It’s that time of the year again when it is time to list films from last year that should be avoided at all costs. There were several candidates for the 10 films with the highest Disapproval factor in 2024, so I will, as customary, begin with some dishonourable mentions that didn’t make the list. Many of them were, not surprisingly, screened at Cannes, which keeps getting worse each year. Rumours, Emilia Pérez and Hors du temps 1Seen at the Berlinale are not on the list only because I didn’t manage to make it all the way through them. The decline of Guy Maddin, Jaques Audiard, and Olivier Assayas is not pretty to behold.
The absence of Yorgos Lanthimos on this year’s list should not be seen as an act of kindness; instead, it is because I skipped it entirely. His previous film won the Golden Lion. An award which has proven to be large shoes to fill ever since Joker won the prize in 2019.
10. Ma vie ma gueule/Eat the Night
Quinzaine des Réalisateurs has typically been the highlight of the Cannes Film Festival but has struggled to maintain its quality, not least since the latest shift in the programming team. This change coincided with the section being renamed Quinzaine des Cinéastes. Ma vie ma gueule (This Life of Mine) is the posthumous film by Sophie Fillières. It is about a woman called Barbie (Àgnes Jaoui) who goes through a midlife crisis. According to the Quinzaine webpage, the film is a self-portrait. Apparently, the film was finished by the director’s children after her death. In any case, this film, in three distinctive parts, is little more than an incoherent mess.
Eat the Night arrived at the Croisette with a considerable buzz, with several critics pointing to it as a highlight before the festival started. The story is set in a world of games where Pablo and his sister Appoline play Darknoon. While the company announces the disappearance of its universe, Pablo gets involved with Night, making and dealing party drugs. I wouldn’t have minded some drugs during any of these two films or anything that would have made them feel less immature and over-emotional but simultaneously stiff and rigid.
9. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass by The Quay Brothers is based on the works of Bruno Schulz. It should not be confused with Wojciech Has’s masterpiece from Schulz’s novel. I explained what makes the film so tedious in my review.
8. Le deuxième acte
Quentin Dupieux is a prolific director, and Le deuxième acte (The Second Act) was the opening film at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. As I pointed out before, those films are rarely great and often not even good. Dupieux’s films have become increasingly annoying, and a significant factor in two recent films is the actor Raphaël Quenard. In my review, I explained why this tracking shot is not worth following.
7. Harvest
Memories of the 2023 Venice competition were positive, so I took my chances on quite a few films during the 2024 edition but was rarely pleased. This film by Athina Rachel Tsangari, who made the overrated Attenberg ages ago, even received a one-star review in The Guardian. I’m not sure it deserves even a twinkle. This plodding piece, set in some medieval village or whatever, looks amateurish, and the actors seem as bored as the spectators.
6. Megalopolis
And we are back at Cannes once again. The place where Francis Ford Coppola won the Palme d’Or for his only great film, The Conversation, precisely 50 years before he subjected the audience to Megalopolis. I have no idea why some people expected anything from this, but it was still shocking how boring the film was. Anyone hoping to laugh at the film’s expense will merely be fatigued long before the ordeal is over. A text in the aforementioned The Guardian felt like a hit piece, but after watching the film, it makes perfect sense.
5. Des Teufels Bad
Do you remember Goodnight Mommy (Ich seh, Ich seh 2014)? No? Then you are more lucky than I am. After that one, they made a horror film in English which I was luckily oblivious to. In 2024, their latest work, Des Teufels Bad. It was dry and academic and only stood out for some truly weird Foley work. I managed to stay awake to review the thing.
4. Love Lies Bleeding
Love Lies Bleeding also appeared at The Berlinale after being screened somewhere in Utah. Rose Glass’s debut, Saint Maud (2019), was overrated but at least showed glimpses of talent. The sophomore feature is a trainwreck where the director displays no sense of knowing what cinematic form is. I reviewed Love Lies Bleeding as well.
3. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
On the last day of the Cannes competition, Mohammad Rasoulof descended on the Croisette as a superstar/saviour, who stepped down to us mere mortals to show the film that he managed to get out of Iran. That goes for the director himself, who had several sentences from his home country, including flagellation. Didactic doesn’t begin to describe this film or the director’s later works. Read my complaints in the film review.
2. The Room Next Door
The Golden Lion winner makes it to the Disapproval list for the second consecutive year. Unlike Poor Things, The Room Next Door didn’t manage to grab the first place on the list. It had ever so slightly too much substance for that. Read my evisceration of the film instead of watching it.
1. The Substance
That The Substance is the uncontested winner of the Disapproval List 2024 shouldn’t surprise anyone who 1, has seen it and 2, has a brain. The tendency that vapid genre cinema has taken over film festivals, not least those in the French countryside, is not shocking, but the enthusiasm for this dull, ugly and braindead film truly is. I wrote a review for this one as well.
For those keeping count, six films are from Cannes, three from Venice, and two from the Berlinale.