I tend to have a very low opinion of myself.

It’s something I’m working on, and I’m making progress, but it’s part of my personality.

I also believe my taste to be mine and no one else’s, or, put another way, I have a healthy perspective on the possibility what I like is not what other people like and is maybe not – for the aficionados or the hoi polloi – considered “good.”

So, given my low opinion of myself and my self-awareness on my likes and dislikes, I’m generally hesitant to recommend music, fashion, food, interior design, television shows, books, podcasts, paintings, sculptures, furniture, pets, alcohol, cleaning agents, auto parts, [redacted because my grandma reads this], places to live, places to visit, or really anything.

Except movies. I genuinely, unironically believe I have impeccable taste in film.

I know this is a delusion, but it is the one thing – the one thing – where I believe that if I think a film is good it is good and if I think it is bad it is bad and if I think it is okay it is okay. I’m able to acknowledge sometimes that a film is “not for me” and might still be good, and I know that I also love some films that are probably “bad,” but by and large this is the one place where I actually think my opinions are, well, correct.

It’s probably why film is one of the few things that will get me to blog these days, even as I am going through a bit of an existential crisis regarding writing in general (we’ll get through it).

So now, having made it through a really respectable selection of 2024’s films, I return with what has become a bit of an annual tradition for me: my top 10 films of the year, my favorite performances of the year, and my film of the year. “Top” means some combination of best and favorite, which is partly me allowing a little for the ways this film might skew towards my preferences and partly my excuse to include a better variety of films. My favorite performances follows a similar criteria, but is a little less dedicated to giving an exhaustive list. And the film of the year is not necessarily the “best” movie or my “favorite” movie, but is instead an excellent film that best represents the moment in culture and history (this makes better sense when you read my explanation). I’ll close with a few quick notes on the Oscars, and until then I’ll mostly stay away from using them as a launchpad for my thoughts.

Top 10 Films of 2024

Again, since I have impeccable taste, I highly recommend you watch all ten of these.

10. A Complete Unknown – Before James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic started rolling in one of the small historic theaters I frequent, my girlfriend said she didn’t really know much about Bob Dylan. As the credits rolled, she said, “I think I know about as much about Bob Dylan now as I did when the movie started.” It’s fair – the movie doesn’t really get inside his head or explore his childhood or dive deep into his relationships. It’s also fair that it’s 20-30 minutes too long and probably features too many songs (or at least too much of each one). So, if you’re not a Bob Dylan fan, this movie might not quite work for you, in the way that many music biopics don’t work for people who don’t already have a connection to the artist. But I am a Bob Dylan fan, and if I embody any American decade it’s probably the 60s, so A Complete Unknown just makes the top ten as my one sentimental pick (I’m clearly not alone though, as it earned a Best Picture nomination). Mangold’s depiction of the historical time and place is engrossing, and the embodiments of the megastars – Dylan, Baez, Guthrie, Seeger, Cash – are extremely effective. While it hits the familiar music biopic notes, the fresh perspective here is that Dylan’s genius is not presented as a divine gift to the masses or a misunderstood cultural provocation, but rather a living thing in constant push and pull with his own artistic milieu and the crowds who flocked to see this young phenomenon.

9. Oddity – I am only just getting my sea legs with the likes of Longlegs and Late Night with the Devil, so take this one with a grain of salt, too, but Oddity was the best horror film of the year. Pulse-pounding, unnerving, twisting and turning, and legitimately frightening, Oddity holds the freakish and paranormal next to the mundane depravity of human beings and challenges notions of what nightmares are really made of, while also turning a compassionate eye to the mentally ill and neurodivergent who are so often cast as the monsters of our scary stories. The atmosphere is absorbing and unrelenting, the script tight and sensible, and the scares diverse and panic-inducing. Prestige horror is in the ascendancy, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

8. Didi – As many have noted, Didi is like if you combined Lady Bird and Mid90s and somehow came away with the best of both (Lady Bird is a better film, but Didi is arguably a more complete picture of adolescence). And that’s…incredible. The three form a definitive triple feature on the experience of growing up a Millennial, and Didi takes extra steps in its depiction of the Asian immigrant experience and the complicated love between siblings. Films about teens and pre-teens are always susceptible to cliches, and often feel like they were made by adults either imagining what childhood was supposed to feel like or telling their own very specific, very unusual experience. Not Didi. This is as universal, as relatable, as painfully familiar as a film about those awkward years can be. Every kid goes through these things, and that is disheartening even as it is so reassuring. Also notable: features one of the funniest scenes of the year when Chris’s Nai Nai rants about how Chris’s behavior will lead to the end of their bloodline as his mother soothes a bruise on his face with a hardboiled egg.

7. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga – Mad Max: Fury Road is one of the best films – nevermind action films – of the century, and Furiosa is almost as good, erego…it flopped at the box office and garnered not a single Oscar nom. Make it make sense? Furiosa kicks ass, replete with gonzo performances, over-the-top action, astonishing practical effects, and that distinct weirdness of the post-apocalyptic Millerverse. I watched this and Dune 2 on the way to India, and to me there’s no question which film is better (as much as the Dune franchise is a feat in its own right). If you missed this, find it and watch it, even if you haven’t seen Fury Road. It is propulsive, concussive, preposterous entertainment. “Who is that?” “Someone competent and excessively resentful!”

6. Monster – Hirokazu Koreeda is back! One of the best living filmmakers (and one of my personal favorites) has been just a step off his game after the 2018 masterpiece Shoplifters, with the English/French language The Truth and Korean language Broker not quite reaching his usual heights, though both are still good in their own right. But Monster is a true return to form for the master of twisting and turning sentimentality. Koreeda once again explores the biggest issues and questions through the most intimate and basic of relationships, and his juxtaposition of the world as seen through the eyes of children and adults has never been better. The non-linear story builds and builds to a stunning crescendo of a third act. Monster is riveting human drama.

5. Conclave – Occasionally I’ll tune into a important game in a sport I don’t really care about just because I recognize the weight of the thing. I imagine this is why Conclave has been so broadly popular. You don’t have to be Catholic, or love the Catholic Church, or hate the Catholic Church, or really have any opinion on Catholicism or religion in general to recognize the weight of the conversations held among those cloistered in the Vatican. The decision made by 120 men will have massive implications for millions of people and even the course of history. Conclave establishes this importance so efficiently; within minutes this feels like a Cold War spy thriller. These men who under slightly different circumstances may have been lawyers and professors and salesmen and dentists are instead here in these funny robes with funny titles whispering amongst each other about who likes who and who hates who and who is honest and who is good and someway somehow they have to pick the man who is right for one of a handfull of the world’s most important jobs. Director Edward Berger knows his movie has the ingredients, and oh does Conclave cook.

4. I’m Still Here – I’m still here, too, as part of me will forever remain in the theater where I watched the incredible true story of the disappearance of Rubins Paiva in 1970s dictatorship Brazil. 20th Century period pieces – maybe especially those about government oppression – sometimes feel a little too big, a little too insistent on being an Important Film. They stray into being half-assed documentaries or movies about History and Big Ideas rather than the people who lived through them. I’m Still Here is a film about a family, and that doesn’t change after their lives are upended when government agents take their father away, never to return. This is when most movies expand and pick up speed and build to a dramatic conclusion. Not this one. It never loses track of where it is or what it’s about. It’s about these regular people who have to find a way to move forward and reckon with the uncertainty of not knowing their father’s fate. It’s rare for a film about such Big subjects can maintain its compassionate eye on the people at the center of it.

3. Anora – Sean Baker levels up again. Anora, like Baker’s past projects, coats the viewer in a nice uneven layer of grime – sex, drugs, slaps, shouting matches, general disorderly conduct…but once again he is not exploitative or critical or uncaring about his subjects, most of whom are lower class, sex workers, uneducated, foreign, or some combination. So while Anora is intense, laugh-out-loud funny, and anxiety-inducing, it is ultimately so compassionate and aching, a carefully-constructed portrait of the desire – the need – for human connection and the devastation when it turns out to be something other than we wanted. To walk this line so carefully is a man on wire act, and Baker is Philippe Petit. Anora is like if you cooked some cod with the fish boil method and what came out was Michelin-star-quality fish en papillote.

