Sean Baker’s “Anora” made history at the 97th Academy Awards when it nearly swept its nominations. Baker took home four statuettes (tying only Walt Disney) while breakout star Mikey Madison pulled an upset over popular industry veterans. There are a myriad of reasons why this film’s success is so monumental, and all of them refuse to neatly fit into the box of a typical Best Picture winner. Everything from its story and content (an unrestrained, near two and a half hour long, tragicomedy) to its background (a run-and-gun indie hailing from a filmmaker whose work has mostly been celebrated in smaller circles prior to this) are far from the popular picks of the “Gladiator” variety or even the smaller-scale, yet still crowd-pleasing likes of “Birdman.” It points to a bright future ahead for the widespread recognition of independent cinema, while calling to mind the few yet unforgettable instances where out-of-the-ordinary films were bestowed with the coveted prize.

As October comes to a close, there’s no doubt that viewers will be dying to check out a variety of horror films in the spirit of Halloween. Fortunately, 2024 has yielded some of the scariest films in recent years, and while major success stories like “Longlegs” and “Alien: Romulus” deserve to be in conversation, there are quite a few titles that were poorly managed by their studio or had too small of a release to make that much of an impact. To give them the recognition they deserve, here are some reviews of those films. 

2023 was an influential year for film when it came to blockbuster filmmaking and art cinema. At the Oscars, we saw the best lineup of nominations in years. Although the selected cultural canon of great cinematic work from the past year is diverse in terms of social inclusivity as well as cinematic mode, there are always films that don’t quite break through to the zeitgeist.

January and February, August and September. These pairs of months might not seem to be related even slightly, but they share a crucial similarity: they are continuously referred to as “dump months” for the movie theater marketplace.  

For many filmmakers, their twilight years are a period of slowdown and downsizing with smaller, less ambitious works replacing the grand epics and massive swings that defined their careers. That makes Martin Scorsese’s recent film run (starting with “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2013 and continuing with “Silence” in 2016 and “The Irishman” in 2019) all the more remarkable. As he approaches his eighth decade, his films have only grown in ambition, subverting the genre convention he had helped popularize with his most famous works to tell a grand, interwoven tale about the history of America and how it is entrenched with exploitation and violence.

For over a century, horror films have lured audiences to cinemas all around the world. Their purpose is not only to terrify or disturb but also to engage with dark, challenging and taboo themes that you usually would not see in any other genre of films.

On Thursday, Feb. 3, the show “Murderville” was released on Netflix. The show stars Will Arnett and is an American adaptation of its British counterpart, “Murder in Successville.” “Murderville” successfully infuses comedy into the whodunnit genre of television, allowing viewers to take a ride into a murder–ridden town with their favorite celebrities as guest stars.

“Moonfall” is a science fiction film directed by Roland Emmerich and was released in theaters Friday, Feb. 4. The film follows the three characters: Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson), a retired astronaut after an incident that occurred in 2011 that cost the life of another astronaut during a routine satellite fix; Jocinda Fowler (Halle Berry), a renowned astronaut that was also present at the 2011 incident and K. C. Houseman (John Bradley), a megastructurist and the first person to realize that the Earth’s moon is out of orbit.

Was “Godzilla vs. Kong” a “good film?” Not really, but that question isn’t relevant to a movie like this. Monster movies like this aren’t supposed to be high art. They aren’t competing with classics like “The Godfather” and they aren’t trying to. What they are, and what they have always been, are fun, and this movie delivers.