The Best Movies and Worst Movies of 2024 w/ Hit Factory

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[00:00:53] Well, hello everyone. Welcome back to Struggle Session. I'm your host Leslie Lee III. Thank you so much for joining us today on this very special episode. A very exciting episode. We're talking about some of the best movies of 2024. Lots of people are saying it's a good year for movies. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see as many as I liked.

[00:01:16] But I brought on two experts. Two real film aficionados. Two real filmers. You know, some of the best online. Aaron and Carly of Hit Factory. Thank you so much for joining us today. Once again, returning to Struggle Session. It's been too long. Long time coming. Long overdue. Thrilled to be here, Leslie. Thank you so much for having us on the show.

[00:01:44] Too many things, Leslie, have happened between the last time we hung out and this time. Yeah. Far too many things. Far too many things. Far too many things. Including the entire year of 2024 and all of the cinema encompassed within. Yeah. Good job. That was good. Thank you. Yes. Wonderful transition because we got a lot to talk about. Not a lot of time because I came up with a little format. In fact, I think in the show notes, I'll put a ballot.

[00:02:11] So for the audience, if you want to fill out a ballot as well, let me know. We'll talk about it on the upcoming episode. But we talked about our best films. The worst films. The most surprising. The most disappointing. The best performances. Worst performances. And some miscellaneous awards. And of course, these things are not subjective. These are objective. These are, in fact, the best and worst movies of 2024. No question whatsoever.

[00:02:40] You don't need to watch the Oscars. Don't bother. They don't even need to have them, in fact. Okay? Why bother? This is it. Don't watch the Oscars anyway. Yes. They're garbage. Nobody's going to get slapped again. There's no point. There's no point. That was peak. Peak Oscars was Chris Ross. Look, I... I controversially love Will Smith for doing that. Yes. Absolutely. It was wonderful. I loved it. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

[00:03:09] I've been on this show for about five, six years. I've been campaigning for them to just cancel the Oscars. It's weird. It's like post-pulpeting the Dunder Mifflin Awards on TV. Like, is it insider industry awards? We don't need to see it. We don't need to see that. Totally agree. It's very silly. Although, I will say one thing in the Oscars favor this year, if it actually happens now,

[00:03:35] is if friend of Hit Factory, friend of the show, Carla Sofia Gascon from Emilia Perez finds her way to the awards ceremony. She's not... Netflix has said that they are not paying for her to attend. They are no longer footing the bill for any of her travel or any of her board. But who knows? She may be able to, out of pocket, attend herself and on her own dime. And if she does, surely something interesting will happen.

[00:04:03] I know you're irony tweeting live right now, but she is not friend of the show. She is not a friend of the show. She stays out of pocket. So, I'm sure she'll make her way. She stays out of pocket. She'll make... Yeah, she'll make her way. Oh, my goodness. What a wild story. Let's talk... We didn't actually have that on any of our lists. Did y'all watch that movie? I was about to watch it because it kind of looked interesting from the cover.

[00:04:31] And then my partner, who had looked into it more, was like, no, we're not watching that. That movie's garbage. No, no, no. And a lot of people, normal people, had a visceral hatred of this film. But for a while now, even before those tweets came out, people have been mad about this movie. Even though, for some reason, it got a lot of Oscar buzz and nomination. All that's kind of dead now. But it's kind of interesting. Did either of y'all see it? I don't think Carly did. And I certainly did not see it.

[00:05:01] No. It's one of those things where, like, there is a part of me that has a curiosity about it, but not enough to sit through two and a half hours of it. I've seen a couple of the clips online, obviously. The very famous, now infamous, like, Penis to Vagina song with the doctor and some of the other funny bits. And I just, I can't convince myself with all the other things that I have going on in my life,

[00:05:28] all the other movies that I know, like, that are, you know, kind of canonical great movies that I've never seen. I can't be persuaded to go and see Emilia Perez instead and just sit down for that length of time. I think also, like, the biggest thing for me is a lot of my Latin American friends, including friends that live in countries in Latin America, were, like, vehemently appalled by it. So, like, there's, like, the transphobia,

[00:05:56] the sort of, like, you know, weird conservative turns of the film that we've heard about if you're paying attention to the discourse online. But then there's also, you know, I think a lot of people are upset about the casting and sort of how what it means to be Latin American is portrayed and that she is now this sort of, like, representation of various identity groups is, you know, something that people aren't happy about.

[00:06:24] Well, let's talk about some movies that we were happy about that are worth our time. Yes. The best films of 2025. I absolutely loved The Count of Monte Cristo, directed by Alexandre de la Patelier and Mathieu de la Porte. I don't know if I'm saying their names right, but I'm trying. Perfect, perfect. Absolutely. It's beautiful. Yeah.

[00:06:51] Starring Pierre Nini in the protagonist role of Dantes, who we are all familiar with to a certain extent, as this is a very well-tread story. For that reason, I was trepidatious. I was like, The Count of Monte Cristo, I really love the Jim Caviezel version of this film. Also a friend of the show. No, don't stop. He is great in that film.

[00:07:18] But there have been, you know, there have been a lot of iterations of this story over time. The anime version was pretty good, too. I've never seen it. What's, when and where is the anime version from? Oh, it came out probably about 15 years ago now. It actually showed on Cartoon Network. I forget the exact name of it, but it was really cool, really stylish. It kind of looked like, inspired by, like, clumped paintings, the visual style of it. It was pretty interesting. Okay. I will absolutely check that out,

[00:07:46] because since this film has renewed my interest in this text, I'm, like, wanting to seek out other versions of it. I don't know that I'll read the book, but I probably will at some point. Um, but it's just, I mean, I was floored by how much this film did not feel its length. It's, I think, over three hours or nearly three hours. It's, like, on the dot, like that 180-minute mark. There's nothing better than a long movie that doesn't feel long.

[00:08:16] I mean, I was completely immersed. It really felt like the type of movie we don't get anymore, and also still very much utilizing current cinematic technology in a way that felt additive and supportive and, like, generative and not lazy. So it has this sort of, like, grand, sweeping epic

[00:08:44] that, like, you know, you think of when you're thinking about some of the, a lot of the stuff that came out in the 90s that was these period pieces that felt really immersive. The last Mohicans. Last Mohicans. And even, you know, things like Braveheart and, or Shakespeare adaptations, right? But this not only had that, you know, really lovely period epic sort of sweeping immersive quality,

[00:09:13] but it also used digital technology beautifully. I felt like all of the digital that was utilized in the film was really there to enhance and just made everything feel even more immersive and more like a fairy tale. I very rarely felt like it was pulling me out of the story. And it's just gorgeous to look at. I mean, everything looks like a Rococo painting. It's a really, really, really beautiful film.

[00:09:40] But on top of that, Pierre is just stunning as Dantes. I really was floored by it. And it is, at the end of the day, really true to the, what I know about the story, which is that it is ultimately about love. I think a lot of people think the story is about revenge, but this man's revenge wouldn't mean anything if he didn't love the people that he seeks revenge for. And this film totally foregrounds that.

