A great deal about Better Man—Michael Gracey’s biopic of English pop star Robbie Williams—astonishes. Not always in a good way, but it’s tough not to admire a big swing.
Williams narrates his own story, and though that’s his voice—cracking wise, soliloquizing and dropping profanities in equal measure—that’s not his face. The musician, whose tale is told from grade school to present day, appears onscreen as a chimpanzee. He’s a biped who dresses the part; CGI built on the work of Williams, Jonno Davies, Carter J. Murphy, and Asmara Feik as well as a host of dancer stand-ins for each age range. But from the opening voice over to “the end,” the only time you see Robbie Williams is in historical snapshots over closing credits.
Why? A metaphor, that Williams is everybody’s monkey but not his own man? Or a gimmick to draw attention away from the otherwise standard biopic beats that make up the film?
A bit of both.
At issue is that Williams’s biographical information so closely resembles, well, every other famous person’s? That can’t be correct, but it certainly reminds one of (if movies are ever to be trusted) Elton John’s, Johnny Cash’s, Amy Winehouse’s, Dewey Cox’s: problematic father figure whose love is conditional, drug and alcohol abuse, a loved one taken for granted until it’s too late, undiagnosed depression, questionable romantic choices.
Gracey distracts from formula with a CGI primate, although he might have been just as successful relying on his own impressive instincts for staging a musical number. The longtime music video veteran, whose The Greatest Showmanremains inexplicably popular, wows with inspired choreography/editing/CGI work in song after song.
Strong support work from Alison Steadman, Steve Pemberton, Kate Mulvaney, Damon Herriman and Raechelle Banno keep the film feeling human. Indeed, Better Man is at times deeply touching.
But it’s long. And it feels every second of that two hours and fifteen minutes. Much of the film could easily have been pruned. There’s no doubt Williams, in his depression and drugged out stupor, did betray each one of the people we spend screentime with, but we didn’t need to see all of them. It was an indulgence by way of apology, admirable but cinematically tedious.
Still, the climax is a heartbreaking, exceptionally cinematic moment: schmaltzy, earned, boisterous and moving. Does it go on one moment too far? Yes, it does. But it was great while it lasted.
Birdeater gets off to a slow but promising start. Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and Irene (Shabana Azeez) have an unusual relationship. To give more details than that would be to eliminate some of the film’s surprise, so I won’t. Co-writers/co-directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir have a plan for unveiling information as it is most provocative, and I’ll leave it to them to provoke you.
Irene is anxious about the couple’s upcoming wedding. Louis is anxious about Irene’s anxiety about the wedding. So, he invites her along on his “box party” — the Australian term for bachelor party.
What follows is an unrelentingly awkward, fairly twisted tale of sexual politics, blow up dolls, drunkenness, ketamine, big cat tranquilizers, bonfires, and the nature of consent.
It seems important to point out the Wake in Fright movie poster hanging in best man Dylan’s (Ben Hunter) apartment. Like Ted Kotcheff’s unhinged 1971 Outback classic, Birdeater seeks to upset you as it digs into Australian ideas of masculinity. On the whole, it succeeds in that aim—not to the scarring degree of Wake in Fright, but success nonetheless.
Louie’s BFFs Dylan—the boisterous, manly troublemaker—and Charlie (Jack Bannister), the Christian whose brought his also-Christian girlfriend (Clementine Anderson), have plans for the event. But Louie has his own plans and he does not want anything to mess with that.
Birdeater’s greatest success is investment in character. These people feel authentic, which is amazing given their behavior. Their relationships feel truthful and you find yourself invested more in what happens to the side characters than the bride and groom.
Louie’s plans and his mates’ come to a head, which is where Birdeater explodes into messy, fascinating, unrelated pieces. The surface story of bachelor party debauchery—of traditional masculinity run amuck—and the underlying and far more distressing story of male/female relationships sometimes reflect something insightful. Just as often, they feel slapped together nonsensically, or held together with contrived opportunities for exposition.
Recently, Halina Reijn tackled prickly ideas of female sexuality, power, and gender politics with Babygirl. It explored one woman’s seemingly misogynistic choices, but by remaining true to the protagonist’s point of view, the film itself exposes something else.
Birdeater paints itself into a corner it can’t figure out how to escape, primarily because, though the male characters throughout the film wonder at Irene’s choices, the men writing and directing the film don’t seem to understand them. Instead, we spend 90 minutes inside a male perspective as they guess at (and, indeed, create) female motivations. This leads inevitably to a climax that can’t help but be unsatisfying.
