Our Favorite Watches of 2024 (So Far) | Group Chat

Plus, some personal updates from the Cinemantics gang

From time to time, Cinemantic’s four main contributors — Tyler MacQueen, Graham Piro, Caleb Boyer, and Daniel Mitchell — will jump on a call to chat about anything and everything movies. This month, we break down our favorite watches of the year so far, either old or new, and explain a little bit about why the content machine has slowed down a bit.

TYLER: I think we should just state the obvious: This year looks nothing like the historic one we had for movies in 2023. There just isn’t as much new stuff to watch. Sorry, I should be clearer: there isn’t that much *exciting* stuff to watch.

That being said, I had one of the coolest movie-going experiences of my life in January when I sat down with Graham to watch the Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One (2023, dir. Takashi Yamazaki). I knew almost nothing about the movie, except for what Film Twitter, er X, had pushed to me in the algorithm. As someone who is not a huge monster movie fan, I had low expectations. It was the best way to walk into this movie.

The easiest pitch I can make the picture is that it’s Godzilla meets Jaws meets Dunkirk set in post-WWII-Japan. It just absolutely rocks. Spileberg’s influences are seen and felt throughout the entire picture. The monster moves in a terrifyingly inhuman way; its head is often just above the water’s surface in menacing pursuit like Bruce the Shark.

But in a genre where people are the first to be discarded in the name of bigger CGI slug fests, it was the human characters that impressed me the most. While archetypes, they nonetheless felt real and lived in: the solider, the doctor, the drunk ship captain, the kind romantic interest. We see and feel their trauma and their desire for a better life, and we believe in their fear of this monster from the sea. This makes Godzilla’s attack on the city of Ginza feel just as horrific as any put on screen recently. 

Pray to the movie gods that Godzilla Minus One comes to streaming and physical media soon, because it's one monster movie you don’t want to miss.

CALEB: The last couple months have been ideal for watching cinema in the Boyer household. The nights are often long and late, because —spoiler—my wife and I are busy caring for our first born child, a beautiful baby girl! 

We love our daughter and parenthood, but there is only so much you can do when you are trapped on the couch holding a newborn. Knowing I would have lots of time and a wonderful baby on my hands, I challenged myself to watch as many new films as possible. 

I attempted to expand my cinematic horizons by watching all kinds of genres from different eras in search of new films to experience and enjoy. I watched everything from My Neighbor Totoro to Requiem for a Dream; the former wholesome and the later horrifying.

I have yet to see a film released in 2024 as babies do not make ideal theater companions, and most of the recent films that interest me are only now becoming available to stream. As a result, I spent most of my time watching films from yesteryear and the distant past. Among these films was Michael Mann’s incredible crime thriller, Heat.

The film keeps you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. The opening is a masterclass in thoughtful set piece designs that reveal the characters through their actions as opposed to their words. When exposition and dialogue are necessary, they are delivered with standout performances by Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Their tense game of cat and mouse builds throughout the film, culminating with two scenes where De Niro and Pacino meet face to face. 

The first is at a diner where De Niro and Pacino express their mutual respect for each other’s excellence and the opposing duties of their trades. As the master criminal, De Niro breaks the law while Pacino, an LAPD detective, upholds it.

During their conversation, De Niro uses a quote that he repeats throughout the film, “Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” The saying is brought to bear, both literally and figuratively, on the second and final encounter between De Niro and Pacino. It’s brilliant and beautiful.

If you have yet to see Heat, go watch it! It is the best film I have seen in recent memory, and now among my all time favorites. It is everything you want out of a crime thriller and so much more.

DANIEL: I’ve been saying this for years – we need more movies with charming people. Romantic comedies, Action movies, any genre of movie really.

Anyone But You technically had a 2023 release, but it was a big hit at the start of this year. It’s currently No. 1 on Netflix and I expect it will stay there. It’s a perfect movie to watch at home and it has two up and coming stars: Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney.