[00:10:09] It sounds awesome. Yeah. It was lovely. I mean, it's also interesting to see how it adapts the source material because, you know, there are different things emphasized in all the different versions of this. I was not in Carly's camp. I will watch any version of The Count of Monte Cristo that exists. I think it's one of the most just like... Why only to cut on the surface? With a breath-infect very thin ice? If the heat-infects are on the branches, pack the infection with the root. Because it not only does the symptoms,

[00:10:38] but also does the wreak. Um-Calu-A-Bo. Unusprachable, but out-of-and-so-called good. To risks and effects, read the package and ask your doctor, your doctor or your office. Breathlessly entertaining stories ever written and will pursue anything that is even like kind of remotely related to it. And my favorite part of the story is always the Chateau Diff stuff. You know, when he's in prison and, you know, he's learning all the languages and learning science

[00:11:06] and being taught by this like wise old mentor. You know, that stuff is cool to me. And it was relatively brief in this version. Like it's there, it's powerful enough for what it needs to be, but it really, really spends a good deal of time with Pierre Nini as the count and exacting his revenge in these small minute ways. And that stuff played brilliantly. Like I thought it was paced really well. I thought it was written really wonderfully. It's funny. It feels like, as Carly said,

[00:11:35] like a swashbuckling adventure kind of story that we don't really make a lot of anymore. That is both like occasionally sort of silly, but also incredibly heartfelt and earnest and reverent for its source material. And just like takes that seriously while knowing how to also make that feel fun without being ironic. And that movie sounds good. I've been waiting for, like you don't get those big historical epics that often anymore.

[00:12:05] I mean, it would be kind of jumping ahead to talk about this, but we did mention it. Gladiator 2, is a historical epic. And I think that popped up on a lot of people's worst lists in one respect or another. I did not like the CGI animal warfare, sea warfare at all. It was completely unnecessary. It served like no purpose. Like I think Doom 2

[00:12:32] had like a better like gladiatorial vibe because it at least felt like real intense. And that's kind of what you need in the movie called Gladiator. Hmm. I really liked Gladiator 2. Although, you know, Leslie- I like, I love the Denzel stuff. I love- Denzel's great in it. There's parts of it I love so much that I actually think it's one, it's a Ridley Scott movie that if you cut some of it out, it's a better movie. Yeah.

[00:13:01] I mean, there's certainly things that can be sort of like shaved away to make a much leaner and stronger picture. But I mean, Denzel is worth the price of admission. That quote that he has about his like method during it where he just says, I'm putting on this dress, these rings, and I'm going crazy is like one of the coolest quotes I've heard someone give on the craft of acting in a long time. Like, I can't think of something that badass.

[00:13:28] I think, Leslie, on your ballot though, I did place Paul Mescal in my worst performances. Now, I have a caveat to this, which is that I think he is genuinely quite bad in the movie. And every time he gets up like on a pedestal and does one of these sort of like rousing speeches or tries to like hold space in the movie, it just becomes abundantly clear how much he isn't Russell Crowe

[00:13:56] and how good and like effortlessly Russell Crowe like did that and how easy he made that look. However, I think that the movie broadly is doing some interesting things about, doing some interesting things broadly in terms of like deconstructing the mythology of the first movie and like being just like a more cynical, a more modern kind of iteration on the same story with I think, you know, like the George W. Bush years

[00:14:26] in its rear view and certainly like one Trump administration in the rear view as well. And for that, I think that it's interesting to see Paul Mescal as sort of like this like deflated kind of empty, vacuous character who's now put in that position of authority. And for me, it just sort of works thematically more than it actually works like dramaturgically, you know, like because he's not very good, but I did find that absence kind of compelling.

[00:14:55] Yeah, Denzel is always saying stuff like his unbridled rage. And it's not true at all. It's not true at all. But if you look at Denzel as Trump, that is the sort of thing that Trump would say to hype up a guy who's a complete, you know, dwee, blues piece of shit, right? Gassing him up. Yes. All right. So Aaron, since I kind of crapped on one of your favorites, why don't you give us one of your best? No, look, we're here to disagree on stuff.

[00:15:23] I see a wide array of things happening here on the ballot that I think it'll be interesting for discussion. But my number one film of the year, and this, you know, may be a controversial pick only because the way that these things go now with the festival circuit and with international release stage, this movie technically came out at the end of 2023, although it got its U.S. theatrical release in 2024,

[00:15:53] firmly in 2024, so I'm counting it. And that is Radu Jude's Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World. I just think that this is a masterful picture. It is set in Romania. It is a young woman who is sort of like a gig worker. She's a, I can't tell if she's like a temper, but she's some sort of like PA for a production crew who work on behalf of a megacorp.

[00:16:21] And they are producing a safety video. And in it, they are finding former employees who have since been removed from the company because of their disabilities, because of injuries that they've sustained while working and paying them like a very menial sum in order to like be on camera and explain what they should have done differently in order to

[00:16:51] be more safe in the workplace. Of course, this could very well render null some of the defenses that they have, you know, against the company and their current lawsuits and things like that. So they're, they're basically taking families that are in very precarious situations and asking them to put themselves in even more precarious ones for a short term and a small payout, you know. Anyway, this is like sort of the backstory, really the focus is on this young woman who is like

[00:17:20] the, the very definition of a disaffected like millennial or even like a Zoomer, you know, living in our, our current moment. She works a terrible job for an awful company and has to sort of like, you know, be compliant and complicit in their awfulness just as a means of surviving in her free time when she's not driving around and complaining to people and occasionally stopping to get in arguments

[00:17:50] with friends and family or have like brief hookups in the back of her car. She's also fronting on the internet like on like a TikTok sort of thing as a character called Bobita who's like a, like a men's rights activist like Andrew Tate style like parody and just basically going for broke in these scenes. She has like a weird face filter that she puts on and just espouses really, really awful

[00:18:20] cruel vitriolic babble, you know, for, for the masses and, and, you know, the level of where the irony begins and where it ends sort of becomes blurred in those statements that she's making on video. All of this is just like, to me, this incredible like melting pot of images and ideas that somehow coheres into something that has sort of like rewarding postmodern structure and really does more than just about any movie

[00:18:50] I've seen this decade so far speak to countless different like atrocities and trivialities of our moment. It is one of those movies that a lot of like the, you know, kind of canonical great filmmakers of our era seem afraid to make which is one that speaks directly to the moment and is about what it is to be alive in like 2024 in the world, right? Like, and, you know, there are obviously some things that are very specific

[00:19:18] to Eastern Europe and to the milieu that Radu Jude creates but things, of course, that go well beyond that and are very universal in terms of how much it just kind of sucks to be alive right now and all of the tiny, tiny little things we have to do and exceptions we have to make in order to survive. Yeah, I'm sure you read that quote from Robert Eggers where he says he's never going to make a movie set in the present day and I talked a little bit on our Nosferatu episode