“It’s like this place isn’t real. You could just vanish into thin air and no one would ever know.”
“We would know.”
With All We Imagine As Light, writer/director Payal Kapadia creates a triumphant portrait of friendship and Indian womanhood. In her narrative feature debut, Kapadia unveils a wonderful voice, one full of clarity and grace, with an assured command of how to reach us through her characters.
Kani Kusruti is gently spellbinding as Prabha, a nurse in Mumbai who has not heard from her husband in over a year. After their arranged marriage, he has been working extensively in Germany, and when his unexpected gift to Prabha arrives in the mail, it only punctures her guarded routine.
Prabha’s roommate is Anu (Divya Prabha), a younger nurse who is resisting her parents’ desire for an arranged marriage by taking up with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). While the other nurses whisper about her “boy,” Anu and Shiaz look forward to finding a place to become intimate.
While Prabha advises Anu to be more responsible, the lesson is underscored by Prabha’s attempts to help Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who works as a cook in the hospital, stay in her chawl (tenement apartment). Parvaty’s husband has suddenly passed away, and now a developer wants to evict her to make way for a skyscraper.
As the lives of the three women intersect, Kapadia illustrates the struggle of Indian women to balance tradition with the desire to control their own destinies. And whenPrabha and Anu join Parvaty on a trip back to her village, separate events will push all three women closer to changing their lives.
There is a poetic nature to Kapadia’s storytelling. With only the most gentle of nudges, Kapadia speaks for the scores of Indian women who come to Mumbai for the promise of a better life in the city, only to be disillusioned. All We Imagine As Light draws its power from how clearly it sees them, and how real it makes them feel.
They may be a universe of genres apart, but Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl breathe plenty of the same air, both on the screen and on the red carpet.
Like fellow 90s icon Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson squeezes every dramatic ounce from the role of her lifetime, reigniting her career with a performance steeped in the personal experience of hard truths her character is suddenly forced to confront.
Anderson is Shelly, a longtime showgirl at the Le Razzle Dazzle revue in Las Vegas. Shelly finds purpose in the garish glamour of feathers, sequins and skin, and in her small circle of backstage friends. Dismissing the labels of just another “nudie show,” Shelly will not be denied the dignity she brings to each performance.
But after a three-decade run, the show’s producers announce plans to shut it down, leaving cast and crew to ponder what comes next. The question hits hardest for Shelly, who will soon be left to navigate Las Vegas without the leverage of youthful beauty.
And as the days tick down to that final curtain, Shelly is also juggling a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), mother figure advances from young cast member Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), and a complicated past with Eddie (Dave Bautista), the show’s stage manager.
In her feature debut, screenwriter Kate Gersten provides important moments of authenticity that are doubtlessly rooted in her research time spent with real showgirls in Vegas. Coppola (Palo Alto, Mainstream) showcases it all with subtlety and respect, letting each character-driven moment (including a priceless cameo from Jamie Lee Curtis) personify a longing to savor something that is already gone.
But like Moore’s desperate Elisabeth in The Substance, it is Anderson herself who provides this film’s most authentic layer. She has lived a life celebrated for her face and body, but often mocked when she tried to offer anything else. That hard-won wisdom grounds Anderson’s performance, and makes Shelly’s steadfast defense of her chosen art form anything but laughable.
Coppola’s camera comes in close, and Anderson does not flinch, letting every line on her face tell a story. She hits enough levels of honesty to prove just as vital to her film as Moore is to hers, bringing a clear-eyed engagement that gives The Last Showgirl its – yes I’ll say it – substance, and her career its own reason to be re-born.
We say this most years, but 2024’s horror output kicked all manner of ass. It was tough to narrow our list down to ten, so we want to give some quick love to the honorable mentions.
25. Immaculate
24. Speak No Evil
23. Woman of the Hour
22. Sleep
21. The Devil’s Bath
10. In a Violent Nature
19. Milk & Serial
18. The Vourdalak
17. Handling the Undead
16. Stopmotion
15. Cuckoo
14. Alien: Romulus
13. Late Night with the Devil
12. Smile 2
11. Infested
And now, our ranking of the ten best horror films of 2024.
10. Red Rooms
True crime culture. Serial killer groupies. The Dark Web. Does all of it seem too grim, too of-the-moment, too cliché to make for a deeply affecting thriller these days? Au contraire, mon frère. Québécois Pascal Plante makes nimble use of these elements to craft a nailbiter of a serial killer thriller with his latest effort, Red Rooms.
