Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Nest (2020)

Allison: You can blame shit on me Sam, but you're 

the one who's going to have to live with your choices.

Sam: I don't have to make choices, mom. 

I'll just find a man to make my choices for me.

A happy 44 to Carrie Coon today! We've just got a couple of weeks until The White Lotus returns for its third season and we're gifted with CC dropped Mike White dialogue like its hot (her AND Parker Posey -- I can barely contain my glee; and you did hear the show's already renewed for a fourth season right? It sppears the trade-off on this timeline was everything else is shit but we get Mike White finally being appreciated properly.) Anyway if you still haven't seen Sean Durkin's 2020 film The Nest (it got seriously lost and underappreciated amid the doom of that year) I highly recommend you seek it out; I think it's brilliant. Here's my review. And even if you disagree there's a Carrie Coon dance sequence that transcends all differences!

You should also go and watch His Three Daughters on Netflix by the way -- the movie got ignored by awards bodies I think because nobody knew which actress between Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elisabeth Olsen to focus on because they're all really great in it. A really fine piece of work, that one. 

Rodrigo Santoro Seven Times

What a perfect Friday treat -- a new photoshoot of Brazil's greatest export Rodrigo Santoro from Bazaar magazine (via). And our fella is looking really good, right? It looks like he's finally recovered from losing all that weight for a role like a decade ago -- I wish actors would stop doing that. Christian Bale done messed up an entire generation of our most precious and beautiful treasures. Anyway point being hi Rodrigo! Happy to see you. And now we shall hit the jump to see some more...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, Jai

Yesterday Jai Courtney shared with us some photos of him celebrating a belated homebound premiere for his Netflix Western series American Primeval, which didn't get a real premiere because of the L.A. fires. Looking it up now I see the series has apparently been a hit (as far as we can gague Netflix numbers for real) -- anybody watched it? I haven't yet but it's got Jai so I will at some point probably. For now I am happy with these photos! Hit the jump for them all...

The Harding of Friedrich

There are several moments that made me gasp in Nosferatu, but none louder than when Aaron Taylor-Johnson revealed the very important and critical detail that his character of "Friedrich Harding" dresses to the left. And let us take this opportunity to congratulate the film's costume designer Linda Muir on her richly deserved Oscar nomination! See two more gifs from this moment right here -- there's another moment in the movie (seen here; thx Mac) where Aaron's constant co-star makes a similar cameo but it was this shot above that really shook me to my core, personally. Stormed my castle, even! I mean -- they're plaid pants, even! This was a message sent directly to me, I know it. In all seriousness I could 100% write a serious piece of criticism on the abundance of phallic imagery in Eggers' adaptation if, you know, I was a serious person. Instead we get bulge gifs! Awooga!

The Goblin King Meets the Prince of Darkness

I've always found it odd that I have no emotional connection to the 1986 film Labyrinth -- I'm the right age for it, I loved The Muppets, and I'd eventually grow up to become a horror freak who adores David Bowie. But the movie for whatever reason never grabbed me as a kid and so I find myself in a weird position approaching today's news from Deadline that no less than director Robert Eggers is apparently working on a sequel to the film.  Alongside yesterday's much-more-thrilling-to-me news that Eggers is working on a werewolf movie it's proof that the box office success of Nosferatu (along with its four Oscar nominations, and even better its high placement on my own Top 20 of 2024 list) has everybody wanting to take a bite of Bobby and that makes me happy. But this is just weird news that I don't know how to react to. I did re-watch Labyrinth a couple years ago (it's on 4K now!) and I still feel very little for it but I guess it will be cool to see what the hell Robert Eggers would do with puppets. Or will this movie be puppet-less? I can't imagine that is a possibility -- the people who love the original would riot. It's hard for me to imagine this movie at all! I don't know! Weird news! If nothing else I hope they bring back Jennifer Connelly.

Quote of the Day

As we put 2024 behind us officially and move on to the year's first film festival with Sundance kicking off today, let's look at one of our most anticipated titles premiering in the next two weeks there -- Plainclothes, Carmen Emmi's film about a closeted police officer (Tom Blyth, seen above for V Man magazine -- more photos here) falling for a hot dude (Russell Tovey) he arrests for cruising a Syracuse restroom. 

