Wiz's Top Ten First Watches of 2024

Wiz's Top Ten First Watches of 2024

This is it: The Top Ten First Watches of 2024! Thanks all for listening to the podcast! Moving forward, reviews will be exclusively on YouTube but I will be working on what I will do on the feed, possibly a weekly podcast rounding up what I reviewed and other things I'd like to talk about. Thank you again for listening and I hope you have a great 2025!

Holiday Inn, dir. Mark Sandrich

Wiz RECOMMENDS Holiday Inn...But It's Not A Christmas Movie I came into Holiday Inn under the pretense of "I watched White Christmas last year and liked it...and this is a remake of Holiday Inn...so I'll watch Holiday Inn to compare the two!" Well...there's a few problems with this mode of thinking. FIrst: White Christmas is a loose remake of Holiday Inn...and loose is the key word here. The only things that both films have in common are Bing Crosby and it's set in a country inn. That's it. In fact, even though it's considered a holiday classic...Holiday Inn is not a Christmas movie. Hell, scenes during Christmas is only in the beginning and end of the film. This essentially means that comparing the two films to each other is kind of pointless. So, yeah, making this the final review of the year before Christmas feels like a mistake. Whoops. Anyway, Holiday Inn is a cute film that has some great aspects to it. Firstly, the dancing with Fred Astaire is really good. Yeah...I know, Fred Astaire, good dancer...who knew right? But seeing him and Marjorie Reynolds go at it in some of the dancing scenes (especially the drunken party scene) are really fun and astounding to watch. Another good aspect of the film is Bing Crosby's singing. Yes...I know, Bing Crosby is a good singer...stop the presses. Though not all of the singing numbers are good (the Lincoln's Birthday one is not great...even when considering it as a "sign of the times"), some of them are enjoyable, especially "White Christmas" and the beginning number. So the primary things are pretty damn solid for a musical to work: great dancing, good music. But the film isn't a cavalcade of singing and dance numbers, there's actually a story there. And honestly, the story is okay at best. The competitiveness of the two main male leads is kind of weird considering one really hates the other (for good reason), so when he returns to go after his love interest for the film, it still seems kind of odd he will let him be there. But on top of that, neither character is all that likable. Both are manipulative and conniving which makes it pretty hard to sympathize with Crosby's character when he's doing all this stuff to jeopardize Reynolds' character's career. But taking those aspects away from the romance, the chemistry between Reynolds and Crosby is kind of average at best. This has more to do with Crosby than Reynolds but it's clear the actors were hired for their dancing and musical talents then their acting abilities. This doesn't lead to an unenjoyable film; it just leads to an average one when the music and dancing isn't on screen. And I guess that is what makes this film disappointingly enjoyable when compared to the great time I had last year with White Christmas: it's a fun movie that I wouldn't object to watching again...but it's an enjoyable time waster at best.

Three Days of the Condor, dir. Sydney Pollack

Zero and Wiz RECOMMEND Three Days of the Condor Sometimes you watch a movie and you just enjoy it even though there are glaring issues with the finished product. This was my exact feeling finishing Three Days of the Condor, Sydney Pollack's paranoia thriller about a CIA reader (Robert Redford) who comes back from lunch finding his entire team assassinated. The movie is actually entertaining: it's a twisty thriller that makes you wonder whether the main character will make it out alive. The plot goes along at a decent clip hitting beats of the plot and providing new information as the film moves forward. The mystery aspects, along with the governmental spook plotline, makes it enjoyable...though I can't really say I was excited or enthralled by what I was watching. As for performances, Max von Sydow's quiet and clever performance as a freelance assassin. He plays him as elusive, somewhat creepy and seasoned and Sydow is easily the most interesting of the characters in the film. But there was one element of the film that made me almost not recommend it and that's everything to do with the character played by Faye Dunaway. Essentially, Dunaway plays a character that is kidnapped by the main character, tied up and gagged at some point...then becomes romantically interested in him soon after. It's actually rather appalling to watch one minute where she is scared and was tied up in the bathroom with him barking orders....only to then minutes later be in a sex scene that is portrayed as loving and romantic with a soft camera look. And then...for some god awful reason....she decides to help him! Maybe this is me injecting "modern values" in a film but it seems incredibly strange that someone who was terrified for her life one day...is falling for her captor the next day. And before you ask, the film isn't that deep to be portraying her as someone going through Stockholm Syndrome. Here's the thing though: if you are able to just turn your brain off and just enjoy the spy plotline, Three Days of the Condor is a decently entertaining film. It's just odd to watch a film that deals with its espionage elements somewhat intelligently only to completely blunder with a key character.

