The Big Picture · Top Five · Roundtable · Review · Hall of Fame · Interview
December 16, 2024/ 136 min/ Sean Fennessey · Rob Mahoney · Joanna Robinson
Sean Fennessey, Rob Mahoney, and Joanna Robinson each rank five favorite performances of 2024, then run a long honorable-mentions roundtable. They review Marielle Heller's 'Nightbitch' and build a ten-film Amy Adams Hall of Fame. Sean closes with an interview with Pablo Larraín about 'María.'
48 films across 7 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.
Rob Mahoney's Top Five Performances of 2024No. 1 first
No. 1: Josh O'Connor as a perfect cad and shitheel; the alleyway scene where he asks Zendaya to coach him. Rob's favorite performance in one of his favorite movies of the year. God's Own Country and The Crown already proved he can do anything.
No. 2: Mikey Madison, transformative and relentless in a role that could grate if pitched slightly differently. Rob had little Madison exposure before and left fully signed up.
No. 3: Joan Chen as the coming-of-age mom: funny, controlling, quietly wrecked. The scene where she demythologizes Dìdi in front of his older skater friends is punishingly real.
No. 4: David Jonsson as the synthetic Andy, reprogrammed and degraded across the movie; the defining performance in it, in the Fassbender lineage of humanizing a machine.
No. 5 (the lick-a-knife rule): Austin Butler's Feyd-Rautha stealing a stacked movie; let him be a freak more often. Rob's verdict on release: 'that was sick.'
Joanna Robinson's Top Five Performances of 2024No. 1 first
No. 1: Colman Domingo holding the center among nonprofessional actors as an incarcerated theater-group leader who hits a crisis of faith; the small window to the outside he keeps returning to. One of our great actors taking this project as his star rose.
No. 2: Denzel Washington as Macrinus: a synthesis of Training Day, Glory, and the goofier early stuff, Shakespearean and wily with a sexual fluidity under the surface. Saves a movie Jo otherwise didn't enjoy.
No. 3 (scene stealer): Yura Borisov as Igor, magnetic with little dialogue as the camera lingers on him watching. Jo did a full rewatch just tracking him.
No. 4 ('you really didn't need to go that hard'): Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova, gleefully creepy hand-in-the-head physicality in a movie the hosts had fun with but don't think is good.
No. 5 (newcomer): Maisie Stella holding down a movie mispackaged as an Aubrey Plaza two-hander. Engaging, occasionally unlikable, easy to root for, and game for a full Justin Bieber fantasy sequence.
Sean Fennessey's Top Five Performances of 2024No. 1 first; his No. 5 is a two-movie slot
No. 1: Clarence Maclin as Divine Eye, the co-lead: a nonprofessional actor and former RTA participant. He and Domingo swap places like a double helix; the late scenes between them are the movie.
No. 2: Nell Tiger Free, a discovery, as a nun slowly becoming possessed, matching Arkasha Stevenson's vision. (Once played Princess Myrcella on Game of Thrones.)
No. 3: Marianne Jean-Baptiste's Mike Leigh reunion (their first since Secrets & Lies), a sustained, fearless portrait of anger. The couch-shopping scene builds empathy without redemption.
No. 4: Hugh Grant as Mr. Reed, the culmination of his 'piece of shit' era: aw-shucks bumbling turned chilling, bouncing off Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East. Two-thirds perfect.
No. 5 (shared slot): Lupita Nyong'o as a woman in hospice at the end of the world; the survival-movie register that rarely gets awarded.
No. 5 (shared slot): Lupita Nyong'o again, a vocal performance putting a character into the robot essence: the hidden art of voice acting.
Honorable mentions the supporting and also-ran roundtable
Stanley Tucci, plus Sergio Castellitto as the vaping Italian cardinal.
Josh Hutcherson as the worst-possible-son villain. Amanda put it on her best-of-the-year list too.
Willem Dafoe just doing Willem Dafoe ('there is a beast!'). Joanna's pick here: Nicholas Hoult.
Hunter Schafer's restrained, anxious scream-queen work; Dan Stevens having a blast as an evil German doctor.
Kirsten Dunst, and Jesse Plemons in one of the year's tensest scenes.
Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum. The movie's a car crash, but she's a riot.
Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, one of the singular freaks of the 20th century.
Vicky Krieps, the underbilled star of a movie Sean wanted to shout out.
Dan Stevens as an Australian monster dentist, introduced pulling a tooth from King Kong.
Dan Stevens in what's basically a Michael Mann movie that happens to have vampires.
Kevin Durand's mocap Proximus Caesar, elevating a movie Sean was mixed on.
Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, following Joaquin Phoenix's version for the same director.
Carol Kane, suddenly picking up supporting-actress buzz (New York Film Critics Circle).
Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels at the center of a movie Joanna didn't love.