Plante expertly braids vulnerability and psychopathy, flesh and glass, humanity and the cyber universe for a weirdly compelling peek at how easily one could slide from one world to the other.
His real magic trick—one that remarkably few filmmakers have pulled off—is generating edge-of-your-seat anxiety primarily with keyboard clicks, computer screens and wait times. But the tension Plante builds—thanks to Juliette Gariépy’s precise acting—is excruciating. They keep you disoriented, fascinated, a little repulsed and utterly breathless.
9. Oddity
Carolyn Bracken is Darcy, twin sister of the recently slain Dani (also Bracken). Darcy is a little touched—she still runs the curiosity/antique shop her mother left her and still holds on to the giant wooden man a witch gave her parents for their wedding. Darcy is also blind, so when she arrives at her brother-in-law’s home—the very spot where Dani came to her bloody end—Ted (Gwilym Lee) and his new live-in girlfriend (Caroline Menton) don’t know how to politely ask her to leave. And to take her giant wooden friend with her.
Writer/director Damian McCarthy hands this tapestry of folklore and soap opera to a nimble cast and a gifted cinematographer. Together this team casts a spell too fun to break.
8. Longlegs
Maika Monroe is Agent Lee Harker whose “hyper intuitive” nature has her assigned to a confounding case of whole families murdering one another, the only sign of an outside presence being an encoded note left at the scenes. Monroe’s green FBI agent is as stiff and awkwardly internal as Nic Cage’s psycho is theatrical. Her terror is as authentic as his lunacy.
Filmmaker Oz Perkins shines as bright as ever, too. As always, his shot selection and framing evoke dark poetry. His use of light and shadow, architecture and space is like no one else’s. Longlegs is strangely beautiful, deeply unnerving, and a fine reason to be a horror fan.
7. I Saw the TV Glow
Fulfilling the promise of 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, writer/director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up, I Saw the TV Glow, is a hypnotically abstract and dreamily immersive nightmare of longing.
Justice Smith (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) is heartbreakingly endearing, while Bridgette Lundy-Paine (Bill & Ted Face the Music) provides a revelatory turn of alienation and mystery. It’s hard to take your eyes of either one of them, with Schoenbrun often framing their stares through close-ups that become as challenging as they are inviting. And that feels organically right. Because Schoenbrun is channelling characters who imagine life as someone else, to again emerge as a challenging and inviting filmmaker with a thrillingly original voice.
6. Heretic
There is something undeniably fun about Hugh Grant’s villain phase. Filmmakers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods craft a villain for the veteran actor that might just wipe those 90s rom-coms from our collective memory. Grant is Mr. Reed, and he’s invited two young Mormon sisters (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, both very solid) into his home to help lead him to enlightenment.
Less terrifying is the trap that’s been laid, more frightening is the absolute authenticity of Grant’s wickedly funny performance. You know this guy—if not in person, then from online comments. He’s absolutely genius, and though the film writes itself into a bit of a corner, there’s no denying this performance.
5. Blink Twice
In her directorial debut, Zoë Kravitz—working from a script she co-wrote with E.T. Feigenbaum—delivers an intoxicating and haunting thriller about privilege.
What transpires feels influenced by the classic The Stepford Wives, as well as Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty and Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. The ideas are less borrowed than repeatedly, historically true and Kravitz reconsiders these timeless notions with an unerringly contemporary sensibility and a mean spirit that’s earned. Still, it’s Channing Tatum who effortlessly bridges horror fantasy with “damn, this could really happen.” His morally blurry turn, charmingly evil, has such authenticity to it that the island horror feels more like a reflection of reality than it should.
4. Strange Darling
“Are you a serial killer?” A question usually asked in jest during a first date, but you still judge your date’s facial response as they answer. Was that a nervous laugh? Did that smile come too easy? We’ve all seen too many episodes of Dateline. Strange Darling kicks off with this question and that’s the top of the hill for the cat-and-mouse roller coaster thriller that follows.
The twists are fun, but Willa Fitzgerald (The Fall of the House of Usher) and Kyle Gallner’s (Smile, Dinner in America) performances are the best part of the movie.
3. The Coffee Table
A remarkably well written script fleshed out by a stunning ensemble becomes utter torture as you want so badly for some other outcome. Co-writer/director Caye Casas ties threads, builds anxiety, plunges the depths of “what’s the worst that could happen?” and leaves you shaken.
