In the Slate Annual Film clubEmails from film critic Dana Stevens with other critics – for 2024, Bilge Ebiri, K. Austin Collins, Alison Willmore and Odie Henderson – about the cinema year. Read the first entry here.

How are you, fellow human beings who write well,

The question of what one looks for in the cinema is an interesting one, but perhaps impossible for a critic to answer. At least this critic. I go to the movies all the time – for work, for fun, because I’m a parent, because I have time to kill, etc. – but I so rarely ask myself: What do I actually want? see? Of course, I’m lucky: the kinds of films I like are often the kinds of films I end up watching and writing about in some way, and I suspect you might find yourself in a similar situation. However, when I think back to the films of 2024 that I might have put on the most anticipated films list at the start of the year, I’m a little at a loss – which, as Alison can tell you, is hilarious, because as part of it Due to our jobs throughout the year, we are both regularly asked to contribute blurbs for various “Most Anticipated” lists.

But also, I moved out of New York City at the end of last year, so the question of what I would want to see in a theater is almost moot. The two suburban multiplexes near me would never be shown Close your eyesI can tell you that much. Or Green border. Or Girls will be girls. As I write this, Nickel Boys is about to hit theaters, but we wish you good luck finding it anywhere near New Haven, Connecticut. I assume the film will be wider (will it gets wider?), it could find its way here. When could that happen? Fandango doesn’t know. The Cinemark app doesn’t know. Remember when people just knew when and where movies were coming out? Or, for that matter, these movies even existed?

We’ve talked a bit about the current state of moviegoing (and I agree, Alison, it gets tiresome and predictable at times when every critical conversation devolves into a meditation on the fate of the moviegoing experience), but mostly what I find is that Most people simply don’t even know what movies are playing so they can watch them. Allow me to illustrate this with a story I’ve probably told elsewhere. Sometime in May, I found myself in a lengthy conversation with an Uber driver, a middle-aged gentleman who I thought was a few years older than me. (That probably means he was a few years younger than me, but I digress.) We started talking about movies and he mentioned that he liked going to the movies. He asked me for some recommendations. I suggested it immediately The Guy casewhich opened earlier this month. “The Guy caselike the old TV show?” he asked. I said yes. “That was my favorite show!” he exclaimed. He asked me who was in it. I told him Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. He then exclaimed that he loved Ryan Gosling. “I had no idea they made a movie out of it,” he muttered.

All I could think was: We as a society have failed this man. Here’s a guy who goes to the movies and loves it The Guy case TV show that loves Ryan Gosling, loves action… and yet had no idea The Guy case was in theaters, or even that it existed. And we’re not talking some random, barely marketed indie weirdness here. If any, The Guy case was marketed to death: there were multiple trailers, advertisements everywhere, a promotional piece during the Oscars (through its two Oscar-nominated stars), a Saturday Night Live Hosting gig by Gosling (a great repeat). SNL Moderator), a chic festival premiere, lots of positive reviews. Not to mention good word of mouth: the people who did You see, he tended to like it, which was reflected in his solid legs after a not-so-great first weekend. I know that after the film’s release, there were some spoilsports on social media who smugly declared that the soft beginning proved it was bad or mediocre; Strangely/tragically, a few weeks later some of these people decided that FuriosaThe soft opening was evidence that the audience was stupid or that Warner Bros. had dismissed the film.

Look, we’re all human and we love to create narratives out of the things that happen around us, and those narratives often only serve to confirm our own biases. I’m probably doing a bit of the same thing when I say there’s a crisis in film marketing. One of the reasons big franchises still do so well is because large, existing fan bases are easier to market to. (But they will also turn on you quickly, since the Kraven the hunter And Madam Web people figured it out; Even Marvel has ended up in the wilderness before Deadpool and Wolverine saved his ass.)

