Jan 20 - 26 2025
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In, MadS, Anora, Sing Sing, Uncharted, A Real Pain
- Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In [2024] - 74
Gotta love a movie with a colon in the title for no reason [theoretically there’s going to be both a prequel and sequel to this, so I suppose big ups for planning]. Regardless, Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In stands as a more-than-entertaining film if you’re in for some traditional Hong Kong-style punches, kicks, slides, and table flips. Certainly not a perfect movie by any means, this 2024 submission for the Oscar’s “Best International Film” is, I believe, perfect for what it intended to be. While I wish certain aspects had been elaborated on further [whatever the hell “spirit magic” is], and a little less time was spent on others, Walled In still makes for an incredibly fun time… as long as you’re open to some extreme camp, silly character names, and a lot of over-the-top drama.
- MadS [2024] - 63
Likewise in the “not exactly the ticket, but exactly the ticket it meant to be” category; we have the 2024 zombie-oner, Mads. As suggested, this is a film shot [or extremely cleverly edited] in a single go. This is always a method that rides the cool/ risky train pretty hard, with only a razor’s edge to balance on and… MadS doesn’t exactly tip the right way all the time. While the film’s opening and closing scenes are as excellent as anything else in the genre, a lot of the connective tissue between moments serves more to highlight why movies aren’t made this way, rather than showcase how they could be made differently. Apart from it’s horrendously dark filmmaking — and I do mean “dark” as in “I had my TV on a brightness setting I’ve never used before and still had trouble making some scenes out” — MadS feels like a loving ode to class leader, 28 Days Later, and is far from all bad. Just… watch those teeth.
- Anora [2024] - 94
Annnnd then the Oscar nominees were announced [sorry Walled In, you didn’t make it 🙁], and I got myself off of random films and straight into catch-up mode… starting with an absolute banger of a nominee. Up for Picture, Leading Actress [Mickey Madson], Supporting Actor [Yura Borisov], Editing, Directing, and Original Screenplay, Sean Baker’s million-mile-per-hour stress-[ro]mance, Anora, is smart, savvy, sexy, loud, and extremely fun[?]. I really loved this movie for all it’s obvious storytelling and all its questions that it forces you to ask by the end. I definitely think this is a film that could easily define the phrase “your mileage may vary”, but I think there’s a high level of artistry and intelligence behind the script here that will make this one stick with me for a while. I’ll definitely be curious where this ends up on my 2025 Top 100 and I hope to see it take home some awards come march.
- Sing Sing [2024] - 96
Sing Sing, likewise, is an easy entry directly into my Top 100, and likely Top 20. With nominations for Leading Actor [Colman Domingo], Original Song, and Adapted Screenplay, this was a movie I had very little interest in seeing at first. Billed as a “prison/ drama”, I had Orange is the New Black flashbacks and was instantly turned off… Oops 😅. Lead by a truly stunning performance by Domingo in the star role as Divine G, Sing Sing follows a theater troupe inside the titular maximum security prison and the things big and small that its members have to both embrace and overcome to put on delicate and vulnerable performances. This movie is soft and powerful and moving and uplifting and damning and enraging all at once… with a little twist during the credits that elevates it all the further. By the end… the only thing that turned me off about Sing Sing was that it wasn’t nominated for more pieces of its brilliance.
- Uncharted [2022] - 54
As a pallet cleanser, I watched 2022’s action/adventure/miscarriage, Uncharted. While most videogame adaptations tend to be bad in one way or another [often one way and another], Ruben Fleischer [Zombieland, Venom] created something here that manages to set itself apart. Now, keen-eyed viewers will have spotted the above rating and be able to put their critical thinking skills to the test by figuring out that this hasn’t set itself that far apart… but what makes Uncharted special is that it manages to be more “nothing” than it does “offensive”, “awful”, or even “boring”. Some of the action is good, some of the employment of the games’ themes is fun, and some of the jokes land just fine… but most of the film simply manages to limp along with confusing casting, meaningless characters, and absolutely nonsensical plot points while daddy Sony dreams of sequels. Not the worst movie… I guess… I’m sure Uncharted would be plenty of fun for pre-teens and entirely undiscerning viewers, but I wish this one had taken a slightly longer gander at the map before setting sail into production.
- A Real Pain [2024] - 82
Nominated for both its absolutely brilliant screenplay and equally brilliant performance by Kieran Culkin, Jessie Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a drama that sits comfortably alongside one of my all-time favorites, Lars and the Real Girl, in that it’s a movie about the viewer’s experience of the world within the film. Culkin is so well written and performed that we’re tricked into feeling exactly how the film wants us to feel about him at any given moment, only to then have the lens turned against us; forcing us to reconcile with the thoughts we’ve had and words we’ve shared about someone who’s maybe a little more profound than we gave them credit for. While I wish this film had used a less dramatic backdrop for its plot to take place against so that its overall story could be told with a little less obvious metaphor, the storytelling itself is beautiful, complex, and deeply resonant for a world that never stops moving and has become so jaded by tragedy that almost nothing phases us anymore.
