The Top 24 Movies of 2024

Director Denis Villeneuve said about DUNE I that the harshest, most terrifying critic he could face was the teenage version of himself, who’d read & loved Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” judging him from afar. One has to hope that kid is satisfied because DUNE II completes the work that Villeneuve & co-adapter Jon Spaihts started in DUNE , my #1 film of 2021. The sequel, like its predecessor, is a grand work of scale & of detail, of ideas & visuals, & of career-defining performances.

DUNE II adapts, expands, & renovates, making Herbert even more relevant by questioning the ascendancy of Paul Atreides as the prophesied savoir of the indigenous people, the Fremen, even as it unfolds before our eyes. This messiah is called the Mahdi & it’s understandable how the leader of the northern Fremen, Stilgar (Javier Bardem, an exuberant force of nature) could think it’s Paul.

Like Peter O’Toole in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA Timothée Chalamet’s Paul credibly matures from naif to leader, somewhat to our horror. He goes from outcast to a comrade of the Fremen and the partner of Chani (Zendaya, forced to scowl a lot). Paul seeks revenge on the Harkonnens, who killed everyone he loved, and becomes what everyone wants him to be, the Mahdi. Like Al Pacino’s Michael in THE GODFATHER Chalamet exhibits the chilling calm of a person surging with power. (Not Chalamet’s 1st time either. See his Hal turn into Henry V in D. Michod’s superb THE KING.) And, like Diane Keaton’s Kay in THE GODFATHER, Chani is repelled by the worship of Mahdi & changes in Paul.

Meanwhile Villeneuve expands outside of the dune planet Arrakis. We see the chiaroscuro, militaristic world of the Harkonnen & their champion, Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler, positively serpentine). Instead of prophecies & nature, Feyd is the ultimate expression of politics, tech & vice. But even the Harkonnens are just cogs in the Empire & its tactician Emperor (Christopher Walken, a little incongruously) & his daughter, Irulan (Florence Pugh, given to voiceovers). The changes Villeneuve makes to the third act are monumental & not unwelcome or unearned. This is a movie that will stand the test of time or the unflinching critiques of precocious teenagers.

ANORA was my favorite film at Cannes and the Jury, led by Greta Gerwig, seemed to think well of it too, awarding it the Palme d'Or. Writer/director Sean Baker has crafted a clear-eyed study in human nature, populated with characters all striving for what they want, and as is true in most of Baker’s films, some sort of piece of the American dream. For the eponymous, exotic dancer Anora (she prefers “Ani"), played by the luminous, feisty Mikey Madison, she wants even more; the Cinderella fairy tale. The fantasy appears to be coming true when she becomes the PRETTY WOMAN consort of Ivan, the scion of a Russian billionaire. Ivan is played with Mentos-in-a-Coke ebullience by Mark Eydelshteyn. Ivan is pursuing his own dream, that of living outside of the clutches of his horrible oligarch parents back in the home country, particularly his manipulative harpy of a mother. After an amorous few weeks Ani and Ivan spend together he comes up with the scheme to marry her in Vegas, thus becoming an American citizen by Green Card, and not having to return to Russia and the family business. What follows is an energetic, unexpected exploration of wants and desires, including, most surprisingly, the three Armenian henchmen sent to annul the marriage (special mention to Yura Borisov, who plays the unlikeliest of thugs, Igor). Unlike his more edgy, desperate characters, living on the edge of poverty in TANGERINE, THE FLORIDA PROJECT & RED ROCKET, those populating ANORA have some firm, basic foothold in reality and lack the lean, desperate hunger in the former films which makes ANORA less harrowing & more satisfying.

A love of language, culture, and place soak into the tab sheet that is KNEECAP. Being American, I'm claiming ignorance as the bliss that allows me to overlook some of the political firebombs that might trigger some here. I found a rambunctious, smart, caring, funny, real film directed by Rich Peppiatt and co-written by the three charismatic members of the band, Kneecap, Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara & DJ Próvai. With its TRAINSPOTTING nods the film careens around with two, young, "low-life scum" who join up with an older instructor (who teaches kids to speak in their native, Irish tongue) to form a rap band. The very notion of who gets to control speech and how a language lives and dies is the baseline in this remarkable film.

DAY ONE was co-written & directed by Michael Sarnoski. He co-wrote & directed my #2 film of 2021, PIG. What he has created, on the shoulders of his co-writer here, the original QUIET PLACE creator, John Krazinski, is a meditative exploration of life & art and the importance of art to enhance our ephemeral time on earth. Lupita Nyong'o gives as fierce a performance as could be seen this year as Samira, a woman with terminal cancer who happens to be in New York city the day the noise-attracted aliens appear. It also includes a stellar turn by Joseph Quinn as a terrified businessman and a too-brief but touching appearance by Alex Wolff as Samira's friend and caregiver/hospice nurse. Perhaps my favorite end scene of the year.

