Anatomy of a Fall is one of the major titles of the 2024 awards season. Although it was not France's chosen entry for the Oscar for Best International Film, the movie managed to carve out its own path outside the category. It's not surprising: this film by Justine Triet revolves around the death of a man who falls from the second floor of his own house. What happened? Did he jump, or was he pushed? From there, the wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), gets caught in a whirlwind, accused by the prosecution and forced to defend herself. Triet is not really interested here in finding the culprit or providing answers but in questioning the pursuit of truth. After all, what is the truth? Who owns the truth? These are the questions the film raises, making it stand out. Special mention to Hüller's performance, which manages to convey this complexity in her acting.
One of those darling films of the awards season in 2024, The Holdovers follows the story of a teacher (Paul Giamatti, brilliant), a grieving cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), and a troubled student (Dominic Sessa) who come together during the year-end celebrations when all other students, teachers, and staff go home – they, however, need to stay as the young man has nowhere else to go. Well-directed by Alexander Payne (known for above-average films like Nebraska, Sideways and The Descendants), the feature manages to stir emotions with the story of these characters seemingly rejected by life but finding each other in their differences – although the script emphasizes that there are more similarities than differences among these three characters. Joy Randolph and Sessa perform well, but the film belongs entirely to Giamatti, delivering a poignant yet funny portrayal of this teacher hated by students with unexpected eccentricities. Just don't expect a Dead Poets Society: the film is more about human relationships than teachers' lessons.
Inspired by the book "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI," Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" is an epic that reorients the original story – told from the perspective of newly formed FBI agents – to the viewpoint of the Osage Native American tribe, who were victims of infamous serial murders in an Oklahoma community during the 1920s. The plot begins with Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio, in an atypical role), a disillusioned World War I veteran who returns to Oklahoma to work for his influential uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro), and soon becomes the architect of a sinister plot to strip the Osage of their wealth through his marriage to Mollie (the brilliant Lily Gladstone from "First Cow"), a woman from the tribe. True to Scorsese's tradition, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a brilliant story about the meteoric rise, precipitous fall, and rocky penance of men seduced by greed (in the vein of "Goodfellas" or "The Wolf of Wall Street"). However, the director, in full mastery of his craft, confronts the audience not only with the depravity of the human soul but also with our own relationship with stories of others' suffering.
Faced with the unenviable challenge of trying to produce a work of wit and heart within the confines of a corporate intellectual property as large as Mattel's Barbie doll, director and co-writer Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) generally comes out on top. Drawing on inspirations as diverse as The Wizard of Oz and The Truman Show, the iconic doll's cinematic debut is a fun comedy that follows a Barbie (Margot Robbie) who must travel to the real world to discover what is making her imperfect in utopian Barbieland. However, she soon discovers that the invention of the Barbie dolls has not been the feminist panacea they themselves imagined, and that the real world is quite the opposite of what they live in their utopian world. Funny, clever and with incisive comments about patriarchy, it is an entertaining popcorn proposal that almost (ALMOST!) makes us forget that it is a huge commercial for Mattel.