Greetings, reader!
There has been some good hype around the movie production company A24 recently - their film Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and the momentum has continued with the newly released Beau is Afraid (2023), which I sadly didn't get a chance to see yet. But, with all the hype around the studio, I figured that this would be a good time to rank my favorite A24 movies.
Here are my honorable mentions: Enemy (2013), Hereditary (2018), Under the Skin (2013).
10. The Vvitch (2015)
The debut feature film of horror mastermind Robert Eggers is classic A24 - a sharp focus on production values without feeling grandiose or 'Hollywood', an indie feel despite the big-name cast and decent critical acclaim, and an overall end product that has its own unique personality.
The Vvitch takes its time introducing us to the characters and setting, before creeping up with the well-timed horror elements. The escalating intensity throughout the story gets the viewer all invested and riled up, all the way to the suspenseful climax.
9. Midsommar (2019)
From one maestro of new horror who has emerged in the last decade to another, Ari Aster has had a similar career trajectory to Robert Eggers, although their directorial styles are very distinctive and different from one another. As I mentioned earlier, I haven't seen Aster's newest film Beau Is Afraid yet, but out of the two hit feature films he made before that, Midsommar is the one I prefer.
The horror genre tends to lean a lot on darkness and shadows, so making a truly and authentically scary horror flick largely set in broad daylight is one hell of a challenge. Aster pulled it off with this creepy and disturbing film, that gets extra horror points for utilizing the fantastic trope of twisting old folk traditions into unsettling horror lore - the rituals of the Scandinavian Midsummer festival are a beautiful thing, but in the right context, this film finds something seriously spooky out of those roots.
8. La La Land (2016)
Wait, this can't be right! La La Land is a Lionsgate production, not A24! Oh, wait a minute, I got the wrong envelope again. Let's see...
8. Moonlight (2016)
Ah, there we go. People were making such a big deal out of an A24 film winning the Best Picture Oscar this year, that I totally forgot that it had happened once before. And quite deservedly so - while Moonlight wasn't quite my favorite film of the year 2016, it's hard to deny that it has the makings of a Best Picture winner. The film deals with issues of race, sexuality and poverty with nuance and subtlety, without feeling as Oscar-bait as one might imagine based on the synopsis.
Also, Mahershala Ali's Oscar-winning supporting performance in the film's first act just can't be praised enough. Powerful, powerful stuff.
7. Eighth Grade (2018)
While A24 has moved on to more large-scale and mainstream material throughout their dynamic rise, they still produce many films with the same indie spirit that helped the studio break through in the first place. One such film is multi-talent Bo Burnham's directorial debut, Eighth Grade. This coming-of-age film was very illuminating for me; while most films in this genre focus on youths who I can easily to relate to (the protagonist seems to almost always be a skinny, insecure and bullied young boy - it's almost like our kind always ends up becoming screenwriters and processing their trauma through writing...), this was not one of those films.
This film dives deep into a type of person who I would've found annoying and difficult when growing up, and shows how much humanity there is beneath the behavior that can come across as shallow and generic. I wish this film would've existed when I was in eighth grade myself, as it would've been a nice reminder not to judge people who you don't understand, as there's always a story behind everyone. It's like Walt Whitman said: be curious, not judgemental. In any case, Eighth Grade is as well-acted and deeply moving as it is eye-opening.
6. The Whale (2022)
2022 was a great year for A24 films getting the critical acclaim they deserve - in addition to a certain Big One (which we'll get to later) sweeping the Oscars, the studio had another film in the same year that landed three Oscar nominations, and won two of them. The movie in question is Darren Aronofsky's The Whale, which especially gained attention for Brendan Fraser's heartwarming Oscar win for Best Actor in a Leading Role - between Fraser's dramatic career trajectory, gripping life story, lovable personality, underdog status and humble speech, this was a beautiful narrative on just so many levels.
Furthermore, the Oscar was beyond deserved, as Fraser truly acts his heart out in this majestic lead role, supported with excellence by Sadie Sink and Hong Chau's gripping performances. The Whale is one of the least fun movies you'll see, with only the occasional sprinkles of humor helping the viewer get through the grim subject matters. It is still very much worth watching, both as a masterclass in acting and as a well-written, heavy-hitting emotional gut punch.
5. Lady Bird (2017)
Written and directed by Greta Gerwig, modern Hollywood's gift that just keeps giving, Lady Bird is one hell of a coming-of-age film. The whole vibe throughout the film is immaculately crafted and unique, to a point that years after seeing the movie for the first and so-far only time, just thinking about it immediately causes an almost physical reaction in remembering quite strongly what watching the film felt like and what the atmosphere was like.
