As a companion piece to my Top Ten list, every year I write a post to discuss some of the other major films that got a lot of positive attention. I find this exercise helpful in providing context for my own choices and how I feel about the year in film as a whole. It's also a lot of fun. Please note that I will not be writing about films listed among my honorable mentions, including "Dune: Part 2."
Let's start with the big award contenders. This was a weird year for me, because I totally failed to connect with some of the big populist favorites. "Conclave," for instance, struck me as a wildly contrived religious allegory with such ridiculous twists that I couldn't take it seriously. The execution is fabulous on every level, and I adore everybody in the cast, but I was totally soured by the writing, especially the twist ending. "Emilia Perez" is not as bad as its detractors are making out, but it was the wrong people making this film, and the incredibly tone deaf behavior of the cast and crew didn't help matters.
"Wicked" was better than I was expecting, but it's just not very good as a film - a few too many technical problems, and a real drag of a second act. I appreciate what James Mangold was trying to do with "A Complete Unknown," but I didn't think those intentions came across very well in the movie - and Timothee Chalamet's Dylan didn't do much for me. "I'm Still Here" is a very good film about surviving a dictatorship, but without more background information for the non-Brazilians, I don't think it travels as well as its creators were hoping. "Babygirl" is a daring piece of cinema, and I'm very happy that Halina Reijn and Nicole Kidman got to make it. However, I found the trailer more compelling than the actual film. And then we have "Sing, Sing" - Colman Domingo's performance is great, but the rest of the film doesn't live up to it.
Prominent foreign films include several excellent titles that I count as 2023 films - "Red Rooms," "Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World," "Evil Does Not Exist," and "Green Border." However, I only liked "Evil Does Not Exist" enough that I would have considered it for last year's list. To date, it's the only Ryusuke Hamaguchi film I've really liked. "All We Imagine as Light" has been a big critical favorite, and I wish I liked it more than I did. It's a lovely, intimate look at the lives of a group of Indian women, but too slight for my tastes. I also didn't really get the "The Beast," Bertrand Bonello's genre-bending romance about past lives and existential terrors. It all just felt overlong and overindulgent. I've said my piece about "Flow" in previous posts - I'm glad it won an Oscar, but the movie is not for me.
Let's talk about some of the trans-centered films, which got a lot of attention in 2024. "I Saw the TV Glow" is a film I can appreciate for its depth of feeling and nightmare imagery, but the performances are so monotone and the mood is so depressive, it's a very difficult watch. "The People's Joker" completely went over my head. I didn't find it funny or insightful, and the no-budget production quality and amateur actors grated something awful. The documentary "Queendom" ended up being my favorite trans film of the year.
Box office winners that broke into the awards conversation included "Furiosa: A Mad Max Story," which I liked, but which suffered in comparison to "Fury Road," and for being a prequel. The same can be said of "Nosferatu," which had some great atmosphere and performances, but often made me wish I was watching the older versions. Then there's Alex Garland's "Civil War," which struck me as fundamentally a misfire with a few good moments - Jesse Plemmons' appearance is a contender for scene of the year.
There were several smaller films that had some really passionate champions. "A Real Pain," which is about one very specific relationship, is very personal and very well made, but I liked other takes on this material better. "The Wild Robot," is the best Dreamworks animated film I've seen in years, but I couldn't help noticing how tropey and formulaic it got in the last act. "Megalopolis" is a miracle of a sort, but like Terry Gilliam's "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote," it wasn't worth the effort.
Finally, films that just missed my honorable mentions include "Wildcat," "Daughters," and "¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!" There were also several contenders for my "Plus One" spot, for movies I hadn't seen in time for last year's list. Along with the aforementioned "Evil Does Not Exist," these were "Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person," and "The Monk and the Gun" - my first Bhutanese watch!
And that's my 2024 in film.
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