Movies and TV Shows for Which to Be Thankful in 2024

Catching up on November's best offerings, including 'Conclave,' 'The Penguin,' 'A Real Pain,' and more.

Hi! So. As you may have noticed, I haven’t written anything here the entire month of November. I apologize for this! It’s the result of two things: i) being busy with other writing projects, and ii) being really, really, really depressed about the impending conclusion of American democracy. Like, I’m 95% convinced that movies will be the absolute least of our concerns this time next year. So why bother to keep caring?

Thing is, the timing of my other work and chasm-deep concerns about the future of humanity could not have come at a worse time, because 2024 has been an unusually good year for movies and television, and there has been some really amazing stuff this month that I would encourage people to check out.

And so, in the words of Nicholas J. Fury, “Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.” I will try not to let this space remain barren for quite so long in the future. But in the meantime, here’s a quick ketchup of stuff I loved and missed writing about (presented in alphabetical order, ‘cause I’m not playing favorites).

Quick aside: most of these have something to do with the current political situation, usually in a general sense, but in one case, in a very direct sense. This doesn’t seem weird to me at all: the threat of He Who Shall Not Be Named has lingered in the art like a stale fart for the better part of the past decade. Still, it seemed worth noting upfront.

With that outta the way…

Agatha All Along

This may be, pound for pound, the best MCU television show to date (and I say that as someone who has loved several of these programs, including Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Hawkeye). It continues the story of Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn), the antagonistic witch from 2021’s WandaVision. Agatha takes a couple of episodes to get going, ‘cause showrunner Jac Schaeffer has to first get Agatha out of the predicament in which she was left at the end of WandaVision (which, BTW, was also a Schaeffer joint)… but once it starts to cook, man, it really starts to cook. It’s funny and suspenseful and unexpectedly emotional, especially as it draws closer and closer to its conclusion. Hahn is wonderful as per usual, but Patti LuPone, as another member of Harkness’ coven, ultimately steals the whole shebang. As a bonus, “The Ballad of the Witches' Road,” a song that recurs throughout the program, is catchy AF.

I implore those who haven’t kept up with the MCU not to keep away from Agatha if the show sounds otherwise-appealing. If you feel like doing homework, you can watch WandaVision (which is also pretty good, at least until the end), and if you really want a granular understanding of the show’s context, you can watch Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (which was directed by Sam Raimi, and is thus worth seeing regardless). But if not, you’ll be able to figure out what’s going on with Agatha pretty quickly even without watching that other stuff. It’s not rocket science, y’know?

You can also just one of the many recap videos on YouTube, which will basically tell you all the background info you need to know.

The Apprentice

If you wanna know exactly how we ended up in this mess we currently find ourselves in, director Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice is an excellent primer. The movie chronicles the relationship between a young Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) and his mentor, Roy Cohn (a characteristically great Jeremy Strong from Succession). Cohn, we all know, was one of history’s most devious villains, and the movie posits that he was the Obi-Wan Kenobi to Trump’s Luke Skywalker. Based on a sharp screenplay by journalist Gabriel Sherman, Trump’s arc here is akin to that of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood: he starts out bad and then gets worse (not for nothing does The Apprentice use Handel’s “Sarabande” to invoke Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon). Despite top-notch performances in I, Tonya and Pam & Tommy, Stan remains under-appreciated as an actor (probably because his claim to fame is playing Bucky Barnes, a.k.a. the Winter Soldier, in the MCU). The Apprentice, however, leaves no doubt that the guy is an A-list talent: it would have been so easy for him to play Trump as a Saturday Night Live-esque parody, but Stan captures the essence of Trump without ever allowing his portrayal to get too oversized or outlandish. This seems all the more remarkable given that Stan was born in Romania and didn’t move to the U.S. until he was 11; his Queens accent is flawless.

A Real Pain

The writing/directing debut of Jesse Eisenberg stars Eisenberg and Jeremy Strong’s Succession co-star Kieran Culkin as a pair of cousins. They were once close, but have drifted apart as they’ve gotten older; Eisenberg’s character is a husband and father with a reliable but boring job, and Culkin’s character is screw-up who is capable of being charismatic and repellant in equal measures. The cousins come back together after the death of their grandmother, taking a trip to her native country, Poland, to see where she grew up, as well as the concentration camp which she narrowly survived. A Real Pain is funny and sad, dealing with issues of generational trauma and what does or does not constitute “real” suffering in a way that feels extremely real; it’s not preachy, it offers no easy answers, and it leaves you with a lot to chew on by the end. Eisenberg and Culkin are both terrific as well, natch.

