2024 film round up - Drama, action and Thrillers

These are the jottings I made for the drama films I saw in 2024 where I haven't already published my notes.  There are some other films I saw this year I have already written about here, here and here.  And my more recent musings on romance, coming of age and family dramas are here 

Back to Black:  Amy Winehouse is played to great effect by Marisa Abela, in this largely kind portrayal of the artist, her creativity and her demons.  I felt she was probably a lot more of everything than shown here, whether that be her creativity, amazing musicianship or demons, but I did go home and put on the albums again, and I was sad again at the waste of such a blazing talent.

Bank of Dave:  Based on the real life story of Dave Fishwick's creation of a local bank and starring Rory Kinnear giving his best blokey-ness.  Very clunky in the delineation of villains vs good guys, and after googling afterwards, with a fair amount of fantasy to round off a good story, but despite that I really enjoyed it.  A funny feel-good story with clear messaging about the real challenges in the way banking (and most of the corporate world) operates,  but Dave as portrayed by Kinnear is the absolute star - engaging and driven, never losing sight of his goals.

Poor Things: One of my friends saw this before I did, and their text simply said 'I don't know what to tell you!'   Emma Stone is wonderful in this weird and wild ride of a woman's self discovery and growth.  Emma plays Bella Baxter, a woman with a baby's brain - literally as she is created by Dr Godstein Baxter ( a scarred Frankenstein figure played by Willem Defoe) who Bella calls 'God'.  From  her first baby steps to her puberty and then self and sexual discovery, this is a surreal and funny journey but with a satisfying drive as this woman discovers who she is and what she wants for herself, rather than what is defined for her by the men around her.  Visually striking with colourful steampunky sets full of oddities and always with an eye to a sexual reference or pun, the whole thing is a wonder, but none of it would work without the amazing performance by Emma Stone.  I find it impossible to describe, just watch it for yourself.

Civil War: In this dystopian action drama, a crew of journalists take a journey through an America torn in two by a new civil war.  A kind of modern day Apocalypse Now, except there is no monstrous single Colonel Kurtz figure to be found.  Instead, as we join this journey, we see the dysfunction and division all around.  Shocking and spectacular battle scenes but without any sense of what they are fighting over, beyond the desire to win.  Leading the gang travelling through the chaos is Kirsten Dunst as Lee, an acclaimed war photo-journalist, a young wannabe female photographer  Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), an adrenaline junkie journalist Joel played by Wagner Moura and the mentor to Lee (and clear sitting target for getting wiped out early), played by Stephen McKinley Henderson.   The bleak ending was unsurprising, but I got myself a bit cross, perhaps unfairly, about the way that the very few women characters were treated - I think we should be allowed more than one hotshot female photographer at any one time

Challengers:  I watched this at the start of a night flight back from NY, waiting to be served my meal before I tried and failed to sleep.   It's a long and entertaining movie about the friendship and rivalry between two young male tennis players (Josh O'Connor and Mike Faist) for professional success and, perhaps more importantly, for the heart of Lily (Zendaya).  The tension is split between the sexual chemistry between the three and then again on the tennis court.  It's billed as raunchy and it is, nothing wrong with that.  But I really loved the set piece tennis matches the most which were filmed as lovingly and close up and as much full of tension as the sex scenes.  It's an entertaining and good looking few hours. 

In Camera:  A sharp and funny satire about acting and the film and tv industry, following the trials and tribulations of Aden (Nabhaan Rizwan)  as he faces humiliating auditions and rejections mixed with the occasional grim bit parts.  Trying to become whatever is specified by each role, he seems to lack any clarity of who he is.  However, when a new dickish flatmate arrives, Aden starts imitating bits of his character and then starts becoming successful.  Clever and confusing, I want to watch it again as it's so subtle in the transitions that Aden goes through I only really understood what was going on when it was too far through the film. 

Emilia Perez: This is one of many films that I couldn't categorise at all.  It could be seen as a coming of age/family drama, just a musical, or as a political film.  The critics were similarly torn on how to interpret it so I don't feel quite so bad.  This has the tone of a South American soap opera, but it's also a musical with loads of family drama and a political element in relation to the disappeared; you could also argue the coming of age angle in Emilia's coming out as a trans woman despite it being later in life.  Spanish trans actor Karla Sofia Gascon plays Juan “Manitas” Del Monte and Emilia, putting in great performances in both roles.  It was also great to see Selena Gomez doing something different, although her character wasn't really given enough to make her really 3D.   I was pretty uncomfortable about the way the disappeared storyline was managed, leaving it as secondary, or perhaps even lower in the pecking order of priorities in this packed narrative.  Audacious and OTT in many ways with disconcerting shifts of tone, I wasn't really sure about its interpretation of the trans experience, and it was cliched in many ways about gender stereotypes, but it was definitely strikingly different, and that is a very good thing.

Don’t Worry Darling: With Florence Pugh in one of the lead roles, it's not surprising that roles of women and the patriarchy is examined in this glossy sci fi.   Alice (Florence Pugh) and her husband, Jack (Harry Styles) live a glossy 1950s life with stay at home wives and husbands who go to work in flashy cars, filling their weekends with cocktail parties.  This is largely a Stepford Wives update for the  world of virtual reality, showing the soft and hard versions of coercion and a tiny bit of exploration about why women might go for that.  So, overall this is largely a thriller, and a pretty entertaining one.

The Settlers: Bleak and brutal film about the clearance of indigenous peoples in Tierra del Fuego as part of the colonisation and exploitation of the land by Europeans and commercial interests.  A Scots ex soldier, known as the ‘English Red Pig’ Alexander Maclennon accompanied by a Texan with their tracker, a mestiso’ half indigenous man murder and rape their way across the countryside as they claim it for their master José Menendez, meeting other mercenaries and people on the make, mostly just as awful and empty of any empathy or morality and being further brutalised in their turn.  The later negotiations over the ‘optics’ and ‘aesthetics’ are sad as the truth is told and then squared away with Segundo and his wife dressed up in western costumes for a tea party filmed for a whitewashed version of the making of a nation. The cinematography brings out both the beauty and bleakness of the landscapes and the score adds a further unsettling note.   Based on real characters this was really depressing to watch and I had to find something cheery afterwards. 

Dune 1: I saw this on the first flight out to NYC I did this year but didn't write about it then.  Looks gorgeous although I only saw it on a tiny screen.  Timothy Chalamet is good, although this first episode is a bit too much establishing him as the moody rebellious hero.  I found the portentious music really annoying though.

Wonka:  I also saw this on the flight out to NYC.  More Chalamet, and again he did a good job in a fairly glossy and fun, but otherwise unremarkable film, except that is by the turn by Olivia Coleman which had me giggling.

Gladiator 2:  This might be shaming to admit, but I have never seen the original Gladiator, so I suspect I was unwittingly whizzing past easter eggs galore, but even I spotted a couple of references.  Not gonna lie, I saw this because it had Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal in it, and they were both good value for money.  I thought the script was a bit dull and predictable, and some of the dialogue was downright clunky, but actually the performances were great, as was the cinematography - the thing looked amazing, particularly the set pieces in the colosseum, and the music was just right.  I have to say Denziel Washington was fabulous too.