David Pareja and Estefania de los Santos craft indelible, believable, beautifully flawed characters so convincing that their experience becomes painful for you. Casas salts the wounds with dark comedy, but the tenderness and tragedy collaborate toward something far more crushingly human.
2. The Substance
There are some films that, for better or worse, you never truly forget. With each passing minute, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance proved it would be one of those films. And that shrimp cocktail will never look as appealing again. Holy cow, this movie! What a glorious sledgehammer Fargeat wields!
Demi Moore -in her best performance in decades if not her career – plays Elisabeth, an actress and fitness guru turning 50. Fargeat takes this concept, pulls in inspiration from Cronenberg as well as Brian Yuzna’s Society, strangles subtlety with some legwarmers, and crafts an unforgettable cautionary tale about the way the male gaze corrupts and disfigures women inside and out.
1. Nosferatu
In collaboration with longtime cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and The Northman composer Robin Carolan, filmmaker Robert Eggers conjures an elegant, somber, moody Germany breathlessly awaiting death.
Eggers keeps the Count (Bill Skarsgård) shrouded in darkness long enough to build excitement. What the two deliver is unlike anything in the canon. It’s horrifying and perfectly in keeping with the blunt instrument they’ve made of this remorseless monster. His monstrousness makes the seductive nature of the tale all the more unseemly. This beast, the rats, the stench of contagion infesting the elegant image of Germany and her beautiful bride—it is the stuff of nightmares.
It makes you grateful that Eggers was not intrigued by Stoker’s elegant aristocrat and his tortured love story, but drawn instead to the repulsive carnality of Nosferatu.
Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo has been made into 23 different films, plus a dozen or so mini-series. It’s popular, and with good reason. The 19th Century tale of vengeance, political intrigue, fated romance buckles more swash than you might imagine.
The epic Dumas tale hits big screens again with Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthiew Delaporte’s opulent adaptation.
At a full three hours, the duo’s film does justice to more crisscrossing details than most previous efforts, but their instinct for epic filmmaking ensures engrossed viewing. From the moments of intimacy that nurture vengeance of this scale to the brutal beauty of the adventure-scape to the lavish excesses of the wealthy, every image packs a purposeful wallop. Celia Lafitedupont’s editing emphasizes glamour without distracting from intrigue. The film’s pace allows for scenes to breathe but never drag.
At the center of the treachery and bloody righteousness is Pierre Niney (Franz), whose evolution from humble innocence to hardened vengeance never fails to convince. But who is the Count without his foes? De La Patelliére and Delaporte surround Niney with collaborators able to find something authentic in their characters while supplying just enough moustache twirling to do the job right. Laurent Lafitte and Patrick Mille are a particular delight as the dastardly Villefort and Danglars.
All of which must be balanced by innocence corrupted, and again, the ensemble soars. Julien De Saint Jean introduces uncommonly human layers to the Count’s godson, the “Prince”, and Vassili Schneider (The Vourdalak) as young Albert, innocent pawn in a grand scheme, injects his scenes with touching tenderness.
And of course, the love story—how could you accept all the Count is willing to put into place if you can’t get behind the love he has lost? Anaïs Demoustier’s (Smoking Causes Coughing) Mercedes is no fool, no innocent waif nor tragic beauty. Demoustier offers something genuine that allows the entire saga a note of authenticity.
The result is a rousing, gorgeously cinematic adventure and a reminder of what a movie can be.
Eva (Odessa Young) carries the weight of the 19th century Icelandic fishing outpost’s success since the death of her husband Magnus last season. When she and her crew see a foreign ship sinking not far off the coast, the decision to try to save them—and risk her own men’s lives in the immediate as well as the near future, given the sparsity of rations—falls to her.
She and this tiny, desperate community—isolated and unlikely to endure the winter—make a series of choices. With each they weigh their own survival against the needs of others, but each successive decision is less and less noble. While none is unrealistic, perhaps not even unreasonable, the result leaves the group dangerously torn apart from the inside.
The Damned director Thordur Palsson’s nightmare bears a resemblance to John Carpenter’s masterpiece, The Thing. Desperate, wintery isolation fosters paranoia, and soon it’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t, but everything seems supernaturally sinister.
Young’s conflicted turn, balancing stoic strength and resignation sometimes in the same moment, becomes the film’s the gravitational pull. The rest of the ensemble delivers memorable characters in what could easily have been one-dimensional archetypes. Joe Cole’s work is particularly subtle and moving.
Powerful as the performances are, every scene is stolen by the formidable Icelandic seascape—beautiful, terrible and haunting every moment.
