Awards Season 2024 Recap, Vol. 5
Architects, floods, and first loves
Volume Five is the last entry of our Awards Season Recap for 2024. Next week’s post will highlight last year’s best films. This volume features reviews of The Brutalist, Flow, and Touch. Be sure to check out Volume One, Volume Two, Volume Three, and Volume Four.
The Brutalist
Notable Honors: Golden Globes Awards, National Board of Review, Critics Choice Awards
Rating: R
Where to Watch: Theaters
My Reaction: The Brutalist begins promisingly, as László Tóth (Adrien Brody), an architect and Holocaust survivor, arrives on Ellis Island full of optimism. His vision of the American Dream quickly turns nightmarish when he encounters a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce).
Unfortunately, too much of the conflict devolves into a victim/victimizer binary, where the rich are portrayed as greedy and sadistic, while migrants are depicted as helpless and naive. The music and cinematography give The Brutalist a grandiose feel, but the story at times feels incoherent and redundant. Characters appear and disappear with little consequence, while others behave inconsistently or are driven by vague motivations.
Like the architectural style after which it’s named, The Brutalist is a hulking, cold, and brash assault on the senses. While it grapples with intriguing ideas about immigrant identity and artistic autonomy, it never achieves thematic or narrative cohesion. That said, I’m glad we still live in a world where a filmmaker can get a project like this funded.
Flow
Notable Honors: Golden Globes Awards, Annie Awards
Rating: PG
Where to Watch: Rent
My Reaction: It’s Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey as if it were a passage from the Book of Revelation, with a cat partnering with other wild animals to battle the elements, face off against other creatures, and survive in a flooded world.
The animals feel incredibly real and compelling because the animators wisely chose to use authentic animal sounds and resisted the temptation to make them overly cute or too anthropomorphic. The rousing music, combined with the surrealistically realistic animation, makes this experience truly immersive—it has remained imprinted in my mind.
Flow reminded me of the golden age of Disney animation: a simple premise serving as the vehicle for a mesmerizing and thrilling animated journey. In this case, we watch, sometimes clenching our teeth and other times covering our mouths, as a tiny cat undergoes an existential crisis and ultimately finds transcendence.
Touch (“Snerting”)
Notable Honors: Casting Society of America, Palm Springs International Film Festival
Rating: R
Where to Watch: Prime
My Reaction: Touch is a contemplative film about loneliness, forgiveness, and the therapeutic power of memory. It challenges us to confront the vulnerability of aging and our inherent need for human connection.
We follow Kristófer (Egill Ólafsson), a man struggling with Alzheimer's, who embarks on a journey across the world at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to search for his first love (Kōki), who disappeared 50 years ago. The actors portraying the younger versions of the characters imbue them with such passion and authenticity that they transcend the typical "star-crossed lovers" mold from which they were drawn.
While the film doesn’t break new ground or introduce provocative ideas, it tells a simple yet poignant story about two individuals who met by chance, lost contact, and went on with their lives—always wondering what might have been had they stayed together.
