2024 films in descending order of preference
Not a top ten list just yet, just movies I watched.
Flow (Gints Zilbalodis, 2024): 4/5
Wordless and overflowing with amazing, powerful, primal, and mysterious images. Great cat, and other animals too.
The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2024): 4/5
Mordantly funny and acutely aware of all the micro-humiliations, dumb resentments, and disappointments of modern life. Each short scene/skit is efficient and cutting. Serious Roy Andersson vibes but, like, funny. Arnow is one to watch. “Thank you for forgiving me for mansplaining about L.A.” “’Do you need me to leave?’ ‘Not for a few more minutes.’” “‘This is supposed to be foreplay, like in Titanic.’ ‘It would still be nice to get the proportions roughly correct.’”
The People’s Joker (Vera Drew, 2024): 4/5
(Limited release in U.S., April 5, 2024) Accomplishes what no other trans-related property was able to this year: be relatable, inviting, and real-feeling. Also one of the funniest movies of the year (after Hundreds of Beavers and The Feeling That…). Not everything works and the last 20 minutes are tough, but overall fun, inventive, and impressive.
MadS (David Moreau, 2024): 4/5
A propulsive and fun zombie/vampire, full of horrific shocks and surprising ecstasies. Made to seem like it’s one shot—and even at (supposedly) five actual cuts, it’s a marvelous object.
* The Brutalist (Brady Corbet, 2024): 3.5/5
It’s amazing how impressive and powerful a film can be just by behaving like it’s impressive and powerful. A lumpy script, overacting, some dodgy overliteral plot points, an unnecessarily open-ended ending (feeling like a betrayal after so much investment), and a slow-clap-in-the-auditorium epilogue that suddenly explains so much about the artist’s work that would have been nice to know earlier. And yet the filmmaking thrills by simply insisting on its own bigness and boldness.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’état (Johan Grimonprez, 2024): 3.5/5
I didn’t know this (interesting and relevant) story of the Congo and CIA, and it’s told here with a lot of wit. Very Graham Greene. The (great) music is superfluous, really, but it does help situate the events in time through social context. Plus: groovy. Khrushchev comes off as surprisingly bad-ass—saying the same things that Malcolm X was saying about the exploitation of black people in the U.S. and Africa, but saying them on the floor of the U.N.
Nightbitch (Marielle Heller, 2024): 3.5/5
So much relatable truth about how difficult and transformational it is to try to hang with a two-year-old. I genuinely love the unusual third act, where Travis Bickle (or the ballerina from The Black Swan or Jack Torrance in The Shining) discovers the beauty and wonder of, say, making pottery or, uh, macrame—and becomes a much happier person. Amy Adams lets her chub flag fly, and I love her for it.
A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg, 2024): 3/5
The movie wants you to question whether the relatively contented Eisenberg, with a job and family, has made the right decisions about how to deal with his anxiety and pain (such as they are). After all, the people in the group seem warm to Kieran Culkin’s character in the end but dismiss Eisenberg’s with a “safe travels.” But to me, Kieran Culkin’s character—a suicidal, unemployed narcissist—is hardly a viable alternative to a life of safe stability.
It’s Not Me, 42 min (Leos Carax, 2024): 3/5
In which Carax says fuck it and makes a late-Goddard movie. Attempts, in 40 minutes, to relate his own story and his relationship to all of cinema, plus all of history during the time that cinema has existed—while also mourning everything that has changed and the abhorrent state and politics of today. So it presents multiple odds and ends of thoughts, feelings, and images that we are free to do what we like with.
Heretic (Scott Beck, Bryan Woods, 2024): 3/5
Its exegesis on religion is jejune, but it fully delivers on the creepy-old-house-of-horrors level. What’s scarier than a basement? A sub-basement!
Dahomey, 1h8m (Mati Diop, 2024): 3/5
A meeting among young intellectuals, activists, and regular people about these repatriated artworks (in the back half of the movie) is completely fascinating. The Benin education system seems to be doing ok, if these young people can speak so eloquently about the many levels of meaning these works hold—politically, in terms of personal pride and self-understanding, and spiritually. The first half hour for me was mostly a waste.
Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024): 3/5
Like all of Eggers’ movies, this is rich pictorially and weak dramatically—lugubrious, thick, slow, and ponderous with style. Surprising how much this owes to Coppola’s Dracula (not a compliment). A conversation with my daughter Rosa (who has a particular interest in depictions of vampires) lead me to the image/motif of Death and the Maiden, redeeming the ending somewhat and buying an extra half-star.
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2024): 3/5
i know that fans find Rohrwacher’s playful asides, bits of magical realism, and random narrative swerves enchanting, but I’m a little annoyed by them as well as by her films’ wandering emotional arcs. These moves fail to make me feel the demanded wonder or awe, and instead they just further attenuate my engagement with the narrative. Extra half star because of how much I love Josh O’Conner. The kid’s a star.
Queer (Luca Guadagnino, 2024): 2.5/5
It’s pretty interesting to be hanging out in Mexico City with a young William Burroughs, and there are a couple of haunting images, but overall pointless.
Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2024): 2/5
A woman is attending the trial of a serial killer who broadcast his murders on the “dark web” for others’ entertainment. But what is her interest? Did she know one of the victims? Is she excited by the crimes? Maybe she’s the one who had committed them, and the guy is innocent. Unfortunately, the solution is uninteresting.
Lee (Ellen Kuras, 2024): 2/5
I was not especially familiar with Lee Miller the photographer, so it was interesting to experience what music bios like that of Queen or Elton John must feel like to someone unfamiliar with their music and biographies. It’s not Kate Winslet’s fault, but there’s something inauthentic about the film’s feeling of its time, and the drama never takes wing. Extra half star for casting Andy Samberg.
Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024): 2/5
After the stylistic breakthrough of American Honey, Arnold returns to the grotty apartment blocks and bad boyfriends of her earlier work, this time with a fantasy aspect that doesn’t work at all. Always great to see Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, but they’re up to nothing in particular here.
Seagrass (Meredith Hama-Brown, 2024): 2/5
(U.S. release date January, 2024) The supernatural elements are a dead end, and the mother character remains unsympathetically self-involved. Maybe she should have some kids so she could stop thinking about herself so much and redeem her feelings about her mother. What? Oh.
Caddo Lake (Celine Held, Logan George): 2/5
A temporal tangle that is, frankly, beyond me—and emotionally not worth the effort.
Baker Mini-fest
One of the fun things about watching a bunch of a director’s movies together is that you recognize things like that Karren Karagulian (Toros in Anora) has been in all of Baker’s movies—and like him and Baker more and more for it.
Anora, rw (Sean Baker, 2024): 4.5/5
A strong rewatch. With the specter of menace removed, it becomes more funny throughout, as it flows from fun situation to fun situation. Anora is always strong yet vulnerable, and we are with her as we all gradually realize we’ve been had. The film offers the best ending of the year—a flood of emotion that deepens everything that preceded.
Khaite FW21 (Sean Baker, 2021): 2/5
I don’t begrudge Baker grabbing the cash, but this clothes commercial is pretty embarrassing. Extra half-star because KK shows up.
Snowbird, 12m (Sean Baker, 2016): 3.5/5
A seemingly authentic glimpse into a community of folks living off the grid in the desert. A series of eccentric encounters with some genuine kooks, with a killer last image. These are signatures.
Starlet (Sean Baker, 2012): 3.5/5
The sweetest and least complicated of Baker’s films—and the one that Anora is most hearkening back to. A sensitive and nice young girl—on the outskirts of sex work and peering at the abyss that beckons—enters an unlikely relationship that seems to promise the human connection she isn’t finding elsewhere. Lots of rich location detail (here a familiar San Fernando Valley). And, again, the final scene deepens and complicates the characters we thought we knew.
Prince of Broadway (Sean Baker, 2008): 3.5/5
Another authentic-feeling look at a cluster of people in a disreputable and insular community—here a shop in NYC that sells stolen and knocked-off purses, tennis shoes, jackets. Largely about one character slowly learning to be a slightly better father.
Take Out (Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker, 2004): 3/5
Baker shows his Dardenne Brothers origins, here following a new-immigrant Chinese food delivery guy trying to raise $800 in a day to pay off a debt. Ends up a portrait of the whole NYC Chinatown restaurant, and if you count the 30 or so delivery customers, of a whole community. Dramatically a bit static and repetitive, but very authentic.
