Ballad of a Showering Colin Farrell

The second thing I did after watching this trailer for Ballad of a Small Player, Conclave director Edward Berger's new gambling film starring Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton, was make the gifs of Colin naked in the shower that you see here, intended to lure you in by me much the same as the shots were included in the trailer by Netflix to lure people like me into posting about the trailer. "Gotcha?" More like "Gotch-us!" We all got good. 

The first thing I did though, even before the gifs, and this one was a surprise, was run to IMDb to make sure that Berger was again working with his usual composer Volker Bertelmann, whose scores for Conclave and All Quiet on the Western Front have been two of my favorite movie scores of recent years. And they are working together again! Yay! So even...

... with Tilda Swinton looking like that (we do love it when she cartoons herself up to eleven) and with naked Colin Farrell, our first priority was the film's music. I feel as if this shows some personal growth? Maybe by the time I'm 90 I'll somewhat resemble an adult. Anyway here's the trailer:

Ballad of a Small Player lands on Netflix on October 15th.

Death in Tilda's Hands

I'm pretty sure I talked about how Tilda Swinton should do more horror movies when I reviewed her turn in the wonderful ghost story The Eternal Daughter a couple of years ago -- I'm sure I could go find proof of that and quote myself, it's just a google away, but let's just believe me when I say that I said it. Anyway so I'm happy with this morning's news, I am! She's going to star in the new movie from A Ghost Story and The Green Knight director David Lowery -- and that in itself is a thrill! -- and it's an adaptation of the 2020 book Death in Her Hands by beloved author Ottessa Moshfegh. (As a weird aside I had a signed first edition of this book that I never read because it was worth too much that I had listed on eBay for a couple of years and which finally sold just about a month ago -- I wonder if whoever bought it has a heads-up on this project?) Anyway here is how the plot is described:

"She’ll play recent widow Vesta Gul, who comes across a chilling handwritten note in the woods near her home: “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” Except there is no body. No blood. Unmoored by the death of her husband and armed only with a camera, her dog Charlie, and her vivid imagination, Vesta becomes obsessed with uncovering Magda’s identity and fate. As her inner world begins to eclipse reality, the mystery of Magda threatens Vesta’s grip on her own life "

So it sounds like gothic old-fashioned kind of horror -- psychological obsession et cetera -- which will be perfect for Tilda. I really don't understand why she hasn't done more horror -- she's practically one of Guillermo Del Toro's ghouls come to life with the right lighting, and I say this with a heart bursting of love and appreciation. I wish I was one of Guillermo Del Toro's ghouls come to life! Instead I'm just, like, an extra in the Thriller video at best.

The 20 Best Movies of 2024

I have thought about dropping my year-end favorites list on Oscar Nom Day several times in the past, but timing-wise it just hasn't worked out before -- this year looks to be an exception, however! My reasons for thinking it's a good idea are 1) as stated in my earlier requisite post acknowledging that those nominations happened I just don't care about them and I don't want to spend all day reading people's brain-numbing statistics and theories all of which rob me of a will to live. So this gives me something else to focus on. Also today is the first day of Sundance and while I might not be there in person this year (sigh) I will be reviewing movies virtually, and I'm going to be very busy starting to do that almost immediately. So if I don't do this today it'll be a couple more weeks. 

Also -- I've had the list of movies on a spreadsheet for weeks now, and every other day I go onto the doc and I move them around a little bit depending on my mood, and... I could just keep doing that forever, or I could just say enough! And organize them into their final form, waffling be damned. That said 2024 turned out to be an especially amorphous year with no single frontrunner slam-dunk -- any of my top five on any given day could've been my number one. Which isn't to say I think 2024 was a bad year for movies -- quite the opposite! There's a lot of love spreading around here. But let's just stop our yammering and get to the goods. Here at last are...

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2024

20. Strange Darling (review)

19. Femme (review)

18. I Saw the T.V. Glow (review)

17. I'm Still Here

16. Love Lies Bleeding (review) 

15. Janet Planet

14. A Different Man (review)

13. Flow

12. The End (review)

11. National Anthem (review)

10. Kinds of Kindness (review)

9. Rumours (review)

8. Red Rooms (review)

7. Bird (review)

6. The Substance (review)

5. Challengers (review)

4. Nosferatu (review)

3. Hard Truths (review)

2. Queer (review)

1. Evil Does Not Exist 

---------------------------------------

And here are ten runners-up: The Vourdalak, Babygirl, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Hundreds of Beavers, Blitz, Trap, The Brutalist, Memoir of a Snail, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, and Oddity.