That being said, it’s not that people don’t want to see the films; It’s because they don’t really know that movies exist. Once upon a time there were newspaper advertisements for movies (which many of us enjoyed watching as kids – can you name another industry whose advertising was so popular for so long?), we had trailers that people enjoyed watching (because they were them). and we had posters on streets, at bus stops and in malls that people noticed because they weren’t looking at their phones all the time. I know this sounds like an “old man yelling at Cloud” situation, but I wouldn’t dwell on the past so much if these things had been replaced with something more tangible or effective. What replaced this? Banner advertising? Annoying pop-up videos that play automatically? Short: Name the last advertising banner you saw. Now we’re trying our best to block out this crap. How is anyone even supposed to know a movie is coming out, let alone that it exists? Even theater tents have somehow fallen by the wayside. Do you remember the time when the tents advertised the films being shown? Well, a lot of them don’t anymore. Is it because changing the letters takes too much time, materials and labor?

And then there are these bizarre cases where the distributors themselves don’t want people to know about their films. I liked Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 quite a bit and was shocked, like everyone else, that Warner Bros. seemed determined to bury it. Here was a well-directed, well-acted, gripping legal drama the likes of which no one makes anymore; It was on both Kam’s and Alison’s lists, and even though it wasn’t on mine, I thought about it. So what did Warner do? It was released in a few theaters (stupid), with very little advertising (cruel), and made no box office (weird). It seemed like the studio wouldn’t even show the film to critics until it caved at the last minute and let some of us see it one afternoon deep in the basement of the AMC Lincoln Square, in the theater’s smallest room. The film was received very positively and seemed to do well despite the limited launch period – so much so that the studio eventually added a few theaters. I saw it again at an Alamo Drafthouse a few days after its release and the theater was completely sold out. Heck, even the New Haven metropolitan area finally did it for a hot second, I seem to remember.

Speaking of sales: Dana mentioned No other countrythe documentary about the ongoing destruction of a West Bank village, which has been winning prizes at festivals throughout the year (and is currently cleaning up in critics’ circles too) but still hasn’t been able to find a distributor, although in this case it got a short self-distribution run in New York , to qualify for awards, and it looks like it will premiere at Film Forum in January.

But No other countryFor me, the distribution difficulties are secondary to its spectacular achievement as a film. It’s worth thinking about this in the context of our earlier discussion of scale and scope. No other country isn’t a “big” movie – it’s only 95 minutes long, but its scope is huge and takes place over years. The film’s protagonists remind us that no one in the outside world cares if a chicken coop is destroyed or one is filled with concrete. And the Israel Defense Forces know this. By limiting its incursions to these seemingly insignificant matters, it is gradually erasing entire villages from the map. But by compressing time, the filmmakers of No other country Allow us to witness the overarching pattern of destruction. This gives the film a documentary urgency, but also makes for some great art; His use of scope has both political and aesthetic power.

All of this gets me thinking about the question I present to you: If there was an overlooked film from this year that you could magically get everyone to watch, knowing that they would probably like it , which one would that be? For me it would be like this not Be my number 1 film, Close your eyesstill my number 2, Nickel BoysSimply because they are formally daring works that divide the audience. It wouldn’t be hugely entertaining either Fall Guy (my #4) because, well, America had a chance to see it. I think It could be my number 3 film, the one by Agnieszka Holland Green bordera brutal black and white drama about the treatment of refugees along the Polish border with Belarus. It’s a sprawling epic that looks at the subject from many perspectives, but also has all the old-fashioned virtues: it’s moving, suspenseful and tragic, with compelling characters – it even ends on a somewhat hopeful note. (Holland is a director who has worked in Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Hollywood, and she also helmed some notable shows of the Peak TV era, including The wire And House of cards. She’s an incredibly versatile director who makes accessible films.) People would hate me for forcing them to watch the film, but I think they would end up loving the film.

There: I read an entire post without mentioning it once Megalopolis … d’oh!

bilge

Read all the entries in Slate’s 2024 Movie Club.