usually takes me a few months to get to everything/brutalist doesn't open here for another three weeks so ill probably have mine ready in march lol
honestly time has been so weird I can't make a list haha, like Challengers feels like it was a millennia ago
I still have quite a bit to catch up on (Anora, Babygirl, so on and so forth) but as of now: 1. Drive Away Dolls 2. I Saw The TV Glow 3. Challengers 4. Love Lies Bleeding 5. Monkey Man 6. Lisa Frankenstein 7. Problemista 8. Fall Guy 9. Thelma 10. My Old Ass
This might sound weird to say about your #4, which is below three other rad films, but I think I expected Love Lies Bleeding to be higher for you, lol.
tbf the entire top 4 is gay, which hurt my joke which was gonna be wow you think just because they're gay that they would put the lesbian movie first lol
Every year, there is a scramble to see everything before the end of the year. Unless you live in New York or Los Angeles, you simply are unable to see the independent and foreign films that are given limited releases. This year, GRAND TOUR, NICKEL BOYS, HARD TRUTHS and THE HUMAN SURGE 3 highlight the biggest omissions. However, there is still plenty to celebrate this year. 10. MEGALOPOLIS DIRECTED BY: FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA Other than the boring, constant jokes about the club line, most of the criticisms of this film are completely legitimate. The actors are all over the place, plotlines weave in and out of importance, and overall it feels like it was made by a man who has not been around a lot of people for an extended people of time. If the money had come from the need to sell Frosted Flakes and BMW's instead of Coppola funding it itself, it would be a very different movie. Even with that, though, there is something just so hypnotic about this ode to one man's idea of America as a falling empire. The allure of auteur theory always bumps against the reality of business interests, but this is the rare example of a big budget statement. We haven't had this since the end of New Hollywood in the late Seventies. 9. TRAP DIRECTED BY: M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN No one has been received more viciously than Shyamalan by the early Internet. THE SIXTH SENSE was just his second major film and they were calling him the next Steven Spielberg. The knives were out for him from that moment. SIGNS was illogical THE VILLAGE was too unrealistic and LADY IN THE WATER was too self-indulgent and then THE HAPPENING wasn't scary enough. By the time he was making Will Smith nepotism projects and uninspired adaptations of a popular show, it seemed like his era was over. However, with one exception, he has been back since THE VISIT, bringing modern takes to classical sub-genres. Almost like he is challenging himself, Shyamalan keeps coming up with theses scenarios that seem impossible to make entertaining and then impressing anyway. 8. DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD DIRECTED BY: RADU JUDE You never want to get ahead of yourself, but this is probably the best film Uwe Boll will ever be involved with. 7. DAHOMEY DIRECTED BY: MATI DIOP A REAL PAIN is the big film this year about people reckoning with generational trauma, but while the boys in that film have easily available tour guides and homes and structures to move them through that grief, the European destruction of so much African history and culture. Much has been made lately of Western European exams being filled from hall to hall with stolen African sculptures and architecture, and here we get a better idea of how rootless and incomplete one can feel without being able to identify with and channel your own heritage. 6. JANET PLANET DIRECTED BY: ANNIE BAKER Being a kid is the hardest part of your life. Your body is going through extraordinary changes, you have no choice in where you live or go to school, you are often saddled with siblings, and the person who decides almost every factor in how to raise you is just some random person who was involved the night you were conceived. No one is every really prepared for it, and while there is often love and compassion there, there is still a tug-of-war of personalities and ideology for how life should be lived. You are always comparing your situation to the peers around you, and it gets that much harder when you start to realize how unlike those other families yours are. 5. CLOSE YOUR EYES DIRECTED BY: VICTOR ERICE Nothing really prepares you for looking deep into the eyes of someone you have known and cared about, only to see nothing back. You might understand the science behind it and you may have heard stories of it happening to other people, but that isn't going to happen to the people, you care about, right? Of course, knowing the history of Erice and his contributions to world cinema, there is even more here, acknowledging film, even fiction, as documents of history. 