The Zone of Interest Review+ 2024 Films To Avoid
The Zone of Interest Review+ 2024 Films To Avoid
Another Dumpuary in the books
Last year I wrote about how many deem January/February as “dumpuary” in Hollywood. The name primarily stems from the idea that studios try to dump films that test poorly during this window. When competition is at its thinnest, the worst movies from each studio have a better chance of turning a profit than they do in the loaded summer or crowded fall.
If you are interested in reading up more on why studios chose this time of year to dump their bad films, check out my piece on dumpuary 2023 where I dive into some of the specifics.
Later in today’s newsletter I will touch on dumpuary 2024 and give you a list of films that are probably not worth your time. Before we get to that, I wanted to address another trend that has been prominently presenting itself over the past four months - Oscar movies waiting to have their wide releases in January/February.
It happens every year, but 2023/2024 has been notoriously bad. American Fiction, All of Us Strangers, and The Zone of Interest were all three in contention to be nominated for Best Picture. Yet, the only way you could see them by the end of 2023 was if you went to a fall film festival or lived in NYC/LA.
At the end of December, I had yet to see any of those three films. To vent, I angrily tweeted the following:
When I tweeted that, I expected maybe five other people to relate and show frustration. Mainly people who were deep down the film Twitter rabbit hole. To my surprise, thousands of people interacted & I got hundreds of messages with people expressing their frustration over this recent trend.
This has struck a nerve with many.
Some were also quick to fire back with, “You just don’t understand the business model”.
I very much understand why studios do this, I just don’t think it makes as much sense as it once did.
Almost every movie that is attempting to position itself for an Oscar run wants to release at some point from October through December. Hollywood has long believed that the best way to win an Oscar is to have a movie release in the 11th hour. Create momentum right before voting begins. Let recency bias do its thing.
Since this window has turned into the most coveted release dates, it has created a crowding effect on the release calendar.
Almost every week during that period you have 3 or 4 big Oscar hopeful movies releasing. This equals an abundance of quality films, but not near as much demand from audiences to see them. It would be overload to try and see them all during that window (I can speak from experience).
As a way to have their cake and eat it too, some awards movies are doing limited theatrical runs throughout the fall in NYC/LA to meet Oscar eligibility requirements. They will avoid the competition of the fall, still qualify for the Oscars, but then wait for January/February when the competition is weaker to release the films to a wider audience. This is known as a “slow rollout” in the industry.
Now, I 100% understand how that could help smaller movies financially. They likely will bring in more money with less competition in January/February. But is this really a great solution long term for the Oscars or for movies in general?
The Oscars are less important and prevalent today than they ever have been. Audiences are engaging with awards movies less than they ever have been. Shouldn’t we be doing everything possible to reverse those trends?
When the Oscar nominations were announced on January 23rd, multiple potential nominees for Best Picture were either just starting to roll out across the country or were yet to. How is that beneficial for the Oscars?
The Oscars may think that this setup will cause people to see the nominations and go, “oh I am yet to see this film, this film, and that film”. Let me plan out when I am going to seek those out and see them. Maybe 10-15 years ago that worked as a way to get people to see awards movies, but not now. Not in our information overload, everything now society.
In 2024 this simply makes people go, “I haven’t even heard of half of these”.
And they decide that they aren’t going to watch the Oscars a month and a half before the show even airs.
The whole thing creates an elitist mentality around films. If you live in NYC/LA or go to a fall film festival you can see these great works months before the general public. Those special viewers can talk up those films and encourage others to see them. By the time the rest of the country gets to see the films, the conversation around the films has ended. They are “old news” at that point.
This whole thing is the complete opposite of what film is about or should be embracing. Film is a social and collective experience. How are people supposed to be social about something when everyone can’t see it remotely close to the same time?
I know that I am the exception and not the rule, but I was desperately waiting to see those three films & was even willing to drive a few hours if need be. Yet, even for someone who is the target audience, seeing some of the movies is still near impossible.