Palsson, who co-writes with Jamie Hannigan, develops a parable—a cautionary tale, really—about shame, guilt and grief. Something evil seems to be afoot. Food goes missing, a body disappears, and little by little, members of the community see horrible things. Is this horror the manifestation of a guilty conscience shared by an isolated community, or is it the supernatural?
A subtle but palpable dread wonders whether it’s Eva’s decision making that’s brought this on; whether Magnus would have chosen differently when faced with the unholy decision; whether it was, in fact, her desire to protect and nurture that brought their doom.
Or perhaps it was Magnus, who’d brought them out seeking the opportunity that awaited anyone who could bear the cold and hunger, who’d damned them all?
“The living are always more dangerous than the dead.”
It’s that time again! Our lists were checked at least twice and we came up with what we believe are the best films of 2024. It was a good year.
1. Nosferatu
In collaboration with longtime cinematographer Jarin Blaschke and The Northman composer Robin Carolan, filmmaker Robert Eggers conjures an elegant, somber, moody Germany breathlessly awaiting death.
Eggers keeps the Count (Bill Skarsgård) shrouded in darkness long enough to build excitement. What the two deliver is unlike anything in the canon. It’s horrifying and perfectly in keeping with the blunt instrument they’ve made of this remorseless monster. His monstrousness makes the seductive nature of the tale all the more unseemly. This beast, the rats, the stench of contagion infesting the elegant image of Germany and her beautiful bride—it is the stuff of nightmares.
It makes you grateful that Eggers was not intrigued by Stoker’s elegant aristocrat and his tortured love story, but drawn instead to the repulsive carnality of Nosferatu.
2. Anora
Sean Baker doesn’t shy away from seamy subcultures, and the worthiness of people trying to get by outside of conformity. Yet it hasn’t been until his Palme d’Or winner Anora that he has found one group without any redeeming qualities. This shocking and depraved group of people is, in this case, the jet-setting global elite.
The relationship between the spoiled son of Russian oligarchs living in Brighton Beach and exotic dancer Ani (Mikey Madison) quickly escalates, from sex work outside the club to becoming an exclusive escort to an impromptu Vegas marriage. This being a Baker fairytale, Ani’s whirlwind rags-to-riches marriage is only the beginning of her Cinderella story.
Baker pulls off a risky balance between outright comedy and what is, essentially, the kidnapping of a sex worker by three large, powerfully connected men. None of this would work without Baker’s characteristic empathy for everyone. And it certainly wouldn’t feel so easy-going were it not for the relationship between Ani and the silent strongman Igor, played by Yura Borisov with a standout turn that nearly rivals Madison’s.
3. Sing Sing
To see the film is to witness a filmmaking vision brought to transcendent life by director/co-writer Greg Kwedar, and a tremendous ensemble cast that features many formerly incarcerated members of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) program at Sing Sing maximum security prison. Another endlessly sympathetic and award-worthy performance from Colman Domingo, personifies the soul-stirring effects of the RTA.
The film’s surface-level message of healing through the arts is well-played and well-earned, but a more universal subtext is never far from the spotlight. Sing Sing soars from the way it invests in the need for expression and inspiration, and in the very souls who found a path to redemption by stepping on stage.
4. Challengers
The relationship triangle at work in Challengers could probably work outside of a tennis court, but director Luca Guadagnino does wonders with the sports angle for a completely engrossing drama of intimate competition. Anchored around a three-set challenge match between Art Donaldson (West Side Story‘s Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor from The Crown), the film drifts back and forth in time as it immerses us in their series of entanglements with tennis phenom Tashi Duncan (Zendaya).
Zendaya, Faist and O’Connor deftly handle the growth of their characters from fresh-faced teens to hardened adults. All three deliver terrific, well-defined performances, and Challengers quickly becomes a film to get lost in, where you’re happy to be hanging on every break point.
5. Love Lies Bleeding
Awash in the stink and the glory of new passion, Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding treads some familiar roadways but leaves an impression solely its own. Glass blends and smears cinematic gender identifiers, particularly those of noir and thriller, concocting an intoxicating new image of sexual awakening and empowerment. She routinely upends images of power and masculinity, subverting expectations and associations and fetishizing the human body anew.
Anyone who’s seen Glass’s magnificent 2021 horror Saint Maudmay be better prepared for the third act than newcomers to the filmmaker’s vision, but it’s a wild and unexpected turn regardless. It’s quite something—bold, original, and wryly funny in the most unexpected moments. There’s heartbreak and horror, sex and revenge, a little magic and a lot of steroids. Glass’s juice has the goods.