Much as with TOY STORY 4, Pixar has defied the odds & delivered an equally-emotional, equally satisfying film as IO2’s immediate predecessor. One has to think that it’s a film that is going to serve as a balm, healing self-therapy to those who might start feeling like they’re losing their grip & to reassure them that it's okay.While it is, by its very nature, unable to be as startlingly original as the first film, IO2 feels fresh, even as it hits the same beats as the first film. The look (here directed by Kelsey Mann, IO1 directed by now-producer Pete Docter), the music (here credited to Andrea Datzman, with many references to Michael Giacchino’s memorable IO1 score) all harken back to the 2015 classic, yet IO2 brings it alive anew. New emotions are introduced without it feeling gratuitous. The film throws new, more mature scenarios at Riley, as she loses friends & makes new ones, without the suspicion that it’s just extensions. Most importantly it confronts the biggest bad of all big bads, the one hinted at in the first film; puberty. Early on the emotions from IO1 (Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust & Sadness) are shocked when the construction crews knock things down to make way for new emotions including the pushy Anxiety, the bashful Embarrassment, the so-bored, French Ennui, & tiny, big-eyed Envy. Riley has also, through her collection of memories, created a “Sense of Self,” which glistens like a sports trophy-tierra in the back of the emotional control center. That Sense says, “I’m a good person” but it’s shaken when Riley realizes her two best friends are going to different schools & she may be a better hockey player than they are. Meanwhile Joy’s leadership is challenged again but this time it’s by Anxiety. Anxiety, btw, isn’t always bad. It thinks about the future & is concerned about how the choices Riley makes affect it. But then it & the other new emotions seize control. Much like IO1 there are long journeys to take, aspects of the psyche to be explored, & questions to be raised about how our actions shape us.

When a musical opens on Broadway and becomes popular the only resource to experience it for many is the Original Cast Recording. Sitting listening to the songs, without the benefit of the book, is perhaps a bygone pastime but one I enjoyed very much. And, if a movie was eventually made of the musical, the bar I would judge it against was my interior, imagined interpretation of the Original Cast Recording. And so many have failed to meet that elusive, entirely subjective, and personal bar: PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, RENT, CATS (let's not even...), DEAR EVAN HANSEN, & INTO THE WOODS. Often it's because so many songs are cut for time. Having a favorite mental cue excised is immediately notable. Not just a paper cut but a gash. Not WICKED: PART I. Director Jon Chu, seemingly learning from the experience of having made IN THE HEIGHTS, made every minute of the 2 hour & 40 minute runtime count. He had the guts, chutzpah, whatever you want to call it, to not only include every moment you mentally dabbled with, but to leave things out. That, principally, is the new original song that's always tacked on to a musical adaptation, to get a "Best Original Song" nomination. Somehow, and it must have been a Herculean task, he prevented that.
Chu also brings the camera in close. We aren't watching WICKED from the balcony in this movie. We're inches away. And it's exhilarating. Particularly when it's Ariana Grande & Cynthia Erivo's faces. They give, and he captures, nuances that make their characters, the flighty but well-meaning Gallinda, and the powerful, bruised Elphaba, come alive and solidly their own.
The production design, costuming, special effects, all come to the aid of this extraordinary production, which succeeds because it was started well.

The best film I saw in Venice this year, admittedly a left-handed compliment, was JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX. Not the visceral gut-punch like the 1st film, what writers Scott Silver & Todd Phillips, Joaquin Phoenix, & Lady Gaga have in mind is utterly different, bizarrely entrancing, and mostly satisfying. One could call it a penitent musical. In it Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is incarcerated in the Arkham State Hospital after killing five people in the spree of JOKER.

(At this point the audience all did a little quick math in our heads: the 3 guys on the subway, his co-worker, Randall & Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). That’s 5. I gave a sigh of relief, recalling Arthur’s sweet neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz) & her daughter weren't in the tally, which was left in some question at the conclusion of the first film.

Arthur is despondent. He won’t even tell jokes to the prison guards, including the "Oh, is HE gonna get it" Brendan Gleeson. Then Arthur spots Lee, aka Hayleigh Quinzel (a stunning Lady Gaga), singing in a therapy group. She makes the same gun-to-the-head, suicide gesture to Arthur that Sophie did in the 1st film & Arthur is smitten. Lee ignites a spark in him & he resurrects the Joker side of his personality to woo her. As Arthur turns Joker on and off in his head, the movie too switches from the real world to his dream world in the form of musical numbers with a lot of Harold Arlen & the American Songbook. It's Phillips' PENNIES FROM HEAVEN.

Much as comedy, even bad comedy, was Arthur’s escape in JOKER, music, happy music, is his refuge in FOLIE À DEUX. “That’s Entertainment,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Come On, Get Happy,” etc. are all presented as if a deeply depressed Vincente Minnelli was making a musical of SE7EN.

The film then moves to Arthur’s trial to decide whether he’s insane or not. Fleck doesn’t seem to care; he’s much more concerned that Lee will be in the courtroom (Harvey Dent is his prosecutor). Gradually, Joker comes out to raise a defense for himself but he has to face the testimonies of those affected by his rampage. As witnesses describe what really happened, not just Fleck’s fantasies, he’s shaken & remorseful. Lee, drooling to see her beloved Joker return in his violent glory, turns out to be nothing but a flighty, insubstantial fan girl who loved the righteous killer, not this whimpering simp.

