2024 Year in Review: At the Movies

Last year, I introduced an adventures-in-moviegoing-style column to the Year in Review series. This year, I christen it At the Movies, in tribute to my favorite writer and critic, Roger Ebert. In April 2025, it will be 12 years since his death, but he is never far from my mind or my heart, and whether consciously or not, I carry him with me every time I walk into the theater.

In the spring, I read Matt Singer’s essential Opposable Thumbs, which recounts the history of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert as professional rivals entered into a mutually beneficial pact that evolved into a unique brotherhood. It also tells the tale of Siskel and Ebert™, the cultural force that would define the way generations watched, discussed, and thought about movies. It gets my highest Last Cinema Book Club recommendation. (Remember when I tried to make that a thing? Perhaps I’ll bring it back.)

I wrote the following in this piece last time around: “We’ll start in my neighborhood, a scant 10-minute walk from my front door, at the Highland Park Theater, itself the subject of closure rumors. As of now, it survives.” From the time I published those words, it would survive just another 51 days. The 100-year-old theater closed Feb. 29, 2024. 

Community chatter about potentially reopening it started pretty much immediately but died out quickly after. It sits vacant, the marquee marked by graffiti. Most days, you still can see inside. Despite the end-of-February closure, for a while, someone continued to update the posters in the lobby. The last such update came with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which released May 10. That poster still hangs, and there is something haunting about that ghost of a theater forever advertising a film it never got to show and probably never will.

There are many such haunted houses in the city, the most prominent of which is probably the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. One of the COVID pandemic’s many economic casualties, the dome just sits there at that vacant intersection, waiting for some hero of the cinema to come save it. It supposedly was set for a 2025 reopening, but the last anyone heard about that was in 2023. I’ll give it a couple more years, then start the Last Cinerama Dome Standing Fund and buy it myself, if necessary. Quentin Tarantino can’t save them all.

And, that’s as fine a transition as any to a May 22 screening of Pulp Fiction at Tarantino’s own New Beverly Cinema. The theater hosted a week of showings to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the film’s triumphant debut at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. Though I had seen the film bordering on 50 times, I had never seen it on the big screen. It was like seeing it with fresh eyes. Everything that is radical and inventive and shocking about that film – the kinds of rough edges that get sanded away by cultural ubiquity – felt new and exciting again.

A couple weeks before, I caught Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece High and Low at the New Beverly, as well. It’s hardly breaking new ground to call it one of the great director’s best. I look forward to Spike Lee and Denzel Washington reinterpreting and remixing the premise for our modern age with a film that is slated to come out in 2025.

Staying on that side of town, the programming at the Academy Museum continues to impress, as one might expect. A couple days before Pulp Fiction at the New Bev, I visited the Academy for a screening of the Telugu megahit RRR. This was my fourth viewing but first in a theater. It is a spectacle that demands to be seen on the biggest screen possible with the loudest speakers, both of which describe the Academy Museum to a ‘T.’ The crowd was raucous and lively, cheering and hooting and hollering. Super fans compared résumés – ‘I’ve seen it 15 times in theaters’; ‘I’ve seen it 20!’ I had a wonderful time, but once is enough, thanks.

On the other hand, a couple days after my birthday in July, the Academy screened a film I could never tire of watching. The Addams Family is on a short list of films that potentially could lay claim to the title of movie I have seen the most times in my life. My best guess puts it right at the top, just ahead of Addams Family Values. It was shown as part of the Branch Selects program, in which a different branch of the Academy selects a movie each week that represents the best of its craft. This particular screening was hosted by the Makeup and Hairstylists branch and was preceded by an introduction by Kevin Haney, one of the film’s makeup artists.

Seeing it on the big screen was a reminder of what a miracle that film is. It could have been a cash grab, a relatively untapped piece of IP, generated to prey on Boomer nostalgia. In that respect, it worked and was a massive hit. But, it is also a beautifully crafted piece of art when it didn’t need to be. The depth and texture of the set design. The inventiveness of the camera moves. Of course, that wonderful makeup. Those performances. A C+ movie would have been a hit. These artists went for the A+ and the extra credit. Their reward: a legacy as a multigenerational cultural touchstone.

From one gothic treat to another, my annual sojourn to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery for its Halloween programming consisted of a night under the stars watching modern horror anthology classic Trick ‘r Treat. Director Michael Dougherty made a surprise appearance before the screening to talk a little about the difficulty in getting the film made. He seemed genuinely moved to be speaking to a thousand-plus fans who made the trip out to demonstrate their love for his creation.

The programming of the American Cinematheque is a highlight of any year of moviegoing. I didn’t make it out to the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica as much as might have liked, though advanced screenings of Nickel Boys and Nightbitch were particular highlights. Likewise, I still have not attended a film at the newly reopened Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, but I expect to rectify that in 2025. On the other hand, I found myself at the Los Feliz 3 often for many of the Cinematheque’s wonderful offerings.

In July, I caught an early showing of Sean Wang’s excellent coming-of-age film Dìdi. Wang and cast members Izaac Wang and Joan Chen hung out for a truly insightful Q&A afterward. In October, I attended a special double bill of Guy Maddin’s Bring Me the Head of Tim Horton and My Winnipeg, part of a tribute to the filmmaker in honor of his latest release, Rumours. Maddin spoke afterward and was exactly as rye, prickly, and brilliant as I had always hoped. 

Finally, in December, the Cinematheque presented a series of Steve McQueen films around the release of Blitz. I attended a late-night showing of Lovers Rock, widely considered the crowning achievement of the filmmaker’s monumental Small Axe. You’ll hear no argument from me, and it was an absolute privilege to see this Amazon-produced pandemic release on the big screen, where it belongs.