Okay -- that's that! Onward and onward!

 Let's get 2025 rolling...

Good Morning, World

I know people find Michael Shannon odd, and he is, but I personally am extremely drawn to his kind of odd, so this photo of him laying in bed in the fuzziest pants I have ever seen in the new issue of Interview Magazine -- where he's interviewed by his Bikeriders co-star Austin Butler, sigh -- is to me the coziest thing to greet a week with. I wanna climb in there and spoon so hard! I haven't read the chat yet but I imagine it's mostly about The End, his end-of-times musical with Tilda Swinton and George Mackay that was one of my favorites of last year (here is my review) -- The End is available to rent at home at all the places now so I say do it! It's not the easiest sit -- especially in the year that 2025 has already been -- but I think it's really quite brilliant myself. Anyway happy Monday from me and Big Mikey!

Alessandro I Want For Chistmas...

Because he has three yes count them three movies out in theaters now -- Kraven the Hunter came out last week (read my quick thoughts here) while Brady Corbet's The Brutalist (read my review here) and Pedro Almodovar's The Room Next Door (wonderful but not reviewed by me) are both out now -- we have been blessed with not just one but two count them two photoshoots of Alessandro Nivola this week! This first one is for Sharp magazine and there's a chat with him at that link as well; the same goes for Anthem magazine, and you'll see those photos down below. Before that though, an aside -- there's a chance this post will be our last until the holidays are upon us, happening, and then history. Which is to say I'm not sure if I'll be online tomorrow and after that I'm definitely off until January 2nd of the year 2025. If that's not the case I suppose you'll know when I start rambling on here tomorrow. But if not -- Happy Holidays, everyone! And consider this collection o' Nivola my gifts to you, right on after the jump...

Quote of the Day

There is a chat with director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes in Dazed magazine right now (thx Mac) about their latest colaboration Queer (the William S. Burroughs adaptation out in theaters now that I reviewed right here) and besides it containing several images from that film's set that I adore -- that one of him in a Carrie t-shirt above is going straight onto my mood board -- it's also got several bits of information I really enjoyed reading. Luca talks about why there's so much Nirvana in the film, and he also admits that Twin Peaks was an influence on it (but refuses to elaborate further). But it's the bit at the end that has nothing to do with Queer that has me the most excited -- and if you've seen my hemming and hawing then you know it's not about his possible American Psycho remake. 

No it's about An Even Bigger Splash, his long-gestating longer cut of his already divine 2015 film A Bigger Splash, which stars Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes. Luca has been mentioning this was a thing on his mind for awhile, and bless this interviewer for getting a very brief but important update:

 "Yes, for sure. 100 per cent. We’re finalising it."

Supposedly this cut has a full seventy more minutes! I don't know whether this is a good idea or not either, but Luca always proves my doubts wrong so you'd think I'd have learned my lesson at this point. And even if it does prove to be too much of a good thing -- am I going to complain about seventy more minutes of a movie where the godline Matthias Schoenaerts runs around in itty bitty shorts looking like a fucking sculpture? I don't think so. In summation here is a new photo that dropped online this week from the set of Luca's other 2024 film Challengers, with him in a spot where so many of us would love to be -- half-straddled by Mike Faist in his tennis gear:

It's The End of the World As We Know It

Any fans of Joshua Oppenheimer's documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence up in here? I count myself as one, a big one, and so I was cautiously optimistic about his new movie The End starring Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, and George Mackay -- my caution stemming from 1) it's a musical and y'all probably know I approach that genre with repidation, and 2) it didn't get that striking of a reception from critics when it played at TIFF and Telluride earlier this fall. Nor did it this past weekend when it hit theaters -- it sits at around 50% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. Except I liked it! Count me among the glass-full half of that 50% -- my review went upnat Pajiba yesterday and you can read it right here if you like. I mention this in the review but the movie it most reminded me of was The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, another musical that bucked the system and made of me a fan. (Indeed Cherbourg is probably my favorite movie musical of them all so Oppenheimer was clever to aim for those vibes.) Anyway I totally get why reception's mixed but don't be surprised if you see this baby end up inside my Top 10 of the year, is all I am saying. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Suspiria (2018)

Madame Blanc: I don't know how aware you are of what times we lived through here 40 years ago, out of which this piece was made. We learned at great cost through those years the value of the balance of things. Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth, but we must aim upwards. We need to get you in the air.

