Monthly Movie Round-Up
November 2024
I thought it might be nice to create a little space to discuss the new movies that I see each month. Or, at least, new-to-me movies. This week I’ll be stretching the definition of “monthly” to encompass several months at once, because, let’s face it, November has been a sparse new movie time for me. After the election, I’ve mostly been comfort-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer by skipping through episodes to all the Spike scenes. A perfectly fine and normal thing to be doing.
Here I feel it is appropriate to drop the Spike jingle from the Buffering the Vampire Slayer podcast, by co-host Jenny Owen Youngs:
ANYWAY. If you want to keep up with my new-to-me watches, I keep track over on Letterboxd. So let’s begin!
Mayhem (2017)
Directed by Joe Lynch, Mayhem stars Steven Yeun and Samara Weaving as two people caught in a corporate office when it goes into lockdown after exposure to an inhibition-lowering virus. The situation devolves quickly into violence…which is the perfect time for our two heroes to take out their frustrations with corporate America. Look, Yeun and Weaving are great and great together. If you think about the script too hard, you will end up with a lot of questions. Best to just shut your brain off and be carried along by the Yeun/Weaving charm.
Recommendation: It feels a little smug about how edgy it thinks it’s being, but give it a watch if you wanna enjoy some onscreen ultra violence directed at the C-suite.
Suitable Flesh (2023)
Another Joe Lynch film. This time he’s adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing on the Doorstep and paying homage to classic Lovecraft adaptations, like Stuart Gordan’s Re-Animator. A choice which doesn’t work for me. I’m halfway through a whole essay on why that is, but until then, I’ll just say that I think Lynch is mostly riffing on the style and not zeroing in on what actually makes something like Re-Animator a really interesting Lovecraft adaptation.
Recommendation: Worth a watch if you’re into those Gordan movies as it does start to capture the spirit more in the latter half.
Strange Darling (2024)
I’m not going to drop the trailer here, because the less you know the better. The only hint I will give is that it’s in the thriller/horror space and stars Willa Fitzgerald (from Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and Kyle Gallner (Dinner in America, Smile, Jennifer’s Body) in a pair of tremendous performances.
Recommendation: Check it out, and, if nothing else, appreciate the 35 mm cinematography by Giovanni Ribisi (yes, the actor).
Challengers (2024)
Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino, about a love triangle between three tennis players (that’s simplifying it by A LOT), is a film I found more interesting than enjoyable. The way he explores the triangle of relationships through the metaphor of tennis, and the back-and-forth in time to tell the story kept me engaged on a structural level, but, to be honest, I’m not a love triangle person. I find them frustrating in a bad way and the opposite of romantic. Just form a throuple already! And especially in the case of this film because who else could stand to be with these characters? But my pet peeves aside, the film is anchored by three great performances from Mike Faist (Riff in West Side Story), Josh O’Connor (the younger Prince Charles on The Crown), and Zendaya (Chani in the Dune films and general queen of all things), whose continual choice to play prickly, often verging into unlikable (that dreaded word for a female character!) roles, is one that I love.
Recommendation: Check it out!
The Bikeriders (2024)
Directed by Jeff Nichols, it chronicles the evolution of the Vandals from motorcyle club to biker gang. I’m by no means a Nichols aficionado, having only seen Midnight Special and Loving (the former didn’t connect with me, but the latter has a GREAT performance by Ruth Negga, who should be in all the things), but I found a lot to like in The Bikeriders even as I think the script doesn’t necessarily service the film’s strengths as well as it could. More on that in the spoiler section below.
Recommendation: Check it out!
Spoilers for The Bikeriders!
What I mean when I say the script doesn’t necessarily service the film’s strengths as well as it could is that you have two main narrative thrusts: the relationship between Benny, played by Austin Butler (Elvis, Dune: Part Two), and Kathy, played by Jodie Comer (Killing Eve, The Last Duel), and then the tragedy of Johnny, played by Tom Hardy (Inception, Venom), who founds the Vandals as a motorcycle club, only to watch the thing he created grow out of control and eventually lead to his death.
The Benny/Kathy relationship takes up a lot of real estate in the film and tries to set up a choice where Benny is pulled between his love of Kathy and loyalty to the Vandals. However, I don’t find the Benny/Kathy relationship very compelling. It starts out with a strong meet-cute, but then skips the part of the relationship where we actually see the love between the two grow, and goes right to the part of the relationship where it seems like he resents her as an obstacle to his love of riding his motorcycle. I’m never in doubt about whether he’d drop Kathy in a second if he actually had to choose between the two.
I find the vastly more compelling storyline to belong to Johnny as he tries to retain control of the monster he created, but realizes much too late that it has grown beyond him. Here, Benny is also presented with a choice: to become Johnny’s successor as leader of the club and take on that responsibility, or to continue as somewhat of a lone wolf, whose only true goal is the freedom of the road. I buy this as the much harder choice for Benny. And it’s one that leads to devastating consequences and what I found to be the most emotionally affecting moments of the film.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the film wants the Benny/Kathy stuff to have as much of an emotional weight as the time that it occupies within the narrative implies, I needed a little more investment in watching their relationship grow. But I would have also been okay if the film jettisoned most of that and concentrated on the Tom Hardy storyline.
Spoilers over! And that’s all for this month’s movie round-up. Hopefully I’ll get to a few more new-to-me watches in December!
Have you seen any of these films? If so, let me know what you thought of them!
Ah, I love Ruth Negga too! Her performance in Passing was absolutely brilliant.