[00:19:48] where it's like if you're a great filmmaker and you're not directly addressing the modern day you're kind of depriving us of whatever your vision of that would be. Yeah, I think he said something like the idea of filming a car makes him sick or something and it's like Eggers is someone who draws a lot of controversy and I think that there are certainly people who are a little too harsh on the guy for what his thing is but it certainly reveals the limits of him as a

[00:20:18] filmmaker to have him say something like that and be like this is my lane and I'm never going to like challenge myself artistically when it comes to that I'm never going to try to make something that speaks more specifically to like 21st century America or to the world at large I don't know I think it's just kind of limiting to me. I think a lot of I'm surmising that a lot of filmmakers are afraid to tackle our current moment because of the pace at which things move

[00:20:47] particularly technology and so there's this fear that if you are making something that is utilizing the technology and sort of like everyday detritus of our lives that like very quickly that film and that story will become dated but something we talked about with the director Pascal Plant who made one of my favorite movies from 2023 that we did not see until 2024 a movie called Red Rooms he talked about the fact that

[00:21:17] you know it was set in present day and it's very much reliant on the technology of the present day and that in order to tell the story that he was telling where there's a lot of sort of dark web digital nascent and not so nascent violence taking place in the sort of narrative propulsion of this film that he had to sort of project extensions about the current technology

[00:21:47] when he was writing the story and think about what they would perhaps look like a couple years ahead and that's sort of how you write sci-fi if you're trying to talk about some mirror of our current moment and I thought that was a brilliant and brave solve for that and I think a lot of filmmakers are afraid to tackle current technology because conversations shift so quickly the tech itself shifts so quickly the sentiment around the tech shifts so quickly but there is

[00:22:16] a little bit of imagination you have to use when you are projecting forward into the future to think about how you tell a story about technology that's maybe just on the edge of existing and that imagination I think is what makes movies even that fall a little bit short narratively interesting and it's also the thing that so many you know filmmakers and just people in media in general are afraid to use like no one is able to imagine things beyond the conscripts of what

[00:22:46] like the current reality is and it is not only limiting but it is also like violently enforcing our current our all right so continuing on with my best picks and I'm actually noticing all of them are in one way or another period pieces so kind of speaking what we're talking about but one film I really liked

[00:23:16] that I talked about a little bit on a prior episode woman of the hour which is Anna Kendrick's directorial debut it premiered it was a Netflix film but it actually looks like a real movie it's really really good it's about the dating game the true story of the dating game serial killer and it's you know this really gripping dark thriller about you know sexism and everyday misogyny

[00:23:45] and how that ties into like how a serial killer was able to get away with it because the cops didn't believe the women it's very much similar to Zodiac but like from the perspective of the victims and potential victims it takes some liberties with the actual horrifying story which if people don't know the old TV show the dating game one time one of the contestants so it is usually

[00:24:14] a woman and then there's three guys hidden behind the screen and she asked them you know various questions sort of innuendo sexual sort of funny questions about what their date's going to be like and she picks one just from their voice to go out with and one of the guests on one of the shows turned out to be a serial killer and he was actually the winner on the show but the woman decided not to go on the date with him and this

[00:24:44] is dramatized in the film in a way that didn't really happen but is incredibly effective and it's a terrifying movie like it's really really it doesn't really pull any punches with at least the implied violence it's just it's really really dark really really interesting and I think it really takes you know the issues it's dealing with like really head on in a way that a lot of movies about serial killers don't they don't really dwell on the

[00:25:14] misogyny inherent in most serial killers do you feel like Anna Kendrick did a decent job directing directing because I think she's a pretty phenomenal actress but I don't know much about her directing chops I think she did an incredible job directing this is her for her debut I think she did a phenomenal job I love that yeah I put this one squarely like right in the middle of my list at the end of the year like I thought that this was pretty good

[00:25:44] I didn't love it but I did like a lot of things about it and one of the things that I did find compelling that doesn't quite get stretched out or explored as much as I want it to but is very clearly there intentionally is a lot of the ways that like Kendrick understands the camera as a voyeuristic object and you know the serial killer is like a photographer and uses it to take photos and chronicle you know his victims

[00:26:13] we see the camera sort of exploring this very kind of like patriarchal environment within the dating game you know and this young woman looking for a date and even though there is like a certain level of autonomy and power that she possesses in order to like choose who she wants to be with the game is very much designed around her as an object of desire being pursued by multiple men all of this stuff is definitely there I feel like there's just one part of it that just doesn't pull it out into another kind of

[00:26:42] metatextual layer though it seems clear to me that Kendrick watched stuff like Brian De Palma movies like body double or something that she watched Powell's Peeping Tom as well and got a little bit out of that and extracted some things and you're right the movie does look quite good it's well acted there's just some I think some like structural things for me that don't quite cohere but it was promising enough that I will watch the next thing that Anna Kendrick directs I think she does a pretty

[00:27:12] darn good job in front and behind the camera in this one Leslie I want to hear about why The Substance is one of your best films of the year now we're getting into it yes so I heard your critiques of it I read all the critiques of this film and the thing is I agree with all of them I'll let you explain in a second I agree with all the critiques I don't disagree with any of them but ultimately I just had a blast

[00:27:42] I just thought it was a fun movie I just thought it was pumping 80s music cool visuals doesn't really take place in the real world and the director admits that it's like it's very stylized and it's you know to me more being the more she's gorgeous she's beautiful even in the scenes where you're supposed to feel like she thinks she's so ugly like she's beautiful I mean come on I think her performance is wonderful I think Margaret Qualey does a

[00:28:11] great job I like everything in this movie could it have been more yes should it have been more yes but I ultimately had a blast I have great time I liked the homages to Cronenberg a lot more than the Kubrick ones and what was the other there was a couple others that just made no sense tonally or thematically at least Cronenberg body horror okay all right fine I can't accept that but I think you gave

[00:28:42] Coralie a lot the grieve the you know the the the citations the Kubrick like the Kubrick like the hallway from The Shining and it just means nothing in this film except it just and I read interviews where she talked about it and it just felt kind of like well she had a budget to make the movie and she was like what would kind

[00:29:27] more I would probably like it a lot so that's fair the substance I get the critiques but I thought it was and I think about it a lot and I think about like you know I feel like as mechanically just on a basic level getting the substance is exactly like getting Olympic like like it's a very similar process and packaging so I even gotta give it even a little bit points you know for that because even though it's set in a

[00:29:56] bizarre present non-past sort of thing it's like there are cell phones but Demise Moore's job is being like a washed up 70s actress who's an aerobic instructor instructor in aerobics is very like but it doesn't and I think Coralie she understands it doesn't make sense she's not trying to make it okay a specific time or place given that timelessness but the substance element itself it feels fairly

[00:30:26] timely I don't know what the film has having a good time at the movies with the substance yeah I mean you are one of several people I know whose opinions I greatly respect who really had a great time with this film like across the board and I think that you know even with