Lady Bird is a film of contrast - the artistic ambitions of protagonist Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) and the dragging-one-down brand of parenting from her mother (Laurie Metcalf); the contrast between gripping drama and heartfelt moments of comedy; and most striking of all, the contrast between the lively and passionate worldview of the main character and her bleak, uninspiring surroundings (I've never been to Sacramento, and because of its depiction in this film, I think I'd rather travel to Chernobyl).
4. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
Ah, the big one. Having won seven Academy Awards in the most recent Oscars, including casual feats like Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and Best Actress in a Leading Role, this critical darling by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert is quite something. In a case similar to Moonlight, this wasn't the #1 best film of 2022 in my view (team The Banshees of Inisherin forever!), but it was most definitely close enough that I was very happy to see it win.
Everything Everywhere All At Once is a wildly creative film, and not just on the mere 'this plot is quite imaginative' level - the very essence of this film feels like big middle finger to traditional genre barriers, and the whole "this type of film has to fill certain criteria whereas that type of film has to fit into that category" school of thought. I've never really gotten how some people criticize films that combine genres or atmospheres by saying "this part didn't really fit in in this type of movie" - I mean, what kind of narrow-minded society has decided that a concept as full-of-possibilities as cinema should be strictly divided into archetypes that follow certain rules?
Therefore, it felt almost therapeutic to see a film that just goes "Hey, let's tell this gripping and tear-jerking story about generational trauma, but let's make it sci-fi in order to be wildly creative with it, and despite all the drama let's also have some outrageous comedy in the mix, and how about one sequence where the main characters are literally just rocks", et cetera. More of this, please, Hollywood!
3. The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
To the backdrop of spectacular black-and-white cinematography and properly eerie set design, Joel Coen brought to the life one of the most faithful and stylistic Shakespeare adaptations on the big screen. The Tragedy of Macbeth looks cool, feels atmospherically creepy and keeps its dialogue delightfully loyal to the source material.
And then there's the cast. While Frances McDormand, Brendan Gleeson and Corey Hawkins provide excellent supporting performances as Lady Macbeth, King Duncan and Macduff respectively, the star of the show is without a doubt Mr. Denzel Washington as big M himself. I've seen icons like Sir Patrick Stewart and Michael Fassbender playing the role of Macbeth, and while I still haven't decided whose take was the overall best, I will say that no other has portrayed the character's gradual corruption from hero to villain in quite as gripping of a fashion as Denzel.
2. The Disaster Artist (2017)
Yeah, I know that most people wouldn't rank the good movie about the famous bad movie quite this highly - the thing is, I just really, really like The Disaster Artist. As someone who has seen The Room (2003), often referred to as the Citizen Kane (1941) of bad movies, not once but twice, I'm very invested in the wild cult following and widespread culture around Tommy Wiseau's disasterpiece. Therefore, my expectations were high for the biopic about just how it came to be that such an ambitious artistic project turned out so terrible - and those expectations were met.
With plenty of humor and heart mixed in with all the illuminating storytelling, The Disaster Artist is every bit as good as The Room is bad. The casting of the Franco brothers as the two main culprits was a golden decision, and while Dave Franco's take on Greg Sestero is a thoroughly decent performance, James Franco's Tommy Wiseau is one of my favorite acting performances in Hollywood, with his skilful acting truly capturing the notoriously terrible acting of Mr. Wiseau in a startling manner.
1. The Lighthouse (2019)
Until an even better film comes along, if such a thing ever happens, The Lighthouse will be the ultimate A24 film for me. Like the previous entry, this is a film for which my expectations were sky-high - seeing the trailer for the first time, while in the cinema, was a jaw-dropping "this film is going to be something big" experience. Yet the end result managed to even exceed these expectations, with The Lighthouse finding its way into my heart as a true masterpiece of modern horror.
Along with elements such as Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe's sledgehammer performances, the perfect mixture of unsettling elements and seafaring humor in the dialogue and Jarin Blaschke's ridiculously amazing cinematography, the film's perhaps strongest suit is the ambiguous nature of its story.
You can view it as a supernatural horror tale, where two lighthouse keepers suddenly realize that the rock they live on is cursed amidst various sea monsters rearing their heads while something strange goes on with the light in the lighthouse and the very concept of time seems to work differently in this milieu. Or, you can view it as a symbolism-heavy psychological thriller, with the two men slowly going insane in their isolation, and the various elements of fantasy and lore being mere metaphors for their corrupting mental state. Both takes are equally valid, and the ending leaves everything so open that the film begs to be seen again and again and again.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for a post requested by my friend Jonne - the top 10 moments from the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, in honor of the franchise concluding with the recently released third instalment.
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