A24, the indie film production company that has secured itself a home amid ever-oscillating trends in pop culture by not only piquing Gen Z’s attention but retaining it through truly unique and tenacious marketing efforts. A24 taps into youth culture in a way that others don’t. They take risks and rip up the Hollywood way of doing things.
How does The Farewell swerve around all the clichés of the Snowball Lie plot? Probably because it’s based on an actual one: When director Lulu Wang’s grandmother got cancer, the family really did hide the diagnosis from her. In Wang’s film, that deception sets up a culture clash between Billi (Awkwafina, in a finely-honed dramatic turn) and her Chinese family, who see concealing the truth as an act of love, a way for the group to carry the emotional weight instead. The film itself is attuned to that communal spirit.
Release date: July 12, 2019
Director: Lulu Wang
In the sham wedding that’s an excuse to get everyone back together, The Farewell nails the internal dynamics of a big family gathering: the gossip, the in-jokes, the subtle jockeying for position. The showdown over the lie becomes a stand-in for East vs. West, but Wang is smart enough to know she doesn’t have to pick a side. With warm humor and a touch of magic realism, the world she’s created feels very big and small at once.
“You’re having too much fun, and it’s not supposed to be fun,” an adult tells some children near the beginning of The Florida Project. You could say the same about Sean Baker’s neorealist gem, which takes place on the outskirts of Disney World at a collection of roadside motels that play home to people the American Dream forgot. One of them is Moonee (the exuberant Brooklynn Prince), a 7-year-old who spends her days scampering around, tormenting the kindly handyman (Willem Dafoe), and generally being an adorable little hellion.
Release date: October 6, 2017
Director: Sean Baker
There’s less plot, more slowly escalating chaos — much of it driven by Moonee’s volatile mother (Bria Vinite, cast from Instagram) — but Baker’s camera has the energy to keep up with their boundless imagination. Featuring cinematography as creamy and colorful as an ice-cream sundae, The Florida Project is both a masterful sketch of life on the margins and a gorgeous ode to childrens’ ability to find joy no matter their circumstances.
With its bittersweet tone and first-person-omniscient narration, 20th Century Woman feels like the film adaptation of a short-story collection that doesn’t exist. And yet, it’s never anything less than cinematic, thanks to writer-director Mike Mills’s bold use of time-lapse and found footage, which drops us into late-’70s Santa Barbara like a stone in the river of time. Annette Bening stars as Dorothea, a boarding-house matriarch who deals with her increasing bewilderment about her teenage son (Lucas Jade Zumann) by enlisting her tenants (Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup) and the boy’s crush (Elle Fanning, one last time) to help raise him as a good man.
Release date: December 28, 2016
Director: Mike Mills
What I love about 20th Century Women is that it’s a movie all about people trying to reach out to each other, and largely failing … but they keep doing it anyway! Mills has given us a vision of found family that’s messy, nuanced, and above all, full of life. As a perfect instance of life imitating art, when I showed it to my parents, they hated it. But this isn’t their list. What a lovely film.
Unapologetically basic — a love letter to the suburbs, DMB, greatest-hits compilations, and calling your mom. But basicness is as valid an aesthetic choice as any other. The real problem is being phony, which despite the viral takedowns, this movie is not. It comes by its convictions honestly. Greta Gerwig’s solo debut takes us through a whirlwind year in the life of a high schooler (Saoirse Ronan) who longs to escape her middle-class Sacramento life.
Release date: November 10, 2017
Director: Greta Gerwig
Like any teen, she’s self-obsessed and a little performative, but Gerwig takes Lady Bird’s ambition seriously, if not literally — just as she knows Mom (Laurie Metcalf) is right about her daughter being a brat but could also stand to cut her a break now and then. What’s remarkable about Lady Bird is its finely honed balance: in the push-pull dynamic between mother and daughter, the way an argument can ebb up then just as suddenly recede; in the pacing of its vignettes, which are sketched with the deftness of a veteran storyteller; and in the tone, which is wistful but never indulgent.