[00:30:56] my many misgivings about the film I you know I the ones that we have like didn't really care for the look of the film but I had a great time looking at the film and the last act with just the blood and the stage like I thought that was fun and totally extra my issues

[00:31:26] you know not to rehash well-tread territory but I'll just say I'll say just quickly that I think the film made me as a female which you know who she says her like intended audience was for right for and about women and their experience and you know everyone else along for the ride made me feel like she thought I was stupid and I think a lot of that comes from like heavy

[00:31:56] handedness of a lot of the statements that she's saying where I'm like as a woman I don't need you to explain to me that everyone tells me I need to look younger right like I get that and you know the body horror stuff I think as someone who loves Cronenberg up down and sideways one thing that I felt like was missing from her body horror that Cronenberg is absolutely a master at is an understanding of the way that like these

[00:32:25] aberrations the body horror literal and metaphorical that comes along with living under a patriarchy under capitalism under a white supremacist society that the aberrations that exist because of that system of just caustic oppression can sometimes be connective and can sometimes lead to some sort of radical impulse Cronenberg

[00:32:55] asserts this often in his film whereas this was solely focused on the ugliness and I think that you know Coralie is a different filmmaker but the citation of Cronenberg then to me feels like it's falling a little bit flat because she's not fully understanding that David Cronenberg is actually someone who fully believes in the radical potential of these aberrations that are born out of really violent

[00:33:25] circumstances and the last thing I'll say on the substance is I thought Demi Moore was wonderful in the movie what I was actually pissed off about is that she didn't get to do more like I felt like she was always like just on the edge of like doing a little bit more with her character and I don't feel like even in the portions of the film where she got to rage she really got to have a lot of dimension in her performance

[00:33:55] and we know that Demi Moore is an incredible actress and I kept thinking about striptease when I was watching this movie and how interesting a double feature that would be considering that film is very much about her body and her ability to use her body to sell something to sell sex to sell herself to help herself get forward move forward in the world and very much playing on old men's

[00:34:25] desire for her and how she navigates that world there are lots of dated problematic things about that movie but there are also some really revelatory things about it and she has a really nuanced performance while also looking incredibly fuckable and hot in that movie and so we know she's capable of it and I really wanted the director and the writers to give her character more to do than just suffer

[00:34:55] yeah she literally I was just realizing this is one critique I had that bothered me it's like she has no friends in that movie literally every other character is antagonistic towards an antagonistic man so yeah she really has nothing to play off of she doesn't have any she doesn't have you know a depth to her character because she's always up against this like the same thing

[00:35:25] constantly you know and it being being very french director it is indeed that no it's exactly that yes I think that is right on the money I think we say the same in our episode length critique of the film where it's just like a lot of these things

[00:36:04] all right so we're running a little long and we got a lot to talk about so let's do some less lightning around this a little bit Aaron what are your other two best picks yeah of course so I realized right off the bat here that I did not pick a single English language film for my top films of the year and that's for good reason I think that that's part of a greater trend that most larger American films and even some of the bigger independent

[00:36:34] producing now or distributing just are not making the best films of any given year in the 2020s but my other two are in Italian and a Spanish film respectively Italian film is La Camara by director Alice Rohr excuse me by director Alice Rohr Rohr Rohr Rohr our good friend Josh O'Connor who was also in Challengers this last year I think that this is definitively his best

[00:37:04] performance between the two he plays a recently released guy coming out of prison in Italy he's a grave robber with a bunch of friends it's a beautiful movie that is about history and reverence for it and love and loss and grief and I just think that it's really really gorgeous my other film that I put on the list is Victor Risse's Close Your Eyes and this is his first film in I want to say like 25 years he does not move particularly quickly when it comes to narrative features he's only

[00:37:34] released I think three of them in like 50 plus years now and this one is just immense another one of those long movies that doesn't feel its length it runs almost three hours a story about an actor who disappeared in the midst of making what would have been the filmmakers like great work back in the 70s that search for him becomes something else entirely and a story about the nature of cinema and where it is now and its history and again

[00:38:04] just about like reverence for the past and some of the things we've lost and also some really interesting questions about what the limitations of art are in our current moment and what it can do to heal and also very much like what it can't do in order to heal some of the wounds and things that are part of our everyday existence I think it's immense I think it's beautiful I think it is a must-see motion picture awesome Carly your other two picks some very popular ones I think

[00:38:34] I will keep it quick Furiosa holy shit I was not expecting to like this I waited for a very long time to watch it I watched it I was absolutely blown away it's utterly spectacular George Miller he can do no wrong I liked Mad Max I didn't like it as much as everyone else did Fury Road specifically Fury Road yeah sorry oh oh I didn't like Fury Road that much either so I've been holding off on Furiosa Leslie let me tell you I am right there with you

[00:39:03] everyone was freaking out about Fury Road and I was like it's fine like it's it looks good it's fine I was not expecting to love Furiosa and I absolutely adored it it is just I mean it is like it just takes you and it throws you into it and then it pulls you along and you are like I am here for every part of this Chris Hemsworth is amazing we'll talk about him in a minute absolutely loved Furiosa so romantic deeply romantic incredibly romantic film the other film is Trap

[00:39:33] directed by M. Night Shyamalan I was like in tears I had like the best time he fucking does it every time man even his bad movies are good like he is just he just knows how to make a movie and I think the casting of Josh Hartnett in the father role knowing that a lot of people watched this man when they were you know maybe in middle school or high school is so intentional and he is he

[00:40:03] is utilized beautifully and he is incredible in this film and it is about fatherhood and family and also the surveillance state and just so many things but more than anything it is just gripping it is a gripping film and it is the thing that M. Night is so good at and I was just hooping and hollering watching this movie yeah I really like trap too yes the third act gets a little ridiculous but they stick the

[00:40:33] landing I really think they really stick the landing I when that movie ended I was like hell yes this we do spoilers on this show but this is one movie I do not want to spoil just ride with it go along for the ride all the way till the end all the way till the end when you are staring at Josh Hartnett's face and you are like screaming I really really like trap my other pick for best film of the year was Nickel Boys

[00:41:02] this is a tough this is a hard this is a heartbreaking film about a true true story really dark story is based on the novel called Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead which won a bunch of awards pretty popular and it's about this again this true story of this horrific abuse that was happening during Jim Crow at this boys detention

[00:41:32] center with and all this abusive treatment that really happened and dozens and dozens of boys black boys who were killed in this institution their bodies buried in unmarked grave recently undug in fact Colson Whitehead he read about the story in the newspaper because it's hard to talk about it's a really difficult it can be a really difficult film because it's all from a first person perspective of one of the boys

[00:42:02] who survived this and you're seeing his life from childhood and you're seeing the love his mother has for him and the hope his mother has for him and seeing how all of that gets ripped away and it's a tremendous film tremendously effective it's I think Romero Ross's second film and it's just excellent but really it's a hard watch but it's a really excellent movie

