in Top Ten

2024 was a year where I really wanted to have some transcendent moments at the movies and unfortunately, I didn’t quite get what I wanted, but at the very least got what I needed. I probably went to the theater about as much as I have since the pandemic, as I probably watched about 5 of the 30+ movies I saw last year on streaming. Which is a very silly thing to congratulate myself for, but sometimes you just gotta get out there and rip yourself away from the other screens in your life. Even if you’re seeing a director’s less-remembered 2024 film like Luco Guadignino’s Queer or slightly disappointing holiday fare like Nosferatu or Babygirl. Really my only regret is that I basically saw no foreign films, but that’s always a problem that can be rectified by Criterion Month.

Anyway, my list is more for the thoughtful misfits than the freaks and perverts, but as was apparent in 2024 cinema, they’re certainly welcome.

Honorable Mentions:
Janet Planet
Dídi
Late Night With The Devil
Hit Man

10. Conclave

I was pretty skeptical about Conclave, considering I don’t have a terribly personal relationship with the Catholic church other than general discomfort. However, I got pretty sucked into the intrigue and politics of electing a new pope against the backdrop of the church’s conflicted desire to either change with the times or double down on the past. It’s a movie that certainly reeks of Oscar prestige, but I thought the twists and turns and highly flawed personalities that populate this conclave gave it just enough bite to stand out from being empty prestige. Also, it’s just the kind of mainstream entertainment for adults that doesn’t really get made anymore, and we could all use a little more of that.

9. Good One

There were quite a few notable directorial debuts last year, and Good One might have been the most pleasant surprise, perhaps because it snuck into theaters and left with such a low profile. Which feels about right for this movie. This is a very quiet, contemplative film that sees a teenage girl (played effortlessly by Lily Collias) accompanying her dad and his oversharing friend on a camping trip through the Catskills mountains, and director India Donaldson does a great job of observing a lot about human nature without beating you over the head with it. Good One felt a lot to me like a Kelly Reicherdt movie, but a little funnier and with a surprising ending about the fact that a woman in the company of men is always a hard thing to be.

8. My Old Ass

So let’s move a few hundred miles northwest from the scenic Catskills to the even more scenic landscape of the lakes and forests of Ontario. My Old Ass was another movie that I was a little skeptical of, just due to its smartass title and gimmicky plot, but I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of wisdom and heartfeltness the movie embraced. I was reminded a lot of the films of Penny Marshall (and in particular Big) and the ways those films had this lightly sincere touch that never quite devolved into schmaltz.

Aubrey Plaza undoubtedly had a rough year in 2024 but showed once again that she’s become one of our most reliable character actresses, while newcomer Maisy Stella does a great job of embodying the mix of confidence and uncertainty that one feels while on the verge of adulthood. Also, along with last year’s All of Us Strangers, it shows that you can do a lot more things emotionally with a time travel-esque plot than inserting them into an action movie that barely makes any practical sense.

7. I Saw The TV Glow

I often talk about albums that are “growers” — music that takes a few listens to grow on you before you begin to see its nuanced charms. I Saw The TV Glow, despite the fact that I only saw it once, feels a bit like the movie equivalent of this. When I saw it, I definitely enjoyed it, but some of its stranger qualities left me a little unsure of where exactly I came down on it. But as time went on, I felt more and more haunted by the insular nature of Jane Schoenberg’s sophomore feature.

All of the strangeness somehow fit neatly into this story about the deep personal connection we feel with pop culture when we’re younger, and how that bond can grow even deeper when you find someone else who also feels that connection. I also can’t comment too much on the trans allegories present in the film, but it’s fun that along with The People’s Joker we’re getting these types of under-explored stories on the indie circuit, even if it sounds like Emelia Perez isn’t remotely as good as its awards nominations would have you believe.

6. The Brutalist

What is there to say about a film like The Brutalist that has so much to say? It’s the type of film we don’t get too much of, considering most of our epics are just blockbusters that could have probably been 2 hours instead of 3, while an epic with this many ideas about the American psyche has been sorely lacking. Well, except maybe in Killers of the Flower Moon last year.

