TMW #6: Review of the Year Part 1
Kicking off our top 20 countdown of 2024's best movies. Plus: the problem with superhero movies, Kneecap director Rich Peppiatt interviewed and a canine quiz
Welcome back…
…to the start of the end of 2024. In our print-magazine days, polling staff and contributors for their favourite films of the year was always an exciting process, well worth the blood, sweat, tears and heated invitations to resolve things in the office car park. So we’re thrilled to continue the tradition (without the car-park bit) with The Movie Wingman Review of the Year, counting down our Top 20 of 2024.
Over the next few weeks we’ll be revealing the movies that moved us most. We’ll also be bringing you interviews with key players, think pieces on the trends of the year and lots of fun little extras. Today we’re kicking off with numbers 20-16 on our top-films countdown, Matt Maytum’s exclusive interview with Kneecap director/co-writer Rich Peppiatt, Jordan Farley’s thoughts on why superhero movies had a power failure in 2024 (with one notable exception) and our top 5 fights.
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Thanks for reading, and let us know your 2024 highlights (and low points) in the comments below. We’ll be back on Friday with reviews of Nightbitch, Unstoppable and more…
Review of the Year Part 1
20. Blink Twice
Actor Zoë Kravitz proved to be a star behind the camera too with her dynamite directorial debut (which boasted 2024’s most memorable working title: Pussy Island). Co-written with E.T. Feigenbaum, this psycho-thriller sees Channing Tatum’s infamous tech billionaire woo nail artist Naomi Ackie into joining him and a few fellow hedonists on his private, no-phones-allowed island. Clearly, such a red-flag set-up is not going to end well, but Kravitz parcels out the reveal with shivers of subtle hints before a spectacular final-act pivot to bloodbath horror. An unblinking study of power and its abuses that’s both darkly funny and deeply unsettling. (ML)
STANDOUT SCENE: Ackie’s ominous discovery of rows of ‘perfume’ bags, arranged like something you might find in the Overlook Hotel gift shop.
Available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital
19. Civil War
Dinged in some corners for its peculiar apoliticism, Alex Garland’s urgent document of America at war feels even more frighteningly plausible with the divider-in-chief back in power. A road trip movie across literal battleground states, it follows a band of war correspondents - hardened photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), writers Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and hungry young photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) - as they travel from NY to DC to interview the president before he’s impeached with prejudice. Explosive final assault aside, this is a film of intimate but supremely tense encounters across a lawless, militarised America, and a smart study of the mindset required to get the shot. (JF)
STANDOUT SCENE: Dunst’s real life husband Jesse Plemons makes a memorable impression asking a loaded question at gunpoint: ‘What kind of American are you?’ Somehow, the goofy red glasses make him even more frightening.
Available on 4K, Blu-ray, DVD and to buy digitally
18. Hit Man
Richard Linklater scored his most celebrated film in a decade with the sorta-true story of nerdy university lecturer Gary Johnson (Glen Powell, also co-writer), who discovers a knack for posing undercover as fake hitmen for the New Orleans PD. It’s a pleasure watching Johnson/Powell own the role(s) but Hit Man really heats up when the fake assassin crosses paths with Madison (Adria Arjona), who wants her abusive husband taken care of. What follows is a tense, sexy screwball thriller featuring the year’s hottest on-screen chemistry (Powell and Arjona are electric). And amid the excitement and seat-edge double-crossing, there’s philosophical musing on the masks we all wear and an unexpectedly dark ending to unpick afterwards, preferably over a slice of post-movie pie. (MM)
STANDOUT SCENE: The montage that shows off Gary’s knack for disguises (and Powell’s supernova star power).
Available on Netflix
17. The Wild Robot
After girl-meets-alien (Lilo & Stitch) and boy-meets-beast (How to Train Your Dragon), Chris Sanders returned to pillage our tear ducts anew with another unlikely duo: shipwrecked robot and orphaned gosling. Living up to the trailers’ soulful promise, this adap of Peter Brown’s novel tracks with exquisite care and charm the emotional awakening of Alexa-on-legs Roz (Lupita Nyong’o, flexing incredible vocal nuance) as she braves winter with the wildlife and teaches young Brightbill (Kit Connor) how to fly. Meanwhile, the painterly, post-Spider-Verse visuals strike an apt balance between high-tech gloss and organic warmth. Not sure how the prospective sequel can top this, but we’ve got the tissues ready. (ML)
STANDOUT SCENE: Heart-in-mouth time as young Brightbill launches himself from Roz’s shoulder into a wider world.