[00:42:32] I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more talk I guess it's not out in wide release yet but it's a fantastic film it's one of those prestige films that actually might hold up past the award season alright so moving on let's talk quickly about the worst films I'm so excited about this Carly you've already told us about

[00:43:01] The Substance but Bad Boys Ride or Die say it ain't so I haven't seen it yet I've been holding that home lastly it pained me it pained me to not like this movie this is a surprise to me too because I saw a text from you while you were house sitting saying I'm watching it and then you had one or two things to say about it but I never got your final verdict I love the first Bad Boys I love Bad Boys too I fucking love the second one like the second one is so good yes and Martin Lawrence like I used to watch Martin

[00:43:31] he is still so fucking funny like everyone talks about how funny Will Smith is Martin Lawrence is just like he's on another level I will watch him do anything his own specials are so good his own specials I mean like I he can say like a sentence that coming out of anyone else's mouth but with his facial expressions and his body language like so Martin Lawrence still high for me the one critique I have

[00:44:06] where I was like this almost feels like it's making fun of his character and I was like not happy about it I was like he's not it felt a little bit Bad Boys is an action movie we're supposed to think these guys are cool and badass if nothing else it really did Martin Lawrence character dirty like I was not I was not happy about it you have a third character to make the goofball yes yeah literally

[00:44:36] every time and so that to me like took me out a lot like so many scenes where I was like I love Martin and I love what he's doing but they're like really making him the punching bag here and it would just it just felt insulting to me the only other thing I'll say about it is because I love the first and the second one and admittedly I haven't seen the third one because I love the first and the second one so much I really still wanted like the chemistry that the first two have and it just like wasn't there it wasn't

[00:45:06] there they were trying too hard they were throwing in a lot of like weird like sort of vaguely political stuff but they weren't going anywhere with it and I was like I get that a lot's happened and you guys aren't gonna do an ACAB movie but I need you to I need you to acknowledge that it's 2024 and these two black men that are police officers like and they're dealing with like ice and all this and like did not it and I'm just like okay if

[00:45:36] you're gonna make it like give me something so that to me was you know it's an action movie I don't expect it to like we're not reading theory here but I did want it to feel somewhat entrenched in like the world that these men as black officers would be living in and like it just didn't go there and I love Will Smith love the slap like I said like I think that's a fine moment for him but he just like didn't he didn't bring it in the movie I was I was really let down by this one

[00:46:05] all right and also you did not like carry on now I watched this over my partner's shoulder it seemed you know decent you know like a decent thriller but the fact that they tried to pass off Taron Egerton as an American I'm like what world was offensive was offensive so please tell me I love Yami Colette Sarah the Liam Neeson movies that he does

[00:46:34] I mean that's my shit man like I I am here for late stage Liam Neeson and when he works with Yami Colette Sarah I am like fully on board so I was expecting to really love this I did not like Taron is just not you know I watched The Kingsman or whatever and like he's pretty good in those he's just he can't carry a movie he just really can't and Jason Bateman is too Jason Bateman in this movie

[00:47:04] like it just I I wanted more from this film and I also feel like Jason Jason Jason Bateman yeah he's playing a villain in this movie like trying to be like a bad villain but he's still like Jason he's still like making jokes and like it's you know I'm glad he's working but I also think so the thing that I love about non-stop and the commuter is that there's

[00:47:34] action but it's you know it's Liam Neeson as the protagonist so he's not like rolling around and doing a ton of shit but Yami Colette Sarah still manages to fill the film with with these like really propulsive tense moments of action and you have a younger cast here in carry on and it's just like it was womp womp like the action just like did not hit for me it didn't feel I was disappointed I'll just say

[00:48:03] all right so I'll go into my worst Deadpool and Wolverine I mean it's not even a movie it's like you need you need to have watched like low-key to understand about a third of the film which is like offensive for two reasons because first of all this is like the third and allegedly last Deadpool movie so there are characters in the in the series that should have gotten like a proper send

[00:48:33] off but they didn't if you were a fan of the film like you didn't you didn't get to see like what really what happened they were just kind of it was like they were DLC for the movie there's like one scene with all the characters from the other films then they move into the MCU bullshit and then they

[00:49:10] other one the crow the 2024 crow which I was optimistic for I mean it took them about a decade I think they've been trying to make another crow film for about 20 years now probably shouldn't have bothered look one problem is I knew this

[00:49:40] crow the first crow came out pretty much so all they had to go with to make this guy look cool and hip because the crow film everybody's a goth in it and maybe even a little bit ahead of the time in some ways this film all they have for him is Sound Cloud Rapper because that's the only new sort of guy who could even be like the

[00:50:10] crow like that's what the aesthetic he is which is the same aesthetic that Jared Leto had as a joker was that almost 10 years ago I'm afraid to look it up it's been a while so there's been no new guys no new subculture out there so that's what they had to go with but besides that the film and I'm spoiling the whole thing here do it because it's offensive it's a

[00:50:39] Jacob's ladder there is no crow there is no fight he gets no revenge it's just all him having a dying dream as his girlfriend survives the assault I hate that that's terrible that's awful it's awful it's unnecessary because he has

[00:51:09] all the fight not a lot of fights he has one fight that's another problem with it but they do do the movie the crow does bring him back to Turner it hurts my heart to say

[00:51:39] that I even think some of those pro direct video sequels are worth for the look but not this one and my other worst Jerry Seinfeld's Unfrosted besides Jerry Seinfeld becoming a total well I guess he was always a monster in some respect no the point of the show but a real kind of gargoyle in real life

[00:52:06] and this movie is awful bad concept pointless concept not funny not i thought one thing it would have for it is that the jokes would have to be funny but it's literally jerry seinfeld thinks pop tarts are the greatest thing in the world and he's like i don't know it's like but he also like he understands he's a comedian so they make up a lot of fake stuff it's like you

[00:52:32] could have been one or the other like if he had actually done the real story and had it more like a more realistic tone and it added some humor some of the jokes would land but it's like a cartoon it's like a live action it's like looney tunes starring uh you know 60 70 year old jerry seinfeld not entertaining not fun and again about pop pop tarts because there is a genuine affection

[00:52:57] scenes of him standing outside the headquarters and showing a genuine affection is like the core of the movie i think even if you just take that out and just had the silliness it would kind of work like the weird owl biopic did y'all see that it was it was a roku exclusive and it's like completely fake he just makes a comedy movie right about his fake life and i think who's harry potter stars as him

[00:53:24] and it's actually quite funny it's way funnier than this jerry seinfeld film so if there was any debate yankovic greater than seinfeld i like that's where we're netting out yeah and erin your boy all right we'll get through these quick here so i'll do them in alphabetical order my first one

[00:53:45] is going to be the reboot sequel retcon film alien romulus now i'm a huge huge alien fan i have seen everything in the original series many many times i've grown up with those movies i know them front back left and right i even like to varying degrees ridley scott's

