Every December, frequent moviegoers like me fall into the same familiar ritual: looking back at the movies we saw and ranking the ones that made an impact — for better or for worse.
There’s no real science to this; it isn’t about “the best films according to an algorithm” or awards-season prognosticating. It’s just about calling attention to the movies that stuck with me, the ones I couldn’t wait to discuss afterwards, that I’m still thinking about weeks or months later.
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Here is a list of every new movie I saw this year, along with the grade I gave it. Films are listed in the order in which I saw them.
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With so many movies released in any given year, there are bound to be a few gems that slip through the cracks.
Eephus is one of those films you probably didn’t hear much about when it played in theaters earlier this year (if it even made it to your town). But it’s available to watch digitally, and you should do yourself a favor and check it out. Especially if you ever played little league or on a town team (at any age), or you’ve ever considered yourself a baseball fan.
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Song Sung Blue is a movie for anyone who thought Deliver Me from Nowhere needed a few more hit songs. While the film about a Neil Diamond tribute band isn’t exactly a downer, like the Bruce Springsteen film is, it’s not entirely the upbeat entertainment the trailers and commercials promise, either.
It’s got a soundtrack that’ll make you sing like a guitar hummin’, though. And that’ll be more than enough for some viewers.
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Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? is good, but not great, and it feels a bit disappointing after A Star Is Born and especially Maestro (one of my favorite movies of 2023). Both of those films exhibited the confidence of a director fully in command of his vision, but this latest one feels looser and a bit unsure of itself.
Cooper’s latest has moments of real insight and emotion, but it also meanders and is occasionally frustrating. You can see what he’s going for — something raw and human about creativity and connection — but the final product just doesn’t quite get there.
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If you’re like me, and you never did get around to seeing the recent Tony Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, or you did see it and you wish you could see it again (and again), director Maria Friedman has given audiences a time machine that goes right back to the Hudson Theatre, preserving her buzzy Broadway production for future generations.
Friedman, a British actress and director making her cinematic debut, didn’t just park a camera in the aisle during an actual performance. Rather, she’s produced a film that’s a bit of a hybrid, one that effectively captures the electricity of live theater and gives you the kind of intimacy you can’t quite get even from the best seats in the house. Yes, that means the film is stagey. But that’s exactly the point.
Merrily is in theaters now as a special-event release, and for musical-theater fans, it’s a genuine holiday gift.
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Three films into the Knives Out series and Rian Johnson still isn’t bored with his own funhouse — and neither am I. Each entry in the Agatha Christie–inspired franchise has told a different story with a different cast and setting, but they’ve all been mainstream crowd-pleasers that feel intelligently crafted rather than assembled by an algorithm, the rare series where “new installment” means “new flavor” instead of “same meal reheated.”
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery keeps that streak alive. It’s not as bright and cameo-filled as 2022’s Greek island–set Glass Onion was. But it’s sharper and more self-possessed than the original Knives Out was.
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George Clooney swears he’s not playing himself in Jay Kelly. But it’s hard to see where the actor ends and the role begins.
Directed by Noah Baumbach (While We’re Young), who wrote the screenplay with Emily Mortimer (Lars and the Real Girl, The Newsroom), the film is very much a star vehicle that knows it’s a star vehicle. It’s definitely entertaining and attractive to look at. But it treads familiar territory in that it tells the clichéd story of a character who realizes they’ve put their career before their friends and family, and who tries to make things right. Given who the film’s star is, that makes it a bit difficult to feel much compassion.
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With its lush cinematography, precise period details, and performances so controlled they practically scream “For your consideration,” Hamnet is one of those movies that feels engineered from the ground up to earn award consideration — if not a few little gold men themselves.
And to be fair, it is a beautiful movie. Director Chloé Zhao clearly put a lot of thought and care into the look and feel of her latest work. Every frame feels deliberately composed and drenched in a kind of quiet melancholy that fits the subject matter perfectly. (Though, some shots do appear to be lifted straight out of a Terrence Malick film.) The acting is top-notch across the board, too, with grounded, intimate performances that pull you in even when the movie itself drags.
But that’s the thing: For about three-quarters of its length, Hamnet is … a bit dull. Not offensively so, not “check your watch every 10 minutes” dull, and certainly not “to sleep, perchance to dream” dull. Just slow, restrained, and very interior. As expected.
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Heaven has a sense of humor.
That’s one of the key takeaways of Eternity, a new movie that asks the question: If you could spend your eternal afterlife in a setting of your own choosing, which one would you pick and who would you spend it with?
The film comes from the studio A24, and it is, not surprisingly, a quirky rom-com that errs not on the side of mainstream romance but on the side of offbeat comedy, packing in so many subtle jokes that you either have to be an eagle-eyed viewer or a repeat viewer so you make sure you catch them all.
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Martin's Musings 