Friday, October 25, 2024

2024 Awards Season Round-Up Part 1

 by Rob DiCristino

It’s that time of the year again!

1. Magpie (Dir. Sam Yates)
Former theater wunderkind Sam Yates makes his feature debut with Magpie, a taught neo noir about a young mother (Daisy Ridley as Anette) who uncovers her husband’s (Shazad Latif as Ben) infatuation with Alicia (Matilda Lutz), an actress co-starring with their daughter (Hiba Ahmed) in a costume drama shooting near their country home. Co-produced by Ridley from a story developed with her husband Tom Bateman, Magpie trades the savage backstabbing of a typical noir for a measured and meticulous study of a marriage already in freefall, one in which both parties feel like prisoners looking for an excuse to break free. Yates keeps us at arm’s length throughout, letting us wonder if Ben is really stupid enough to think he’s getting away with it — he is — and if Anette is really blind enough not to catch on — she isn’t — right up to a climax that will quench any genre fan’s thirst for delicious justice without compromising the film’s icy, mannered Britishness. While never revolutionary, Magpie is a satisfying debut for Yates and a great sign for Daisy Ridley’s creative future.

Magpie comes to US theaters on Friday, October 25th.

2. The Outrun (Dir. Nora Fingscheidt)
Saoirse Ronan’s hunt for Oscar glory continues in Nora Fingscheidt’s stirring drama, The Outrun. Lost in the throes of her destructive alcoholism, biology grad student Rona (Ronan) returns home to Scotland’s Orkney Islands to reconnect with her troubled parents and join a group of conservationists in their search for a breed of bird on the brink of extinction. The Orkneys are legendary for tempests that are wild and turbulent enough to compete with those inside Rona’s soul — if the metaphors feel heavy-handed in the first ten minutes, just wait until she’s standing on the coastline playing chicken with hurricanes near the end — but they also provide her the quiet peace of isolation and the endless inspiration of discovery, both welcome reprieves from the London party scene that came so close to swallowing her whole. The delicate and ruminative Outrun is sure to speak to anyone whose life has been affected by addiction, but its nonlinear storytelling structure puts a bit too much pressure on flashbacks that begin to feel repetitive long before Rona finds her eventual catharsis. It’s Oscar bait of the highest order, but Oscar bait nonetheless.

The Outrun is in limited theatrical release now.

3. MadS (Dir. David Moreau)
But since we’re speaking of parties: French writer/director David Moreau brings us MadS, an outstanding one-take pandemic thriller that feels like Night of the Living Dead by way of Tangerine or Run Lola Run. The insanity begins when club kid Romain (Milton Riche) stumbles across an injured woman on a rural road. She’s incoherent, disoriented, bleeding all over him, and, well, horror fans can probably guess where things are going from there. Too stoned to deal with the situation responsibly, of course, Romain heads to the club and quickly spreads his sickness to Julia (Lucille Guillaume) and Anais (Laurie Pavy), each of whom will take over as our leads at some point before their last night on Earth is through. Though MadS’ gimmick alone would be impressive enough work for most filmmakers, Moreau orchestrates expert-level chaos here — allegedly in one genuine take — ratcheting the madness higher and higher before ending on a note of black comedy that would be legitimately hilarious were it not so hopelessly bleak. MadS is sure to be one of 2024’s hidden gems, a must-see as we wrap up #ScaryMovieMonth.

MadS is now available on Shudder.

4. A Different Man (Dir. Aaron Schimberg)
Shame on me for not watching trailers: I went into Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man expecting a mawkish character piece that would scold me for my basic human prejudices while pounding enough saccharine pap into my eyeholes to trigger my Annual Awards Season Reinvestment in the Transformative Power of Empathy weeks ahead of schedule. What I got instead was one of the fiercest, most acerbic comedies of the year, one that imagines The Elephant Man as told by Charlie Kaufman or the Coens riffing on Jekyll and Hyde. It turns out that Schimberg has zero interest in milking actor Adam Pearson’s neurofibromatosis for easy drama; instead, he weaponizes our crocodile tears against us in what ends up being — as everyone on Letterboxd has already pointed out — an absurdly hilarious complement to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance. More details would spoil, but suffice it to say that Pearson is a revelation of charm and confidence as he joins Sebastian Stan and The Worst Person in the World’s Rene Reinsve in a most unconventional — and unexpected — love triangle.

A Different Man is available on PVOD now.

5. Goodrich (Dir. Hallie Meyers-Shyer)
I’ll admit that it’s a bit presumptuous to put Hollywood scion Hallie Meyers-Shyer’s Goodrich — a droll little comedy that asks us to imagine the inner lives of those families depicted in luxury retail catalogs — on an awards season primer, but since I’ll likely be spending the rest of my year writing about the likes of Anora, The Brutalist, and A Complete Unknown, I thought it was worth a tiny detour to highlight a delightful return to form from Michael Keaton. Capping off an 18-month period that saw him revive iconic characters like Batman and Beetlejuice, Goodrich gives us the return of Mr. Mom Keaton, the sputtering flibbertigibbet Keaton whose scatterbrained sweetness compels us to forgive whatever white-collar sins his hopelessly privileged characters are absentminded enough to commit. This one is Andy Goodrich, a workaholic who wakes up to find his wife (Laura Bananti) is (a) going to rehab and (b) divorcing him. As his nine-year-old twins and pregnant adult daughter (Mila Kunis) roll their eyes in bemused exasperation, Goodrich discovers the true meaning of family and reminds us all that the Boomers are, indeed, alright.

Goodrich is in US theaters now.

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