It's here that Philips and Phoenix essentially give a big middle-finger to a portion of the fans of the first film. This is not TAXI DRIVER for vigilantes. It's not WALL STREET for stock brokers (it's more Stone's make-up attempt, MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, but better). JOKER II does not give people leave to burn the whole thing down. And that's a big reason why some people hate it so much. It is a deep social critique as it turns the key phrase of the first film, "You get what you fucking deserve" into another kind of warning.

The most haunting film of the year, Gints Zilbalodis' gorgeous, heartbreaking, ominous, ethereal FLOW slips between dreams and prophecy. It's all grounded by a black cat, whom we follow in this entirely wordless film, as it finds allies, like an avuncular capybara, some genial, roughhousing dogs, & a big fat metaphor, a futuristic egret. They are escaping the rising waters around them, which are doing so at an alarming rate, without any hope that they will recede. Yet hope and community are at the heart of FLOW, acting like flotsam in a sea of despair and inevitability.

I haven’t read “Dylan Goes Electric,” the Elijah Wald book upon which director James Mangold’s film, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is based, nor do I know much about the life story of the great Bob Dylan all that well. So I came to the film as a neophyte, just someone who just appreciated Dylan’s songs & had mostly heard only the “bad Bob” stories and watched the docs DON’T LOOK BACK & ROLLING THUNDER REVUE. And COMPLETE UNKNOWN captivated me. It’s like the best magazine profile/feature article sprung to cinematic life. UNKNOWN doesn’t try to capture all of Dylan. It doesn’t try to explain him or excuse him. Heck, it doesn’t even really try to stick to the facts of the folk movement in New York, circa 1960 – 1965, as I’ve subsequently read, and re-read in numerous take-down posts & articles, since its release. But what it does, in a unique fashion for the “bio-pic” genre, is to provide vignettes, strange, seemingly unrelated but pertinent moments, strings curling from the pegs of the headstock, from this singular talent, that give you an indelible, unshakable impression of him at an important juncture in his life.

They may seem like meandering excess. Numerous scenes don’t strictly propel the narrative, yet are foundational to the overall portrait: the rising star Dylan sits in on the local educational show of his mentor Pete Seeger (an absolutely brilliant, Mother Jones portrayal by Edward Norton) and playing with the fictional blues guitarist Jesse Moffette, or a high society party where Seeger just happens to bring a guitar for the put-upon Dylan to play. These moments can seem like untrimmed ends but Mangold, in this perhaps his magnum opus, knows they add to a full portrait. Monica Barbaro, as Joan Baez, owns every scene she’s in.

Writer/director Megan Park has many things going for her. First off, she can write & direct and MY OLD ASS, funny from the title, is a prime example. A sexual-mores-for-the-Gen-Zs, coming-of-age, time-travel, romance, comedy, drama MOA is about Elliott (the delightful Maisy Stella), the plucky daughter of cranberry farmers. She can’t get away fast enough & as the date for her to go to college approaches she spends time with her friends (the likeable Kerrice Brooks & Maddie Ziegler) goofing around & taking mushrooms. The mushroom trip Elliott has includes a time-portal phenomenon whereby her future, 39-year-old-self, endearingly played by Aubrey Plaza, appears to her in corporeal form. Future Elliott not only can converse in person, she can add a contact in younger Elliott’s phone, under the name My Old Ass, which then leads to phone conversations between the two across the time divide. Older Elliott has some facile suggestions, appreciate your parents, be nicer to your brother, but, most importantly, stay away from any guy named “Chad.” Of course, Chad shows up in the winning form of Percy Hynes White (the artistic love interest in WEDNESDAY), who is there trying to reconnect with his farming stock relatives. Complications ensue. Park’s casting of Stella & White is inspired, Stella particularly. Though she was a regular on the tv show “NASHVILLE” it’s hard to imagine that role gave Stella the chance to show the off-handed wry humor, the quiet depth, the gentle sincerity that she shows, & that Park has captured in Elliott. She’s a find. Plaza, in one particularly touching scene of reconciliation with an old acquaintance, reminds us that EMILY THE CRIMINAL is Aubrey the astounding actress. This is a unique mixtures of tones & genres & provides nostalgia & wistful wisdom in equal measure. If you’re under 35, seek it out.

Original in story and execution director Jacques Audiard (THE SISTERS BROTHERS, A PROPHET) creates a vibrant, exciting, pulsing musical (well, mostly) out of the tale of a macho, bloody, drug kingpin who wants to transition to the woman he's always been.
Zoe Saldana leaves everything on the field in her role as Rita Castro, a brilliant lawyer, who accepts the big money payoff to help a notorious gangster, Manitas Del Monte, transition into Emilia Pérez, an accomplished crusader for reform.
Karla Sofía Gascón is both the cruel and domineering Manitas and the sophisticated, caring Emilia, in a performance that's likely going to be a Best Oscar nom.