Goodbye Oscars Again

Conan O'Brien was doing such a good job putting on a good Oscars show -- along with the show's producers, who embraced the gaudy nonsense that the show should embrace, but more on that in a second -- that it wasn't until its second half that I realized I didn't give a shit about any of the movies or people winning the prizes. That they held off my annual Oscar annoyance and bitterness that long is an incredible feat! There are a couple of winners -- Flow for Best Animated film, Daniel Blumberg's incredible score for The Brutalist, No Other Land for Doc, and I'm Still Here for International Film -- that make me very happy. Several others are fine. But when you're as meh as I am about every single one of the top prize winners? Keiran Culkin is the only performance of the four acting winners I really like, but I could name twenty people I'd have handed that statue to over him including three of the other people actually nominated against him (I haven't been able to bring myself to watch The Apprentice yet). And I admit I need to re-watch Anora -- I have only seen it once at NYFF in the fall -- but y'all know...

When Conan made the joke about Anora using “the f word” 479 times I thought maybe we were gonna get a joke about its rampant homophobia for a second, haha silly me

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 8:51 PM

... my repeatedly-expressed feelings there. And while I quite like The Brutalist I'm of the mind (apparently very very lonely of that mind) that Brody and Jones are its weakest aspects. (And JFC Brody's speech was insufferable proof that he remains insufferable.) 

I was expecting this to pop up in the middle of that speech

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 10:28 PM

Anyway I loved the production of the show, which embraced the hokey dance numbers of the past, and which really let -- for its first half anyway -- the nominees in all the craft cateegories get their due. Until they decided things were running too long and started cutting people off -- as soon as they start doing that I start getting tense and annoyed and the entire mood shifts. And then I started noticing that I wasn't liking the winners and yadda yadda Mikey Madison beat Demi and I was done. Y'all have thoughts? 

Robbed

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 2, 2025 at 10:43 PM

Congrats to the Dorian Winners!

The winners of the annual Dorian awards have been announced -- voted on by members of GALECA, an orgination of entertainment critics of the queer sort amongst whom I happily count myself -- and we did okay! I only voted for a couple of the winners but I'm not angry that we gave The Substance a near damned sweep -- that's a lot of fun! This ain't your grandma's queer critic's awards show! Anyway Challengers did well too (winning score and screenplay) and we gave our rising star award to Jonathan Bailey! Jonathan Bailey always gets a rise outta me that's for sure. Hit the jump and I'll share the full press release with y'all...

The Cool Critics Take Nashville

One more look back at 2024 (The Oscars who?) from me and then I think that'll be the last you hear about it, because 2025 is turning out to just be So Awesome And All -- head on over to the Nashville Scene where my pal and fellow critic Jason Shawhan gathered up an incredible roster of my fellow critics (plus me) to vote and comment on our favorites of the year that was. The only movie in my own Top 10 that might win an Oscar -- Coralie Fargeat's The Substance -- topped our list, so you know we're pretty fucking cool people. Indeed the overlap between my faves and this list is stronger than anywhere else I've seen! Good work, us.

Vibin' With The Vourdalak!

The literal only reason the vampire puppet surreal horror film The Vourdalak only made it onto my list of runners-up in my favorite 2024 films was because of a mistake on my part -- somewhere in the editing and endless re-editing process of said list I misplaced the film's title from the document I was working on and I didn't realize it until I'd posted the final list. If the title had been there in front of me and I had remembered it The Vourdalak would have been in my Top 20 and I feel shitty about it! But now you can see the movie for yourself and understand why I feel so shitty for that mistake -- it's now streaming on Shudder.  It's one of 2024's great films, absolutely singular and odd and funny and delightful, and I adore it -- here is my original review. The film is also getting a blu-ray release (thank goodness!) in "Late Spring 2025" and you can buy it on Oscilliscope's website for the time being. I have a feeling a lot of people will be discovering and loving this now that it's more broadly available! 

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 

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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...

It's Another Red Rooms Post

I think I have posted about Red Rooms about three dozen times now but I don't care -- it's out on Shudder today and I feel proud of my itty bitty role in getting the word out on it! Especially once it started popping up in tons of "Best of 2024" lists. I was there when the Quebecois true-crime-obsession thriller had its North American premiere in Montreal at the Fantasia Film Festival in July of 2023, and I was immediately bowled over by it -- I wrote up my thoughts on it for Mashable right here, and yadda yadda eventually other people saw it come 2024 when it got released and they seem to've agreed with my assessment. My little quote that the movie "out-Finchers Fincher" made it into the trailer and onto the poster and onto the eventual blu-ray release, which turns out was a good move by the PR people -- amazing how a throwaway comment you're not thinking too hard about can be the one that captures people's imaginations and curiosity. Anyway I keep being tempted to post the two most memorable shots in the film (once you've seen it you'll know the ones of which I speak) but I wanna leave them for y'all to disocver if you haven't seen it yet. So go watch it. Or go watch it a second time. Talk about a movie that haunts you.  

