2024 Awards Season Round-Up Part III

 by Rob DiCristino

Movies 4 U!

1. Hard Truths (Dir. Mike Leigh)

English auteur Mike Leigh returns with Hard Truths, a riveting domestic drama exploring the lives of two very different sisters: Chantelle (Michele Austin) is a bubbly hair stylist raising her daughters in a home full of warmth, joy, and gratitude. Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a bitter curmudgeon whose borderline personality symptoms keep her family walking on eggshells whenever she’s around. Their only common cause is the grief they share over their deceased mother, which Hard Truths scrutinizes with all the delicate empathy that has defined Leigh’s work from the very beginning. Where does grief live inside of us? How do we express it? How does it change us? Pansy can be a monster, to be sure — her trip to the dentist is one of the year’s most terrifying horror scenes — but her wrecking ball of rage would be hollow without the undercurrent of aching despair that Marianne Jean-Baptiste keeps humming through every tantrum. She and Michele Austin are an ideal pairing, an alchemy of battle-tested affection that any sibling will understand.

Hard Truths hits U.S. theaters on December 6th.

2. Flow (Dir. Gints Zilbalodis)

Animation fans bored by Disney’s endless descent into “live action” remake drivel should carve out eighty-five minutes for Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow, a Noah’s Ark adventure that rivals even The Mouse House’s best feature efforts in its depth, texture, and grace. Together with a cadre of colorful animals gathered on an aimless sailboat, a black cat explores an overgrown world of collapsed structures and flooded cities, fending off dangers and discovering the unseen wonders of a vast and beautiful universe. Free of dialogue or anthropomorphization, Flow’s narrative moves with the gentle rhythms of realistic animal behavior: Our feline friend may be overmatched in this great big world — predators and catastrophes wait around every corner — but Flow finds creative ways to keep him landing on his feet. And though it’s rendered in a choppy CG style that might distract anyone who owned a Playstation in the early aughts, Flow is nevertheless remarkable in its naturalism, a soothing spectacle of imagination led by the year’s most unlikely hero.

Flow is scheduled for U.S. release on December 6th.

3. September 5 (Dir. Tim Fehlbaum)

During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, a group of Palestinian militants invaded the Olympic Village, kidnapping and eventually executing eleven members of the Israeli team before being killed or captured during an exchange attempt several hours later. ABC Sports crews were on hand to document the harrowing action in real time, inadvertently engineering one of the most consequential events in the history of modern journalism: The first terrorist attack broadcast on live television. Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 is a tense and thought-provoking recreation of that day, a claustrophobic thriller that binds its audience to the control crew (led by Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, and Leonie Benesch) as they debate their journalistic and ethical responsibilities in this unprecedented situation. A bit more effective as a formal exercise than as a historical drama, September 5 is still a strong effort that might make for a fascinating complement to Alex Garland’s Civil War, as both films remain relevant in our age of never-ending geopolitical cluster-fuckery.

September 5 hits U.S. theaters on December 13th.

4. The Last Showgirl (Dir. Gia Coppola)

A fitting intersection between Anora and The Substance — two other 2024 films that dissect the tenuous relationship between femininity and industry — Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl presents fifty-something performer Shelly (Pamela Anderson) as she and her cohorts (a multi-generational roster including Jamie Lee Curtis, Brenda Song, and Kiernan Shipka) prepare to stage the vintage Vegas revue Le Razzle Dazzle for the last time. Audiences are changing, says producer Eddie (Dave Bautista, excellent in a low gear), and financiers want something modern, something well outside of Shelly’s dwindling capabilities. As she explores the options left before her, Shelly must forge a bond with the daughter she gave up for adoption (Billie Lourd) and reflect on a life spent in service of the frivolous and the fleeting. Kate Gersten’s screenplay fails to cut as deeply as it should and Coppola’s over-direction quickly grows distracting, but The Last Showgirl is a powerful calling card for Pamela Anderson, whose third act may prove to be something very special.

The Last Showgirl hits U.S. theaters on December 13th.

5. A Real Pain (Dir. Jesse Eisenberg)

The soul-searching continues in A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s road dramedy about two mismatched Jewish cousins (Eisenberg as David and Kieran Culkin as Benji) whose trip to Poland in homage to their late grandmother leads to new revelations about their own complicated relationship. Soaked in a dry and chatty brand of existential humor that recalls obvious Eisenberg influences like Albert Brooks and Woody Allen, A Real Pain hangs on Kieran Culkin’s eccentric shoulders, and time will tell if awards bodies will reward the Succession standout for giving us what is essentially a big screen version of Roman Roy. That’s not a dig on Culkin, necessarily, for whom Eisenberg’s screenplay feels tailor-made, but it may provoke an interesting debate over the merits of a truly original performance versus something we’ve already seen in other venues. Awards season noise aside, though, A Real Pain is a convincing sophomore effort for Eisenberg and a warm blanket for anyone looking for a bit of gallows humor to brighten up these ever-shortening winter days.

A Real Pain is in U.S. theaters now.