked a public apology tour, he’s turned over a new leaf, diving into philanthropic efforts while secluding himself on a mysterious remote island. His claims of reform are complicated by rumors of debauchery—all-night parties, sketchy associates, an on-hand pharmacy of designer drugs. This does little to deter the eager Frida (Naomi Ackie), a jejune cocktail waitress working the gala his company KingTech is hosting. Frida may still be figuring things out, but one thing is certain—brushing shoulders with Slater, if only for the night, would be a memory worth making. Read More

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‘KINDS OF KINDNESS’ A Freaky Foray Into Yorgos’ Hilarious Depravity 

A trio of demented fables make up Yorgos Lanthimos’ most recent film, Kinds of Kindness. An anthological miasma of the bizarre and misanthropic, Yorgos returns to his biting roots as a somewhat impenetrable provocateur, escaping easy explanation at every turn, armed with a razor sharp sense of satirical humor. Featuring an outstanding ensemble cast that cycles through various characters throughout the film’s distinct – and mostly unconnected – three short, Kinds of Kindess filters the filmmaker’s most esoteric curiosities through an almost Black Mirror filter, making for a collection of works that are strong and striking on there own merit but add up to something entirely captivating when taken as a whole. Read More