Hi-Fi, 6m (Sean Baker, 2001): 3/5
A bunch of kids drive into NYC to … score heroin. Spoiler, but it’s this unexpected heaviness that makes the short special.
The Wonders (Alice Rohrwacher, 2014): 2.5/5
A family of Etruscan beekeepers try to hold their lives together. Although the swerves of whimsy and surrealism are not present here (as they are in La Chimera and Happy as Lazaro), the characters, narrative, and meaning are similarly elusive and drifty. What are these characters feeling and what am I supposed to feel about them? It’s a beautiful mystery.
The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz, 1941): 3.5/5
Edward G. Robinson is the mad Ahab-without-a-cause, and John Garfield and Ida Lupino two star-crossed lovers. But what persists is Curtiz’s realistic boat sets and his swaying and leaning mise-en-scene, making the viewer feel truly at sea. The final sequence, involving a very realistic sinking ship and a harrowing drowning, is aces. From a Jack London novel but very Conrad in its moral quagmire, shaded characters, and debate.
Rifkin’s Festival (Woody Allen, 2020): 2.5/5
They say that so much of comedy is simply rhythm, and the pleasures of strong story beats and the rhythm of comic lines persist in these later Allen works—even when the relatable fireworks of insight are missing. Someone should point out how Allen keeps writing stories about beautiful women falling in love with his old, ugly ,and nebbish avatars.
Two-Lane Blacktop, rw (Monte Hellman, 1971): 4/5
A mysterious serenity and placidity reigns over this always-compelling story of a group of people dedicated to moving from blank space to blank space. Warren Oates is still haunted by desire and backstory, but James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are simply moving forward, wanting nothing. Casting Beach Boy Denis Wilson ties this brilliantly to an Endless Summer, sans sunset, waves, and satisfaction.
Rap World (Danny Scharar, Conner O’Malley): 3/5
Three white rappers in Nowhere, Pennsylvania, struggle to record an album. Ultra-low budget, shot on crap video, but funny. Seemed to be a bolt out of the outsider midwestern blue, but I discovered afterwards that O’Malley was once a writer on Conan.
Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999): 3/5
The hardscrabble life of a poor, sensitive 10-year-old: Glasgow edition. For me, the yardstick for this particular story is Maurice Pialet’s cruel and bracing L’Enfance Nue or Loach’s emotional Kes. (Not to mention 400 Blows and Shoeshine). But this is kinder, feeling more like a less abstract Terence Davies.
The Killers, rw (Don Siegel, 1964): 4.5/5
Ostensively a remake of the 40s classic, this feels much more like the itchy little brother of Point Blank—with its bright colors, sudden blasts of violence, and dead-man-walking nihilism. The storytelling is a 93-minute model of efficiency, and Lee Marvin, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson are excellent. Ronald Reagan plays a cardboard-faced heavy, Clu Culager is a perfectly sadistic sidekick, and even Seymour Cassel shows up briefly (he and Cassavetes had already worked together on Shadows and Too Late Blues.)
Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980): 3.5/5
Extreme cinema, filled with scenes that crackle with unpredictable negative energy, where any horror could occur next and often does. Some of the best very, very drunk scenes in film history, a genuinely odd (perhaps vaguely autistic) performance from Linda Manz, and one of the grimmest last 15 minutes I’ve seen. Audacious and horrendous.
Jaws, rw (Steven Spielberg, 1975): 5/5
Loveable not for sleek depiction of action (it’s not sleek) but for its furriness. I have read that Spielberg served as an uncredited production assistant on Cassavetes’ Faces in 1968, and Jaws does have a recognizable looseness, informality, and privileging of character over event. Come for the shocks and stay for the hang-out vibes.
Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964): 3.5/5
A measured and heartfelt look at a man trying to get along in a time when white people could just insult him (‘boy’ is especially weaponized), degrade him, and fuck with him at every moment. Everything is beautifully underplayed. After watching Abbey Lincoln sing like a powerful goddess in Soundtrack to a Coup d’état, it’s surprising how timid her acting is here.