It's got everything! Hot men! Gay sex! Upstate New York! It's like my autobiography y'all. In all seriousness I posted about this movie the second it was announced and I'm extremely happy it's one of the few titles on my most-wanted Sundance list that's doing virtual screenings so I will actually be able to see it! (Pour one out for Ira Sachs' new movie with Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall which I will not be able to see -- SIGH). Anyway there's a chat with Blyth about the movie in Variety today and because sex scenes get all the clicks they talked Plainclothes' sex scenes between the two fellas and here's what he had to say:

"We had an amazing intimacy coordinator, Joey Massa. I’ve worked with a lot of intimacy coordinators and they’re always amazing. Sometimes I feel they’re called in when the scene isn’t even that intimate just because everyone these days is rightfully trying to correct the course and make sure that everyone’s protected. Sometimes you’ll have a kissing scene and you go, “We probably know how to do this.” But this was genuinely intimate stuff. It was really intimate, really vivid, and Joey was incredible. It felt very organic. It felt like we rehearsed it in a way where I think Russell and I both were made to feel confident and comfortable enough that we could lead it. I think it works best when the actors feel emboldened to be able to take control of the choreography and make it feel organic."

I do like the sound of "really intimate" don't you? Those are the kinds of phrases that make my happy places get happy in the first place. Anyway stay tuned for my thoughts on Plainclothes in a couple of weeks -- the virtual screeners don't drop until the end of the fest so it'll be a bit but there's no way I won't have thoughts on this!

The 20 Best Movies of 2024

I have thought about dropping my year-end favorites list on Oscar Nom Day several times in the past, but timing-wise it just hasn't worked out before -- this year looks to be an exception, however! My reasons for thinking it's a good idea are 1) as stated in my earlier requisite post acknowledging that those nominations happened I just don't care about them and I don't want to spend all day reading people's brain-numbing statistics and theories all of which rob me of a will to live. So this gives me something else to focus on. Also today is the first day of Sundance and while I might not be there in person this year (sigh) I will be reviewing movies virtually, and I'm going to be very busy starting to do that almost immediately. So if I don't do this today it'll be a couple more weeks. 

Also -- I've had the list of movies on a spreadsheet for weeks now, and every other day I go onto the doc and I move them around a little bit depending on my mood, and... I could just keep doing that forever, or I could just say enough! And organize them into their final form, waffling be damned. That said 2024 turned out to be an especially amorphous year with no single frontrunner slam-dunk -- any of my top five on any given day could've been my number one. Which isn't to say I think 2024 was a bad year for movies -- quite the opposite! There's a lot of love spreading around here. But let's just stop our yammering and get to the goods. Here at last are...

My 20 Favorite Movies of 2024

20. Strange Darling (review)

19. Femme (review)

18. I Saw the T.V. Glow (review)

17. I'm Still Here

16. Love Lies Bleeding (review) 

15. Janet Planet

14. A Different Man (review)

13. Flow

12. The End (review)

11. National Anthem (review)

10. Kinds of Kindness (review)

9. Rumours (review)

8. Red Rooms (review)

7. Bird (review)

6. The Substance (review)

5. Challengers (review)

4. Nosferatu (review)

3. Hard Truths (review)

2. Queer (review)

1. Evil Does Not Exist 

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And here are ten runners-up: The Vourdalak, Babygirl, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Hundreds of Beavers, Blitz, Trap, The Brutalist, Memoir of a Snail, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, and Oddity.

Okay -- that's that! Onward and onward!

 Let's get 2025 rolling...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Oscars Remain Pointless, News At 11

Well the Oscar nominations are here and they flopped the only test I was giving them this year -- nominate Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths for giving the best performance this year, perhaps even this decade, in Best Actress. So I fully don't give a shit about the rest of the noise even if a couple of cool things happened -- I expected The Substance to get Best Actress and maybe even Best Director but scoring Best Picture seemed a stretch and they went there, which is cool. Hoping they will make it Ralph Fiennes year FINALLY; happy for Fernanda Torres, who is wonderful in I'm Still Here and I certainly don't blame her for MJB's absence -- not when two of the Best Actress nominations are straight up trash. Yura Borisov! Guy Pearce! Nosferatu nabbing several noms for its exquisite everything! But mostly in a really interesting year for movies they nominated the least interesting, basic, to downright bad things -- shocker! Conan O'Brien hosing the audience down with blood and reenacting the end of The Substance might be the only saving grace, I fear. 

