The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Film Critic Justin Chang on What to See in 2024

Episode Date: April 8, 2024

The New Yorker’s newest staff member, Justin Chang, shares three films that he’s excited to see released in 2024: “Janet Planet,” the début feature film directed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker; “Blitz,” a wartime drama by Steve McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave”; and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the widely anticipated new entry in George Miller’s Mad Max series—which, at forty-five years years old, predates Justin Chang.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I have said that I heard screams. I have since read that screaming with hysteria is a common reaction, even to expected total eclipses. Annie Dillard is one of our great nature writers, and years ago, she wrote a brilliant essay called Total Eclipse. She read an excerpt from that piece when she joined us on the program in 2016. And with people from Texas to Maine

lining up to watch Monday's total eclipse, it's worth hearing again. Here's Annie Dillard. People on all the hillsides, including, I think myself, screamed when the black body of the moon detached from the sky and rolled over the sun.

But something else was happening at that same instant. And it was this, I believe, that made us scream. The second before the sun went out, we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves 1,800 miles an hour.

Language can give no sense of this sort of speed. Seeing it and knowing it was coming straight for you was like feeling a slug of anesthetic, shoot up your arm. If you think very fast, you may have time to think, soon it will hit my brain. You can feel the appalling inhuman speed of your own blood. We saw the wall

of shadow coming and screamed as it hit. It was as though an enormous loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the earth's face. Annie Dillard, reading

from total eclipse, the essay was included in her last collection The Abundance. I've always thought that 90% of our readers read the cartoons first and the other 10% are probably lying. But maybe I'm wrong. Oftentimes, I'm told they head straight to the film reviews, and these days that means Richard Brody and our newest staff member, Justin Chang, who became our regular film critic in February after a great and long run at the LA Times.

Justin, welcome. Thank you, David. It's great to be here. Well, you joined us just before the Oscars, so you wrote about the nominations in last year's bumper crop of really good movies. Looking ahead now, and we're well into 2024, what should we be excited about for this year? Let me take a wild guess. One of them is a Mad Max film. Yes, I mean, it looks like a good year overall, but I will start with probably my least obscure choice,

probably everyone's choice. I'm incredibly excited for Furiosa, a Mad Max saga, which is the upcoming fifth feature in the director George Miller's Mad Max cycle. And it arrives nine years after the amazing Mad Max Fury Road, which starred Charlie Stharren as the warrior, Imperator, Furiosa, and this new movie is a prequel. And it presumably an origin story, um, in which we get to meet the young Furiosa played by Anya Taylor Joy.

Anya Taylor Joy, of course, can be seen in the year's other big dystopian desert blockbuster doom part too. So she's kind of ordering the market there. Wait a minute. In the studio's desire to make some money, what took them so long to do a follow-up? Why nine years? Well, even Fury Road,

the journey to making that took so long. And as big of a success as it was, as many Oscars as it won, as a huge smash, rightly regarded, I think, is one of the greatest action movies the Hollywood studio has made. The way that George Miller makes them are incredible logistical undertakings. His insistence on practical filmmaking, on doing as much

as possible in camera. So he's anti-CGI? I don't know if he's anti, but he is, you know, he does hail from that school that really believes in filmmaking in the most digitally unenhanced sense possible. Now, of course, there's visual effects being deployed, but he really, he doesn't just want to leave it to CGI. He doesn't want to just leave it to post. So the amazing things that you see and Fury Road in it and in the other Mad Max movies, which started, you know, as pretty scrappy independent productions. In fact, the saga started before you were born. How does the Mad Max saga hold up compared to, say, Star Wars or other long-running

franchises? Oh, I mean, they may not, you know, nothing has the reach of a Star Wars, of course, but I think, I do think that in terms of Miller's ability to keep the franchise, the series, the series, series alive and make it mean something to a new audience, I will say that he's been more successful than say George Lucas was able to do with later iterations of Star Wars. And so, I mean, I think for that series to have, for him to have left it alone for many years and then come back to it so triumphantly, I think, defied all expectations. Is there a signature scene in that movie? There are many. I mean, because the movie is, in some ways, one long action scene, and so,

And it is the sort of just the early moments when you're out there with Tom Hardy as Mad Max. And he is strapped to the front of some vehicle in Morton Joe and his evil, extremely grotesque henchman. And there's like one of them who's on this guitar. And it's like, it's like a, this like satanic like rock concert type of thing. It's really the level of imagination and just you feel like you're there. I was more than take for me. Got my blood. Now it's my.

