Films of 2024: Pt II of II

This is the top half of the list, continuing from the bottom, which is available here. 

10. Crossing, by Levan Akin. 106m. ​Domestic Trailer.

“What would you tell her if you found her?”

It's possible this belongs much higher up on this list. I need a rewatch in order to write intelligently about it. There's a lot going on in the deceptively simple story, about an aging aunt seeking her long-lost (trans) daughter. It has a cumulative power I wasn't expecting, and like Audiard's work manages to be many things at once, albeit in a quieter and more focused key. Regardless of what a second viewing reveals: what an ending!! A powerful reminder that regardless of how convinced some are by bigoted views and putting up walls between themselves and others, tolerance always– always– ages best. Acceptance even moreso.

9. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, by George Miller. 148m. Trailer 1.​

“You can never balance the scales of their suffering.”
​
An auteur action picture. In a sea of indistinguishable summer multiplex vanilla, the authorial voice is instantly identifiable here, as is the refreshing reliance on practical effects. Miller proves himself once again the consummate craftsman, in sequence after sequence of maddening ingenuity (the mid-film truck chase alone took 87 days to shoot, longer than the full schedule for many features nowadays). He challenges himself to a different aesthetic than 2015’s equally stunning Fury Road, forgoing that film's two-hour car chase format for something structurally more akin to a symphony, with adjustments and cycles of pace and mood. He also favors (slightly!) longer takes over Fury Road's quick cuts, blocking three or four beats in one shot rather than one per, and concludes with a dialogue-based climax (anathema in this genre) that surprised me with its maturity. You know this preposterous narrative is working when we find ourselves unexpectedly moved when Anya Taylor-Joy decides to go back and save Tom Murphy.

8. Conclave, by Edward Berger. 120m. Trailer 1.

“Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith."

There are not enough films about old people just being people. And not enough films that recognize a difference between religion and faith, and explore seriously the questions brought on by both. If only the recent electoral disaster had taken some cues from this film's remarkable conclusion, which represents hope during a time when we may feel bereft of it. Also– props to Berger's highly unusual deployment of score, wherein he somehow gets away with telegraphing dread through music alone, a direct counter to our current practice of not relying on music to telegraph emotion; and his courageous willingness in creating a mise-en-scene that's utterly unafraid to depict the Vatican as a cesspool as human as any other space of power– that is, a breeding ground for corruption, myopia, and cutthroat competition.

7. The Brutalist, by Brady Corbet. 216m (230 theatrically). Trailer.

“Laszlo, I am alive.”

What an opening line. It's one for the ages. Neither of the lead couple discusses their concentration camp experiences, but it is those traumas which inform the action here. Brutalist architecture was an attempt to dispense with the past and create a new history by looking only forward. It is creativity born from trauma, but neither character is of the inclination or the generation to talk much about these motivating forces; their traumas are privately lived. The American-born characters around them don’t understand where they’re coming from, but we do. We feel their loneliness. 

There are very few films about the relationship between the artist and the financier. Every artist knows how frustrating it is to have to justify all creative decisions from a financial perspective, and this film has the guts to demonstrate what too often ends up happening between the two parties (hint: it isn't the artist who comes out on top). I disagree with the film's final line, but understand why the characters, who have been through what they've been through, would cling to it as a truism. We choose the ideas that make sense of our lives.

If you saw it in theatres, you got the 15-minute intermission, shaved down to 1 minute for home video, which accounts for the difference in runtimes above. I felt it to be an important part of the film; to be confronted with the photograph for that time, while listening to the modernist piano performance that echoed softly while the timer counted down. I spent the time walking slowly around the huge room, regarding the photo from up close and far away. There was time to reflect on what we'd just seen, and we learned the power a great image has when held for a long time. It was also a highly impactful way to introduce the Erzsébet character.

6. Monica, by Andrea Pallaoro. Trailer.

“She doesn’t know who I am.”

I'm taking advantage of delayed domestic release dates to sneak this 2022(!) picture in, because it deserves the praise and nobody's heard of it. A trans woman returns home to her mother, who doesn't recognize her. Queer stories lend themselves well to exploring the universal condition of loneliness, and this quiet masterpiece is no exception; director Pallaoro emphasizes the singularity and solitude of the protagonist’s experience with a boxy 1.33 frame and shallow depth of field (don't try this focus pulling at home!). Even aside from its deeply moving and humanist narrative it would deserve a place here on the strength of its ravishing visuals alone. 

Some of the films on this list aren't for everyone (Love Lies & Furiosa perhaps too violent; Anora too profane; Kindness and Needle too misanthropic; Brutalist too long; and then there's Perez). But Monica deserves a chance. Try the trailer, above. Who doesn't relate to the loneliness of being oneself?

5. Anora, by Sean Baker. 139m. Trailer. 

“I don't have Instagram. I'm an adult, man.”

The qualities of this Palme d’or– and four-time Oscar winner have been discussed extensively elsewhere. It's a portrait of people at work, and a portrait of four people who form a bond that, although antagonistic, is a bond nevertheless, and one their bosses cannot access. As a champion for the working classes myself, how can I resist this punky, vibrant salute to a collection of lives its tuxedo-clad Cannes audience wouldn't have known the first thing about how to make a movie about?