2. Nickel Boys – Possibly the most inventive film of the year. The first person POV was, for me, a little distracting and felt like a gimmick for the first ten minutes or so, and I was a little worried I might just be watching Black Tree of Life. And then I sank into it and was absorbed in one of the more enthralling films in recent memory. It is a testament to the depth of the evil of anti-Black racism in the U.S. that even after so many films have been made on the subject, one can feel so fresh and instill such shock. I will think about some of these scenes for the rest of my life. The entire film is beautifully shot and it glides effortlessly through its unconventional storyboard. It also features possibly the biggest twist of the year, and I cried as the credits rolled. Nickel Boys is a revelation.

1. The Brutalist – No doubt about it. Every year since 2016 (except 2021), we’ve had at least one stone cold diamond certified 5 star all-time classic film, and this year it’s Brady Corbet’s staggering American epic. It knows it, too, which can be off-putting, but if you can run like Sha’carri Richardson maybe it’s okay to flex (of course, you may lose the race at the end to the St. Lucian, which very well might happen if Anora takes home the biggest prize). Anyway, it feels a little ridiculous to distill my thoughts on this film into a paragraph when it’s the type of film that could serve as the basis for an entire university seminar. Individual scenes contain as much as entire movies, and there are three and half hours worth of those scenes. Yes, even the scenes of sensuously touching a hard pillar of masculine desire and insecurity. And also the handjob scenes. I will be rewatching this one, and while I will miss the overpowering experience of seeing it in the theater in 70mm, I anticipate picking up on many subtleties I missed the first time. I haven’t really said a lot about what makes the film excellent, have I? Okay, here goes: through a perfect symphony of cinematography, performances, score, set design, and writing, The Brutalist, presents architecture as a form of expression employed by fleeting humans to find some sense of permanence, a reclamation of space and time and memory when all three threaten at times to dissolve us into wisps of smoke like the ones constantly escaping Adrien Brody’s mouth and nose one cigarette at a time. How’s that?

Performances of the Year

In no particular order:

Nicolas Cage and Alicia Witt, Longlegs. I actually think casting Nicolas Cage might have been a mistake, or at the very least Neon may have gone to greater lengths to hide the fact he is playing the titular serial killer. Despite the prosthetics, it can be tough to not, at times, be taken out of the horrifying moments by remembering this is “Not the bees!” guy. And yet…it is utterly chilling. Longlegs is scary, if not quite so much as the incredible ad campaign had us expecting, but his performance is going to live with me and make my eyes snap open while falling asleep from time to time for a good long while. Alicia Witt’s performance is allowed to be more subtle, and in each of her scenes a layer is added to the character through her performance. By the end, the mere look in her eyes is enough to send shivers down my spine.

Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain. They are more or less playing themselves and the characters we expect them to play, but I think it’s unfair to criticize someone for playing the same song when they play it so well. Maybe call it the Christoph Waltz rule. The writing in this film is one of its weaker points, but Culkin and Eisenberg inject it with such pathos, and to the script’s credit it gives both performers room to cook.

Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown. By and large, I’m uninterested in performances that are imitations, but goodness gracious Chalamet’s is so good here and he’s impossible to look away from in every scene, his chemistry and his aloofness obvious with all the different scene partners. His singing is a phenomenal reproduction of Dylan’s distinct sound. Shout out to Monica Barbaro (damn) for also absolutely crushing her vocal performances as Joan Baez.

Sakura Ando, Monster. Her performance in Shoplifters is one of the best things I’ve ever seen, and it’s thrilling to have her back in another Koreeda picture. She is a flawless performer and shows new ranges in this film with her moments of rage as a mother frustrated with a school system failing her son.

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave. He’s a perfect point guard. Dude gets his buckets and facilitates the entire offense. The film doesn’t work without him absolutely crushing every single scene.

Everyone in Anora. One of Baker’s greatest strengths is getting relatively or completely unknown performers to hit the high notes and the subtle undertones. Every single actor in this film is unbelievable. It would be easy enough for the Russian and Armenian goons to be whatever stock characters, but each of those guys is pitch perfect in supporting the masterpiece by Mikey Madison, who is asked to do just about everything in this movie. And, not to be crass, but she’s really good in the sex scenes, and I think we’ve seen in recent history that filmmakers have to take sex scenes seriously (looking at you, Christopher Nolan. Looking at you). These are part of physical performances, in much the same way Keanu Reeves deserves credit for the physicality of his John Wick performances.

