2024 Awards Season Round-Up Part IV

by Rob DiCristino

You think we need one more? Alright, we’ll get one more.

1. Babygirl (Dir. Halina Reijn)

Hot Nicole Kidman 2024 continues with a steamy drama from the director of Bodies Bodies Bodies. Kidman is Romy, a tech CEO whose unfulfilling sex life with husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas) leads to a May-December entanglement with intern Samuel (Harris Dickinson). Samuel is the dominant to Romy’s budding submissive, a mix of confidence and aloofness that strips the power-suited mogul — pun absolutely intended — of the control she typically enjoys and casts both her personal and professional lives into chaos. Audiences hoping for a fuck noir that reaches the raunchy heights of The Piano Teacher or Secretary will be disappointed, however, as Babygirl’s passing interest in BDSM, gender dynamics, and workplace politics is secondary to its focus on how Romy’s sexual awakening reshapes her understanding of power, relationships, and identity. Nicole Kidman sells it with all the advertised fearlessness, though, and writer/director Halina Reijn deserves credit for giving us a largely sex-positive entry in a genre that tends to focus on shame, violence, and regret.

Babygirl hits U.S. theaters on December 25th.

2. Exhibiting Forgiveness (Dir. Titus Kaphar)

Speaking of regret, multi-hyphenate artist Titus Kaphar makes his feature debut with Exhibiting Forgiveness, which stars Moonlight breakout André Holland as Tarrell, a painter whose flourishing personal life — including a happy marriage to Andra Day’s singer-songwriter Aisha — is suddenly complicated by the reemergence of his abusive father (John Earl Jelks as La’Ron, especially riveting in flashbacks that would be Oscar clips in a less-crowded field). Though his bible-thumping mother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) begs him to, ahem, exhibit some forgiveness for La’Ron’s lifetime of drug-addled indiscretions, Tarrell’s resentment is too deeply-steeped for any easy solutions. Kaphar demonstrates a delicate compositional touch in his debut, and while his screenplay is littered with overwrought dialogue and his protagonist's attempts to rectify his trauma on the canvas lack the nuance that would make the film a true masterpiece, Exhibiting Forgiveness is nonetheless a confident and thoughtful drama featuring some of the best performances of the year.

Exhibiting Forgiveness is now available on PVOD.

3. In the Summers (Dir. Alessandra Lacorazza)

Since we’re on the topic of bad dads: Chicago’s own Music Box Films brings us In the Summers, Alessandra Lacorazza’s semi-autobiographical feature debut about two Californian siblings (played as adults by Lio Meheil and The Flash’s Sasha Calle) who spend summers visiting their estranged father (René Pérez as Vicente) in his remote New Mexican hometown. Told elliptically over a handful of those summers, the film chronicles Vicente’s attempts to forge a meaningful connection with children who — in light of a background of addiction and incarceration that is left appropriately fuzzy — he is largely unfit to rear. Lacorazza won a well-deserved Sundance Grand Jury Prize for this stunning portrait of a family grasping at unity in a world that sees fit to drive them apart, and anyone whose upbringing was less than traditional will identify with the extraordinary authenticity of its detail, the empathy and grace it shows to an imperfect parent trying to find salvation and the world-weary children trying to learn from his mistakes without repeating them.

In the Summers is now available on PVOD.

4. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Dir. Tyler Taormina)

Speaking of flawed families — Gotta keep this transition streak going, folks — let’s shift gears to Tyler Taormina’s delightful holiday comedy, Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point. The Platonic ideal of a Christmas hangout movie, it follows Long Island’s multi-generational Balsano family as they gather for one last Christmas Eve at their ancestral home. While its opening epigraph (wishing “the lost” safe passage home for Christmas) portends some heavy-handed messaging about the Reason for the Season, the film has no interest in sugary fantasies or snow-bound magic. Instead, its loosely-plotted, fly-on-the-wall construction gives us a peek into the everyday politicking of people who wouldn’t give each other the time of day were they not related by blood. Driven more by its immaculate production design than any star power — though Michael Cera and Eighth Grade’s Elsie Fisher make brief appearances, as do Hollywood royalty Sawyer Spielberg and Francesca Scorsese — Miller’s Point is a wry and unexpectedly warm celebration of the ties that bind, whether we like it or not.

Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point is now available on PVOD.

5. A Complete Unknown (Dir. James Mangold)

James Mangold is a talented filmmaker. He is. His best movies are glossy, mannered dramas that fuse genre eccentricity with prestige sensibility. He’s like Christopher McQuarrie in that way, actually, someone doing his damndest to make four-quadrant blockbusters that respect his — and his audience’s — intelligence while giving them the sweet nectar of familiarity they can’t help but crave. Keep this in mind when watching A Complete Unknown, Mangold’s second swing at mythologizing a folk hero after 2005’s Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line. Split between Bob Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) ascent to superstardom and his infamous decision to go electric during the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the film recounts its hero’s struggle to protect his individuality in light of the cataclysmic cultural change he helped foster. Stranded somewhere between a Wikipedia biopic and a genuine character study, A Complete Unknown is at its best when it’s reckoning with that incongruity, but it never quite justifies itself in a world that already has I’m Not There and No Direction Home. It’ll get young people spinning Highway 61 Revisited though, so maybe that’s enough.

A Complete Unknown hits U.S. theaters on December 25th.