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The following article is an excerpt from the new edition of “In Review by David Ehrlich,” a biweekly newsletter in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the site’s latest reviews and muses about current events in the movie world. Subscribe here to receive the newsletter in your inbox every other Friday.
Well, 2024 is coming to an end, and what a year it’s been. So many things happened! Most of them were very, very bad — like “Madame Web.” But some of them were also kind of incredible and worth cherishing on their own magical terms — like “Madame Web.”
For 2024’s final edition of “In Review,” I thought that it could be a refreshing change of pace to focus on the latter category of things and highlight some of the random movie things that made me happy this year. The “Reggie” sequence in “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” The relatively widespread return of split-diopter shots (“Trap” is great, but check out the choice in “Good One!”). Alessandro Nivola being as Oscar-worthy in “Kraven the Hunter” as he is in “The Brutalist.” Watching the last 20 minutes of “The Substance” with a packed audience of people who didn’t know what they were about to experience. Things of that nature.
Did I choose a smart and illuminating variety of things to highlight on the list you’ll find below? I did not. It turns out that my brain is completely fried and I’m just running on fumes until the new year and/or forever. But anyone who subscribes to this newsletter already knows that.
Anyway, here are 16 positive thoughts that popped into my head during the window of time I gave myself to write this. Most of them bode well for the future, and give me hope that 2025 will be even better than 2024, so long as you spend every waking minute of it inside of a movie theater with absolutely no connection to the outside world. I look forward to seeing you there. Let’s get into it.
1. “The First Omen” Resurrected Artistry in Studio Horror Movies
Horror has been on the upswing for a while now, but indies have largely been leading the way while Hollywood has churned out an endless stream of empty jump-scare machines that contained all the creative value of getting a reflex test from the doctor at your annual physical. I never suspected “The First Omen” would be the film to push against that, as everything about its existence — it’s a prequel to an origin story! — suggested a straight-to-streaming wank that somehow got lost on its way to Hulu.
Not so much. Set in Rome circa 1971, Arkasha Stevenson’s feature debut bleeds craft, grace, and go-for-broke vision from the moment it starts, serving up several of the year’s most striking images on its way to a finale that rescues a well-earned mote of hope from a hellish future of screaming jackals. Parker Finn’s “Smile 2” would later serve up some promising flair of its own, but it was “The First Omen” that left me most optimistic about studio horror’s ability to keep pace with the real world nightmares that await us over the next four years.
2. “A Time of Quiet Between Storms”
I haven’t been the biggest fan of Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies, a fact the director appears to have taken in stride (as opposed to his online partisans, who… have not done that). But the level of craft in all of his work continues to be undeniable, and that extends to some of the best work that Hans Zimmer has done this side of “Interstellar.” Zimmer’s score for “Dune: Part Two” obviously iterates on a lot of the pieces he wrote for the previous film, but the mournful, bone-stirring “A Time of Quiet Between Storms” — a synth requiem that swells to the size of the sand worms themselves — was the one new addition that gave this sequel a soul of its own. Whenever I listen to it, I can almost understand why these movies have resonated with so many people. Almost.
3. The “About a Boy” Reunion in “Juror #2”
For whatever reason, Chris and Paul Weitz’s “About a Boy” has always held a special place in my heart — a comfort movie that’s been made even sweeter by watching Nicholas Hoult grow into a full-blown star while I’ve remained exactly the same height I was in 2002. Be that as it may, I hadn’t really spent the last 22 years clamoring for him to reunite with his “About a Boy” mom Toni Collette, if only because I was a little busy doing other things during that time (like clamoring for Nicholas Hoult to reunite with his “The Weather Man” mom Hope Davis).
But the moment I saw them together on screen in “Juror #2” it was like the existential crisis I never knew I’ve always wanted, and the fact that they’re effectively playing adversaries in Clint Eastwood’s courtroom thriller somehow only made it seem all the more profound that these two actors had found their way back together after all those years. Here’s hoping for another reunion in 2046.
4. David Zaslav Took L #200
On a related note, “Juror #2” turned out to be one of the year’s best films, and its phenomenal success on VOD — coupled with its terrific box office performance in the international territories where it enjoyed a proper release — suggested that the MAX-ification of Warner Bros. may not be serving anyone’s best interests. Our very first clue.
5. The Stowaway to Nowhere
“The Stowaway to Nowhere” How do you follow-up one of the most legendary action movies of all time? If you’re George Miller, you make an operatic prequel that deepens its predecessor in every way while condensing the vehicular carnage that defined it into a single, 11-minute speedrun so intricate and satisfying it makes “Fury Road” feel like a warm-up lap. They fly now? They fly now.
6. “Megalopolis” Spoke to the Audience
Why did I become a film critic? It wasn’t for the money, or the sex, or even the profound respect my profession inspires from filmmakers and audiences alike. It was simply because no other job guaranteed that I could see movies as they were meant to be seen: without a cell phone in sight, and before film critics had the chance to set certain expectations for them (honestly, those people are a pox on society).
Sometimes, that means trekking over to the Sony building in order to be sacrificed to the pagan blood gods responsible for “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” Other times, that means being at the first-ever press screening of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” where rumors of the film’s interactive component did nothing to prepare the audience for the moment when a man stepped onto the stage of the Cineum IMAX in a Cannes strip mall and began talking to Adam Driver’s giant head.
Every journalist in that room suddenly jolted to attention, and the entire film world along with them; like the use of “separation” 3D in Godard’s “Goodbye to Language,” it was the kind of gimmick that reminded the most jaded movie-goers on the planet that cinema is still in its infancy, and more than capable of taking us by surprise. A fact that Coppola would illustrate all over again just a few minutes later when Jon Voight successfully murdered someone with a crossbow by pretending that it was his dick.
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