My Favorite Movies of 2024, version 1.0

Usual caveat applies. I haven’t seen all the interesting movies from this year as often movies do take time to find their way here, so I will make another list at some point.

For context, movies I haven’t seen, but I am planning to when possible, include: The Life of Chuck, Rukku Bakku (Look Back), Magpie, Oddity, Snack Shack, My Old Ass, A Real Pain, I Saw the TV Glow and Nosferatu. I thought this list would have been longer, but apparently a lot of the movies I’ve added to my watchlist this year were actually released in 2023.

Is it just me or was this a good year for movies? Sure, there were embarrassing mistakes, such as Borderlands, Damsel and Madame Web (from the ones I’ve seen), but it just feels like last year I kind of had to dig for the last couple of movies to get to 10, but this year the problem was the opposite: I needed to cut quite a few movies I would have liked to see on the list, but 10 is 10. So, here we are.

The ordering here is that I have two tiers: the absolute top of three and the other seven.

So, the top tier:

Challengers

This was marketed as something salacious, but it isn’t exactly that. Sort of yes, if you pay attention. This is an interesting queer story, but I also find it interesting that one of the characters is continuously frustrated, but not for the reasons we immediately assume. Its just a gorgeous movie that holds your attention and maintains tension in the most unusual way.

The Substance

If I was forced to choose at gunpoint, I would say this is my favorite movie of the year. This movie just doesn’t hold back. “Want male-gaze? Here’s some male-gaze!” But it’s uncomfortable male-gaze and that’s the point. I love it when big stars are willing to put themselves on the line in this way. And then when it pays off? This isn’t a project about upholding Demi Moore’s ego. For her, this might have been about letting go of her brand as the hot one. I don’t know, this is just my speculation.

Kneecap

The story of an Irish rap group as written and played by the same group. I don’t know how much of this is true (although the marketing claims that it is mostly true), but much of it is very believable considering that we are talking about Ireland and the continuing unstability of the country. I would assume much of what went down has been at the very least condensed as the group finds popularity quite fast in the movie. While the narrator posits early on that it is not your standard Irish movie, it does still seem to deal with the trauma of the Troubles and its aftermath. Still, the movie is fun and funny. The band’s music is not something I would put on regularly, but it works and there is a certain appeal to them finding an audience by rapping in Irish while authorities on both sides are against them.

… and the rest.

Anora

As far as I know, Sean Baker still hasn’t made a bad film. This might not be my favorite (that would probably be Florida Project), but it is probably just below that. As his previous work, there are strong themes of class and the circumstances sex workers are in. It is a rollercoaster of emotions where you know things are going to go wrong, but you are still attached to the characters enough to wish them well. At least certain characters.

Longlegs

Oz Perkins has a hit movie? Who would have thought? I mean, I love his work and style, but it isn’t exactly the kind that generally finds audiences. This has almost twice as many ratings on IMDb than his other three movies combined. I do hope the people who found him through this movie go back and watch his previous work, especially February, which has the same kind of unknowable supernatural threat.

Blink Twice

With all the P Diddy allegations, this is suddenly more topical than it ever planned to be. It is high-concept, which allows it to meditate on power in an unusual way and Kravitz is able to make points which seem to interest people as my article on this movie is still finding readers.

Monkey Man

Another great debut from an actor (and I forgot this one when making my article on the topic of actors turning into directors making good movies). Based on Indian myths and trying to bring the troubles the working poor and other minorities are facing with the systematic corruption of the corporate fascism they live in to the fore. It is also just a brutal action flick that can’t compete with the superhero movies, so they had to find the draw somewhere else and that’s the extremely physicality of the fights, which is something the huge mess of CG just can’t do.

Love Lies Bleeding

When I heard Rose Glass of St. Maud fame had made a movie with Kirsten Stewart, the Snow White herself, I was intrigued. And I’m kidding there. I definitely appreciate Stewart’s approach to her work. She could be trying to find new big franchise movies for the big bucks, but instead she is choosing to make little queer films. I mean, she’ll be in a Panos Costamos movie soon. Who saw that coming?

A Different Man

We have an actor with neurofibromatosis, who hears of a possible cure and it works, but after meeting another man with the same disease, he finds that maybe it wasn’t the disease that was keeping him back after all. After hearing what this is about, I was expecting a very different movie, but the structure is actually such that the cure only works around halfway point of the movie, so we spend a lot of time with the main character before that to learn about his life. This was also both much darker and comedic than I was expecting.

Crossing

This is a second movie about Georgia made by a Swedish production in conjunction with the French I’ve seen. The first one was called And Then We Danced which is about a gay dancer in a very homophobic society. This has also LGBTQ+ themes as this is about a retired teacher, who travels to Istanbul to find her missing transniece. He has a young Georgian man to help her. We also follow a transwoman who has just graduated from law school and a couple street children at various points. In some ways this is kind of a messy movie, but it is also just real enough to work and it is definitely a good movie.

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