Available on digital
16. Kneecap
The highest-ranked film not in the English language
An unlikely musical trio became unlikely movie stars in the year’s wildest biopic. Kneecap, an Irish hip-hop trio from Belfast star in their own fact/fiction-blurring story, which lives up to the potentially ruinous Trainspotting comparisons. Providing electrifying context to the potentially dry Irish Language Act, writer/director Rich Peppiatt’s narrative debut follows ‘ceasefire generation’ rappers Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh and Naoise Ó Caireallain on their nascent career, as they team up with teacher J.J. Ó Dochartaigh. While it establishes itself from the off as a very different kind of film about Northern Ireland, it captures the region’s key divisions without ever preaching. And, crucially for a music biopic, the group’s best-played-loud tracks are insanely catchy, and they have such screen presence it’s hard to believe they weren’t professional actors beforehand.(MM)
STANDOUT SCENE: A hilarious sex scene lays bare Irish divisions better than any lecture could.
Available on Prime Video and digital
Interview: Kneecap writer/director Rich Peppiatt
Wingman speaks to the filmmaker behind our highest-ranked non-English language film of 2024
What did you expect the reaction to be like when you were making Kneecap?
When you're making a film, you're so in the middle of the battle of just making it. I don't think consideration of how it's going to be received really crosses your mind. I think we were excited from an early stage by the fact that there'd never been an Irish language film that was modern and gritty and blackly comic and, you know, sex, drugs and hip hop. There was nothing like it in the Irish language… We knew it was going to be controversial and we were quite aware that from the battles behind the scenes with funders and things like that about some of the humour. But, you know, our ambition for the film was really that it would be well received in Ireland and hopefully the UK. But beyond that, I don't think we really considered that it would be a success in the way that it has.
Were you pleased when a lot of reviews made Trainspotting comparisons?
Well, no, not really, because there must've been a thousand films since Trainspotting which have come out and there's a quote going, 'This is the Dublin Trainspotting, this is the Berlin Trainspotting...' There's so many films which come out and none of them ever are the next Trainspotting, and so it's almost one of those comparisons which doesn't do you any favours, really.
I was very, very chuffed when I woke up one day and Irvine Welsh was tweeting that it was the best film he'd seen in years. And then our composer, Mikey [Michael "Mikey J" Asante] was working with Danny Boyle up in Manchester on the Matrix musical, and he showed him the film and he loved it, and that was amazing as well. Just having Danny Boyle kind of give it the stamp of approval was really nice. It's all been a bit of a whirlwind.
When you were getting to know the boys, did you have a sense they’d be good screen presences, given that they didn’t have any previous acting experience?
For me, I just loved them as a trio, as personalities. They were just great fun and had a great chemistry between them. It's one of the hardest things, chemistry, and they had it. And I believe that anyone can act. It's a matter of, do you have the toolbox to understand what acting is? I remember the first time we stood in a room to do a run through the script and they were kind of doing it theatrically. Performing to the back of the room. And I was like, “OK, but what about if the camera's four inches from your face? That's not going to work, is it? So can you take all that energy and internalise it?”
Did you have any kind of qualms as an English person telling this story?
Yeah, I mean, I was very conscious of, you know, the Brits have been oppressing the Irish for 800 years, and here was me not wanting to go and make it 801, by sort of turning up and stealing the lad's story and profiting off it in a way. So it was very important to me that it was a very collaborative process, that they felt involved at every step of the way.
And even to today, there's barely a decision that I don't flag to them and go, “Look, this is happening. Let me know if you've got any thoughts.”
How much did it help getting Michael Fassbender involved?
I mean, the film was already funded. He was the last member of the cast who came on board. I think some people assume he helped get it made, but that wasn't the case. I think the minute you have a big star like that, everyone wants to up their game, and the couple of weeks we had him, he was a fantastic influence to have on set. And for me as a filmmaker making his first feature, looking through your monitor and seeing Michael Fassbender there, was sort of like, 'Oh, fuck, that's pretty cool.' And even the catering got better. Like, suddenly you're getting three bits of bacon in your butty [laughs].
And you're Ireland's Oscar hopeful this year. How are you feeling about your chances there?
As I said at the beginning, we never set out to be anywhere near those sort of conversations, and so I feel the film has done everything we could have dreamed of it to do and more. So on one hand, it doesn't owe us anything and there'll be no crying in our beers if it doesn't go our way, but, equally, it's gone so far, there's a little bit of you that goes, “Well, why can't it go a step further?” It does seem like there's a momentum, there's a wind in our sails, but the Oscars is traditionally quite a conservative award. Kneecap is a quite out-there film. I think our hope is really if we can make the final five and go to the Oscars, that would be amazing. I don't think we're under any illusions that we'll win it. But I think that getting as far as going is winning. I'm not sure the Oscars are ready for kneecap turning up though…
Kneecap is streaming on Prime Video and available to rent or buy digitally.
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