It was recently confirmed Sweeney and Powell leaned into the “did they hook up?” questions while filming. The 90s tabloids were full of co-stars running off together, calling off weddings, etc.  – all of which helped drum up eyeballs for their movies. It’s harder to get attention on movies these days, so going back to some of the tricks of the trade paid off, to the tune of $219 Million Worldwide.

Anyone But You is a fun, mostly light-hearted romantic comedy with decent physical comedy from the leads. Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten” steals the show throughout the movie. “Feel the rain on your skin, no one else can feel it for you!” — Sing along! I won’t spoil how it’s used in the movie, but it’s not how you think.

You know Glen Powell from Top Gun: Maverick. For more Glen Powell, I recommend Everybody Wants Some (an 80s baseball movie from Richard Linklater) and Set It Up (a workplace romantic comedy on Netflix). You might know Sydney Sweeney from Euphoria, White Lotus (season 1), Immaculate, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (a small role as one of the Manson followers).

RIP Roger Ebert. You would have loved Sydney Sweeney.

GRAHAM: I would usually go with the best theatrical experience I’ve had in a while – Dune: Part Two – but since I sang its praises already, I’ll go with a film that came out at the tail-end of last year and was overlooked during awards season: The Iron Claw. 

The film tells the story of the Von Erich family, a hugely influential family in the world of professional wrestling (which I admittedly know very little about), detailing the ways that the ambitions and visions of the Von Erich’s family patriarch lead to tragedy for his sons. Zach Effron proves his acting chops in a powerful, transforming turn as Kevin Von Erich. Effron’s physicality is the most immediately striking aspect of his performance, but I love the way he is still able to move like a dancer during a wedding scene – there’s a real grace and dignity beneath the raw physicality that makes Kevin such a compelling protagonist. 

It’s exactly that physicality that makes the film such a compelling watch. The leads have all transformed into their characters, and you feel every blow, illness, and injury.  There are such wonderful little flourishes – like the way Sean Durkin shoots a pivotal moment where Fritz Von Erich (the underrated Holt McCallany giving the best performance of his career) makes an announcement concerning the power ranking of his sons in the world of wrestling. Durkin shoots the scene with a simple long-take push-in that allows McCallany’s presence to dominate the frame while keeping Effron in the background so the audience can experience the range of emotion on his face. 

I was not familiar with any of Durkin’s work before The Iron Claw, but I can’t wait to see what he – and Effron – do next. It’s not a feel-good movie to return to over and over again, but it will undoubtedly reward rewatches thanks to all of the performers. The Iron Claw, simply put, packs quite a punch.

CHECK THE GATE

Folks, our content production has been, well, admittedly low recently—but there are lots of good reasons for that! Here are a few personal and professional highlights from the Cinemantics gang:

TYLER produced a video for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression starring Oscar, Emmy-nominated actor and comedian John Cleese, and NYT bestselling author (and Tyler’s boss)

Greg Lukianoff

. You can watch the full video below! He also served as best man at his best friend’s wedding… and cried a lot.

DANIEL has been catching up on finishing some director’s filmographies (Wes Anderson / Christopher Nolan) - as the resident List Completionist ™. Up next: Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, Nancy Meyers, James Cameron. It’s also baseball season, so he’s getting his fill of the Guardians - and making sure his boys get plenty of baseball/soccer outside now that winter is over.

CALEB and his wife, Emily, had their first child in February. They were blessed with a beautiful baby girl and named her Eleanor. They watched nearly every classic Disney movie waiting for her arrival at the hospital and quickly introduced her to the world of cinema soon after taking her home. Her favorite movies are Paddington 2 and There Will Be Blood.

GRAHAM, inspired by a visit to the International Spy Museum’s Bond in Motion exhibit, has been embarking on a second full rewatch of the James Bond movies. Deciding that watching the movies wasn’t enough this time since he had done that in the early days of COVID, he is also reading the Fleming books for the first time. Admittedly, this has been a much slower going than the movies, but he’s excited to make 2024 the year of Bond on Cinemantics for no particular reason.

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Reader, how is your year going so far? What is your favorite movie that you’ve seen this year?