[00:54:09] prequels i'm less keen on prometheus but i love the second one yes beautiful film yeah i think it's i think it's terrific and this movie i held out hope for all of about like three months after the announcement of it and that fete alvarez was involved and i was like okay well at least he'll bring out some of the cool horror elements of the alien series and then more and more information

[00:54:33] started coming out about it and it's really just beat after beat after beat just horrible reiterative fan service every single moment in this film is plucked from one of the other movies and they're designed to get you to like recognize it and clap along and cheer and also of course much discussed one of the greatest sins that it commits is a really terrible uh ai assisted cgi rendering

[00:55:03] of ian holmes character ash as a new character a new android named rook in the film it looks bad it sounds bad it's in bad taste and honestly like it doesn't really provide anything necessary or vital to the film beyond fan service and recognition and i say fan service in quotes it's it's really yeah i mean there's there's literally nothing about that character and what's happening there that

[00:55:31] couldn't have just you know been like let's give michael fassbender a paycheck and bring him back as a david clone or something like that you know like bring someone who's alive and can actually stand in the frame and talk to people so i just mentioned that they fixed it they said that they said that he made it better on the blu-ray version of it yes i did i did hear that it's improved on the home video release but okay but like the fact that he even had to do that right well you gave us

[00:55:58] garbage that but i'm gonna be honest with you it's not even the worst thing about the movie now like the rest of the movie is just sort of at certain points unwatchable like there's it's just it's not good and every time every moment of it that i spent watching it i just wished i was watching one of the other alien movies instead uh because those are all actually good and i enjoy those even resurrection i would much rather watch which is still i like resurrections from i i like alien

[00:56:25] resurrection quite a bit uh it does steal the climax for that one it does the same thing which again makes it not surprising or interesting in any way whatsoever so bad movie sorry guys my next one is alex garland's civil war which i know some people were more keen on than me i know that this was one that became sort of a a contentious battleground sort of movie on the internet i think it's it's just

[00:56:51] kind of dumb like it's it's a movie that has a lot of images that it's evoking and ideas that it has on its mind without anything coherent to say about them and i think that that's kind of appalling especially in our current moment like you can't do a film like this that so haphazardly i think draws out images of warfare of violence of atrocities you know and war crimes frankly

[00:57:18] when we're in the midst of you know aiding and abetting so many of those around the world when we see them on the news every single day and then have your kind of central thesis be like photo journalists are important but also maybe they're not important you know like who knows what i actually mean by all this it just doesn't really have an idea in it that i find compelling and it it you know absent that doesn't really make for a movie that i find worthwhile in any way despite

[00:57:48] the fact that it has maybe like one or two interesting moments or cool visuals in it what type of american are you that's a cool scene silly resolution like it was a zombie uh yeah it's a zombie movie without zombies i keep saying we should have taken the hint when alex garland made a judge dread movie and it was even less political than the sylvester stallone judge dread movie and to be fair like i

[00:58:14] kind of like that movie like he's you know like sort of like tangentially involved and like i think it looks nice but it is depoliticized and he doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting guy like he he was not doing himself any favors going around in interviews being like well you know like the my movie is really just about how we're all so divided right now and how like that's that's gonna that creates tension and what we really need to see call it civil war yeah it's okay you know it's

[00:58:40] that weird like intellectual centrism that is just like really kind of gross and vapid and meaningless that that comes out in that speaking of vapid centrism my other film uh that i picked is actually not one that i hated as much as the other two uh but one that i felt the need to express some misgivings about just given how much uh admiration and love i see for it all the time yeah it needs a little bit of hate i saw it on it someone's got to take it down a peg here and i'm going with edward

[00:59:09] berger's conclave so edward berger uh directed and i believe won at least a couple of oscars for his last film the remake reboot whatever you want to call it of all quiet on the western front a movie that i found to be an abomination and really really terrible he commits several of the same sins formally and directorially in conclave but the worst atrocity for me is that it is a movie set

[00:59:34] within the world and milieu of the catholic church at its highest order at its sort of central like locus of power and it treats the catholic church with kid gloves uh barely making mention of any of its various controversies especially the big ones that you're thinking of when i say that uh and it resolves in a sort of denouement that is intended to be progressive and timely and of the

[01:00:01] moment with regard to in the movie i'll just spoil it sorry guys if you haven't seen it but in the movie there's a character who becomes pope who is intersex right who has both male and female genitals and has chosen not to go through with an operation to live as god made them and of course as like good progressive liberal minded viewers we're meant to make a logical extension and connection to

[01:00:25] how we view trans people how we view anyone you know who who is different than us except that in the film the justification for this character not going through with an operation is because they would like to live as god made them which to me gives a very easy out to bio essentialists and makes it very easy for people who watch the movie to sort of extricate trans people from that big you know tent and big net

[01:00:54] that they cast of acceptance and doesn't really do what it thinks it's doing i think there's a lot of things very problematic about it i think there's a lot of ugliness to its resolution and and ugliness that is made worse specifically because uh it's it it thinks it's doing something really smart and really wholesome and forward thinking yeah this one i like up until the ending because it was like watching an episode of like real

[01:01:20] housewives or something you know when it was like a comedy about people being catted against one another i really liked it but when it tried to make a point i was a little bit less into it should be more you know in the thick of it maybe or you know v-ish yeah i agree with that i think it could have been even funnier there's a lot of stuff that's getting memed about the film that i have this like kind of

[01:01:45] you know just like personal theory that the more a film is memed the less substantive it just is like it's an indication that the movie doesn't have a lot going on and i i felt that before i saw conclave and then after i watched it i was like okay this is firmly cementing my perspective on this there's not a lot going on here all right so we're doing lightning round for real this time for real this time all right so most surprising for me saturday night actually kind of good i thought the trailer

[01:02:14] was it looked horrible made it look ponderous and nostalgic and kind of pathetic for like the younger reitman to make the film it was actually seen kind of pathetic to make a show about your dad i mean not not necessarily his dad but you know that generation you think you seem kind of pathetic right to make that movie but it was actually kind of fun had actors you recognize with some funny

[01:02:38] lines kind of playing people you might recognize somewhat you know it's a halfway decent film okay it's a it's a fun thing to watch it's not a big deal i do not like saturday night live and the best part about this movie saturday night is it ends right before the episode of saturday night live happens so you don't really have to watch it all right and also i was surprised i liked a real pain because i

[01:03:04] find i'm so surprised that was on here for you i i was surprised that i liked it but it was actually not as annoying as it seemed it's like the exact opposite of the type of movie i like but i ended up kind of finding it kind of touching and kind of sad and kind of you know it kind of gave me a good feeling by the end like that because i think all of us know a really awful annoying person that we're nevertheless attached to and we need to find a way to love them we need to find a space for them