Frustrating is an understatement.
Something else worth noting - this January/February strategy doesn’t have recent success in actually winning Oscars. In fact, recent trends show us the exact opposite.
The 2021 Best Picture winner, CODA, was released to the whole world on a streaming service in August.
The 2022 Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere All At Once went wide in April and played in theaters the whole year before winning the award the following March.
The likely 2023 Best Picture winner, Oppenheimer, was released in July.
Maybe, just maybe, studio execs should realize that letting your movie be accessible/widely seen and talked about for months is a positive thing for the industry, your film, and its Oscar chances.
I get that there are a lot of logistics to figure out and financials, but if the 2020s have shown us anything, it is that movies don’t have to be released at the end of the year to win awards.
Starting in 2024 the Oscars are rolling out a new requirement for a film to be eligible for best picture - a 7 day theatrical run in 10 of the top 50 markets in the US (no longer than 45 days after release). It is nice to see they are trying to address this problem, but this won’t really move the needle in a meaningful way.
If it were up to me, every Best Picture contender would have to have at least a three day theatrical run in the top 100 US markets before the end of the calendar year. That could literally mean a single showing in one theater for three days in certain cities, but it would at least give people a chance to see the films that want to. This could help create community amongst those who are interested in this kind of thing.
In our modern culture, people go to the movies for one thing - events. Any film that becomes an event is something that people feel the need to see in theaters.
Why not turn awards movies into events?
Imagine an Oscars club or Oscars pass that participating theaters could sell. For 10 or 15 weeks you go to a screening of a movie that is in contention for Best Picture. If you make it to every weeks screening, you get to vote for a new special Oscar, “Best Theatrical Movie” or something along those lines. This would allow fans to participate and be vested in the actual show. And maybe, just maybe actual spur some interest from those who normally aren’t into these kinds of films.
Or maybe just release your movie in the other 40 weeks on the release calendar.
If we don’t make drastic changes in the coming years, the Oscars are going to continue to lose cultural relevance and before we know it studios won’t be making these types of movies anymore. It is a slippery slope.
*Rant over*
So I started writing everything above as an intro to say that I finally was able to see the last best picture nominee for this years Oscars, The Zone of Interest. As you can see, that intro spurred a life of its own!
So today we have my review of The Zone of Interest and a roundup of Dumpuary 2024 (aka all the films to avoid so far this year).
Anyways, enough talk! Lets get to the movies.
The Zone of Interest Review
Premise - “The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife, Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.”
My thoughts - As a society, over and over again we haves tried to contextualize the Holocaust. We have built museums. We have built monuments. Heck, we have even put items in display cases. But no matter what we do, we can never truly recreate the horror.
The remarkable thing about The Zone of Interest is that Glazer recognizes this and doesn’t even try. Instead, he gives us something even more haunting - he puts us within earshot of all of the horrors & reminds us that this sort of thing happens because people benefit from it There is plenty to wrestle with on screen, but we are really forced to ponder everything we don’t see on screen.
So many movies today are made with the intent of solely entertaining, so it’s refreshing to see something that is more interested in what you think & feel about everything. If you care about seeing this film, do yourself a favor and see it while it is in theaters. The sound design and immersion of the theater are so utterly necessary to fully give yourself over to this masterpiece of art.
Rating - 4.5/5
Where to watch - Currently in theaters & now also available on VOD services (Amazon, Apple, Vude, Youtube, etc.) for purchase. If you enjoy seeing things in the theater, I can’t recommend that enough for this one.
Dumpuary Roundup
For most of the year, I try to keep things pretty positive around here, but in January/February (aka “Dumpuary” in Hollywood) that is near impossible.
There actually have been some films in 2024 released during this stretch that have been quite enjoyable (The Beekeeper, Mean Girls the musical, Lisa Frankenstein), but there has also been the typical bottom of the barrel stuff that we have come to expect from this time of year. Today, we are going to focus on that.