Thank goodness for Mr. Baker's talent and empathy, and nerve in ending as he does; the film plays better on repeat viewings because the final scene reveals the film is aware of dynamics we haven't yet considered. Ani is so good at putting up a guard, at confrontation and conflict, standing up for herself, and usually she's in situations where these skills are required; hence her mastery of them. But like no small amount of folks I've met on the street, she's utterly unprepared when confronted with vulnerability, decency and kindness. I wonder if she knows it's her loss. As a friend said afterward about the ending, “It's a sad film. I'm glad it knows it's sad." ​

​4. La Chimera, by Alice Rohrwacher. Domestic Trailer.

“Those were not intended to be seen by the eyes of humans, but by those of souls.”

Technically a 2023 release in the States, I'm once again looking to UK release dates to sneak a gem in. A film that in its narrow focus ends up being a film about everything. Like Sean Baker, Rohrwacher knows about worlds that most major filmmakers are too wealthy to have access to. She milks this advantage on all her projects, illuminating beauty we didn't know existed. Chimera has an awareness of class that American movies lack, and explores the ribald relationship between the present and ancient past as can only happen in Italy. How do we assign value to the invaluable? Why do we bother? What cost does the soul pay when we ‘get away with’ something? Rohrwacher uses the tale of an English foreigner robbing Etruscan gravesites to explore these questions and more.

I recently tried to rewatch this at home, but found that I couldn't. Footage originating on 16mm is often unacceptably pixelated on streaming services, where the bitrate of an internet signal simply can't keep up with the amount of changing data asked of each pixel (this is why any streaming movie suddenly looks terrible when there's shots of fire or ocean waves; too much movement). Rent the Blu-ray if you can; the Kanopy stream looks like VHS, and I only know this film has beautiful cinematography because I saw it in theatres. At once a celebration and a lament, about time, love, and loss– in other words, again, everything. 

3. All We Imagine As Light, by Payal Kapadia. 118m. Trailer. ​

“You have to believe the illusion, or else you'll go mad.”

This should maybe #1, but I'm not sure, as I only saw it once, unlike the below titles. Ms. Kapadia’s film for me recalls The Godfather: a smart young director making a dense and perfect film that feels both classic and new, with an obvious awareness of cinema history, told in a new voice with deft storytelling economy, about characters responding to shifts in the world around them without being aware of it. Except instead of that film's insidious spread of corruption due to honorable intentions and the maintaining of family bonds, this film involves a slow build towards acceptance, in part due to the questioning of family bonds. Don't expect The Godfather (or you'll be disappointed with all films!); but do expect a quietly astonishing little gem that knows exactly what it is, and that you know you'll have to watch again. Who can forget that brief melancholic interlude regarding Mumbai as a city, with the voices of various unseen souls in reflection? Alongside Malick she may be the only director using sound as counterpoint to the image.

2. Dune, by Denis Villeneve. 155 & 166m. Trailer 1 for Part II.

“You will never lose me… as long as you stay who you are.”

I'm referring to both installments and considering them a single story, as per Villeneuve’s intention. A major work. By any measure it is intelligent, demanding, and rewarding on all levels, not least of which is Villeneuve's distinct brand of stately, brooding gravitas, which I find hypnotic. Only Nolan is also making work at this budget scale for adults, and without meaningful creative compromise. Aside from these two we have to go back to Kubrick or 90s Spielberg to see a massive blockbuster this redolent of a singular authorial voice. That ending is the bravest thing I've seen a studio film do since… well, Oppenheimer, but you get what I'm trying to say here!

The work has personal relevance for me (SPOILERS) because I went through a breakup strikingly similar to the Zendaya character's journey, abandoned by a partner blissfully unaware of their transformation, in ways that, without getting too much into it, nigh-perfectly paralleled the films’ emotional arc (minus the sandworms, of course…). And this all happened in between the release of the two installments. Do you know that sensation, where the film feels like it was made for you alone? The tragedy that is the ending is something I'm sure many of us can relate to: after you've been railroaded by love, or the illusion of love, sometimes there's nothing left to do but hop on your own sandworm, and carry on by yourself.

1. Wildcat. Starring Maya Hawke as Flannery O'Connor, and directed by Ethan Hawke; based on Flannery’s short stories. 108m. Trailer.

“Joy is sorrow overcome.”

Is it because I also write short stories? Or because I’m so enamored with literature, female authors, and the interiority of the writing process, a state of existence I so rarely see films accurately portray? Wildcat may be the best recent film about writing I've seen, partly because of its awareness and reverence for the observational headspace a writer possesses, and partly for its attention to how the self gets split up during writing, and how perception changes because of the act. (Notice how Flannery perceives her Mom, as seen in the stories, as slightly different from who Mom actually is.) Bravo to both Hawkes for tackling risky, challenging subject matter with consideration, tact, and force; for once Ms. O’Connor isn't rolling in her grave over an adaptation. Ethan outdoes himself here visually, with wide-angle lenses, rich desaturated blues, and minimal cutting. 

There are few films about the inner life, and fewer still about belief systems that don’t ask the viewer to believe a certain way, but simply ask us to reflect on faith, the lifelong wrestling match we have with ourselves. This is only the second film I've ever seen to conflate artmaking and spirituality as an overlapping transcendent act; the first being Tarkovsky’s 1966 Andrei Rublev.