Oscar season is here again. By the time this edition is published, the winners of the gilded statuette would be long proclaimed at Dolby Theatre, Hollywood. At the time of writing, there were ten publicly disclosed nominees for Best Picture, and no winners in the meantime. Suppose the news hasn’t reached you yet.

A24 has produced some of the most critically acclaimed films in the last decade, supporting indie films to certified modern cult classics. With its approach to cultivating avante-garde cinematography rather than the boilerplate flicks we have seen and come to expect from high-budget Hollywood movies, it managed to produce and distribute films like Moonlight (2016) and Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022),  both bagged the coveted Best Picture at the Academy Awards. A24 in the opening credits is a quiver to a cinephile’s heart, a sign that originally crafted cinematic poetry is afoot. With excellently made motion pictures, at least one of A24’s films will carry the Oscar back home (my money’s on The Brutalist and Sing Sing). Here’s a quick review of a few of their pictures from their 2024 filmography. 

Queer (dir. Luca Guadagnino) — A gay James Bond’s hunt for genuine human connection

William Lee (Daniel Craig) is an American expat in 1950s Mexico City hopelessly navigating the queer dating scene as an openly gay man through substance abuse and casual sex until he met a strapping war veteran, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Trust me, everyone is there for the plot, not Daniel Craig’s on-screen fellatio. We closed our eyes in that cladless bareback scene, transitioning back and forth to the sweltering Latin American midday.

Allerton first appeared across a red-blooded sport of cockfighting, no less, Lee instantly fell in lust. Who would have thought that Nirvana’s Come As You Are, the scene’s anachronistic background music, could be so sensually gay? This highlights Daniel Craig’s divergence from usual machismo roles such as Benoit Blanc and James Bond, the gentleman detective/spy. This “Bond” ventured on a mission to Ecuador in search of yagé (ayahuasca), a psychoactive plant said to grant telepathic capability. Except, the hallucinatory decoction unveiled visions that they avoided to confront—“I’m not queer, I’m just disembodied.” 

Queer was based on William Burroughs’s unfinished 1952 semi-autobiographical novella of the same name, published in 1985. Burroughs intended to live vicariously through Lee, a sassy homosexual unapologetic of his queerness out in the open. Their relationship was unrequited or, as Guadagnino explains it, “unsynchronised love”—out of place, out of time. 

This is Guadagnino’s second 2024 movie after Challengers (starring Zendaya and Josh O’Connor). Call Me by Your Name (starring Timothée Chalamet) seared Guadagnino on the Hollywood boardwalk as a leading queer filmmaker. His movie portfolio—laden with his signature portrayals of “queer”—adds a touch of familiarity and awareness to queer relationships (including fine young cannibals in Bones and All, 2022). Thus, Guadagnino films are usually throwbacks of earlier times (the 1950s, 1980s), antedating queer stories within periods where LGBTQ+ tales were somewhat muted (if not erased).

Genre: Romance, Drama, LGBTQ+

Civil War (dir. Alex Garland) — Cautionary tale on war and the role of journalism

Released in a divisive US election year, Civil War highlights the aftermath of a full-blown anarchy. Four journalists embarked on a road trip from New York to the White House to interview its incumbent (Nick Offerman) amidst the war-torn United States, hostile to pressmen. We heard, from their casual chatter, the Chief Executive’s decisions on pushing a third official term, dissolving the FBI and authorising air strikes on US citizens. This led to domestic fracturing, the petrodollar’s collapse and wide-scale disorder.

Garland pairing California and Texas, stereotypical bailiwicks of two rival parties allied against the Union, is particularly intriguing. Its meagre worldbuilding left audiences wondering about each faction’s motivation. He attempts to paint the belligerents devoid of their banners, presenting the struggle as an apolitical battle on which the stakes transcend partisan divide: the soul of the nation. Further, it does not wallow in the tension towards oncoming skirmishes; rather, at times, it plunges right into the thick of combat. While it may not appeal to many, it succeeds in disabusing us from romanticising war as nothing but an assault on the senses and being. Thus, we’re not meant to understand the casus belli as justification for the wider conflict moreso than its maddening aftermath.

Civil War studies a decaying State and journalism’s place amidst the bedlam. Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) contemplates the failure of her photojournalism to effectively dissuade the nation from self-destructing. It underlies opinions about present media, returning to its roots (symbolised in old film cameras), dispassionately relaying events as they are in still images without inserting themselves in the fray—something today’s US media outlets are criticised for doing. If there’s an overall message, perhaps it’s sic semper tyrannis.

Genre: Action, War, Mystery & Thriller, Drama

Heretic (dirs. Scott Beck & Bryan Woods) — A thought-provoking movie to lose one’s religion

Set in the Mormon heartland, we follow Paxton (Chloe East) and Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), two young missionaries on their quest to proselytise willing “investigators”. They visited a house owned by a religious sceptic, Mr Reed (Hugh Grant), hoping for another conversion—only to walk willingly inside his lair of traps, making them question their beliefs along the way. Mr Reed engages the pair in a dialogue, enticing the two with the scent of blueberry pie as he excavates deep-seated hypocrisies within the LDS church. He transposes it later to indict the broader Christian dogma as nothing but a glorified iteration of antiquated lores. 

Mr Reed, who studied theology for decades, sought the “one true religion” and claims to have found it. In the course of their discussion, he floated hierological inconsistencies, citing Mormonism’s “cynical brainwashing tactic” to embrace polygamy only to discard it when convenient. This irreverently unspools Barnes and Paxton’s indoctrination, learning Mormonism reduced to Christianity’s “zany regional spinoff” and their missionary work as mere ad commercial. 