I sat through all of the following films so that you don’t have to. Think twice before spending your time on these new movies:
Madame Web (Directed by S.J. Clarkson)
Premise - “Cassandra Webb is a New York City paramedic who starts to show signs of clairvoyance. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she must protect three young women from a mysterious adversary who wants them dead.”
My thoughts - You have probably seen the memes from Madame Web all over the internet over the course of the past week. It’s so bad that there honestly isn’t a point in saying anything else negative about it because it’s so glaring obvious how creatively bankrupt the whole thing is. People aren’t just being mean, it is that bad.
The worst part about it though is that it isn’t even fun bad. It’s just sad bad.
Rating - .5/5
Bob Marley: One Love (Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green)
Premise - “Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley overcomes adversity to become the most famous reggae musician in the world.”
My thoughts - Would have really liked to see the version of this where they don’t have the rights to Marley’s music or the approval of his estate. You can just feel it throughout the movie - the desire to not have upset anyone & the over reliance on the music. It leads to a movie that doesn’t really have much to say about Marley, the importance of his music, or his impact on the world. So many scenes feel like they are in the movie simply to play a song of his that ties in immediately after.
Going into this I knew VERY little about Bob Marley and I knew exactly the same amount leaving. Movies don’t necessarily have to always accomplish education to be successful, but a little of it could have gone a long way here.
Lashana Lynch & Kingsley Ben-Adir actually give quite good performances, but the overall structure of the film can’t shake the typical music biopic tropes.
Rating - 2/5
Argylle (Directed by Matthew Vaughn)
Premise - “Reclusive author Elly Conway writes best-selling espionage novels about a secret agent named Argylle who's on a mission to unravel a global spy syndicate. However, when the plots of her books start to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, the line between fiction and reality begin to blur.”
My thoughts - Genuinely one of the most convoluted and confusing movies I have ever seen. Just classic Dumpurary stuff. I’ll admit that parts are fun, but not enough to excuse the jumbled & chaotic mess that the film itself is.
Really liked what Rockwell was doing, but couldn’t shake the feeling that Bryce Dallas Howard was miscast in this role. I promise that it isn’t near as much fun as the trailer makes it out to be.
Rating - 1.5/5
Underdoggs (Directed by Charles Stone III)
Premise - “Jaycen Jennings, a former NFL superstar, agrees to coach a youth football team to avoid serving time in prison.”
My thoughts - Who was this made for?
It feels like a cheesy Disney channel original movie from 2008, but it’s also a hard R comedy with more profanity than you know what to do with. Too predictable and cheesy for adults yet too wild for families/kids. The cheeziness whole thing would be forgivable if it was intended to be a family comedy, but it obviously isn’t. A real head scratcher all the way around.
I just know that someone pitched this movie as, “The Mighty Ducks”, but a hard R comedy with Snoop Dogg. On paper that may sound great, but the execution here is FAR from ideal.
Rating - 1.5/2
I.S.S. (Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite)
Premise - “Tensions flare in the near future aboard the International Space Station when a worldwide conflict breaks out on Earth. Soon, the U.S. and Russian astronauts each receive orders from the ground: take control of the station by any means necessary.”
My thoughts - When I read the logline for this film, I was so in. About 20 minutes into the movie I couldn’t have been more out. Never quite the level of tension you need for something like this to work. Just a total misfire all the way around. Whether it is the script, the filmmaking, the surface level characters, or certain performances - the whole thing feels like a direct to VOD movie. Very surprised this got a theatrical release. Then again, it is January, so I shouldn’t be so surprised.
My biggest takeaway from the film is that Ariana DeBose needs a new agent. After winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Anita in Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of West Side Story, her next two live action film roles where in this & in Argylle (featured above). I still think she is a great actress, but she has to get better about choosing her projects.
Rating - 1/5
That is all for now! Next week I will be back with a full review of one of my most anticipated films of 2024, Dune 2. We made it through Dumpuary and spring is finally upon us!
Until then, enjoy some great films!
Aaron Nolan