Happy birthday to mother Tilda Swinton! 

And let's all get in the air today!

PS you do know a 4K edition of this movie's out next week right?

Luca Guadagnino's American Psycho Wait What

I fully changed my attitude toward "remakes" thanks to Luca Guadagnino's 2018 master-class on how to do them right called Suspiria -- I've always been a big fan of Dario Argento's original and I thought a remake was a terrible idea, and then Luca's version came out and he slapped my fucking mouth shut to the point where I now refuse to baldly criticize them on first glance. If an artist is willing to do something as different and interesting with the material as he did there, then by all means let the remakes happen! 

And yet! Luca himself has come to test me today! Because Deadline is reporting that Luca himself is working on remaking one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, one I love way more than I ever loved the original Suspiria -- specifically he's thinking about making a new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, which I am sure you are all aware Mary Harron turned into a horror comedy masterpiece in the year 2000 with Christian Bale. For god's sake I just posted a gif from that movie less than 24 hours ago!

The thing is -- American Psycho the film works so well exactly because of who made the thing. The team of Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner gutted the book's POV and made the character of Patrick Bateman into a much deserved punchline. It's much more of a comedy than it is a horror film, althought the terror of toxic masculinity is very real and felt palpably throughout. 

And I have no doubt that Luca gets all of that -- Steven Soderbergh's favorite screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who Deadline says is working on the new script, I'm far more dubious about. Which isn't to say I haven't liked many of Burns' scripts -- he wrote The Informant! for god's sake. But perspective is everything, especially with material this questionable, and it'd be very very very easy to slide off the mark with this. It's honestly a miracle that Harron's movie got made and ended up the way it did -- one I wonder at anew every time I think about the movie. Which is quite often here 20+ years on!

And I say all of this with Luca's new film Queer very much at the front of my brain -- I reviewed that yesterday and it's as good as anything Luca has ever made. The man is killing it right now. I should not doubt in Luca. He's proven that time and time again. And the man can direct some horror! And I should also keep in mind that Luca attaches his name to a thousand projects that never get made, so maybe this will go the way of his Brideshead Revisited or his Lord of the Flies movies. Or maybe he'll make a movie of the musical! I love the American Psycho musical!

I am just... listen, in the Deadline article the head of Lionsgate is quoted saying they're thrilled to have a filmmaker like Luca coming on board this "potent and classic IP" and I know that quoite isn't Luca's fault and he would never put it that way but that dude needs to read the room. "Classic IP" rings all of the alarm bells of terror. So..... thoughts???? Help me out here, people. I am bewildered. 

I Need The Room Next Door Like Yesterday

The first teaser trailer for Pedro Almodovar's English-language debut feature film The Room Next Door starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton has arrived and it's perfectly fine to watch if you're spoiler-averse like me -- it's nothing but a disconnected series of gorgeous images and music...

COLOR IN THE NEW ALMODOVAR TRAILER, PART TWO pic.twitter.com/YIKMKQv3mr

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 20, 2024

... that will get you right in the mood for this, this movie, this movie right here, I need this movie right here inside of my body right this fucking second. Ahem. Excuse me, I got carried away. Almodovar will do that to you. I will be seeing this in exactly 45 days at NYFF -- for those of you who won't be seeing it at any of the fall festivals (it's playing most all of them) it is hitting NYC and LA on December 20th and then it will spread out in January. Here's the teaser:

The Poster Next Door

The poster for Pedro Almodóvar's The Room Next Door has arrived and in the grand tradition of Pedro Almodóvar Movie Posters it's a work of art that any sane person should want to hang on their wall. The obvious reference is of course Bergman's Persona, with two women's faces intermingling, but them being down at the bottom laid out like a landscape, like mountains, makes me think of the poster for Rosemary's Baby as well. I'm sure that was also thought of. Anyway I'm also including the Spanish version below just to prove that the font design on these is beautiful in any language...

NYFF Ahoy!

