Pictured to my left is the ancient Roman god, Janus, for whom the month January is named, because, as you can see, Janus looked both backward and forward. He was the "god of beginnings and ends, entrances and exits, change, transition, gateways, doorways, and arches" (per Google). Those Romans were good when it came to naming the months of the year. The grandstander does a lot of looking forward and backward at this time of the year, so the next several posts will be looks both back and ahead as we have now closed out 2024 and kick-started 2025.
Let's start with a popular Grandstander feature, a couple of movie reviews, plus my 2024 rankings.
"A Complete Unknown"
This of course is the much anticipated Bob Dylan biopic that stars Timothee Chalamet as Dylan, and when I first saw the teasers for this film sometime this summer, it went to the top of my "Must See" list, and I was not disappointed. Chalamat looks like Dylan, talks like him, and most importantly, sings like him. His performance will surely garner him an Oscar nomination. The same goes for Edward Norton who played Pete Seeger in this movie. Chalamet, Norton, and Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, all did their own singing and played their own instruments in the movie, and they were terrific.
The movie covers the time period when twenty year old Bob Zimmerman arrived in New York City from Hibbing, Minnesota in 1961 up until his appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when "Dylan went electric". It captures the time and place of New York and the folk music scene and all of the cultural changes that were taking place in the early 1960's very well.
I had three scenes that were my favorites in the movie, all at Newport in different years:
- When Dylan sings "The Times They Are A-Changing"
- When Dylan and Baez sing "It Ain't Me, Babe" while a tearful Suze Rotolo (a real life early Dylan girlfriend who is for some reason is named "Sylvie Russo" in the movie) watches from backstage
- The entire "going electric" performance at Newport in 1965
Some Dylan-ologists in the online world are taking issue with the movie for all the usual reasons.....this event didn't happen in the sequence depicted in the film....the actors should not have done their own singing, they should have lip-synched the actual recordings of Dylan, Baez, and Seeger.....the time frame is off. To all of that, I say what a friend of mine was once told when he served as a consultant on a movie that was being filmed in Pittsburgh years ago and told the movie makers that were were never any steel mills visible from Forbes Field: "This is a movie, not a documentary." It should also be known that Dylan, while not a formal consultant on the movie, did meet with the screenwriters and the actors as the film was being made and has no problem with any of it. He did say, however, that if you see the movie, you should then read the book upon which it is based, "Dylan Goes Electric" by Elijah Wald, something that I plan on doing.
I am predicting Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Acting nominations for Chalamet, Norton, and maybe even Elle Fanning who played Sylvie.
Oh, and when you go, stay for all of the credits. Three classic Dylan songs, sung by Dylan himself play over them as they roll along.
Four Stars form The Grandstander. I can't wait to see it again.
"Anora"
This is a movie that was a darling of the film festival crowd and is popping up on numerous Ten Best lists.
Mikey Madison plays Ani (she doesn't like being called Anora), a sex worker in New York City. She works in a strip club, coaxes men into private rooms for lap dances, and will even meet up with men outside of the club and have sex with them for money, but she is not, she insists, a prostitute. One such customer is Vanya, the twenty year old son of a Russian oligarch who is richer that God. Vanya takes a shine to Ani, and asks her to spend a week with him in exchange for $15,000. She agrees, but this is no Julia Roberts-Richard Gere-Pretty Woman deal. While on a spree in Las Vegas, Ani and Vanya get married. Word soon gets back to the old man in Russia who then sends three of his goons to pay a visit to the newlyweds and make the whole thing go away.
The movie is in three acts, and I am not sure what to think of them when taken all together. Act One depicts the lives of these sex workers. It's gritty and dangerous, not at all glamorous, and, frankly, Linda and I were tempted to quit watching as it unfolded. Act Two takes place when the three underlings come to the house where Vanya is staying and attempt to convince the couple to get the marriage annulled. During this time, Vanya bolts from the house and Ani fights off the goons, and it is funny and terrifying at the same time. Act Three is the search to find Vanya, the arrival of his parents from Russia, and I'll say no more so as to avoid spoilers.
I am not sure what to make of the ending of the movie. You can go online and find all kinds of opinions as to just what the ending is supposed to mean. I'm still not sure. I will say this, though, "Anora" was a movie we talked about for several days after watching it.
Two Stars from The Grandstander.
My 2024 Movie Rankings
I am not a professional movie critic. I don't have to see every movie that comes down the pike. I only see the movies that I want to see, and as such, I am inclined to like them from the start. In all I saw twenty-five movies in calendar year 2024. Some were seen on theaters, some were streamed, and some were older movies that I had seen for the first time. I rank them as I go along throughout the year, and the rankings are based upon how much I actually liked the movie.
Here they are:
- A Complete Unknown
- Wicked
- Conclave
- Here
- The Holdovers*
- Anatomy of A Fall*
- Anora
- It Ends With Us
- The Fall Guy
- The Greatest Night in Pop
- Remembering Gene Wilder
- In Cold Blood (1967)
- Past Lives*
- American Fiction*
- Poor Things*
- Maestro*
- Unfrosted
- Infamous (2005)
- Wicked Little Letters*
- Taylor Swift, The Eras Tour
- Woman of the Hour
- The Zone of Interest*
- Megalopolis
- Green for Danger (1946)
- Napoleon Dynamite (2005)
* 2023 Movies seen in 2024
Seven of these were released in 2023 for the purposes of Oscar consideration, but I didn't see them until the calendar turned to 2024.
I will say that I had a hard time deciding whether our not to place Wicked or A Complete Unknown in the Number One spot, and I used this criterion to decide: What movie am I most likely to see a second time, and that made the choice a simple one.
