Manohla Dargis
Appearances
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
George Miller, great director from Australia. He makes these incredibly, they're just pure cinema, I think. And I love the stories. This one did move me. It's about a woman's empowerment, you know, and can I say I'm a sucker for female empowerment?
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
One of the things I really love about it is George Miller uses practical effects rather than relying on just computer-generated imagery. And so you are really watching people doing these crazy things. And it's beautifully choreographed the way, let's say, a 1930s or 40s Fred Astaire number would be beautifully choreographed. We are talking about, you know, visual pleasure, you know, maximum.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
Listen, man, I'm going down on this ship. I don't care. This is a wildly ambitious movie. ungainly, imperfect movie. But you are going to see things much like with a George Miller movie that you have never seen before. This is a movie that Coppola has been thinking about for decades. He's been working on it. And it's a very optimistic movie filled with beautiful imagery. And it is...
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
Kind of nuts, but in a glorious way. I mean, it's not Despicable Me 234. It's not. It's something different. It is funny. It is strange. It is unexpected. And why do you go to the movies? Do you just want to see the same thing over and over and over again? No. Maybe see something that you have never seen before, and I guarantee you that you have never seen this before.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
Resist the algorithm. Seek out movies that... Resist the algorithm. This is going to be my new T-shirt. All right, sister, I think we're ready for a revolution now, right? To the barricades. To the barricades.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
There are some really interesting movies that I highly recommend that people can look at. One of those, I really like September 5th.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
It's about the 1972 Olympics where the Israeli team was taken hostage and ABC was covering it live.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
You know, it's a very modest movie. It's really short. It's about 90 minutes long. And it just seems like, oh, it's just about the fact that they were covering it. No, I think it's about journalistic ethics. And it's really interesting. And I think it's very germane to the moment.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
I also like a movie coming up called The Brutalist, which is a movie by Brady Corbett. And it stars Adrian Brody, who when we first see him is actually just stepping off onto Ellis Island. It's post-World War II and he comes to America and he kind of runs face first into the wall of American capitalism.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
It is a really big, ambitious movie. And it has one of the other great performances of the year from Guy Pearce, who plays an American capitalist. Oh, my God. It is an amazing performance. So highly recommend that movie. It's a beautiful movie. If you can see it in theaters, please do. It is one of the most beautiful, kind of monumental looking. I mean, he just it's tremendous looking.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
And then, of course, there's, like, the movie that I think is going to be a very, very big Oscar movie is A Complete Unknown, starring Timothee Chalamet as the very, very young and cutie-pied Bob Dylan.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
The movie opens with him arriving in New York City, and it takes us through to when he first, you know, when he goes electric. And it's a movie that I think is going to surprise people in terms of Timothee Chalamet. It's opening a whole new Chalamet chapter. And it's a movie that is going to be talked a lot about in terms of the Oscars.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
So you're going to hear a great deal about that for the next couple months.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
I am never in over my head. It would be disrespectful to my hairdresser.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
I feel so ashamed for saying this, but being a mother, it's not enough for me.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
Sure. Easy enough to do. Inside Out 2, which is a charming sequel from Pixar. Deadpool and Wolverine, which I could not stand. Despicable Me 4, which I will never see unless I'm forced by gunpoint. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, which was fine, fine. Dune Part 2, Wicked, Twisters, Moana 2, Godzilla, Kong, The New Empire, Kung Fu Panda 4.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
Well, it's very familiar. Sequelitis, this is the current model for the, you know, the big companies.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
They're looking for safe bets. If you're in charge of a multi-million dollar, you know, outfit, much less a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, you're not really going to be one to take big chances like Hollywood. oh, let's bankroll this tiny little movie from Noah. And that whole mentality is really, that's been part of the mainstream entertainment business for some time.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
And when you start introducing things like algorithms, at a certain point, it's just going to start suggesting things that you've already, you know, that are like what you just saw. It's kind of depressing. And we should say that not all sequels are bad.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
First of all, sharks versus gladiators, what's not to like? And also, there's a fantastic performance from Denzel Washington. It's one of the great performances of the year.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
He's wildly entertaining, so don't, please, people, do not tell me that there's nothing to see. There are things to see.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
I would say that most people have not seen this movie. It's quite a small movie. It is made by Payal Kapadia. And it is a deeply touching movie that even when I start talking about it, I get a little misty. So forgive me. It's set in Mumbai, and it focuses on one woman, but mainly three women, who all work at a hospital, two nurses and a cook.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
And it is about both their individual lives, but also their relationships with one another. Padia's worked in documentary before, and she inserts these documentary scenes of people just milling about, celebrating, walking in streets, and you get the sense from the movie that she could have picked another three people and told, you know, their stories.
The Daily
The Year in TV & Movies
It is something I have never seen and that I was delighted to see. It's an independent film and it's glorious.