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Best and Worst Films from November 2024

Best Films from November 2024:

3. Memoir of a Snail

Memoir of a Snail is an existential, but still positive animated movie that is all about moving forward instead of dwelling on the past. The voice acting is terrific, the characterization and dialogue are superb, the score is quite moving and the stop-motion animation is as meticulously crafted and unique as we’d come to expect from this filmmaker. It’s another winner for Adam Elliot and certainly one of the best stop-motion animated movies in recent memory.

2. My Dinner with Andre

My Dinner with Andre is a rare American drama from the eighties that is not only unique and experimental, but it has only become more relevant with age as the two men touch upon finding purpose in life and how we have all become desensitized and robotic in our behavior. Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn are very memorable while Louis Malle directed the movie with a lot of style and warmth. It’s a superbly edited and made film that is only on the surface plotless, but is actually quite deep and sophisticated.

1. Grizzly Man

Grizzly Man is a fascinating documentary about human nature and our relationship with the natural world and wild animals. Werner Herzog’s directing was phenomenal and the movie’s cinematography and editing are also top-notch. While the ending was a bit too straightforward, the film was still a complex take on a very complicated figure that doesn’t paint him in black-and-white. Documentaries are supposed to make you think, which this one clearly did for me. This was the month where I did a documentary cinema marathon and this was the best movie in that line-up for me.

Worst Films from November 2024:

3. Event Horizon

Event Horizon has strong VFX, score and production design. The first act promised to be exciting and fun. Unfortunately, the second half devolved into a pointless, overly ambiguous psychological horror that lacked the sophistication of Tarkovsky’s ‘Solaris’, a clear influence on the story. This is somehow a cult film today when in reality it’s one of the worst SF movies of the decade.

2. The Apprentice

The Apprentice is such a painfully misguided and biased biopic. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong were fantastic here, especially the latter, but they were wasted on a truly atrocious script and a film that can only appeal to the lowest common denominator. The movie is slanderous and inaccurate, but it would have been perfectly fine to criticize Trump, but not in such a painfully biased, unsubtle way and that is its worst offender.

1. Joker 2

Joker 2’s plot and characterization is a giant middle finger to all audiences. That is the worst offender here, but other offences include the fact that this is a musical and the numbers are so badly filmed, and the fact that Lady Gaga was so mistreated and sidelined throughout. It’s a pointless, tedious sequel that doesn’t even succeed in the meta context.