THE UNDISPUTED TOP 10 MOVIES OF 2024 (That I've seen)
People of the scattering and dwindling internet! This is my indisputable and immutable list of the top ten movies of 2024 that I have seen. Note to future historians for context: I watched most of these movies during the dying days of the sclerotic American republic.
1. La Chimera
Dreamlike (or maybe just “dream”) movie that owes something to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s never clear what's meant to be real as a riveting Josh O'Connor, rail thin, grubby with haunted eyes, begins the film asleep in an Italian train car dreaming of his lost love. We eventually learn he is able to find buried Etruscan art that seems to be under every trash strewn field in Italy, either due to a sympathetic connection to the artifacts or maybe just great dowsing techniques. He might have once been some kind of collector for museums, but usually he teams with a troupe of Fellini-esque criminals who sells them to mysterious buyers for short cash. Until he doesn't. Everyone seems to live in crumbling old villas, caves, and shacks, including an appropriately untethered Isabella Rosellini. You won't see another movie like this.
2. Nickel Boys
Moving, lyrical and imaginative film shot from the point of view of its two black teenage protagonists, with frequent diversions in time (we see the one of the kids from behind in his adult life) and literally space (in this case newsreel footage of the Apollo 8 mission.) The world is built from the details of what the characters see with their own eyes.. We learn the discriminatory environment of that world from their point of view: Like in an early scene the camera is the eyes of one of the kids as he watches the streets go by his bus window and two black teens walk into the street to get out of the way of a white woman walking the other way. The two become friends while incarcerated in a Florida "reform" school, one kid just trying to get through without making trouble, and the other, inspired by the contemporaneous progress of the 60's civil rights movement, thinking that if he can just communicate the moral outrage of the school to the outside world, he can fix the system. The denouement is not exactly a surprise, but it does add a level of meaning to what we've already seen.
3. Brutalist
Adrien Brody brings his unique frame, face, and intensity to this indictment of the American dream, it's so-called "welcoming" of immigrants, and the dependence of all large-scale artistic endeavors on sociopathic wealth. But still, the movie can also be read as a paean to the triumph of the work over all of it. The cinematography is sweepingly grand and Guy Pearce is phenomenal in the role of the acquisitive, amoral patron. All praise also to the intermission on this 3+ hour movie. See it projected in 70mm if you can.
4. Evil Does Not Exist
Even though evil doesn't exist, the outcomes are the same and all the more tragic because of it. I've seen three of the director’s movies so far and each one is a strange, slow, empathetic masterpiece. In each, he really makes you feel strongly for his characters and their mostly innocous lives.
5. Civil War
A documentary 2 years (or less) in advance. Intense, bleak movie imagining war correspondents coming home to cover the US's own collapse while on a back-roads drive from New York City to DC. Turns out, we ain’t so different. Jesse Plemmons' character is a pretty good avatar for the terror of present day MAGA-America
6. The Beast
A one-of-a-kind sci-fi spanning from 100 years in the past to 20 years into the future, using a star-crossed couple whose multiple entanglements in past and future lives explore romance, toxic masculinity and the emptiness of the modern age, and an AI future we're heading towards with humanity utterly devalued. Who is the titular Beast? What is the scream? Lea Seydoux gives an incredible performance, even (especially) when she's reacting to nothing but a green screen.
7. I Saw the TV Glow
A lot going on in this movie, is it an indictment or a love-letter to Buffy-type fandom and its in-group signaling? A sympathetic portrait of someone who's trapped in a repressive household in a small town who's literally dying to transition? A movie about kids getting into a really cool and lynchian YA tv show within the movie, which turns out to be not as cool as remembered when watched as an adult? Yes.
8. Nosferatu
Eggers does the scariest fucking movies when he wants. Imagine Coppola's Dracula, except with strong performances from all the actors involved this time, no punches pulled and dracula as a physically intimidating zombie with a badass mustache.
9. Perfect Days
I've missed Wim Wenders humanistic work, like an art-film Jonathan Demme. Wenders manages to make a man who has decided to cut himself off from his friends and family look romantic: It’s Paris TX except the Harry Dean Stanton character is a guy who cleans the architecturally marvelous bathrooms of Tokyo and is played by great Japanese actor Koji Yakusho (Cure) who listens to Velvet Underground and Nina Simone on his van's cassette player.
10a. A Complete Unknown
Well, hell. Chalamee is believable, even if he's no Cate Blanchette. A lot more of everbody's lefty grandfather Pete Seeger (in a good way) than I was expecting, loved Ed Norton in the role. The best parts were the Joan Baez/Dylan sparring. Turns out, when you make a competent movie based on all those good songs and interesting people, it’s fun to watch, even if the story isn't exactly new.
10b. Substance
Is it way over the top and unsubtle? Yes. Is it also shocking and disturbing? Yes. Is Dennis Quaid appropriately cast as an exceedingly slimy TV executive? Yes.
Hounourable Mentions:
Limbo: Australian desert noir where the main white detective re-investigates a long dead indigenous murder where (surprise) white cops had no interest in finding the killer at the time. It's filmed in black and white and set amid the very weird landscapes and opal mines of Coober Pedy.
Anora: The fairytale-turned-sour story is pretty rote, but the actors are all great, especially the lead and the "Russian" henchmen, and the energy of the film is undeniable.