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Gotta be honest, I’m disappointed. 2023 was a very strong film year, and I had trouble coming up with a top ten because there were so many I loved. For 2024, I’ve had the opposite problem. These were my favorite ten, but even some of these are ones I will quickly forget and not return to. Here goes.
10. Nosferatu
This one had all of us cinephiles wrapped around its creepy rotting finger since the moment we heard about it. It may not have a ton to add to the mythology, but the creepy tone, expressionist visuals, and Bill Skarsgård as Count Orlok all gave us exactly what was promised, if not much more. For film fans there are plenty of references to both Murnau and Herzog’s adaptations of the story. Amazing performances from Willem Dafoe and Simon McBurney round out a solid addition to Robert Eggers’ oeuvre.
9. Anora
In my opinion, Anora isn’t really the panegyric on sex workers that it wants to be. However, where it does succeed is in creating a strong, dynamic character, and putting her through hell so that she can come out the other side wondering where she’s been all along. The “descent into the underworld” with her new husband’s goon squad is by far the best part of the film – tense, funny, labyrinthine and always keeping the audience guessing. And the lead performance is garnering praise with good reason – Mikey Madison is wonderful as the title character.
8. The Brutalist
The era of the neo-epic continues! Brady Corbet has come a long way from his first feature, Childhood of a Leader (still his best, in my humble opinion), and commands big stars, big ideas, and big big buildings in his new 214 minute opus. As in his other films, Corbet does an excellent job of keeping a constant sense of doom hanging over the story, leading us along with Adrien Brody’s Laszlo Toth to question everyone and everything. At heart, it’s a story about making a movie, and when we realize the true lengths that Toth has gone through to make his masterpiece, it’s a glimpse into the mind of an artist fighting to make his own.
7. Seed of the Sacred Fig
While a film should be able to stand on its own without extratextual context, it’s hard for Seed of the Sacred Fig to escape its production story – the clandestine filming, director Mohammad Rasoulof’s flight from Iran on foot, the footage smuggled out of Iran to finish the edit, and the actors who were banned from leaving the country. Cinema made under political duress is always fascinating, and this film is as bold a statement on Iran’s current political climate as I’ve seen to come out of the country. At face value it’s a searing criticism of the regime, the hypocrisy of Iranian leadership, and the rampant human rights violations. But more than that, Rasoulof goes deeper to examine the interior struggle of those caught up in the political and religious fervor. He’s bold enough not only to stand up against his enemies, but to honestly explore and express their perspective, to give them a clear voice, and help those of us on the outside understand how regular people can become monsters for a cause they believe in.
6. Kinds of Kindness
Transgressive Yorgos is back, and I’m here for it. Kinds of Kindness is a bizarre, disturbing triptych where each story draws you into a surreal, upsetting world only to spit you unceremoniously into the next one. Each new segment sets up its own rules and confusing morality, leaving us off-kilter over who’s good and bad, what’s wrong and right. How should you feel about a boss who treats you like a loving father when you obey his outlandish directions? Are cult members justified in heinous actions if they really do know the secret of a utopian future? If your spouse suddenly might be an imposter, how far do you push the imposter to confess? As one would hope, there are no clear answers and no real good-guys in the film. And every character is played wonderfully by a rotating cast taking multiple roles. Delightfully miserable, Kinds of Kindness is Yorgos Lanthimos doing what he does best.
5. The Substance
Speaking of transgressive cinema, The Substance exploded onto the scene this year as the most take-no-prisoners film in a long time. It’s divisive for sure, but love it or hate it, people will never stop talking about this film. That it’s able to go from Cronenbergian grotesquerie to Monty Python level silliness and not fall apart is astounding. But it all works together. It’s able to be both grounded and surreal, emotionally dark and very funny. Demi Moore goes sympathetic when she’s meant to and batshit crazy when she should, which show both a phenomenal range as an actor, and the hand of a confident director. And that ending – boy that ending – there’s nothing to compare it to.
4. A Different Man
In a sort of re-telling of Dostoevsky’s The Double, A Different Man has a salient message about disability. But it can also be interpreted in a broader sense about how we view ourselves. Often the things we see as glaring faults in ourselves are not perceived with the same negativity by those around us. When Sebastian Stan’s Edward thinks that he has changed himself for the better he is forced to come face to face with an actual better version of his former self, flaws and all. The script, the direction, and the performances all work wonderfully in tandem to tell a sobering story about how changing your outside doesn’t change what’s inside.
3. A Real Pain
Whenever an actor chooses to step behind the camera as director (and writer!) I proceed with caution. So it was a pleasant surprise to find that Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is thoughtful and effecting with strong, complex characters. The story comes secondary to the character study, but its simplicity keeps from drawing focus to the tension between the two leads. Still, as strong as the characters are built on the page, a film like this could easily fall apart without the stellar performances that both Culkin and Eisenberg give. And in a film that could have easily slid into saccharine feel-good territory, it refuses to leave easy answers, keeping us at arm’s length, just as Benji keeps everyone in his life.
2. Hundreds of Beavers
Hundreds of Beavers is a pure joy to watch. It’s so rare to find unadulterated madcap comedy these days, and this is a film that can run with the best of them. Part Chuck Jones, part Guy Maddin, and part video game, it’s packed with well-earned laughs and inventive storytelling. The lead character goes through an unbelievably zany journey, and watching him learn, adapt, fail colossally (and painfully) then restart the cycle is delightful. The costumes, the gags and the story progression are impressively creative, on a level that you can appreciate apart from the humor. It’s difficult to describe, because there’s nothing quite like it. It’s probably the movie I enjoyed the most this year, and the only reason I don’t put it at number one is because there’s not a lot of emotional or intellectual depth to it. But then again, maybe we need more of that kind of enjoyment these days.
1. Challengers
Challengers was one of the most visceral movie experiences of 2024. The love triangle (and even the tennis love triangle!) isn’t new, but we’ve never really seen it this way before. The connection between athletic competition and sexual competition is dialed up to 11 in every scene. Tennis is a great metaphor for any head-to-head conflict and I’m unaware if Luca Guadagnino plays the sport, but he certainly knows how to film it. Not only do the tournament scenes carry the grit and intensity of high level sport, the level of play looks believable, something often lacking when actors play athletes. The performances are great, the music is propulsive and exciting, and the story is as nail-biting as a tiebreaker at Wimbledon. Can you love a game enough to lose the human connection to the people involved? Zendaya’s enigmatic Tashi will keep audiences asking for years what’s really going on behind those sunglasses.
The post Josh’s Top Ten of 2024 first appeared on Battleship Pretension.
The post Josh’s Top Ten of 2024 appeared first on Battleship Pretension.