[01:03:33] because they're going they're probably dealing with a lot uh themselves so i kind of dug in i love that do you want to go yeah i'll do my most surprising film so my most surprising uh from this year is robert zemeckis's here the one that stars robin wright and tom hanks reuniting post for scump it's actually even written by i think the gentleman's name is eric roth i can't remember now uh who also wrote for scump i think for scump's a really evil movie despite the fact that it often works it's very

[01:04:00] entertaining it's easy to watch this film leads me to believe that maybe there's something more interesting going on in forrest gump than i ever gave it credit for because it takes all of that warm cozy nostalgia of like mid-century america and undermines it with some very very dark inferences and suppositions about its legacy with white supremacy and colonialism and maybe just like

[01:04:25] the way that the nuclear family is all a myth and uh something that actually just immiserates and makes us all into horrible people it's really really good its formal conceit is interesting it's all shot from one angle one perspective in a house for 90 minutes i encourage you to see it and go in with an open mind yeah the trailers that just make it look like again like a nostalgia piece about this horrific cgi tom hanks ignore that the film is not even about that character it's much much broader than that you

[01:04:55] don't spend a lot of time with cgi old tom hanks thank you thankfully it's a pretty interesting film i like robert zemeckis in general brett east nellis kind of put me on to him and said a while ago a few years ago and said you know robert zemeckis he really had despises like humanity in a lot of ways and you pick that up from his film and i think if you watch that with that aspect you know even forrest gump

[01:05:20] becomes a little bit more tolerable this is him angry he's always very angry like the movie like flights you know like really really great film a very angry film i like i'm a fan of zemeckis and carly your most surprising film you told us was furiosa it's just just watch it it just blew me away it blew me away i cried most disappointing now i like this movie a whole lot but it didn't stick

[01:05:49] the landing night bitch okay i don't want to spoil too much but night they pull back it looks like a horror film for a lot of it and a suspense film and a couple a couple of bad things happened in it but before the end they kind of pull back from it in and i think no one would no jury would have convicted night bitch if she had taken it to the extreme that i wish she would have okay but i'll

[01:06:15] just uh say that if you she has a really annoying you know men around her it's a very similar to the substance in a lot of ways but it takes place more in the real world and yes it's amy adams she starts thinking that she's turned into a dog but she ultimately does not have that dog in her so night bitch i highly recommend it but don't expect uh too much especially if you think it's a horror movie

[01:06:39] uh rebel ridge is that's another film yep a lot of people were praising this film and i find them kind of suspect now because this is what if jack reacher was black and didn't kill anybody at all fuck off what if he was really concerned with never harming a cop please the whole film is just these terrible

[01:07:05] cops who do these horrible things to him and he's just being so deferential the whole time and we find out this that his secret past you know his special training is non-lethal disarming combat and he's never actually been in combat before it's just it's just to me it's almost like a test textbook like emasculation of like a black male hero and this aaron pierre he's a phenomenal actor

[01:07:35] he's fantastic he's jacked i don't know what this script is supposed to be this is by the guy who wrote um blue ruin which didn't pull any punches took it all the way to the limit i don't know i obviously i think the film has his heart in the right place in some respects but it's very liberal but like a liberal does it has our heart in a very liberal place unfortunately and it was just disappointing minute to minute sure it was exciting but you're just waiting for this big finish that

[01:08:04] never comes and it's kind of you've kind of feel ripped off by the end i mean the through line with both of those films that you mentioned leslie is that neither of the protagonists actually you know fight back with violence right yes both both stories require that but in blue ruin he actually gets to kill a guy sorry i'm talking about night bitch i gotcha okay all right my turn

[01:08:33] yeah go ahead yeah okay so uh my most disappointing film from this year is a film called the order it looks so good it looks so good yeah yeah yeah i thought so too look this is my bread and butter one of these like mid-budget kind of small like matinee style movies with a good cast like a like a jude law who's like aged up and looking badass in it and a nicholas holt and some good people around

[01:08:59] them doing a crime thriller and not only that i watched yeah i i did too is the thing about it until i was like you know going back and scanning and that's i think the biggest issue with it so it's directed by a guy named justin curzell who has you know i've heard made some other good features this movie's been talked about in in some circles alongside like great crime epics uh that i have a fondness for and so i was really really expecting something interesting here and it's just really dull

[01:09:26] like i i it just went in one ear out the other and just out of my brain instantly i think that there's definitely a movie in there somewhere but it's a movie that like has no interest in aligning its themes with something bigger and you know trying to to really say something with this clash of wills between the cops and the white supremacists and maybe where that line gets a little bit murky which is not something the film ever explores so it's you know i think a lot like rebel ridge one of

[01:09:56] those things where it's like you start with a great premise here and then you just don't capitalize on it and speak to some things that feel very necessary uh i was really let down but jude law looks great has a good mustache in it he looks like he's gonna cry the entire movie great alcoholic great alcoholic performance uh my uh most disappointing was the beekeeper and i really only put this on here because i didn't watch that many 2024 movies so i didn't have a ton to choose from i liked this movie

[01:10:21] fine but i really wanted to love it because it's very much my speed i fucking love jason statham and really loved him in wrath of man so was excited to see him doing more like late stage stuff and see how he would evolve and he's great in it but the movie is just like kind of nothing that's sad to hear i thought i thought i was hoping for the beekeeper i feel like a lot of action movies let me down this year

[01:10:49] there were a couple of good ones but um we've gone too long we gotta wrap this up i've had y'all for far too long we had more to talk about but maybe i'll just post uh post this for the fans to read or something like that whatever you want to do yeah okay i don't want to go too much longer i'm getting tired i'm really sad because i wanted to talk about olivia coleman and wicked little letters have y'all seen that movie no no we can do that like if you want to stick around we can we can certainly chat

[01:11:15] through just that's performances if you want to and end there okay yeah let's do that okay all right and so let's wrap up well by talking about some of the best performances in 2024 it didn't have a lot to choose from but i wanted to pick olivia coleman from wicked little letters which is a movie about a true

[01:11:42] story of basically the first troll or a shit poster it was about this real life woman and fuck i forget uh let's see england like old england um let's see here what year it was in little hampton in like 1820s and she would post these nasty little anonymous letters on the wall on doors of her like

[01:12:10] neighbors and stuff it was like basically saying not so many words like your husband is fucking the milkmaid you're you're this you're that this is a true story this is something i actually did and she like ended up going to prison for it and this is the story of that woman with olivia coleman you know is always known for playing these really smiley roles but she's playing this absolutely horrific

[01:12:34] horrific horrific woman who says these amazing fucking insults to people like one of them is she calls a woman a piss country old stinker with shit hair you fucking old steaming bag of wet shit are these direct quotes for real letters yes yes you made the old titless turnip all this sort of

[01:12:59] stuff really really fun i think the best one is you look like fucking queen victoria just shoved a fucking nettle up her fucking and you get to see olivia coleman deliver these lies and again 1920s england it's just a very very funny movie it's just a very funny movie a great performance from her as this woman who's just filled with this incomprehensible rage just a hater and she really

