2024 Awards Season Round-Up Part II

 by Rob DiCristino

More cinematic delights for cozy autumn nights!

1. Kneecap (Dir. Rich Peppiatt)

What if Trainspotting but for Irish Republican hip-hop hooligans? It’s a reductive description for Rich Peppiatt’s ferocious and hilarious Kneecap, sure, but it’s also a decent enough way to gauge whether or not you’d be willing to join Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, Naoise Ó Cairealláin, and JJ Ó Dochartaigh — the real-life band Kneecap playing themselves in a fictionalized version of their rise to fame — on their drug-infused, socio-political crucible to preserve their Irish language and heritage through the power of music. "Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom,” says Naoise’s father Arlo (Michael Fassbender, whose glorified cameo probably helped the film get made in the first place), and our boys are ready and willing to serve on the front lines, happily upsetting the Belfast establishment and any other United Kingdom sympathizers who might stand in their way. Delivered mostly in Irish (or Gaelic, if you like), Kneecap is a spectacular anthem of personal autonomy and artistic expression. If you only see one movie on this list, make damn sure it’s this one.

Kneecap is now available on PVOD.

2. Wicked Little Letters (Dir. Thea Sharrock)

Look, is Thea Sharrock’s Wicked Little Letters going to be a major awards contender? Probably not. But is it a fastidious bite of foul-mouthed British absurdity that you should catch up with on Netflix over the holidays? Absolutely! Olivia Coleman is Edith Swan, a devoutly-Christian spinster living with her parents in a village just outside 1920s London who becomes the recipient of insulting anonymous letters riddled with expletives so cock-eyed and bizarre that they’re worth watching the movie just to hear them said aloud. The town authorities immediately point to single mother Rose Gooding (a rip-roaring Jessie Buckley), whose predilection toward hearty drink and unbridled obscenity — not to mention her recent falling out with Edith — makes her the most likely suspect for their authorship. Rose protests, of course, kicking off a raucous comedy of manners that gives two of our very best actresses a chance to play a lighthearted game of thespian chicken that’s well worth a hundred of your minutes over the waning days of this year of our lord 2024.

Wicked Little Letters is now available on Netflix.

3. Fancy Dance (Dir. Erica Tremblay)

Lily Gladstone’s Best Actress Oscar dreams may have gone unfulfilled with last year’s Killers of the Flower Moon — due to category fraud more than anything else; that’s a supporting performance, folks — but she remains a commanding screen presence whose ability to embody a particular kind of delicate strength is sure to keep her among Hollywood’s best and brightest for years to come. Her latest is Erica Tremblay’s Fancy Dance, a thoughtful drama about Jax (Gladstone) and her teenage niece Roki’s (Isabel DeRoy-Olson) search for Roki’s mother, who disappeared from their home on Oklahoma’s Seneca-Cayuga reservation some weeks before. Flower Moon comparisons are inevitable, of course — especially as it also deals with law enforcement’s indifference toward missing minorities — but Fancy Dance is actually better proof of Gladstone’s fitness to carry hefty dramatic weight. Jax is a moral authority, yes, but that morality is crafty, fluid, and more than a bit negotiable. It’s a strong performance worthy of another — perhaps more appropriate — nomination.

Fancy Dance is currently streaming on Apple TV+.

4. The Wild Robot (Dir. Chris Sanders)

If you’ve been less than inspired by 2024’s selection of animated films — although Despicable Me 4’s $964 million in grosses suggests that at least some of you must have gone back for seconds — might I offer Chris Sanders’ delightful adaptation of The Wild Robot? It’s the story of Roz (Lupita Nyong’o), an all-purpose “helper” robot who washes up on a remote island where there are no human customers around to assign her tasks. Searching for purpose, Roz takes guardianship of a tiny gosling named Brightbill (Kit Connor) and enlists the island’s animal population (the likes of Catherine O’Hara, Mark Hamill, Bill Nighy, Pedro Pascal, and many others) to help him grow up strong and learn to fly in time to migrate south for the coming winter. Though it loses its way a bit in the middle act — trading a storyline that supported the thematic crux of the piece for a broader one about interspecies cooperation that doesn’t hit quite as hard — The Wild Robot is a beautifully animated and thoroughly heartwarming portrait of parenthood in all its chaotic glory.

The Wild Robot is in US theaters now.

5. Ghostlight (Dir. Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson)

The team behind 2020’s Saint Frances returns with another disarming black comedy about life’s infuriating tendency to carry on expecting things of us even after we’ve suffered a major tragedy. Dan (Keith Kupferer) is a fifty-something construction worker reeling from his teenage son’s recent suicide, a pain he’s shoved down far enough that neither his rebellious daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) nor his dutiful wife (Tara Mallen; yes, Ghostlight is a real-life family affair) have any hope of ever accessing it. When a bout of misplaced aggression finds him laid off and listless, however, a chance encounter with Rita (Dolly De Leon) offers Dan an opportunity to finally process his grief: A part in a community theater production of Romeo and Juliet. Warm, wry, and well-observed, Ghostlight reminds us of our responsibility to share our pain with those we love and encourages us to channel it into something beautiful, something that respects that pain without ever surrendering to it. And hell, if we can learn a little Shakespeare along the way, that’s just a nice bonus.

Ghostlight is now available on PVOD.