And they proceed to do the most incredible acrobatic sequences. And it's like you're watching this glorious kind of symphony of an action scene. And I remember at the time, years afterward, the director Steven Soderberg talked about Mad Max and said, like, I can't believe they're still not filming it. I mean, the things that he managed to pull off. But the early ones, too, going back to, you know, the first Mad Max, Road Warrior, you know, yeah. The early Mel Gibson period. Yes, yes. Exactly.

My vintage. What else you're looking forward to this year? Yeah, the second movie that I'm really excited about this year is a World War II drama called Blitz. Apple will be releasing it later this year. And not too much is known yet about the story, but the movie stars Sir Sharonin, Harris Dickinson, and others. I assume playing Londoners who are trying to survive the German bombing campaign on the city. And I'm excited about this one, David, because this is the latest film from the English director, Steve McQueen, who I think it's just an extraordinary filmmaker. He's best known, of course, for the Oscar-winning 12 years of slave, but he actually started his career as a visual artist.

He won the Turner Prize in 1999, and he just, he has this eye for imagery and composition that some would call austere. and when he combines this eye with a classical narrative, and in many cases, a historical narrative the way he does in 12 years of slave and hunger and some of his other films. Were you a fan of Occupied City that came out in 2020? I was a huge fan of Occupied City, and that's another reason I was.

And I mean, I also feel like I was one of a very too few who saw it. Right, you're in the minority on that one. If I am in the minority, I don't know. I think that movie's going to grow in stature as people discover it. And it's going to be, it's interesting, because McQueen has Blitz is going to be his first theatrically released feature in a while. What I kind of love about him is that he has this sense of history that I think he brings this gravity to and this great kind of respect for how you represent things.

I think I saw it read one log line where it was just several characters caught up in the horror and the chaos of the Blitz. And so I'm very curious to see how McQueen depicts this, given the regard he has had for history so far and great results he's gotten so far. And what else are you looking forward to, Justin? David, my third pick is sort of my cheat of an entry because I've actually already seen this movie. But it's coming out this year and I liked it so much that I cannot wait to see it again. And it's been a while, too, because full disclosure, I was on the committee that programmed this movie for the New York Film Festival where it played last fall.

And it's a movie called Janet Planet. No relation to the songwriter. It's just a different character named Janet. A-24 is releasing this movie sometime this year. I think this is going to me, a movie of a movie of particular interest to many admirers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Annie Baker, because this is her feature debut that she wrote and directed. And it stars Julianne Nicholson in, I think, one of the best performances of her career, which is certainly saying something. she plays a single mother and acupuncturist.

I'm trying to remember the details correctly because it's been a while for me named Janet, who lives in Western Massachusetts with her 11-year-old daughter. And so it's a mother-daughter love story that I believe Baker has herself described as sort of a story about falling out of love with your mother. I wanted it to be a complicated relationship with a lot of closeness and a lot of distance and to kind of, yeah, for it to be a painting that was only, fully formed by the end of the movie, so I do. It's set during the summer of 1991,

and it's remarkable, and not surprising, but remarkable how good Annie Baker is at using the camera to heighten intimacy between her characters. She draws out silences and nuances in a way that's just completely engrossing, even when not very much seems to be happening on screen. I could not be more looking forward to seeing it because it's been way too long, and I need a refresher.

So through the pandemic and even earlier, every year, every year we hear some version of the death knell for the movie business, certainly the theatrical release. Then 2023 had a run of films that got people into the seats again, and thank God not just Marvel films. Was that just a blip or is there a real shift going on? It is hard to say, and I mean looking at this year, I think that there is, it's premature, but there is an early thing. sense of, hmm, this year is not going to be 2023, this is not necessarily going to be Barbenheimer. I mean, a Barbenheimer year is of course kind of an anomaly to begin with.

But because we're also dealing with sort of the after effects of the Hollywood writers and actors strikes. And so... So there's just fewer films around? I think there may be in terms of specifically American product, studio product. So God, I hate calling it product, but you know

what I mean. I mean, it's like we try to ban the words, brand product content. But I remain optimistic in spite of all that. I think we have to cling to optimism. Otherwise, what am I doing here? I mean, it's, and I've found that even when there are constraints on the industry and when the industry is in turmoil, but artists do find a way and create movies find a way to

get made in spite of themselves. So I cling to that hope. Well, I hope your optimism is well founded. Justin Chang, thank you. It's a pleasure. You can read Justin Chang on movies at New Yorker.com. That's The New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for joining us.

See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zuckerman. With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May,

David Gable, Alex Parish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.