2024 was a strange year for me, and it seems I responded to it by seeing an ungodly number of movies. In order to make this list I had to make a lot of heartbreaking cuts. It started getting painful around 39, but film criticism is not for the weak! I got it down to ten, goddamnit, and these are my favorites.
And if you want to listen to this list, as well as Stephen’s and Megan’s lists, head on over to I Like to Movie Movie
Caveat: Strange Darling and Red Rooms were on last year’s list, hence their absence here.
10. Love Lies Bleeding (dir. Rose Glass)
This edgy, glistening-with-sweat thriller plays as if someone put a hard-boiled pulp fiction novel and a horned-up erotic paperback into a blender (along with a few dismembered body parts) and filmed the results. Ed Harris and Mike “Dave Franco” Pancake turn up the sleaze while Kristen Stewart continues being one of the best and most thoroughly believable actors on the planet. The real star, however, is Katy O’Brian, who commands every inch of the screen. Her Jackie is simultaneously lovable, pitiable, and condemnable … and impossible to look away from.
9. The Brutalist (dir. Brady Corbet)
Gorgeous to look at and featuring no fewer than five all-time great performances, The Brutalist is the type of grand American epic that we don’t see so often these days. But holy shit was it worth the wait. May the future bring us more movies with a built-in intermission. Actor-turned-filmmaker Brady Corbet put every dollar of a relatively meager budget on screen, and in doing so likely landed Guy Pearce an Oscar (and Adrien Brody another Oscar). At a time when A.I. threatens to put the artist out of work entirely, this sprawling fable of art vs. commerce feels uncomfortably relevant.
8. Sasquatch Sunset (dir. Nathan Zellner, David Zellner)
As a fan of crass humor and cryptozoology, the latest melancholic comedy from the Zellner brothers feels like it was made just for me. But don’t let all the shit-flinging and full frontal Sasquatch nudity fool you, this aggressively silly film is also a powerful and effective commentary on man’s relationship with nature — his seeming inability to forgo expansion and accept symbiosis. It also features Riley Keough in what is, for my money, the most impressive feat of acting all year. Should she and her family seek out others, or will visibility be their end? It seems Bigfoot is struggling to adapt to a connected world just like the rest of us. Do yourself a favor and listen to the soundtrack. Keough recorded a beautiful tune both in English and in Sasquatchian (that’s what I choose to call the language of our fuzzy neighbors).
7. Rap World (dir. Conner O’Malley, Danny Scharar)
If I weren’t already familiar with O’Malley’s chaotic comedy stylings, I would think that this, a faux-guerilla amateur documentary about a rap group settling down to record their first album, was 100% real. That isn’t to say that any of the madness which follows is believable, just that it’s captured with a verisimilitude that thoroughly sells the bit. As chaotic and slapdash as it seems, once you connect with O’Malley and gang’s strange sense of humor, it becomes clear how many big choices are being made even in the most inane details. By the time this slice of calamity reaches its final moments I was struggling to breathe. Truly one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and it taps into a flavor of nostalgia I’ve never seen before. I’ve met these guys. In many ways, I was these guys. ::shudder::
6. Anora (dir. Sean Baker)
Baker has a talent for taking a very specific story and somehow making it about EVERYTHING. Anora is about wealth disparity, the attitudes borne of different financial circumstances, bodily autonomy, and the fact that when you’re 23, you’re really fucking stupid, yet the choices you make will stay with you forever (unless, of course, you have a fuckton of money — which will bail you out while inevitably bringing problems of its own). It’s a thrilling picture, both hilarious and touching, and it leads to a final scene that belongs up there with cinema’s great moments™️. It’s impossible to predict any of the film’s harebrained plot developments, but every breathless beat feels organic and earned. Mikey Madison is a powerhouse. The craft, too, is brilliant. A simple lens flare becomes high art. Eat your heart out J.J. Abrams.
5. Chime (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
A perfect capper to the unofficial trilogy consisting of this, Cure, and Pulse. Kurosawa once again explores the isolation that comes with connectivity, and the separation between our hardware (flesh) and software (personality). Chime isn’t a film to be understood or solved, and it’s certainly not one that follows a conventional structure. Nope, this one is all vibes, and they’re the type of vibes that will leave you spiraling and sweating when you’re supposed to be sleeping. The very fabric of this film feels cursed. It conjured in me thoughts of a recurring nightmare in which I am innocently involved in something terrible and end up spending the rest of my life in prison as a result. This dream induces a deep-seated primal fear. Namely, what happens when our hardware behaves in a way our software could never imagine?
Take 45 minutes out of your day and ruin the rest of it. Chime, to put it simply, will fuck you up beyond belief.
4. In A Violent Nature (dir. Chris Nash)
The campground slasher is not a genre bubbling over with innovation, but with a simple twist of perspective, writer/director Chris Nash has not just paid homage to the form, but updated it in a big way. The upside and downside of long-running slasher franchises is actually the same thing: the hulking, masked killer becomes the protagonist. And while it’s fun to root for Jason Voorhees as he smashes the skulls of horny teens, he hasn’t been a scary presence since Friday the 13th Part II. With In A Violent Nature we get the best of both worlds. For the first two acts we smile as “Johnny” turns violent murder into high art, but by the end we’re terrified of him. I don’t remember the last time I clenched this hard during a slasher flick. I also don’t remember a slasher movie ever reaching Malick levels of patient artistry. The sound design is … to die for.
