The Promised Land 2023
Nikolaj Arcel's film, one of several they'd already covered with a director interview before it got a February wide release.
The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Rankings · Interview
'Dune: Part Two' and the 10 Best Movies of the Year … So Far
April 9, 2024/ 102 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
A Q1 stocktaking, recorded during eclipse week. Sean and Amanda argue about which movie quarter matters, agree Dune is the film of the year so far, then run through the gems hiding in the first-quarter rough. Plus a read of a genuinely deranged Netflix movie chart and Sean's interview with First Omen director Arkasha Stevenson.
29 films across 5 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
Is it too early for a best-of-the-year list?the one-week Oscar-qualifying runs that make 2024 feel like 2023
Perfect Days 2023
The Wim Wenders movie, banking on an International Feature nomination it got (the kind of boost that can matter for the box office).
Love Lies Bleeding 2024
They gave it a whole episode. Good in March, would have been good in September.
Immaculate 2024
The Sydney Sweeney nunsploitation horror movie Sean liked a lot, and, weirdly, the near-twin of The First Omen two weeks later.
The Zone of Interest 2023
So dominant in the International Feature race for so long that the qualifying-run gamble barely mattered for it.
The Taste of Things 2023
Amanda's call that Sean keeps forgetting came out this year; banked on a nomination that didn't come.
Society of the Snow 2023
The one they both liked that actually came out in January and gets filed, unfairly, under last year.
The big oneSean's favorite movie of the year so far, on a third theatrical viewing
Dune: Part Two 2024
A breathless act of filmmaking that, on rewatch, reads as actively anti-Paul, an epic that distrusts its own protagonist the way Taxi Driver does. Sean credits the Villeneuve-Spielberg DGA podcast for the frame: Paul isn't the chosen one, he's manufactured into the role. Well cast against Chalamet's winsome public persona. With Villeneuve making a nuclear-war movie next, Dune Messiah (mostly palace intrigue, less spectacle) is probably five years out.
Gems in the roughthe good stuff Sean dug out of Q1
La Chimera 2023
Alice Rohrwacher's 'emo Indiana Jones,' with Josh O'Connor in one white linen suit holding a twig and looking sad while he hunts Etruscan remains and a lost love. A mood piece; the best scene is O'Connor eating pasta while 18 Italian women, Isabella Rossellini among them, yell at each other.
The First Omen 2024
A legacy prequel that plays as a genuine David Lynch / Cronenberg body-horror film. Disney released it; Sean can't believe it isn't NC-17. Ambient and upsetting rather than jump-scare city, and ultimately about control of a woman's body, the same nerve as Immaculate.
Girls State 2024
The Boys State follow-up, on Apple TV+, shot in 2022 Missouri right as the Roe leak landed. The reactions were muted and Amanda's was too, but the fury at how the girls are treated versus the boys is the animating thread, and Emily Worthmore, who loses but does the journalism, is the standout.
How to Have Sex 2023
Molly Manning Walker's debut, on MUBI: 'feel-bad British Spring Breakers.' Verité focus on Mia McKenna-Bruce's teenager on an island vacation, whose walk of shame becomes a single, devastating still shot. An affecting, hard watch.
Spermworld 2024
Lance Oppenheim's Hulu documentary (Sean's favorite documentarian of the last five years) on the unregulated forums where sperm donors find hopeful parents. Stylized verité portraits of four odd, not-bad men, rooted in Nelly Bowles's Times piece 'The Sperm Kings Have a Problem.'
The Beast 2024
Bertrand Bonello's Lynchian, time-hopping film with Léa Seydoux purifying her DNA across 1910, 2014 and 2044 and George MacKay as her lover. Confusing and uneven, but the 2014 incel-stalker segment is the best part (some think it should have been the whole movie), and the last 20 minutes are exceptional.
Snack Shack 2024
A T Street (Rian Johnson's company) throwback to '80s/'90s teen comedy, set in 1991 Nebraska, on VOD. Two kids take over the local pool's snack shack. Riddled with cliché and knows it; the reason to watch is the insane cut-and-perform energy, plus Gabriel LaBelle as a star.
Scoop 2024
A Netflix newsroom procedural about the 2019 Prince Andrew Newsnight interview, told from the booker's side (Billie Piper). Rufus Sewell and Gillian Anderson are riveting in the climactic sit-down. The good version of what season six of The Crown botched: thin, but exactly the serious-not-Serious movie Sean wishes Netflix made more of.
The People's Joker 2024
Vera Drew's crowdfunded public-domain parody of very-much-not-public-domain IP: a coming-out story built from DC characters that most assumed would never get released for legal reasons. Bold, occasionally tedious, sometimes thrilling; Richard Brody called it the greatest superhero movie he's ever seen.
What America was actually watchingthe genuinely chaotic Netflix movie Top 10 that week
No. 1
The Little Things 2021
No. 1: the Denzel/Malek/Leto serial-killer movie that went day-and-date on HBO Max during COVID, now topping Netflix.
No. 5
The Tearsmith 2024
No. 5: the lone other Netflix original nobody had heard of; a teen drama, no supernatural element despite the title.
In conversation
Arkasha Stevenson on
The First Omen 2024
The photojournalist-turned-AFI-director sold the studio on the movie with its single most provocative image: the frontal childbirth shot that fought the MPA over an NC-17 (the vagina, not the demon hand protruding from it, was the problem). She frames the '70s wave (Omen, Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby) as parents fearing their children, and this one as the inversion: children fearing their parents' generation, pitched the day of Texas's six-week ban. Nell Tiger-Free carries almost every frame.
Arkasha Stevenson on
Hollywood 90028 1973
Her 'last great thing': a recently Grindhouse-restored, hyper-feminist horror film shot through a male perspective about the Hollywood strangler, with an ending shot so bold it made her angry.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Villeneuve in the rearview SicarioPrisonersArrivalPolytechniqueClose Encounters of the Third Kind
Director back catalogs Boys StateSome Kind of HeavenHappy as LazzaroThe WondersLe PupilleComaNocturamaDinner in AmericaAmerican FictionFair Play
Comps, homages, and coming attractions Taxi DriverUnder the SkinPossessionThe OmenThe ExorcistRosemary's BabyFire Walk with MeWild at HeartThe FabelmansChallengersMegalopolisArgylleJokerJoker: Folie à DeuxWalk the LinePennies from Heaven1917Unbreakable
What they actually watched this weekend Raising ArizonaMonkey ManAll About Eve
Named but not yet seen The Old OakHundreds of BeaversFemmeIn the Land of Saints and SinnersLand of BadWicked Little Letters
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The CrownServantChannel ZeroButcher's BlockBriarpatchLegionRen FaireNewsnight
Ads DissectTremfyaPepsi
Games Cinematrix
Other WrestleManiaThe Directors Guild podcast