Tangerine, dir. Sean Baker

Wiz RECOMMENDS Tangerine I've heard about Tangerine for nearly a decade now. But there's a few things that get mentioned about the film whenever I hear about it: it's about transsexual sex workers and it was shot on three iPhone 5s'. But unless you pay real close attention (and I mean REAL CLOSE ATTENTION) you won't be able to tell. Tangerine takes the seedy, grimy L.A. setting and gives it a vivid, striking color grading. There are scenes with neon, sunlight and even fluorescent lighting that have a vibrancy that contrasts with the ugliness of the area it's shot in. In fact, it feels like the grimier the areas, the more colorful the setting feels. Pay special attention to scenes with back alleys and hotel rooms to see some of the more beautifully shot scenes in the muckiness. As for the story, Sean Baker strikes a relatively good balance in keeping things humorous while also showing the humanity and compassion of the main character Sin-Dee. The simple plot, Sin-Dee wants to confront her pimp boyfriend Chester when she finds out he's cheating on him with a woman, shows the character in both her comedically outrageous ways while also showing her deeper, sensitive side later on. This is helped further by Kitana Kiki Rogriduez' performance as Sin-Dee. For her first (and as of right now only) performance, she strikes a perfect tone on the character that makes you laugh at her while also feeling for her, especially at the end of the film. But I have one sizable gripe for the film: it should have cut some of the characters or time spent on those characters. Alexandria, the person that Sin-Dee finds out what Chester did, could have easily been a character that you only see when it involves Sin-Dee on screen because she really didn't add much more. But the one character that could have easily been cut was Razmik, a cab driver who's attracted to tranny prostitutes, played by Karren Karagulian. Honestly, whether it's his family drama or him trying to pick up a prostitute for a quickie, it really just felt like a complete distraction from what the main plot is. On top of that, with such a sensitive portrayal of Alexandria and Sin-Dee, it felt odd to treat this character who is attracted to these characters as a comedic relief. It leaves this weird juxtaposition of trying to humanize Sin-Dee and Alexandria while making comedy of the fact that Razmik is attracted to them. For this oddity alone, this character could have been severely reduced or cut entirely. It honestly leaves me conflicted with what exactly the filmmaker wants you to feel at the end of the film. That leaves me with giving it a smaller recommendation than I would have liked to give. The sensitive and funny portrayal of the lives of these prostitutes are well done and makes you empathize with their problems and the film is beautifully shot in its minimalist, shaky style. It's just sad that a film feels like it could be trimmed more to hone in its story even in its very slight 90 minute runtime.

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, dir. Jalmari Helander

Wiz DOES NOT RECOMMEND Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (But You Should Probably See It Anyway) I may struggle to convey how odd Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is. This Finnish genre blender incorporates a whole load of genre and film sensibilities: * It's a dark, brooding thriller that slowly boils up the tension * It's a grim-dark like fantasy * It's a children's Christmas movie * It's an at times violent horror movie * It's a corny action romp * And it satirizes all of this while also taking itself and the story seriously. And here's the thing. As you can tell, I am not recommending this film. However, I can't say it's a bad film. On the contrary, the things that this movie is incorporating in it's story is pretty good. The horror and thriller aspects of the film are done well enough. The fantasy elements are mixed well with the setting. And even the Christmas elements are interesting. But the mix of all these elements just didn't gel well with me. Even though the film is about 75 minutes long, Rare Exports feels like it drags along. The "reveal" of what's going on doesn't happen until 45 minutes in, where the story is more about a frayed relationship between a widower dad and his son. And when the reveal happens, it goes into this more Michael Bay/Roland Emmerich style of story that honestly had me rolling my eyes more than being invested. But the odd thing is that the concept of the film is actually interesting: a buried evil Santa that captures children sounds like a great time. But for me, I honestly sat there puzzled with what I was watching. The thing is though, Rare Exports isn't a bad movie: it's just a movie that didn't hit me very well. Rare Exports feels like a love/hate: some are going to be like and wonder what in the hell did they just watch. Others will adore it, champion it and put it on it's rotation of Christmas movies to watch every year. It feels like I'm copping out a little, but as much as I don't recommend the film simply because I didn't enjoy it, I can fully see that there will be some that will love it. I guess what I'm saying is if this interests you, give it a shot, even if I didn't like it.