4. LATE SUMMER DIRECTED BY: CATHERINE BREILLAT After such long and pointless discourse about whether or not nudity and sex should be portrayed in film, leave it to the French but especially Breillat to cut through all of the false modesty and prudishness and see how our carnal desires operate, threatening to upend our lives and make us do things we would regret in the same way drugs and alcohol do. Sex is power and sex is authority and sex is violence and sex is negotiation. 3. ANORA DIRECTED BY: SEAN BAKER Please stop telling me who he follows on social media. Let the films speak for themselves. 2. LA CHIMERA DIRECTED BY: ALICE ROHRWACHER We are always interested in what came before, and for that reason the Etruscans are so mysterious. In the West, Rome is representative of everything we think of when we talk about the Ancient World, but what if the Colosseum was just on your daily commute or you worked in a shop just a few blocks away from the Trevi Fountain? What is history to people who already live in history? The Etruscans are significantly less documented than the Romans and are thus susceptible to having their past manufactured and repurposed for those looking for easy answers to fill the void in their lives. P.T. Barnum might have once said that there's a sucker born every minute, and it keeps proving itself to be true. 1. EVIL DOES NOT EXIST DIRECTED BY: RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI Hamaguchi almost makes it feel like the camera just follows who it wants. One minute we are following a man to an extended meeting about sewage overflow from a proposed tourist destination (as riveting as any car chase or shootout this year), and the next we are dedicated to seeing the crisis of conscience of one of the building representatives. More than just about anyone else working right now, it is important to just let Hamaguchi's films wash over you. Next year we have many interesting films to look forward to, such as: ANOTHER WOLF MAN CAPTAIN AMERICA 5 ANOTHER SNOW WHITE MINECRAFT: THE MOVIE FINAL DESTINATION 6 KARATE KID 6 JOHN WICK SPINOFF LIVE-ACTION LILO AND STITCH 28 YEARS LATER JURASSIC PARK 7 SAW 11
Right? I think the list shows a lot about the state of queer film right now. There’s still quite a bit I haven’t seen but there was so much variety this year. It feels like we can finally breathe and know we’re not getting the same story over and over again. And that doesn’t even include what didn’t make my top 10. If you had asked me 1/1/24, I would’ve guessed Love Lies Bleeding would end up with the top spot. Drive Away Dolls was just kind of the exact movie I’ve always wanted to be able to watch but never existed.
Favorite first watches: The Devils Cannibal Campout The Swimmer Collateral The World’s Greatest Sinner Menace II Society Bad Lieutenant Midnight Cowboy The Lawnmower Man Variety The New York Ripper The Fly Alphabet City Soul of the Demon First Reformed American Boy Ricochet The Conversation
Best of 2024 (or 2023 with no wide release until this year): 1. In a Violent Nature 2. I Saw the TV Glow 3. Anora 4. Rap World 5. Lisa Frankenstein 6. Gasoline Rainbow (2023) 7. Snack Shack 8. Beetlejuice 2 9. A Real Pain 10. Challengers Still a lot to see. I did not really like: Maxxxine The Fall Guy The Substance The Beach Boys Mike Love puff piece The Bikeriders I disliked: Mean Girls Ricky Stanicky Quiet on Set
I got 15 minutes into Ricky Stanicky and tapped out. I thought it’d be dudes getting into trouble, not men skip out on important events with their wives
1. I already posted my list with the correct winner. 2. I mostly write about being on the train now 4. I have a head injury 5. I'll do a write up later today
I haven't seen Nickel Boys or The Brutalist yet since they don't open till Jan. 10th for me, and there's a ton of stuff I still have to check out from this year but as of now my favorites have been: 1. Nosferatu 2. Anora 3. Wicked 4. The Substance 5. Abigail 6. I Saw The TV Glow 7. Terrifier 3 8. The First Omen 9. Strange Darling 10. Longlegs 11. The Wild Robot 12. Last Stop In Yuma County 13. Plastic 14. A Different Man 15. Oddity
Why isnt anyone asking @imthegrimace? he had the correct Eggers list if you can work out how to read it.
No order Anora Rap World Dune Part 2 Furiosa I Saw the TV Glow The Substance Alien: Romulus In a Violent Nature Challengers Trap Megalopolis Rebel Ridge Hitman Nosferatu Queer Twisters The Bikeriders