Barbie (5*)
Society of the Snow (4*)
Godzilla Minus One (4*)
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (4*)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (3.5*)
Nimona (3.5*)
The Boy and the Heron (3.5*)
Elemental (3*)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (3*)
The Creator (2.5*)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2.5*)
Napoleon (1.5*)
Twelve movies on the 2024 nominee list are considered adventure films, and I can recommend seven of them! Interestingly, every single Action genre film is also on the Adventure list but there are four additional adventures that aren’t action-packed. The overlap is probably to be expected as adventure movies involve a quest or journey into some kind of new world – a world that may require fast acting responses. Sometimes, though, the adventure is a little more sedate.
Barbie is one of those. I know that you aren’t supposed to like Barbie, for a lot of reasons including that she is a commercial product and that the Barbie image is one that weds girls, and the women they become, to a limited ideal of what femininity means. But I actually think that Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach have written a hilarious script that seriously punches holes in our stereotypical sex roles. The adventure in this movie is when Barbie and Ken leave Barbieland and travel to the real world. Ken likes it, Barbie not so much and so there’s a lot of growth that happens as a result. Against the current, I highly recommend this one for a second viewing!
Another adventure that isn’t action packed is Society of the Snow, Spain’s international feature entry. The adventure here happens when a rugby team from Uruguay was flying to Chile for a game. Their plane crashed in the Andean mountains and some died on impact or shortly later. The 33 remaining survivors had to deal with extreme cold and little to eat. More died and those left had to make awful decisions in order to survive. The film isn’t fun – it isn’t supposed to be. But it is a terrific presentation of a some very defining questions.
At the top of the audience ratings and a new entry in the longest running film franchise in history is Godzilla Minus One. If I remember right, my introduction to science fiction was one of the original Godzilla movies from at least 60 years ago. The current film won the Visual Effects Oscar based, primarily, on the monster’s charging sequence and the destruction it unleashes on a Tokyo neighborhood. The science fiction film effects are embedded in an interesting family story and the film also serves as an exploration of Japanese national character. It has its flaws, but is gigantically entertaining.
Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible movies are always action-packed, but without much CGI, Cruise relies more on practical effects. That’s shorthand for pretty much do it yourself, or, when absolutely necessary, call in the stunt guy. Dead Reckoning is full of fights and chases ranging from a submarine at the beginning to car chases, and the action-packed finale involving a train wreck and a Tom Cruise on a motor cycle with a parachute. If you want action as it used to be in movies, see Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.
And, if entertainment is what you want, you can’t miss the latest installment in one of the few comic book movie series that I like, the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Although not as good as the first two, this one combines incredible CGI worlds with the funny and strange characters that makeup this oddball family. Vol. 3 tells the sad origin story for Rocket, the rodent voiced by Bradley Cooper amid a galactic level assault with some new heroes and villains. With help from CGI, the action sequences are very intense.
Nimona is an animated film that just barely makes my recommended list, but it seems to me it is really more of a fantasy film. Written by a leading trans-gender author of graphic novels, the featured character is, indeed, someone of ambiguous gender. And the real value of this film lies more in what it says about being transgender than in the rather awkward and shallow story-line. Note, though, that this will not appeal to some viewers.
The last of my recommended adventures is the film from the Japanese anime genius Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron. The animation is hand-crafted and gorgeous, but the story, a series of disconnected events that somehow examines Miyazaki’s life, is not for everyone. Even he said that “I myself don’t understand it.” And that he wasn’t going to provide explanations. It is his story of how he sees his life and there isn’t much anyone else is going to be able to add to that. See it if you love beautiful animation and have any curiosity at all about an old man’s final look at his life.
Five of the 2024 year action films I cannot recommend. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an animated mess. In attempting to grapple with the multiverse, they end up having some 242 spider-men creatures all going in and out of different universes and battling some dude with dalmation spots. There is action here, but it is sterilized animation. I enjoyed the first “Into the Spider-verse” a lot more than this one because you could easily keep track of the characters and the plot made sense. So see this one only if you have to.
Elemental was an animated film from Disney/Pixar empire and I was really looking forward to the idea of a world where the characters were based on the fundamental elements of air, water, earth, and fire. The detailed worlds these different elements live in is amazing rich in intriguing details. (the baby strollers for the fire people are actually charcoal grills on wheels!). But the story involves an across the tracks relationship between a fire girl and a water boy. There are some predictable problems in such a pairing, but the movie doesn’t really go into them as much as it could. It ends up being very bland and in creative.
I was really looking forward to The Creator and was heavily disappointed. There are so many depths to the issue of artificial intelligence that I simply expected more from a movie on the topic. The child-like robot was very much human-like, but the film was more interested in exploring its similarities to action movies than in actually plumbing interesting ideas. I’m not sure who would benefit from this film.
Disappointing in other ways was the final film in the Indiana Jones series, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This film had the largest budget of any on the list this year and used it to not only pay Harrison Ford, but also deage him by computer so we could have vivid flashbacks to what he looked like in his 30s. The problem, of course, with deaging is that it might be able to make physical characteristics look decades younger, but it doesn’t work so well on making them move younger. And, sadly, without Spielberg at the helm, the action sequences just didn’t pop. Watch only if you have a real need to see all of the Indiana Jones movies!
Finally, at the bottom of nearly everyone’s rating list, is the Joaquin Phoenix mess called Napoleon. For sure there are plenty of battle scenes, although many of them were computer assisted, and the conflicts are intense and very graphic – war wasn’t exactly pleasant at that time. The story attempts to make Josephine responsible for much of Napoleon’s successes and failures, but has so many plot holes that it is just unconvincing. And overly long!
I can also recommend four of the 2023 Oscar Adventure films as must-sees, especially if you like the genre. The Best Picture winner, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (4.5*) surprised me. It is an amazing discourse on the multiverse, nihilism, and postmodernism. (I should add that, to me at least, it is more of a science fiction film than an adventure, but the main characters are on a quest to find the Everything Bagel!. A more conventional science fiction film is Avatar: The Way of Water (4*). Using state of the art motion-capture technology, it is a treasure trove of visual effects and just so much fun as they take their imaginations and technology under water. The adventure here is the family’s move to a water-based land on the planet. In Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, our animated cat, originally in the Shrek films, takes a journey in a pursuit to renew his immortality – great computer animation and a story that takes us into several old nursery tales. And, finally, The Sea Beast is a not-so-thinly-veiled retelling of the Moby Dick story with some political messages woven into the story.
There are ten recommended movies from the last two years all adventure-bound. May your quest be rewarding!
