Mini-movie reviews: 'Armand,' 'Ennio,' 'Transmitzvah,' 'Night is Not Eternal,' 'The Gutter,' 'From Darkness to Light,' 'Hot Frosty' and 'The Count of Monte Cristo'

One last dive into the 2024 screener pile

Like most film critics, I did a lot of cramming of movie-watching in the last couple of months to prepare for awards voting, my top ten list, and the Ben Hecht 500 countdown. All that, for me, is done — although a couple of rounds of critics group voting remain — but I have continued to watch the remaining stuff on my list, to the point where my Letterboxd Watchlist is now almost down to single digits.

Some mini-reviews, from that last stretch of movies that I’ve watched:

Armand

I keep seeing this Norwegian film listed on film festival rosters, as well as International Film shortlists. But I was not prepared for just how batshit it is.

Starring Renate Reinsve, the Worst Person in the World actress who was everywhere this year, it’s the story of a school sitting with parents after one 6-year-old is reported to have sexually molested another.

Directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel, Armand looks like God of Carnage for the first act, but soon goes off into some extremely strange directions, involving everything from dance sequences to an out-of-nowhere fit of laughter.

Ennio

This is a more than two-and-a-half-hour documentary about the late great composer Ennio Morricone, directed by the Cinema Paradiso filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore. It had been on the festival circuit as early as 2021, but I saw it included in a 2024 FYC package, so I’ll consider it part of this year.

I didn’t mind the running time, because Morricone deserves it, and it’s fantastic to hear the music itself, as well as the commentary from the composer himself and his many collaborators- none of whom can resist the urge to sing along with the music while they’re being interviewed.

Transmitzvah

In a year in which there were million public controversies about Judaism and a million more about transgenderism, this Netflix musical out of Argentina dealt with both. It didn’t make much of a cultural ripple, but it certainly should have.

The conceit is just wonderful: An Argentine kid, born as a boy named Ruben but already sure of a female identity at age 13, refuses to have a Bar Mitzvah under that male name, leading to familial estrangement. As an adult, she has fully transitioned… and is now a famous Yiddish singer named Mumy Singer, who decides she wants to have a Bat Mitzvah.

Sure, finding a rabbi to perform an adult Bat Mitzvah for a trans person, much less a famous one, wouldn’t be as difficult in real life as the movie makes it look. But overall, I thought this was wonderful- a better story than Emilia Perez, not to mention a better musical.

Night is Not Eternal

Here’s a documentary, out on HBO and Max now, that really snuck up on me. It’s directed by Nanfu Wang, the Chinese-American documentarian who has made several films about China, and it’s about Cuban-American activist Rosa María Payá Acevedo.

Filmed over what appears to be several years, the film takes a turn at one point, when the viewpoints of the filmmaker and subject start to diverge: Acevedo begins making appearances with Donald Trump, of which Wang disapproves, while it’s clear that while Acevedo is a strong anti-communist, Wang’s critique of China is a bit more nuanced than that.

This sort of split, in other words, is a pretty common one these days, and it’s rendered well by Wang’s documentary.

The Gutter

This is a silly, stupid comedy about bowling, and I couldn’t stop laughing my ass off at it.

Directed by Yassir Lester and Isaiah Lester, The Gutter is a bowling comedy that’s different enough from both The Big Lebowski and Kingpin to stand out, mostly through the use of ballsy racial satire. It stars Shameik Moore as a bowler who goes on a run of victories to save the rundown alley where he works; in this he’s assisted by D’Arcy Carden, in full Bad Janet mode as a bowling champ gone to seed.

This barely got released back in November and recent revelations about the leading man’s behavior with actresses probably didn’t help matters. But this has the makings of a potential cult classic.

From Darkness to Light

There were rumors and even some false news reports earlier this year that Jerry Lewis’ long-lost Jerry Lewis Holocaust film The Day the Clown Cried was finally going to see the light of day in 2024. That didn’t happen, and it seems clear that not enough usable footage exists that it will ever be assembled in releasable form,

Instead, we have this, a documentary about The Day the Clown Cried, that aired with not much fanfare on Turner Classic Movies a couple of weeks ago. It does feature lots of footage from Lewis’ infamous film, but it feels half-assed, not offering much in the way of new insights.

Hot Frosty

Now there’s a high concept for you. This Netflix holiday romcom looks and feels exactly like a Hallmark Christmas movie, including Hallmark mainstay Lacey Chabert in the lead role, but the twist here is that her romantic interest this time is that he’s… a snowman.

Directed by Jerry Ciccoritti from a script by longtime Film Twitter denizen Russell Hainline, it’s a charming film if you can put aside that the male romantic lead is, for all intents and purposes, a child. Still, I bet more people watched this than any of Netflix’s prestige movies this year- and it’s much better than Emilia Perez.

The Count of Monte Cristo

This three-hour, French-language adaptation of the Dumas literary classic has been shortlisted for the Best International Film Oscar, and deservedly so.

Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s film stars Pierre Niney as Edmond Dantès. This epic tale of revenge is a reasonably faithful adaptation that’s never less than exciting.