Dev Patel, who nearly broke his body making it; the movie's not good but he is.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson's McConaughey impression; Sean came a hair from putting him on the main list.
‘Nightbitch’
Marielle Heller's adaptation of the Rachel Yoder novel, with Amy Adams and Scoot McNairy: a mother alone all day with a two-year-old who begins turning into a dog. All three praise the monotony and alienation of early motherhood as unnervingly accurate (Sean, a parent, felt seen), and Adams's haggard, all-in performance. Their shared reservation: the genre trimmings and the tidy end-of-movie speech and art show pull the edges off. Sean's wife texted 'this movie is so rough' mid-watch. Compared to Tully and, on its 'laurels to the artist' ending, The Brutalist.
The Amy Adams Hall of Famethe ten inducted films, after grading her filmography green, yellow, or red
First green. A tiny part, but she's unmistakable: 'show me a better performance in braces.' Her only film with Leo, so far.
The major breakthrough: the sweet, pregnant, wide-eyed innocent. Won at Sundance, first Oscar nomination. The naivety engine in full effect.
Indisputable. One of her biggest hits, built entirely on her charm after Junebug. The first live-action Disney princess not drawn from harnessed IP. Marsden almost steals it.
'So green. Go to bed.' Maybe as charming as she's ever been: a live-wire, incorrigible flirt opposite Frances McDormand's straight woman.
Her scrappiest, most against-type turn; second Oscar nomination. The porch fight is her one clip-reel moment. Melissa Leo's campaign beat her that year.
A wife part, but she does far more with it: a woman quietly, at times overwhelmingly, in control of the frame. If you like The Brutalist, watch this first.
Auto-green for her even though the hosts don't love the movie: the part-within-a-part layering of accents. Her most financially successful non-franchise hit; another Oscar nomination.
The number one: likely the best movie she's made, carried 80 percent by her acting opposite a window. Sean argues she should have won; the Meryl-in-Florence-Foster-Jenkins nomination that year is 'a joke.'
Granted 'for you and the state of Texas,' Joanna and Rob's charitable push. Tom Ford's mean, knowing trash; her reading of the manuscript is the whole exercise. (Also the debut of the Aaron Taylor-Johnson six-pack.)
The tenth slot, over Doubt and Big Eyes: there's no movie without her, and she produced it. Her 'do it myself' producer era, closing the loop on the Junebug expecting-mother arc.
In conversation
The third of Larraín's accidental trilogy of women, after Jackie and Spencer, with Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas. An opera fan since childhood, he wanted a film that is an opera 'in motion': a moving proscenium set in Callas's last week. He opens on Jolie singing Ave Maria in close-up to 'defeat the ghost' of the casting in the first minute. On why biopics are 'a cultural fantasy,' the enigma-plus-magnetism he saw in both Jolie and Callas, shooting on film with cinematographer Ed Lachman (after El Conde) to work through color, and the vanished mid-century world of art, money, and glamour. His last great thing seen: Anora.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Amy Adams's filmography, weighed for the Hall of Fame Drop Dead GorgeousPsycho Beach PartyCruel Intentions 2The Slaughter RulePumpkinServing SaraThe Last RunThe Wedding DateStanding StillTalladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky BobbyTenacious D in The Pick of DestinyThe ExCharlie Wilson's WarSunshine CleaningDoubtNight at the Museum: Battle of the SmithsonianJulie & JuliaMoonlight SerenadeLeap YearLove and DistrustThe MuppetsOn the RoadTrouble with the CurveMan of SteelHerLullabyBig EyesBatman v Superman: Dawn of JusticeJustice LeagueViceHillbilly ElegyZack Snyder's Justice LeagueThe Woman in the WindowDear Evan HansenDisenchanted
In the Amy Adams conversation The BrutalistTullyThe Devil Wears PradaThe InternBlue JasmineGravityPhilomenaAugust: Osage CountyLa La LandLovingJackieFlorence Foster JenkinsVicky Cristina BarcelonaLes MisérablesThe Constant GardenerSicario2001: A Space OdysseyA Single ManRed RoomsThe Girl on the TrainBeauty and the BeastAlice in WonderlandMufasa: The Lion KingPhone BoothIron ManAvatarTwilightHocus PocusHocus Pocus 2
In passing: the performances talk Black Panther: Wakanda ForeverUsBlack Panther12 Years a SlavePigA Quiet PlaceA Quiet Place Part IIGod's Own CountryOnce Upon a Time in HollywoodPretty WomanImmaculateThe VoyeursAnyone but YouBullet TrainBoyhoodScreamMoanaMoana 2
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Sharp ObjectsServantGame of ThronesBuffy the Vampire SlayerNashvilleNormal PeopleBetter ThingsThe O.C.Big Little LiesBreaking BadThe CrownIndustry
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