6. A Complete Unknown
Instead of attempting a complete life arc, director James Mangold and co-writers Jay Cocks and Elijah Wald wisely choose a four-year whirlwind that changed the course of music and culture.
It’s hard to imagine a mainstream treatment working better than this one. And it’s one propelled by an absolutely transformative performance from Timothée Chalamet. His success at emulating both Dylan’s voice and guitar style is beyond impressive, as is his ease at moving the iconic persona from an ambitious Greenwich Village newbie to the cynical voice of a generation feeling “pulverized by fame.”
7. The Substance
There are some films that, for better or worse, you never truly forget. With each passing minute, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance proved it would be one of those films. And that shrimp cocktail will never look as appealing again. Holy cow, this movie! What a glorious sledgehammer Fargeat wields!
Demi Moore -in her best performance in decades if not her career – plays Elisabeth, an actress and fitness guru turning 50. Fargeat takes this concept, pulls in inspiration from Cronenberg as well as Brian Yuzna’s Society, strangles subtlety with some legwarmers, and crafts an unforgettable cautionary tale about the way the male gaze corrupts and disfigures women inside and out.
8. Will & Harper
Harper Steele loved traveling America and spent years upon years hitchhiking and driving from town to town, dive bar to dive bar, stock car race to pool hall to backwater, savoring every minute of it. But since she transitioned a couple of years ago, she’s afraid to do it anymore. Her friend Will Ferrell thinks maybe she can re-explore the country she loves as her true self if she has a man with her. Preferably a big, lumbering, lovable, friendly, famous friend willing to shift attention away from her whenever she might want him to.
There are so many reasons to watch Will & Harper, not the least of which is to see two of the smartest comedic minds (the two met on SNL when Steele was head writer for the show) riff. Another great reason to watch Will & Harper is that this film fits so beautifully into that American cinematic tradition of emotional, thrilling, deeply human road picture: one relationship changes and deepens with the landscape as America itself is more clearly revealed. Will & Harper just makes you wonder how it can be possible for anyone to be upset by another person’s transition. It also makes you hope those who feel too stigmatized to do it realize that there is a better life.
9. The Piano Lesson
You can often find ghosts lurking in the plays of August Wilson. His characters work to forge a better future for their families, haunted by the trauma and systemic racism that has beaten them down for generations. Those themes also define Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, while a vengeful spirit from the past adds a layer of the supernatural to director and co-writer Malcolm Washington’s debut feature.
As a strong-but-cautious woman fighting for both her past and her future, Danielle Deadwyler is an award-worthy revelation. John David Washington has never been better, managing an impressive balance between manic ambition and his sobering reality.
10. Wicked
Grande gives Glinda’s vanity a charm that is somehow inviting and often quite funny, while Erivo brings a level of tortured longing to Elphaba that makes her journey all the more resonate. The two leads – who often sang live during production – have the pipes to bring their own brand of magic, and they share a wonderful on screen chemistry that anchors the film. But themes of a gaslighting scheister wresting power through deception and greed by turning the populace’s attention toward “others” to fear hits a nerve now that gives the film a depth and power than the stage production or book ever had.
Like James Mangold and the music biopic, director Rachel Morrison is facing the lure of convention with The Fire Inside. Not only is this a sports drama, but the sport is boxing – perhaps the most easily cliched in the genre.
But Morrison has Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins in her corner as screenwriter, and together they give the true story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields the gritty authenticity she deserves.
Shields rose from a hardscrabble upbringing in Flint, Michigan to twice compete for Olympic gold, but the film earns its spot on the podium from the way it shifts the perspective to opponents she fought outside the ring.
Morrison – making her feature debut after television projects and numerous cinematographer credits on films such as Black Panther and Mudbound – avoids easy button pushing (no training montage!) to mine depth from the relationship between Shields (Ryan Destiny from TV’s Grownish and Star) and her trainer, Jason Crutchfield (the great Brian Tyree Henry).
Both Destiny and Henry and fantastic, and their partnership is rooted in a clash of raw determination and hard-won wisdom that’s inherently easy to root for. Morrison sets us up to sweat right beside them, and to understand the real-life trauma that remains when the sold out crowds head home.
Like any good sports movie, the film gives us plenty to cheer for. But that’s the easy part. It’s a bit more difficult to paint heart, humanity, and the drive to never settle with genuine feeling. But it’s clear that Shields has never backed down from a challenge, and The Fire Inside makes sure we don’t forget that.