One kill, set in one of the most striking vistas ever depicted in the genre, is so gruesomely creative that the theater burst into applause … applause that stopped quite suddenly as the kill itself kept going and going and going, ultimately reaching a level of sublime brutality that would put any other masked killer to shame.
3. Cuckoo (dir. Tilman Singer)
First with Luz and now with Cuckoo, Tilman Singer has proven himself the master of building huge mythologies without ever stopping to provide exposition. Don’t worry, everything you need to know is there, but his are not films to passively consume. If you’re willing to do the work, you’ll find that Cuckoo is not only satisfying as a genre exercise, but also as a study of family dynamics. Sure, we humans think we have it all figured out, but are we really all that different from animals? Hunter Schafer stuns as a young woman whose family is pulling away from her, but who won’t indulge her desire to pull away as well. It’s a film of nature vs. nurture, of biological family vs. chosen family, of a teenage girl vs. Dan Stevens in unhinged secretive German mode.
Singer shot this on film, and it’s a choice that pays off in droves. The lack of a crisp digital sheen lends itself to a more classic feel, suggesting a time and place when patience is key, and immediate results are a myth. When working with actual film, there is less room for error. The same goes for working with animals…
If humanity is as wonderful as I wish it to be, some intrepid drag queen is currently working on a performance piece involving a sexified version of “Mother.”
2. Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Is there anything on this planet better than movies about sexy people being dicks to one another because it makes them horny? I say no.
I almost skipped the original press screening of Challengers on account of exhaustion and the fact that the trailers made this movie look like ass. Alas, I found the strength to attend, and boy howdy am I glad I did. From moment one, this high-energy, salacious, and quite funny thriller grabbed me by the (tennis) balls and wouldn’t let go. From the killer score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, to the simmering performances from the three objectively hot leads, to the cinematic blueballs of the film’s final, insanely charged moments, to watch Challengers is to watch a master (Guadagnino) have the most fun taking his audience for a ride. It’s pure entertainment, but it’s not empty provocation. There’s a wealth of thematic material covering gender dynamics, codependency, obsession, control, sexuality and, well, tennis.
Come to watch a deliciously cruel Zendaya toy with two lustful and competitive boys. Stay for a chance to BECOME A TENNIS BALL.
IYKYK
Three cheers for Darnell Appling who steals the film as a no-nonsense umpire who keeps his cool despite presiding over a bunch of horny children. Not bad for an actor who started as Zendaya’s assistant.
And three more cheers for churros. We love churros.
1. The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)
If I were to describe to you the final act of The Substance, you’d surely think “Dan is making shit up just to be goofy again,” and I certainly wouldn’t blame you for it. But the spoiler-avoidant needn’t worry. I would never let myself be responsible for spoiling just how hard and far this masterpiece of body horror and satire ultimately goes. It’s an angry, raw movie, but writer/director Coralie Fargeat makes every moment so entertaining that for all its urgent thematic concerns, it never stops being fun.
Some areas are obvious: it’s not news that Hollywood (and society in general) tends to turn its back on women of a certain age, as they are no longer so easy to commoditize as a younger, tighter, fresher face. Yet Fargeat doesn’t stop there. Her utterly brilliant script excoriates the patriarchal forces in our entertainment ecosystem, while also sticking it in the ears of those who uphold the system despite being damaged by it. She take shots at “quick-fix” culture, at “pretty privilege,” at how easily we can lie to others and to ourselves when we want something — plus about a million other deserving targets.
Fargeat is operating on a level like no one else on the planet, and it’s remarkable how tightly conceived and executed her sophomore feature has proven to be. Not a single moment is wasted, owing largely to a setting that exists in a sort of shorthand. Yet for all the inherent oddness (really, an exercise show is the biggest thing on TV?), this alternate world is the perfect funhouse mirror reflection of our own.
Casting Demi Moore (who has certainly faced the limitations placed on older women in Hollywood head on) and Margaret Qualley (who, for all her undeniable talent, is factually a nepo-baby), could be considered stunt-casting, if not for the deeply satisfying and knowing way their familiar stories are integrated into the flesh of the film. Moore should win Best Actress at the Oscars (and she should be made to share the award with Qualley in seven day intervals). Scratch that: The Substance should sweep the Oscars in every category. It won’t, Wicked will, but it should.
In a lot of ways I’d say Fargeat is the heir apparent to Carpenter, but that would be a disservice to Fargeat’s singular voice. And if I’m being really honest, The Substance is more cinematically accomplished than much of Carpenter’s filmography (I say this with nothing but unyielding respect and reverence for the master).
I must hang my head in shame for a second, however. It wasn’t until my third viewing that the double entendre of the title became clear to me. Who knows what my next viewing will bring? I suspect I will be discovering new things about it in perpetuity.
I have already pre-ordered the blu-ray.
Honorable mencheees:
The Apprentice, A Real Pain, Ghostlight, Civil War, Hundreds of Beavers, Rebel Ridge, www.RachelOrmont.com, Aggro Drift, It’s What’s Inside, Furiosa: A Mad Max Story