There were other special experiences this year such as catching writer-director-star Lake Bell and cast at the Eagle Theatre for a 10th anniversary screening of her excellent debut, In a World; a very early screening of the magnificent Sing Sing at the Alamo Drafthouse with a live-streamed cast Q&A afterward; and the Alamo’s Bob Dylan Costume Party attached to an advanced showing of A Complete Unknown.

But, I’d like to close with some thoughts on three movies that reminded me of what I love so much about the cinema. I saw a lot of blockbusters this year and probably caught more movies in IMAX than in any previous year that I can recall. Dune Part II, Twisters, Alien: Romulus, etc. Spectacle is alive and well on the big screen. I support that fully. I am a great enjoyer of popcorn and soda and explosions and stunning vistas and grand images projected to unfathomable heights.

This year, however, what I appreciated most were the movies with the opposite intent. If cinema is the only church I attend – and it is – then occasionally, I’d like that church to be a place of reflection and meditation, of peace, calm, and tranquility. So much of life is noise and distraction that to find two hours, more or less, to be unburdened, unbothered, and untethered feels like a necessary balm for the spiritual wounds we endure.

Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, Ryuske Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light could rightly be classified as slow cinema, but I prefer to think of them as the cinema of mindfulness. There is no room for split attention. You are either fully in or fully out. These films insist that you be present in the moment, that you engage your mind, body, and spirit, and that you give yourself over to these filmmakers and their worlds. It’s a rare and humbling thing when it happens, and it speaks to everything I want from the cinema. Here’s to another great year at the movies.

31 Days of Horror: Night of the Living Dead

They're coming to get you, Barbara, and they are coming to get all of us in Night of the Living Dead.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 30: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Barbara and Johnny drive to the countryside to visit their father’s grave. It is a pleasant day, and the cemetery is mostly empty, except for one older man in the distance. Barbara’s discomfort with their surroundings is apparent, and like any good older brother might, Johnny begins to tease her.

“Barbara. They’re coming to get you, Barbara,” he says. About this much he is correct, and for the next 90 or so minutes of screen time, they come to get Barbara and anyone else unlucky enough to be in their path. They are the dead, brought back to a grim simulacrum of life by unknown causes, and their mass re-animation means no one is safe.

Some might say The Exorcist or Dracula or maybe The Shining, and there are legitimate cases to be made for all of them and many more, but for me, there is no other choice. Night of the Living Dead is the greatest horror film ever made. Until Pulp Fiction came along in 1994 and opened the floodgates on a thousand hyper-literate, highly stylized crime films, it would be hard to name another movie that influenced the future of its genre and film in general more than George A. Romero’s fright night masterpiece.

The zombie as known by the popular culture was invented in that Pittsburgh cemetery, and movies have not been the same since. Like how your parents said you can be anything when you grow up, zombies can be anything now – Nazis, strippers, heartbroken teenagers, classic literary characters – but with rare exceptions, they are all Romero zombies.

In whatever form they come, they are implacable, uncaring, and devoid of the thing that once made them human. You can stand and fight or you can run and hide, but most likely, you will be frozen with fear, and in the next heartbeat, you are one of them. You are a convert to their cause, and what anyone you love might recognize as you is gone, replaced by the coldness of your stare, the pallor of your skin, and the insatiable nature of your appetite.

But, influence is one thing. Films become influential because they are great, sterling examples of the best of their form. Night of the Living Dead is an unimpeachably brilliant thriller from start to finish with any number of social messages buried like gold pieces among the ghouls. It rewards repeat viewings by showcasing the kind of subtlety and nuance often missing from even the most austere dramas, let alone scary drive-in flicks.

Virtually none of the political commentary or cultural critiquing was intended by the filmmakers, but simply by doing what came naturally, a subversive work of art was born. As a general rule, only the best films are deemed dangerous enough to be banned – A Clockwork Orange, The Last Temptation of Christ, etc. – and in a country torn apart by Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, and endless social upheaval, you better believe Night of the Living Dead was considered dangerous.

Our hero is Ben, a smart, resourceful black man played by Duane Jones, who had never acted before and would act only rarely after. Just casting a black man as a hero would have been considered shocking at the time, but Romero and his team just saw the right man for the job. Thank god they did because Jones’ performance is a vital breath of fresh air in a film culture that to this day is desperately lacking in strong black heroes.

He battles hordes of mindless drones, a ready-made metaphor for almost anything. Just take your pick – consumerism, television, political party loyalty, mobs of any kind, and basically all situations in which a large group of people comes together in thoughtless destruction. Joining Ben in the fight, to the limited extent they are able to help him, are Barbara, a young couple, and a family of three.

Of these side characters, the family and particularly the father is the most intriguing. Played by Karl Hardman, who performed multiple behind-the-scenes tasks on this film, Harry is a panicking, petty man interested in his own survival, the survival of his family, and everything else, in that order. In storytelling terms, he is a perfect foil for the calmly logical and eminently capable Ben, but if we dig deeper, we find a pointed jab at the patriarchal structure of American families and the myth of the “You can count on me” dad.

Some of this is there, and some of it is not, but all of it depends on your context for viewing. Because the zombies can be anything, anywhere, and anyone, the audience can plug itself into the terror, which means that no one will have the same experience as anyone else watching Night of the Living Dead. Whatever your deepest fears are, they are manifest in the form of zombies. You can run until you drop and hide until you cannot breathe, but they are coming to get you, me, Barbara, and everyone else. That is the gift of this movie, and the power of horror.

Tomorrow: (yells out the window) “Boy, what day is it?” “Why, today, it’s Halloween day.” And thus had Scrooge found his inner goodness. We wrap up the 31 Days of Horror with a swan song you will perhaps agree is appropriate.