Glen Powell, Hit Man. I didn’t get it before. And now I do. The guy in Top Gun: Maverick is not a movie star. This guy is.

Ryan Gosling, The Fall Guy. Speaking of movie stars. This is another film that might not quite work without the chemistry the lead has with all his scene partners. He is so charming and funny and at his lowest points so worthy of sympathy. I’m team Gosling, guys. Give me more.

Carolyn Bracken, Oddity. Plays two roles as sisters Dani and Darcy and does so with aplomb. Her performance of Darcy, the blind medium, is inscrutable in the best way, as we and the characters continually ask, “What the fuck is going on here” as she marches forward in her quest for justice for her murdered sister.

Kristen Stewart, Love Lies Bleeding. The star at the middle of one of the year’s grimiest, sexiest thrillers. Pretty wild that the same woman who got nominated for playing Princess Diana can be convincing unclogging toilets, handling firearms, managing a sweaty gym, and chainsmoking. The fact the two stars of the Twilight series are two of our most consistently interesting actors was not on my Bingo card.

Adrien Brody, The Brutalist. What do I need to say? In a film chock full of astounding performances, Brody’s is the best. He’s one of the greatest living actors with three and a half hours to showcase every inch of his abilities (and of other things). Three and a half hour movies don’t usually work unless you are living and breathing every moment with the central character. Yes, we’re allowed to use the phrase tour-de-force on this one.

Fernanda Torres and Selton Mello, I’m Still Here. They are convincing parents first and notable political figures second. It’s one of the keys to the movie; it’s about a family, and it really, truly feels like one. The kids are all excellent and its all held together by Mom and Dad. So nuanced, so earnest, so believable.

The Film of 2024 is…

This was tough. I thought for a while it might be A Complete Unknown, a film about cultural change and the dream of making it big overnight. The Brutalist deserves a long look, given it’s an immigrant story and one that comes in the wake of the Holocaust, which is upsettingly relevant right now. I also considered Emilia Perez, because obviously (not getting into that just yet). I did not get a chance to see Wicked, but as the sort of spiritual successor to Barbie as the “hey things really suck right now what if we have a big colorful movie that makes us feel good” movie I thought it might be a worthy candidate.

But no, the film of 2024 is I’m Still Here.

At the most obvious level, it’s a film about a dictatorship that rips families apart and keeps its citizens in a state of fear and uncertainty, punishing those who speak out against it and advocating for might equals right. That’s the world we’re moving into in the U.S. That’s not a political statement; it’s a fact. We are moving with alarming speed towards some late stage capitalist horror portmanteau of oligarchy and dictatorship. We are deluding ourselves if we think we are so far away from the day that a father, a citizen (it’s already been happening to the undocumented) can be taken from his home by government agents, bidding a hasty farewell to his family before disappearing forever (Elon Musk has recently called for imprisoning journalists, which is one of the biggest red flags there is). Maybe you truly believe the Trump administration will improve the economy and make the world safer for you and get rid of some things you don’t like, like abortion, and let you keep some things you do like, like guns. Even if that is all true, the signs are still so painfully obvious that what this administration and it’s puppeteers want is an unrecognizable America. They’re not trying to hide it. A congressperson has suggested giving Trump a third term. That’s king-me shit. And you fucking know it.

But I’m Still Here is also a profoundly hopeful movie, too. Brazil isn’t a dictatorship anymore, imperfect and turbulent as the nation can be. Eunice Paiva did, eventually, get the answers her family deserved and made a career out of acting on behalf of the families of the disappeared. She went to law school later in life to equip herself for this crucial fight. She didn’t quit. Brazil didn’t go die. They made it through. We need that right now. We really, really need that right now (it’s almost like we can learn from history, gee, who’d have thought).

And there is something more here that speaks to our current moment. We want things to be the way they were, but we misunderstand what that means. Our nostalgia tends to idealize past decades, even though in those past decades women and minorities had much less freedom and many of the world’s problems had not yet been solved through science. But, somehow, rights for trans people, the Paris Agreement, and the World Health Organization somehow represent the fear and doubt of modernity, and the solution is to roll back these things and get back to a time where men ruled with an iron fist and women had three to four children and we kept foreigners out of society and you get the picture. This is a gross misunderstanding of the nostalgic urge, a manipulative framing to get the masses to embrace far right politics rather than getting at the heart of what we really miss, of what we really want back.