Well now that that is over we can get back to talking about movies yay

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) January 23, 2025 at 10:19 AM

Good Morning, World

A big bulging Thirst-day morning bounty of thanks to actor Taylor Zakhar Perez and Lacoste brand underpants for slipping our Red White & Royal Blue star into their briefs as their new brand ambassador -- I love it when brands call their models "brand ambassador" and I long to one day be a "brand ambassador" myself. For what though? Hmm. I could be the brand ambassador for Gap sweatpants maybe. I have spent at least half my life in those. That wouldn't be so bad -- it could be much worse. I certainly don't have Taylor's abs so itty bitty briefs are out of the question but I can rock a pair of sweatpants. If I do say so myself! I don't mean to brag or anything. Ahem. Anyway hit the jump, we have lots more of Taylor's blessed bumps to bounce upon ahead...

Ye Olde Wolfe Movie

Even though I said I was going to get off the couch this past weekend and force myself to go see Wolf Man in theaters I did not -- I am the lyingest liar who ever lied and I hope Christopher Abbott shows up at my door and slaps me. (With what I'll leave up to him.) Anyway obviously that makes it my fault that the film flopped, but I did think about the movie some -- that's the same, right? What I thought about was my god, will anyone make a werewolf movie that works again? I mean this is admittedly an insulting thing to think about a movie I haven't seen yet, but the general consensus appears to be that Leigh Whannell's movie doesn't work and it got me thinking -- what was the last werewolf movie that really did work? That was truly great? I saw and liked last year's Werewolves recently but it's not a "good" movie -- it just knows how dumb it is, it has really fun practical effects, and it leaves us on a high note:

Thank you #Werewolves for ending on a high note
(this shot of Frank Grillo) pic.twitter.com/3OiOIKlvql

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 29, 2024

2021's Werewolves Within is a lot of fun too but I don't know that I can quite call it an iconic success -- maybe if it hadn't been released in the depths of the pandemic and had grabbed hold of the cultural imagination, but I do think the movie is a little wobbly on its own outside of just being fun. It's certainly not scary, and I want a scary fucking werewolf movie already! Anyway to finally get to the point -- on the heels of Nosferatu's tremendous box office success (huzzah!) our lord and devilish savior Robert Eggers has announced his next movie and it's going to be a scary fucking werewolf movie! (And we know he won't shy away from some blessed werewolf transformation nudity either!) 

He's calling it Werwulf because of course our favorite history nerd is leaning into Ye Olde English -- the script was co-written with his Northman writer and is apparently stuffed with annotations due to its use of Olde English lol. I love this dork so much. The only other info we have is it's set in the 13th Century and Eggers was going to shoot it in black and white but now he is not doing that. Oh and Focus Features has already dated the movie for Christmas Day 2026 because they are counting their great big checks from the holiday counterprogramming of Nosferatu and saying "Gimme more of that shit please!" If we start getting Robert Eggers horror movies every other Christmas I will be a very very happy boy y'all. Long may our dark prince reign!

GIVE US THE WEREWOLF SEX WE DEMAND!!!

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 1:46 PM

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Hech of a Summer

And lo, another thing to look forward to! Actors Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard (yes he of Stranger Things twinkdom) have written, directed, and are co-starring in a campground slasher film called Hell of a Summer that is coming out in April! That's cool but the thing that makes me happiest about this is the actual lead of the film is my wee little snausage Fred Hechinger of The White Lotus and Thelma fame. MNPP is a Fred Hechinger Fan Club...

... and we support any and all things him. I admit I'm a little wary that thing movie was completed and screened at TIFF two years ago (I am refraining from looking up reviews) but wer're in no matter what! Here's the trailer: 

Hell of a Summer comes out April 18th!