Conclave

You’d probably expect a genre about cardinals gathering to elect a new pope to be stuffy and boring and not proper viewing for anyone under the age of 80, but you’d be wrong. Directed by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) from a novel by Robert Harris (Fatherland), Conclave plays more like a fast-paced political thriller than a Merchant Ivory movie. Ralph Fiennes plays Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence, who is in charge of administering a particularly contentious vote that will decide whether or not the Church takes a progressive step forward or a regressive step back; but he gradually becomes aware of behind-the-scenes skullduggery that could, and should, affect the outcome of the election (any of this feel familiar?). Co-starring Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini in a small but crucial role, Conclave is poised to be a major player this awards season.

Heretic

Heretic’s big hook is that it’s a horror movie starring Hugh Grant as the villain. Grant got famous playing the lead in hit romantic comedies like Four Weddings and Funeral and Notting Hill, but the past few years have seen him settle into playing scumbags in films like The Gentlemen, Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, but none of those characters are nearly so intimidating as the man he plays in Heretic. And Grant is absolutely terrific here, especially during a lengthy monologue in which he uses the board game Monopoly, Jar-Jar Binks from Star Wars, and Radiohead’s “Creep” to explain his distrust of organized religion (no, really!).

But there are far more reasons to see the movie than JUST Grant’s heel turn.

His character, Reed, locks two young Mormon missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) in his home to play a twisted game intended to test their faith. Without giving anything else away, I can tell you that the movie is very much about systems of control and how society willingly subjects itself to those systems of control… which, again, feels deeply relevant right now. Especially as it pertains to our treatment of women, with which Heretic is especially concerned.

The movie comes from Scott Beck & Bryan Woods, whose other credits include writing the original A Quiet Place and writing and directing 65. In other words: Heretic is their first genuinely good movie. Heretic still stumbles in its last ten or fifteen minutes, when it gets an unearned ending that feels like a studio note and undermines much of the film’s thematic weight. But until that time, it’s a really, really great little thriller that is worth your time.

The Penguin

It took me a few episodes for the realization to dawn on me: this iteration of the iconic Batman villain is Donald Trump. He’s a stupid narcissist who has serious issues with women, is constantly lying to convince people he’s on their side when he is patently not, and realizes his dastardly plans only because he’s willing to sink lower than anyone else in order to do so. Other characters even note, on more than one occasion, that his aesthetic choices are tacky and garish, like they’re based on a little kid’s idea of a classy rich person.

The Penguin is technically a spin-off of writer/director Matt Reeves’ The Batman, but you do not need to see that movie to understand this show. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc lays out everything you need to know in the first five minutes: Gotham City is recovering from a terrorist attack, which has left a power vacuum in the world of organized crime. The Penguin follows its titular protagonist, né Oz Cobb, as he endeavors to fill that void.

Everything about The Penguin is great: the plotting, the production design, the visuals, the music, the fact that it dares to end on just about the bleakest note possible… hell, I’m sure even the craft services on set were delicious.

But what truly makes The Penguin sing is its primary characters, all of whom contain multitudes. Like all successful serialized storytelling, The Penguin gets you deeply involved in the fate of its cast, even if that cast is mostly reprehensible criminals.

Cobb is played by Colin Farrell, who is unrecognizable under some of the best prosthetics you’ll ever see. Farrell has gradually become one of his generation’s finest actors, and his performance here is among his very best; I think it’s safe to say he is now the definitive Penguin (as much as I love Danny DeVito), the same way Heath Ledger is now the definitive Joker (as much as I love Jack Nicholson).

So it’s saying something that the entire show is stolen out from under him by Cristin Milioti, who is mind-blowingly next-level as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of a dead mob boss who has her own ideas about conquering the city. Sofia is one of the few characters in The Penguin who is sympathetic… which is not to say she doesn’t do some heinous things. But the show ostensibly posits that Oz was naturally born a monster, while Sofia was molded into one; furthermore, she does have a code of ethics, which Oz completely lacks. In any case, I really don’t have the words to express how good Milioti is here, other than to tell you that I was actively rooting for her to emerge victorious and show up as the villain in the upcoming The Batman Part II.

The other two cast members of The Penguin who I think deserve all the accolades they can get are Rhenzy Feliz, who plays Victor, Oz’s reluctant mentee, and American goddamn treasure Deirdre O'Connell, who plays Oz’s dementia-afflicted mother, Francis. They’re both just, m’wah!, perfect.

Warner Bros. will never take The Batman Part II away from Reeves, and I did like large swaths of The Batman. Still, The Penguin is the best live-action entry in this franchise since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight back in 2008, and Batman isn’t even in it. I shall heretofore forever fantasize about a reality in which LeFranc is allowed to run the whole darned world of Batman.