We want the simple joys of 70s family life as depicted in I’m Still Here. We want to ride around town with our friends documenting every day life on our film cameras, without police harassing on the grounds of looking for political dissidents. We want to go to the beach and float in the water without the sounds of a military helicopter rushing overhead. We want cold drinks and real food. We want family pictures. We want to send our kids off on bold new adventures. We want to adopt a stray dog and give him a new life. We want to turn our dream homes into a reality.

Vintage is in right now, and all the stuff in I’m Still Here is so cool: the cars, vinyl, cameras, natural cigarettes, on and on. Why do you think vintage is so popular? Is it just because we used to put more care into the things we make? Is it just because we miss the days before planned obsolescence? Are we overwhelmed with choices? Do we feel stuck to our phones? Do we miss what those things represent? Yes, all of that. That’s what we should mean when we yearn for the way things used to be. We don’t need to go back to outdated views on gender and family and race – we need to go back to a simpler, more sincere, more connected time. We miss that.

Of course, there are some old-fashioned beliefs we should take up again, like the collective agreement that Nazis are bad.

I’m Still Here is the film of the year. Watch it.

And finally…

I will watch the Academy Awards, but I no longer care to follow along with the Oscars “race.” I think, in general, the Oscars guide our discussions of film too much, and the discussions are robbed of joy and nuance when we spend months rehashing the same arguments and infecting our more pure opinions with half a mind towards what is going to win and why.

A whole lot of time has been wasted in the backlash, backlash to the backlash, and backlash to the backlash to the backlash surrounding Emilia Perez. I am so very glad I have not spent the last however many months following along with this discourse.

You can think the movie is bad. You don’t have to enjoy a single second of it. You can think that it’s depictions of Mexico and trans people are deeply flawed and even offensive. But I’m not sure I’ve ever heard more people have such a strong opinion about a film without seeing it. I am as guilty as anyone of “Have you seen _____” “No, but I’ve heard it’ really good!” That seems to be the general, totally uninteresting reaction from most people: “No I haven’t seen it but I’ve heard it’s really bad and also offensive.” It might be bad, and it might be offensive, but I dunno man maybe watch it and decide for yourself? Have your own nuanced opinion. I’m going to work on getting better about this, and I encourage everyone to do the same.

But, back to the Oscars, the only reason we’re having this totally uninteresting discussion of Emilia Perez is because it has been very well-received by critics, and the months long Oscars race has kept it in the conversation. While the Oscars can prop up outstanding films that might have otherwise gone more unnoticed, it can also set up lightning rods for bad films, and that’s a real shame. It’s like how the NBA All-Star break has made everyone think the NBA is terrible. The NBA is not terrible. It’s flawed, but not terrible. We been knew the All-Star break is bad. How and why is that a measure for the health of the league?

But, related, there’s been what seems to be a growing polarization between critics and general audiences, at least as far as Rotten Tomatoes suggests. This year more than ever I’ve noticed films rated well by critics that have very low audience scores and vise versa. This is something to keep an eye on. Are bigots flooding RT to tank certain movies, al la Last Jedi (which was also a legitimately bad movie but let’s not get into that here)? Are moviegoers getting dumber? Have moviegoer tastes changed? Have critics gotten more pretentious? I don’t know the answer, but it’s something to pay attention to.

Anyway, point is, I’m trying in general to be more intentional about how much “out there” I absorb, and it has made movie watching so much more enjoyable for me. Will I be pissed off if Emilia Perez wins Best Picture? Maybe a little (don’t worry it’s not going to). But it won’t ruin the year in film for me. I remember the way Green Book winning made me so so mad, but what I remember most now is the fact that 2018 is one of my favorite years ever in film (Roma, Shoplifters, Ash is Purest White, Minding the Gap, and many more). How stupid it would be to ruin a year like that hand-wringing over Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody.

So watch Emilia Perez. And then don’t let it ruin your life. There’s just too many good films to talk about to spend that much time being outraged about this one.

See you at the theater.

Forth now, and fear no darkness.

Soli Deo Gloria

Peter