I watch a lot of movies and 2024 was a decent year, even if there wasn’t anything that impressed me as much as Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon or Anatomy of a Fall last year. It might be the hangover from strikes which delayed some releases at a time when Hollywood was just recovering from complications caused by theater closures and Covid protocols. Here are my top ten films for 2024:
Top Ten Films of 2024
10. The Young Woman and the Sea
My mom was a champion swimmer in her youth, and likes historical dramas, so she was primed to like this movie. And it immediately became a favorite of hers. It’s a charming tale of Daisy Ridley as an Olympian showing she could compete with the men, and perform a task that few had been able to accomplish, swimming across the English channel.
The film gets across why it’s difficult, why she could pull it off, and the varied reactions, from the people inspired to those threatened to loved ones terrified of what can happen. It has some traditional elements of the true-life inspirational sports movies, so it’s not ground-breaking but it’s a good example of the form. There’s a lovely sequence in the beginning involving a family tragedy.
9. A Complete Unknown
The performances are amazing, although the central conflict (Will the popular new folk singer go electric?) just seems to be mostly under the surface. It seems to work well for depicting Bob Dylan at his peak, and does maintain the mystery of the lead in a way that is unusual for film, although it also fits the reality of a man who is famous, but also keeps some big things private. The only better version of young Dylan on film would be D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary Don’t Look Back. Timothée Chalamet captures the young Dylan as someone who could exist in his time, and who would be controversial today.
8. Dune Part 2
Man, this was a stunning film. It was a bit less finished than I expected, explicitly feeling like the middle of a trilogy rather than the second half of a book adaptation. Chalamet is effective at showing the transition from boy to messiah, while Zendaya, Ferguson and Bardem are standouts as the main people in his life. Austin Butler and Léa Seydoux are impressive as new villains; ferocity for one, and manipulativeness for the other.
7. Anora
I haven’t seen Sean Baker’s films before, so this was a revelation. It’s quite excellent. Mikey Madison is probably the hottest Mikey ever, depicting a sex worker who seems to get a fairy tale ending when she marries the scion of a Russian plutocrat. And then the parents show up. What I appreciate is that while things get crazy, it feels plausible and plays with expectations in interesting ways.
6. Challengers
A Social Network style rivalry, but in tennis and with a love triangle. I’m really primed to like this kind of movie, and it delivers with interesting direction and characters who are pushed to different kinds of limits, revealing complexity in addition to the horniness.
5. Conclave
I enjoyed this mystery that treats a papal conclave like a political nominating convention, something the characters are aware of. There are some interesting twists, starting with the arrival of a secret cardinal. Ralph Fiennes centers it well, although I was initially more impressed by Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rosellini, even if their roles end ten minutes before the climax. I do like how Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence tries to deny his own ambition, and the resulting complications.
4. September 5
Tim Fehlbaum, a Swiss sci-fi director, made an impressive film about journalists in an unusual situation due to weird luck. It gets into what it’s like to be sports reporters who suddenly have the most important story of the year and have to deal with messy ethical questions while covering efforts against terrorists at a time when the term was relatively new. I would not mind it being a major Oscar contender.
3. The Wild Robot
I wonder where in the genesis of the story was the concept of a robot in the wild, and when they came up with the concept of a robot as the foster mother of gosling. It’s perfect Dreamworks in looking at the cracks behind the myth, but there’s still decency underneath it all. And there’s an interesting behind the scenes message on climate change. It borrows from other films (especially Wall-E and Zootopia), but it says something clever and meaningful.
2. Juror #2
Warner Brothers is really dumb for burying this smart, psychologically complex film about a man who knows that a defendant is innocent but would have to risk getting convicted himself to do the right thing. I really appreciate how Toni Collette’s prosecutor is not a cartoon villain, and how it ends. Eastwood is also smart in how he uses name actors- when Kiefer Sutherland shows up as an AA sponsor, you know he’ll return or when JK Simmons is a quiet juror, you know he’ll say something interesting.
1.The Brutalist
It’s impressive cinema. Adrien Brody is phenomenal as a flawed but strong architect and Holocaust survivor. Guy Pearce is the ultimate rich hack until it takes a messed up turn. The soundtrack is astounding, and it’s a three hour low budget movie about ideas (and perhaps a metaphor for filmmaking) that looks amazing. My architect mom liked it, although not as much as The Young Woman and the Sea. The three and a half hour film did come with some uncomfortable sex scenes for a movie I saw with family, but it was well worth it.
Honorable mentions: Nosferatu, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Inside Out 2, Hit Man, Deadpool VS Wolverine, Flow, Wicked, Maxxine, Gladiator 2, A Quiet Place Day 1, Am I Racist?, One Life, Saturday Night, The Beekeeper.
There are a few worth discussing for varied reasons, either popularity, obscurity or strange connections. I will always promote decent Baltic films.
The Beekeeper
It’s a decent action film that obviously sets up a new potential franchise and it’s also my 78 year old dad’s favorite movie of the year. There’s a good sense of escalation as the film often sets up bad guys who seem like they could be the big bad of the film, but then get dispatched within five minutes so someone tougher has to take over.
Deadpool & Wolverine
The crossover is ultimately a love letter to the Fox movie adaptations. It is very meta in an Airplane/ Mel Brooks way, which is a bit odd since it’s part of the world it’s mocking as the newest entry to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Hugh Jackman’s worst Wolverine is a great straight man for Deadpool and Emma Corrin’s Cassandra Nova is decent as an apocalyptic menace. There is a sense that some of the other characters are middle-aged actors playing action figures, like Toy Story versions of who they’re supposed to be.
Flow
It looks like an indie video game, but this Latvian animated film (definitely not set in Latvia as there are scenes with mountains in the background) of the journey of a cat and other animals is just very pleasant.
Life & Love
This debut film for a feature director in the small country of Estonia is a psychologically rich take on a young woman from the village who begins a relationship with a complicated older man. Initially it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a conflict, but then things sour to the extent it could be a study of a toxic relationship. And as such, it’s quite effective.
Nosferatu
Honestly it’s more like Herzog’s version than Murnau’s, although it fits Eggers’ sense of making movies that seem to be in the terms of their characters and not the modern world. It is a good horror movie , even if it’s not one of the top three takes on the Dracula story in film.
Wicked
Arianna Grande and Cynthia Erivo are quite good as rivals turned friends turned rivals again. It’s a bit like the good witch and the wicked witch going to Hogwarts, but the central relationship is quite rich. The fascist subplot is a bit undercooked, but this is half the story and manages to be a satisfying self-contained film despite that.
Least Favorite Film- Madame Web
The movie shoehorns various Spider-Man IP characters into a story that might’ve been able to work (You could have a decent comic book story about a woman who sees the future protecting future heroines from a villain who sees them as a threat) but the execution is just so off and the messages are twisted.
Major movies I haven’t seen yet: Emilia Perez, Sing Sing, A Real Pain, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Blitz, Heretic, The Piano Lesson, We Live in Time, The Apprentice, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Nickel Boys, All We Imagine is Light
My best film moment of 2024 was realizing that my Apartment building is in Spider-Man 2.
My best film experience was likely the 70mm rerelease of the John Ford/ John Wayne masterpiece The Searchers.
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