This film reminds me of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2006), except we’re not running around the Louvre but in the constraints of Mr Reed’s dimly lit house. It argues that religions are man’s fiction to imbue purpose in earthly living, banishing nihilistic demons from memory. Mr Reed, however, inadvertently reveals his own hypocrisy in an attempt to reify his “one true religion” by demonstrating a Eucharistic miracle. The finale is open to doubt, and that’s by design. As to the fate of Barnes and Paxton, we can simply take a leap of faith that they suffered better ends.

Genre: Mystery & Thriller, Horror

Babygirl (dir. Halina Reijn) — A sex-positive probe on (softcore) female masochism

A female CEO, Romy Mathis (Nicole Kidman), oversees a lucrative automated warehouse company and is married to a devoted and feminist husband, Jacob (Antonio Banderas). Her company’s well-oiled machinery eliminates redundant tasks from human hands, easing the workload for frictionless efficiency, contrasting Romy’s professional independence with her private need to be controlled and dominated. In the opening scene, we were captured by her performative moans only to slink from their postcoital bed dissatisfied, masturbating to online pornography in secret. Her efforts to curb her lust were defeated by her husband’s “vanilla” approach to sex.

In response, she engaged in a corporate tryst with a younger male intern in the shape of Samuel (Harris Dickinson), risking her career and family on the line. Exploring the dynamics of their relationship, on who has power over whom, Samuel would say, “I could make one call, and you lose everything”—to which Romy irresistibly submits. We learned about her upbringing in a cult commune from which her childhood fantasies were possibly implanted, her name selected by the cult guru. We can speculate that her submissive daydreams were rooted in her need to purgate the embedded childhood trauma (or fantasies)—in the most intimate human activity. 

There is no Fifty-shades-of-grey-esque BDSM, but rather a softcore sadomasochism—a reversal of age and status roles. The climactic confrontation is a contest of assertions: whether female masochism is merely a patriarchal construct. There’s a surprisingly feminist ending to this story: a woman salvaging her life intact and sexually satiated, not lampooned for her desires, relishing the triumphant orgasm.

Genre: Mystery & Thriller, Romance, Drama

The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet) — A masterpiece of the decade, an ode to the immigrant journey

In a brutal three-hour-long saga, The Brutalist is uncompromising in its depiction of a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), and his immigrant experience in the post-war United States. He settled in Philadelphia, almost at the exact latitudinal parallel to Frank Lloyd Wright’s seminal opus, Fallingwater (also in Pennsylvania), said to have inspired Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus school where László was trained.

Brutalism is a mid-century architectural style characterised by reinforced béton brut (French, lit. raw concrete). Due to its lack of embellishments in contrast to previous styles, it was vilified as austere, soulless and aloof—I disagree. It’s a misunderstood genius, much like László, who suffered discrimination as a Jew and then as an immigrant but later revered for his towering accomplishments. Upon learning this, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce) commissioned  László on a colossal project, the Van Buren Institute. László fashioned the negative space, tapping natural sunlight to elicit a humbling vista. László’s brutalism employs its surroundings to better serve its creative schema, reminiscing his captivity in Camp Buchenwald in Nazi Germany to his immigrant life in America, one that embodies resilience, adaptability, and survival: cloistered maybe in a cramped mortared cage but dreaming upwards to the high ceiling. 

Life is a coarse, rigid, bare wall—a brutalist edifice—but, in totality, a thing of unsung beauty and promise. As a testament to its endurance, we see it every day in the Beehive, Inland Revenue Manukau, UoA’s Arts and Engineering building interiors, and even Symonds Street Underpass dons the brutalist aesthetic. Once condemned for its stylistic oddities, it is now revalued as an epochal symbol, transcending all time. As László poetically puts it:  “A whole river of such frivolities may flow undammed, but my buildings were devised to endure such erosion...”

The Brutalist is a masterpiece of the decade, an ode to the immigrant journey, which I manifestly endorse for your appreciation.

Genre: Drama

Sing Sing (dir. Greg Kwedar) — Making hope out of nothing at all

Sing Sing is a surprisingly uplifting and optimistic drama on prison life, set in the eponymous maximum security detention facility in New York. It opens with John “Divine G” Whitfield (Colman Domingo) playing Lysander from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, orating the transient moments of love—like a thunderbolt in a collied night. 

We see, in their impassioned enactments, the transformative potential of the Arts as they rehearse for a play called Sing Sing Folies. I learned that this theatre troupe was based on the actual story of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), on a mission to break the incarceration cycle of US convicts. The comedic play itself was based on reality. The actors were former inmates who dedicated their emancipated lives onstage, their dignity restored, and their carceral past now behind the grand drape.

Sing Sing adeptly humanised the convicts through the power of theatre acting, sublimating their sound and fury towards artistic expression. In a potent performance, D Dan (Sean Johnson) delivered a poignant  scene. He recounts graphic mutilation as normative within the keeplock detention wing as he counsels a rambunctious Divine Eye (Clarence Maclin): “Brother, we’re here to become human again… [and] enjoy the things that is not in our reality.” 

It had limited release in 2024 but had a wider release earlier this year as part of its Oscar campaign. This was a powerful, gripping, life-affirming drama where a group of outcasts find their purpose in the most hopeless of spaces.

Genre: Drama

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