Month: January 2025

Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2024

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Looking back on a year full of disappointments and heartbreak, both for movies and the wider world itself, it can be difficult to focus on what made it tolerable instead of fixating on our despair, but no year can be perfect, and no year is without great movies to talk about. As we head into an already challenging 2025, let’s remind ourselves of the good that’s still out there and why we go out of our way to see movies in the first place. Let’s get started!

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HONORABLE MENTIONS: Kraven the Hunter & Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Kraven Review; Sonic Review

I’m sure giving these movies any spot on my list will raise a few eyebrows; especially when films like Anora and Challengers didn’t make the cut. I suppose when it comes to Honorable Mentions, I’m far more interested in making a point than just simply listing my eleven and twelve spots. See, everyone has a theory about what’s wrong with Hollywood movies these days, and the two most common answers are unasked for superhero movies as well as banal nostalgic shlock. Sure, Sonic has a built-in audience who will give this decent reviews and solid box office returns, but no one was expecting the movie to be anything more than what you see on the poster, and it’s doubly worse for Kraven which was mocked from its announcement all the way up to release date. For me, both of these exceeded the low expectations put on them; not in an exceptional way, but enough to refute the perceived wisdom of many armchair studio heads. You can’t simply write down a list of rules to follow or tropes to avoid and say that it’s the formula for success, as any competent filmmaker with the passion, the talent, and the faith of the producers can make something that’s genuinely entertaining. Sure, it doesn’t always make you money as Kraven tanked at the box office, but a good movie is always a net positive in the world; even if it means we have an old sounding Shadow the Hedgehog or Aaron Taylor Johnson running around like an awkward cheetah.

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Cinema Dispatch: Top 7 films of 2024 That Need Improvement

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

And so we’ve come to the end of another year on this ridiculous little planet, one that had its high points to be sure, but wasn’t lacking for low ones either. I try to keep these Needs Improvement lists more positive than negative, as the over reliance on antagonism and sheer pig headed ignorance has turned film criticism into just another brand for YouTube shouty-bros, and the last thing I want to do is contribute to the noise. The last twelve months certainly haven’t made it easy to keep an upbeat attitude, but we’re all doing our best in these uncertain times as we take a look at movies that just didn’t quite hit the mark. Let’s get started!!

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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

Full Review

I understand why a lot of Tolkien fans would appreciate this movie despite its faults. Taking it in as a mood piece that lets you slip into this world for a couple more hours is a valid way of enjoying this, but I simply could not get past how dull it was for most of its runtime. It has a solid foundation to tell an interesting story, but the dialogue and the characters let it down. There’s a lack of personality among the cast. Lots of emotions to be sure, but everyone who express them doesn’t feel like they exist outside their current predicament. This is especially problematic for our two leads as the motivations of our villain lack any sort of nuance and our hero feels thin as her stoicism and humility are presented to us in place of a personality; leaving the movie with two blocks of wood with anime eyes to revolve the story around. If it were up to me to make this work, I’d cut the whole thing down to the bone, no more than forty minutes, and make it the grand finale of a Lord of the Rings anthology. Animation collections have worked for The Matrix, Batman, Halo, even that recent Star Wars thing on Disney Plus, so why not for Tolkien? Without having to fill the space of an entire movie, the characters could stay as archetypes and legends whose actions are meant to speak louder than the words coming out of their mouths. The animation and action could be fleshed out to better suit the simplified storyline, and without having to explain as much, the characters can come off as much more proactive in the story. Perhaps my suggestions are more a testament to my own attention span, but there had to be a more interesting story to tell in Middle Earth than that one time there was a very long siege!

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Cinema Dispatch: Nosferatu

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Nosferatu and all the images you see in this review are owned by Focus Features

Directed by Robert Eggers

Robert Eggers has been one of my favorite filmmakers to keep an eye on in recent years with The Witch and The Lighthouse being two of the best films in the last decade, and while The Northman wasn’t everything I had hoped it would be, a remake of Nosferatu seemed like the perfect pairing with such a brilliant filmmaker. The original Nosferatu is one of the first great horror movies in cinema and began a long tradition of filmmakers making knockoffs of popular works to avoid copyright laws, and it was even followed by a remake in 1979 that is somehow even better than the original which leaves Eggers with some sizable shoes to fill even for someone as talented as him. Will this latest attempt to reimaging the terror of Count Orlok prove to be the best one yet, or does the shadow loom too large for any modern filmmaker to get out from under? Let’s find out!!

Thomas and Ellen Hutter (Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp) have only just been married, and yet news has come down from Thomas’s employer that he must go to Transylvania to meet with a very important client in the Carpathian Mountains. This Count Orlok or some such (Bill Skarsgård) is an odd fellow, but Thomas’s boss (Simon McBurney) assures him that a deal like this will make his career, and so he goes off to meet the man in the hopes of giving himself an Ellen a fine start on their life as husband and wife. With Ellen staying at their friends, The Hardings (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Courrin), Thomas makes the treacherous journey that leads him to a world far more sinister and terrifying than he could ever imagine. Of course, there is one person who did imagine it as Ellen has been struck with terrifying nightmares of a mysterious creature that will kill everyone around her, and when she starts to have fits in the middle of the night, The Hardings call in Doctor Sievers (Ralph Ineson) to diagnose the mysterious behavior, and when he is left baffled, he enlists the help of Professor Franz (Willem Dafoe) who seems to think that Ellen is right to be afraid of what is coming. What manner of creature does Thomas find at Orlok’s castle, and can he escape the horrors with his body and soul intact? Why does Ellen have this connected to the dark forces surrounding her home, and can this be used to find salvation from the encroaching darkness? Is it just me, or does this sound just as much like a soap opera as it does a horror film?

I felt the same way when they announced Death Stranding 2.
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