Love / Lies / Bleeding: 2024 In Film

This was a good year for film — and I am beginning to sense that I always say that. I am beginning to sense that nearly every year I can recall ends with some portion of the online film community indicating otherwise, that this was missing or that was missing or somehow all of this was not up to the other year, regretfully, and I’m starting to believe it’s all just horseshit.

There aren’t “bad years for film.” There are just bad years for personal curation. Or, to paraphrase a line from Bilge Ebiri, there are too many good films right now for me to even see them all.

I’m wrapping things up for this year, not because I have seen “everything” (I never do) or even “everything in the awards conversation” (because why would I). The OFCS voting is still weeks out; yet everyone else seems to have published their list already.

All this to say, there are still movies coming that I think are definitely in the conversation (anyone betting against Mufasa being, at the very least, extremely interesting are kidding themselves).

But I saw something a few weeks ago that felt like a firm capper for year of movie-watching; and then I saw a couple more things that were equally if not more so good, and realized it never really ends and none of this actually matters. If something else sneaks into the list between now and New Year’s Eve, you can keep an eye on my Letterboxd for late-breaking news.

A few strands make themselves plain in looking back on the year:

First of all — and I don’t know if this was broadly true, or merely true of the movies I tend to watch, but — this was a hell of a year for performances by women. My shortlist of “best actress” nominations for the OFCS awards is, actually, too long.

Second: after a 2023 where everyone and their mother (most of them employed by Variety) were doing their level best to assert that Disney, as a film studio, was completely and entirely fucked, this was the year Disney fully put that assertion in the ground. I don’t say this as a “brand loyalty” piece, merely an observation: Disney gobbled up so much box office in 2024 that the Mouse House nearly saved theatrical exhibition single-handedly. So much for [insert whatever snide Film Xitter premise here] ruining movies.

The best films of the year

1. I Saw The TV Glow

(nominations for best director; best actor: Smith; best supporting actress: Lundy-Paine; best makeup & practical effects; best sound)

I could make neither heads nor tails of We’re All Going To The World’s Fair (I turned it off halfway through), and my first experience watching I Saw The TV Glow was… shall we say… unsettling. (It didn’t help that the Buffy connections kept ripping me out of the picture.)

But something stuck in my craw about the whole thing, and I went back a few weeks — plus or minus one coming out — later. What had been, on first reading, a deeply frightening horror movie about the closet became… something else. I’m not even sure I’m ready to describe what the something else is, other than to say I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best films of the decade.

2. Anora

(nominations for best director; best actress: Madison; supporting actor: Borisov; best original screenplay)

If I Saw The TV Glow disturbed me down to my marrow-bones, Anora was its cheery antidote; cheery enough, anyway, for a movie about… well, without spoilers, let’s just say trouble.

This is a straight-ahead piece of Great Cinema that absorbed me, entertained me, absolutely enveloped me in the souls of its characters, and then left me with a final sequence that is one of those final sequences, i.e. a thing I was thinking about for days, weeks, and eventually, I’m assuming, the rest of my life. I can’t wait to see it again.

3. Close Your Eyes

(best director)

Victor Erice, still doing the thing. After an utterly beguiling prologue, shot on film, which turns out to be an incomplete film within a film, shot digitally, which is, itself, an incomplete inquiry into the urge we all (?) have to follow threads and understand our missing pieces… and I got to watch the whole thing sitting in the catbird seat at TIFF [🔕] Lightbox, one of my happiest places on Earth.

4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

(best supporting actor: Hemsworth; best supporting actress: Browne; best sound; best original score; best stunts)

🤐

5. Love Lies Bleeding

(best director; best actress: Stewart; best supporting actress: O’Brian; best sound)

Rose Glass is firmly standing out her marker as one of the best directors working; her sophomore feature is knottier (and naughtier) than her slender projectile of a debut, but gadzooks, it’s a treat to see. This one’s for the girlies, and we loved it.

6. Challengers

(best actress: Zendaya; best supporting actor: Faist; best supporting actor: O’Connor; best original score; best original screenplay)

This one, I think, also arguably for the girlies, and/or everyone who wanted to see the most profound sexual tension of the year turn out to be between the chameleonic Mike Faist and his shaggy-dog buddy, Josh O’Connor. Zendaya presides over the whole thing as a tragic character who both understands tennis (and sex) better than anyone around her and, perhaps as a direct consequence, can’t play (or come). It’s beautiful.

7. Dune: Part II

(best supporting actress: Zendaya; best cinematography; best sound; best original score)

I doubt Zendaya will get much awards heat off her performance here (vs. Challengers, above), and I recognize that Chani does not altogether have the most to do in large swaths of the film. The film’s final moments, however — which rely entirely on Zendaya’s carefully-calibrated position within the story to deliver the moral meaning of what was, in Herbert, a couple thousand words of prose — remain one of 2024’s great below-the-belt jabs.

8. Wicked

(best actress: Erivo; best actress/supporting actress depending on where she chooses to campaign: Grande)

I view the two lead performances here as equal in measure if wildly different in delivery; I recognize the strategic importance of not having Erivo and Grande campaign against one another in the same category. Still, calling what Grande does with Glinda a “supporting” role feels slightly churlish; and besides, these two women gave two of the richest performances of the year, and that’s an equal-parts accomplishment regardless of who walks away with what award.

9. The Old Oak

(best director; best actor: Turner; best actress: Mari)

The more I think about it after the fact, the more I think that The Old Oak‘s moralizing is too much on-its-sleeve; but watching the film, I was utterly absorbed, leaned forward, engaged scene-to-scene on a level that rarely happens (to me, old, ill-bred) anymore. