McCall Pauley7. Springsteen: Delivering Me From Nowhere
Springsteen: “Deliver Me from Nowhere” might have been this year’s answer to “A Complete Unknown,” a drama about the esteemed American singer-songwriter that focused on key points in his career. The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White strived to sing and perform like Bruce Springsteen, and writer-director Scott Cooper had already made Crazy Heart (2009), an Oscar-nominated film about the fictional American singer-songwriter. Nevertheless, audiences didn’t like watching the rock star run around New Jersey, have a little romance, and record an album of quiet acoustic tracks in his bedroom. They wanted the soaring energy and urgent storytelling that animates many of Springsteen’s stadium anthems. Deliver Me from Nowhere went nowhere. While it can be refreshing for biopics to focus on just a small part of a protagonist’s life, sometimes the entire rags-to-riches/burnout/redemption process is what’s needed.
pixar8. Elio
Pixar’s Inside Head 2 was the world’s biggest film of 2024, so expectations were high for the studio’s next animated feature. Those hopes were dashed when Elio was released in June. It’s not that this movie was terrible, but it was fatally damaged. This sci-fi coming-of-age adventure was conceived by Coco co-director Adrian Molina as a personal story inspired by his lonely childhood on a military base. However, in 2024, Molina left the project along with other key players and was replaced by two different directors. As a result, comics no longer have a legitimate reason to exist. Like two of Disney’s other recent flops, Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023), it was hard to summarize the plot or explain what was going wrong. It seems like this movie might have been better if Molina had just shut up and continued working. As it turns out, the Disney alien who made a fortune this year was Stitch from Lilo & Stitch, not the bug-eyed extraterrestrial from Elio.
universal studios9. M3GAN 2.0
Why did M3GAN 2.0 malfunction? When M3GAN was introduced three years ago, it was a meme-inducing hit. With long hair and a cute dress, this killer robot is clearly designed to be a Halloween costume, and a clip of the evil Model 3 Generative Android’s dance routine has gone viral. All director Gerald Johnston could have done was give us more of the same and watch the money roll in. The failure was that he decided not to offer more of the same work. Both films could be described as tongue-in-cheek sci-fi satires, but M3GAN was a suburban slasher horror, while the sequel was a sprawling geopolitical action thriller. In itself, M3GAN 2.0 was a lot of fun, but sometimes you have to give people what they want. “We all thought M3GAN was like Superman. We thought she could do anything,” said movie producer Jason Blum. Speaking on The Town Podcast. “You can change the genre. You can put her in Summer. You can change the way she looks. You can change her from bad to good. And we’ve been overthinking for a long time how powerfully people relate to her.”
A2410. Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world, both literally and figuratively, for over a decade now, but there comes a time when every commercial titan wants to prove that he can also be a serious theatrical actor. And The Rock was aiming for an Oscar, or at least an Oscar nomination, for appearing in Smashing Machine. All signs were promising, as Johnson had a famous co-star (Emily Blunt), a respected director (Benny Safdie, who made Good Time and Uncut Gems with his brother Josh), and a true story of a mixed martial artist battling addiction. The problem was that Johnson hadn’t really exercised his acting muscles, which he had never exercised before. He was a charismatic wrestler who played a charismatic wrestler. The only major difference from his previous work was that Smashing Machines was depressing. And no one goes to see a movie starring The Rock because they want to feel depressed. Still, I can’t help but sympathize with the director. His brother produced another sports biopic, “Marty Supreme,” starring Timothée Chalamet, which received praise that “Smashing Machines” did not receive.
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Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