Although it seems nuts to be onto the fall festivals already (not that I will miss this hellfire summer in the slightest, mind you) it is indeed the perfect moment for me to take stock of my hometown beloved, the New York Film Festival, since they've officially announced all three of their Gala films now. We'll start with the end, or is that the middle -- today they announced their Centerpiece film screening and it will indeed be Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language full-length film The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, John Turturro, and Alessandro Nivola. See all my previous posts on this one here -- we've been rather excited about this for some time, because of course we have. 

This will be its U.S. premiere -- it's premiere-premiering in Venice in September. The NYFF screening is October 4th, right in the middle of the fest -- hence it being the "Centerpiece film" duh -- which runs from September 27–October 14. And speaking of those dates -- the Opening Night film that they announced a couple of weeks ago is Nickel Boys from Hale County This Morning, This Evening (a truly spectacular movie, that) director RaMell Ross -- an adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-winning novel, Nickel Boys stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, Daveed Diggs, Fred Hechinger, and two young actors named  Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in the leads; it's about "two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida." Anybody read the book? 

And then there's our Closing Night movie -- Steve McQueen's Blitz! I've been jonesing for this ever since I first heard about it -- the Hunger and Shame and 12 Years a Slave director is tackling the World War II bombings that devastated London from the ground level, with Saiorse Ronan playing a working-class mum who gets seperated from her little boy in the underground. Blitz also stars, among many others, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, and Hayley Squires -- I have been a massive fan of Squires ever since she wowed in Ken Loach's 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, so I hope her role is juicy too. A lot of people think this might be the movie to finally get Saoirse her Best Actress Oscar, but I don't think enough people have actually seen it yet to know that much. (Having seen her in The Outrun at Sundance though I can already tell you that this is going to be a very good fall for her.)

Anyway that's three films down, dozens more to come -- I daren't even conjecture, they always surprise me, but I find myself getting giddy thinking about it already. If you're planning on attending you can buy packages right here right now; single tickets go on sale in the middle of September. 

Pic of the Day

Alongside this new image from the set we have some very happy-making news today from Sony Classics themselves that Pedro Almodovar's The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore will be out this year! I hope it premieres at NYFF -- Pedro seems to love NYFF. He's always showing up for it. That would rock. See all my previous posts on this movie, Almodovar's first full-length film in English, here -- notably the fact that it also co-stars John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola (mmm). And I see IMDb has added a few other names to the cast -- hello there, Juan Diego Botto...

All Ghosts and Gay Boys

George Mackay giving hot tradie is the theme of the weekend as Femme, the queer thriller starring him and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as haters-turned-lovers is finally finally finally hitting U.S. theaters. It's been a long road, baby, but we made it. I saw the movie at Fantasia last August and I reviewed it for Mashable right here -- then my review got quoted in the trailer right here -- and now it's out for all of you people to see whether you agree with me that it's hot, dangerous stuff. 

But wait! This is actually a crazy thick weekend for good movies. For one Pixar / Disney are re-releasing Luca into theaters -- when it came out at the height of the pandemic it went straight to streaming and I called it "Pixar's best film in years" and that remains true from where I stand; just now you can finally see it on a big screen! So make sure you do. Call Me By Your Name Jr. deserves the love. 

And then there is Problemista -- a movie I adore and yet a movie I have not had the chance to write a proper review of yet. I saw it at NewFest last summer but I haven't had the chance to see it again, which I need to do before I write about it. This has been out in some cities for a couple of weeks but it's going wide this weekend -- anyway once I do see it again don't be surprised if this makes it into my favorite films of 2024 list. Yes it's early, but come on. This thing's a hilarious beauty with some of Tilda's funniest work to date. Here is the trailer.  

And then there is the horror movie Late Night With the Devil also out today! Set in 1977 this found-footage gem is sort of a spin on the great Ghostwatch -- here is the gorgeous poster and the trailer if you missed that. I'm counting my words here because I still might write a review of this. Maybe today even. Stay tuned. it's worth writing about. And going to see!

But yes wait, wait, and keep on waiting -- there is even more. EVEN MORE. Like I said today is truly ridiculous. But don't worry I saved the worst for last. The new Ghostbusters movie called Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is in theaters now and... well I did write about this one. Click on over to Pajiba and you'll hear my thoughts. They are not kind, but they are not as unkind as my words for the previous one, Afterlife. So that's something! The franchise is making incremental mini-steps towards not totally sucking. Maybe if they make fifty more they'll get around to making a good one.