Go See This Masterpiece

That gorgeous new poster for Mike Leigh's latest masterpiece Hard Truths dropped earlier this week (via) just in time for the incredible film to drop today in theaters -- click here if you're not in NYC and wondering if it's playing near you. It is hitting several cities besides us today and a heap more next Friday so hopefully you'll get your chance. I reviewed the film in the fall at NYFF right here -- it is fully ludicrous that it's a question mark whether leading actor Marianne Jean-Baptiste will be nominated for an Oscar for the movie because her work in this film blows every other performance of the year out of the water. And there's been some terrific on-screen acting this year! But her turn here towers above the rest, and if AMPAS doesn't nominate her it will once again delegitimsize itself as a gathering of any substance or meaning whatsoever. I mean I personally decided that a long while back but that's not going to keep me from clanging the bell every time they do it again! (I also celebrate good wins -- like the character Marianne plays I am secretly not entirely vitriol. Just damaged!) 

And Speaking of Barry Keoghan...

... his movie with the legendary Andrea Arnold directing, the one called Bird, can now be viewed from the comfort of your couch, or your bathtub, or Jacob Elordi's bathtub even, thanks to the fine folks at Mubi. I love love loved this movie (which also stars our other boyfriend Franz Rogowski) when I saw it last fall -- here is my Pajiba review -- and you should expect to see it on my list of favorite 2024 movies whenever I get around to taking five minutes to write that thing down for y'all. It is magic. (pic via)

The Year In Queer

I did very little work over my break -- we're talking very, very little -- but I did accomplish one thing of which I am very proud! Click on over to Pajiba to read my list of The 10 Hottest Queerest Scenes in 2024's Movies. I got to go deep -- well ankle-deep anyway, as they're blurbs -- on some moments in my favorite movies of the year that I haven't heard much discussion of. I was especially happy how I managed to get the year's most hetero movie Babygirl onto the list! 

The 2024 Movies Says Pajiba

My own personal list is still awhile off but today the team over at Pajiba (which yes includes me) revealed our communal Top 10 Movies of 2024 list -- click here to read them! Several of the entries are movies I reviewed so there are links to my reviews therein. A couple of the movies will also be making my own list I think, nut I haven't finalized that quite yet -- even better there's only one entry on the list I'm not a fan of. Anybody got a guess? I haven't been coy about it but nobody can pay attention to all of my bullshit. And I bet you Nosferatu -- which happily did make the list -- would've made it even higher on it if our entire team had been able to see it. Its Christmas release cut it off from a lot of folks voting. Anyway we did good, we rock, et cetera.

Evil Comes Home Where it Belongs

I think I've posted the poster for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist a few times now but I will always take the chance again when it's given -- my favorite poster of the year, I think? Stunning poster, stunning film, and prepare yourselves to be stunned now at home because as foretold the movie has just dropped on blu-ray thanks to Criterion and their Janus Contemporaries line -- go snatch up a copy quick! This movie features prominently on my favorite films of 2024 (whenever I get around to announcing such things natch) and you won't want to miss it. It is streaming on Criterion Channel now too if you prefer to commit to seeing something before buying yourself a hard copy, but all that says to me is you don't trust my word and why would you want to commit an atrocity like that? Here before the holidays? What a bunch of ungrateful monsters! No but for serious go see this movie. It's straight up haunted me since NYFF 2023. One of the great movie endings of perhaps all time. 

The Critics, We Choiced

This marks my second year voting as a member of the Critics Choice Association and I long ago made peace -- well before I even became a member -- with the fact that my weird personal picks would end up falling through the cracks of a general consensus and not get much representation in the final tallies. It's just par for the course with this type of thing. That's what I have my personal awards for, and uhhh hopefully some time I'll get to those. But today what I have to share with you are the Critics Choice nominations! And there are a few things I voted for up in here -- you can be sure that any nominations for Hard Truths, Nosferatu, The Substance, the two Guadagninos were among my votes -- and that makes me happy. I will glom my hopes onto them. Oh and as a sidenote -- I am planning on going to Los Angeles for the ceremony this year! So stay tuned for coverage from that! Exciting star-fuckery ahead! Okay now let's hit the jump and see the entire list of nominations...