Seeing this movie the same week as the presidential inauguration and the flurry of anti-immigrant pardons that followed gave the film an extra resonance for me, particularly the “they hate us here” scene toward the end. Adrian Brody once again shows that he’s the right man to play a tortured artist ravaged by the effects of the Holocaust, while Guy Pearce keeps proving that maybe we made a mistake by giving him the first-ever Mildly Pleased Lifetime Achievement Award. Also, as one of the few people who saw Vox Lux, I’m glad Brady Corbett found a story suitable to his ambitions and I also find it funny that he seemed determined to not let an actor’s terrible accent ruin his film again, even if he had to use AI to achieve it.

5. Anora

This movie is just a load of chaotic fun. Mikey Madison is great as this character that often acts like this potent hybrid of a girlboss and a feral animal, and the movie’s frenetic energy would be nothing without her. I also really fell for the movie’s blundering goons that try to kidnap her, especially because they seemed less harmless than your average movie criminal, which helped give this nice aura of comedic absurdity despite taking place in a very seedy New York underworld. Also, there weren’t a lot of pleasant surprises in the Oscar acting nominations today, but I’ll take Yura Borisov getting one, since I feel like it’s hard to make much of an impression while playing the soft, silent type.

4. Hard Truths

Speaking of Oscar acting nominations, I know it’s a lost cause talking about snubs that happened for movies not a lot of people have seen, but I feel pretty confident in saying Marianne Jean-Baptiste gave the best performance of last year. The actress reunites with director Mike Leigh who collaborated with her on perhaps her most famous role, in 1996’s Secrets & Lies, and this film shows that they both still got it. Leigh, somehow at age 81 is about as adept as anyone at depicting the working class, while Jean-Baptiste somehow manages to show the full range of a truly difficult person, and how her cantankerousness affects all of the otherwise kind people in her life.

The movie starts out being hysterically funny, as Pansy seems intent on insulting and picking inane fights with everyone she comes across, like a more hostile Larry David. But then as the movie progresses, you see there’s a deep sadness behind her prickly exterior, and the film does a marvelous job of insinuating why Pansy ended up this way, but also never makes the mistake of trying to explain what makes a person end up being so toxic.

3. Challengers

Well, this is just the kind of entertainment you wanna see when you go to the movies – fast-paced, propulsive, whip-smart, and very sexy. There’s a lot to enjoy here, from the performances to the score to the airtight script to the gayest depiction of a (mostly) heterosexual love triangle you’ll ever see. Does it go a little overboard at times with its incessantly kinetic style? Maybe. But by the time you get to the exhausting final round of that tennis match, it’s hard not to have a big smile on your face as you marvel at the energy put into making this thing pop like a million yellow tennis balls being smacked back and forth.

2. Nickel Boys

I did not know much about Nickel Boys going into it, other than that it was adapted from a Colson Whitehead novel, but maybe that’s the best way to approach it. The first thing that’ll strike you about the film is its commitment to its completely first-person camerawork, a device that has certainly been used before but perhaps never with the emotional heft that the camera communicates here.

While the camera’s perspective does open up a little more as the story goes on, it always feels like this incredibly intimate depiction of a young boy caught in the gears of circumstance and racism, but still managing to find human connection along the way. Considering we’re so inundated with a camera’s perspective on a daily basis, it’s hard to feel like anything new can be done with a movie camera, but Nickel Boys managed to make me feel like there’s always a new way to tell a story as long as you’re willing to experiment a little, but also while not losing sight of your characters.

1. A Real Pain

A Real Pain is far from the most ambitious or technically accomplished film on my list, but in a way, that’s what charmed me about it. It’s such an unassuming little film, about the very simple premise of two cousins vacationing in Poland, as a way of paying respect to their shared grandmother who fled the country to escape the Holocaust. Yet in its small scope and conversational nature, the movie gets at a lot of the profundities about history and lifestyle and generational differences that make life full of questions but not an easy answers.

But in addition to all that, I think my usual criteria for my favorite film of the year is whether it’s the movie I feel most compelled to watch again. Because even though the film does get at some uncomfortable truths, it was also weirdly comforting spending time with these characters as they sorted out both their own shit as well as the shit they have with each other. It was easy for me to see a lot of my friends and family in Benji (Kieran Culkin) and David (Jesse Eisenberg), and yet they’re also such specific characters that you can only imagine that two actors as specific as Culkin and Eisenberg could make them feel so lived in. And then there’s that ending, which leaves you uncertain of what’s going to happen to these guys after the credits roll, but also happy you got to spend some precious time with them while the trip lasted.