We measure movies in arbitrary ways. What does a year of movies all have in common, other than when they are distributed? Usually, nothing. They are not released to compete with one another — movie crews do not make up the members of sports teams. And yet, we have this very human impulse to recollect upon these set periods of time. Within our Critic Circles to select what we wish to champion and help other people get to see. It’s all part of this funny thing we all do, this never-ending dialogue, this search for what movies are worth your time when there are more options than ever, many of the options now being things that are not strictly movies. What are your top 5 YouTube videos of the half-year? Your top 5 TikTok’s? Do we need to weigh anything this way? Absolutely not. And yet, here we are, with this ever-shifting list of partially formed ideas midway through the year — here are five movies we want you to see and five movies we want to see.
The People’s Joker
What better movie to represent 2024 than The People’s Joker? Vera Drew’s masterclass satire makes a tremendous clown-show out of playing with fair use, in the funniest and most clever movie you can watch this year. Working within the framework of licenses and known IP, Drew twists the Joker mythos so that it gorgeously represents a trans coming-of-age story; one of the best ideas ever to come out of a use of intellectual property, and how brilliant that it’s within this essential outsider work that doubles as an absolutely terrific movie. Our review
Love Lies Bleeding
In her Sophomore feature, Rose Glass brings the heart. Sometimes you just have the strongest belief in the world that a director is about to arrive. We all thought maybe it would happen with her debut, Saint Maud (2019), but it absolutely came with her follow-up. This muscle-bound thriller is a giantess among movies, so engorged with keyed-in performances — Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien are electric together — and flowing so wonderfully as a tense genre piece, this is a rare case where everything comes together and a new talent is fully-formed. Everything Rose Glass does from here is top priority. Our review
Evil Does Not Exist
Ryūsuke Hamaguchi directs from a place of reserved quietude and yet his movies are expansive, not restrictive, exploring humanist themes, and staying close to the heart of his character. So goes his follow-up to the brilliant Drive My Car (2021); once again, Hamaguchi channels creative partner Eiko Ishibashi’s deeply-feeling score, which seems to form the emotional direction of the film, especially provoking movement when the film will otherwise stay inside its poignant slowness. There is much to uncover here, a foreground and background procession of events, an environmentally-friendly recourse for a town challenged with a company’s plans for glamping facilities. This is essential, human work, operating along a high register of care and empathy.
Janet Planet
An emotionally devastating exploration of a young girl and the summer where she learns to distance herself from her mother. A coming-of-age story where progress is seasonally stunted, as the young girl must contend with the attention of her mother’s three summer visitors. In three acts, Janet Planet brilliantly tells a story of how we become detached, even from those we love the most, and marks the arrival of celebrated playwright Annie Baker as a filmmaker who also must be celebrated. Our review
I Saw the TV Glow
What is our relationship to media? Has it ever crossed the expected parasocial boundaries and become a part of us? If you’ve landed on this site, that feels like something of a guarantee, and I Saw the TV Glow is exactly for the audience our project is to reach. That is to say, it’s radically inclusive and deeply empathetic work. If you see yourself in Jane Schoenbrun’s movie, it’s going to be one of the most important and self-reflexive experiences of the year. It is also astounding next-level filmmaking that seems to come from the future; this is what the medium may become, and it glows with warmth for you, if you so choose to give yourself to it and enter in its fuzzy, scrambled embrace. Our review
Coming Attractions
Some movies y’all might wanna see in the second half of the year
The Wild Robot
Funny thing to list, but it’s the first movie my daughter has brought to my attention that I knew nothing about — it comes out this fall and it’s from the Dreamworks animation team behind How to Train Your Dragon — and I brought my daughter right to the bookstore and we picked up the first of the two books and are reading it together. It’s wonderful. I love it. We both are looking forward. See why: the trailer shows the great opportunity for expressive animation and a sweet robot story.
Nosferatu
Come on, Robert Eggers is making his dream project — noting, he seems to only make his dream projects — and it looks absolutely astounding in every way. This is also our dream movie. We’d give our blood. You might too. Thus far, Eggers cannot miss, and we do not anticipate he’ll start with this movie, which looks like the pinnacle of the forthcoming awards season.
Twisters
What movie is more fun than Twister (1996)? It’s a high concept road movie with a lot of fun in it. And the sequel comes from Minari (2021) director Lee Isaac Chun, which may mean the follow-up is instilled with an emotional, beating heart. Or, maybe he’ll just make his own version of the fun tornado movie. Either way, we win.
Longlegs
Marketing counts. Trailer of the year sounds like an arbitrary marker — and it is! — but, what an incredible trailer. Seriously wicked. Looks to be a haunting, twisty psychological horror-thriller. Doesn’t seem to have much to do with spiders. Might have something to do with Daddies. Nicolas Cage plays the killer, and in the trailer, only his torturous voice is heard, already provoking chills, he’s already in our head…
Trap
When the M. Night Shyamalan movie’s trailer seems to reveal the twist outright, you’ve just got to wonder: what else is he cooking? Trap looks like exactly the kind of movie that most benefits his very specific toolkit. We simply cannot wait to be tricked again, and again.
Alien: Romulus
All Alien movies are good movies.