[01:13:23] is like the first document troll she's like solo doxing everyone in her town yeah it's just like a one woman doctor and she cannot stop and the real story is even weirder because she got arrested like twice for then sentenced there to hard labor until the second time she got caught she couldn't stop wow cool you know the one thing the british suck but the one thing i will give them is that they are like

[01:13:48] epic level haters they are really really good at coming up with insults that sounds awesome i want to watch that i'm gonna speed run through mine here i'll let you talk about hemsworth just because he's on mine as well from furiosa he's fantastic in it i'll do two others here one is marianne jean baptiste who is in mike lee's latest film hard truths she was also in his film secrets and lies

[01:14:16] gives what i think is probably the performance of the decade so far just incredible and so full of pain and grief and you know the the contours of the performance are just astounding to behold it's just a fully formed wholly realized character that marianne jean baptiste creates in this very kind of minor key movie and then another one that i have to call out and i think you've actually had the the filmmaker on the show before leslie our pal uh christopher jason bell and his collaborator mitch

[01:14:44] blummer put out a film uh called failed state that has a lead performance by a gentleman named dale a smith who plays a man who is not quite homeless but very much on the cusp of poverty and precarity who spends most of his days working for a sort of like gig app not unlike and do not expect too much from the end of the world and struggling to make ends meet he connects with other new yorkers he tells stories of his life and he tries to connect and find the humanity in other people

[01:15:10] the entire movie hinges on him being brilliant and he is brilliant and devastating and heartbreaking and i have not in a long time had uh an experience of the film where someone and a performance like dale smith's got me in tears as instantaneously and with as much brevity in in his sort of like words and choices as as what happens in this film so check it out it's a fantastic movie and uh an incredible

[01:15:37] performance look i'm furiosa pilled i'm just gonna say it um best performance for me was chris hemsworth as dementus and furiosa i mean he is fucking phenomenal he is hilarious he is terrifying he is fully fleshed out as a character i think a lot of times in these movies these sort of big

[01:16:03] action adventure films you get villains that tend to be one-dimensional and dementus is not and chris hemsworth brings so much texture to this performance and i have to say for as despicable a character as he is chris hemsworth is able to wring a certain amount of sympathy out of the audience if you are paying attention to the little things that he does as this character and my god he is just an absolute

[01:16:32] thrill to watch anytime he was on screen i couldn't take my eyes off of him he looks incredible even when he's unhinged and dirty and like has shit pinned to his body and i have so much more respect for him as an actor than i did previously like i i thought he was he's great he's funny he's good to look at sure but he is incredible in this film it really is his movie more so than anya taylor

[01:16:56] joys all right and true speed around one word answers worst performances just me justin baldoni writer director of it ends with us also worst film i won't say anymore because he might sue me conor mcgregor in roadhouse again also similar issues real life issues even the worst human being in real life

[01:17:24] and also terrible actor i guess by the third act he pulls it together but at one point my partner turned to me and asked me is he walking like that on purpose and that kind of sums up his awful truly awful performance embarrassing especially since terry funk professional wrestler did such a wonderful wonderful amazing job in the original roadhouse an embarrassment to combat sports in more ways than one

[01:17:52] conor mcgregor aaron you didn't like nicholas cage and long legs i did not like nicholas cage and long legs i think it completely misunderstands the appeal of someone like a nick cage i've already mentioned pal mescal and i will not develop on this further for fear of also getting sued or attacked on the internet but all of dune part two hinges on zendaya being excellent in it and she is not i will hand you all an olive branch though and say that she's better in challengers she does a pretty good job in

[01:18:21] challengers i like her in that movie taron edgerton and carry on i mean he's not like appalling i'm just like why are you here you're not you can't carry a movie all right and miscellaneous worst trend ai in film it is terrible stop using it even nicholas nicholas cage explained how even using a little bit corrupts the human spirit in an eloquent way in a very eloquent way look it up it's because

[01:18:50] filmmaking it's already artificial enough as it is we didn't need to we don't need to bring it in best genre horror i saw the tv glow long legs nasferatu which was pretty good smile 2 which i love trap i think the pop star the fake pop star in smile 2 is better than the fake pop star in trap you know personal preferences personal preferences strange darling a violent nature rumors the first omen the

[01:19:16] damned slingshot heretic great year for horror and aaron you had a couple of quick ones too i did i said uh the best trend that i noticed this past year or at least the one that i explored the most and i kind of stole this definition uh from a pal of mine on the internet named daniel gorman who's an excellent film writer and critic about the idea of like the handmade movie things that are small intermittent scope and irresolute incomplete or open-ended and really productive

[01:19:44] ways all of my favorite american movies of the year were independent releases that had very small scope and small scale with powerful performances and very intimate directing and there are also many cool things going on in the world of cinema outside of the united states doing things like that as well my worst trend that i put here or the thing that i hate seeing the most right now is just sort of the

[01:20:08] replacing of actual film criticism and film analysis with influencer culture at every level of it and the way that all of this has led to an increasingly commodified marketable and conspicuous idea of film going as sort of an identity marker rather than something about appreciating art in any way so i'm not happy with it it's causing a lot of infighting online and all of it is because people want to make owning a very expensive nosferatu candle their entire personality so don't do that watch the movies

[01:20:38] and it turns off the normies too it does they own they're not interested in they don't want to get involved in that crap we need normie support i'll mention two things quickly my best trend is not really a trend i just really want to mention a film by a dear friend of mine named seamus malik malikafsali and he made a short film called cruel images that i just think everyone should watch it's he

[01:21:02] uses a piece of german german film from nazi cinema and sort of expands around it and talks about things that took place in real life and it ends up making a really salient statement about genocide and imperial projects and the sort of topography of violence under which all of that takes place the other thing i want to mention that i think is a worse trend is just like the infantilization of uh of culture and art and

[01:21:30] media i think like everything is becoming far too reduced and easily digestible this like notion that like movies and music can be a stand-in for politics not that movies and music cannot be political but that movies and music and media can actually be your politics and be your ideology and they can't

[01:21:54] they don't contain enough about the real world and our experience in it to do that it's not a new trend but it's worsening and i think that everyone is just like so miserable and doesn't know what to do and refuses to be mad at the right people and so they just have become babies well that was the best movies of twenty two four one isn't it fun having us on leslie yes well thank you so much for coming on

[01:22:22] i love talking with you i love your show i love reading your posts and your top and your uh and your takes you're wonderful people where can people find you where can people find hit factory yes you can find uh hit factory all over the internet at hit factory pod that's twitter that's instagram that's blue sky on occasion as well we also have a patreon for the show patreon.com slash hit factory pod uh that's just five dollars per month and uh gets you all of the hit factory experience by weekly bonus

[01:22:51] content gets you invited to our discord community as well where things are popping off we have a pretty fun little community in there as well um but that's where you can find us and uh that's where we post from and uh make people angry make people happy make friends all right folks that was struggle session have a good one peace face thank you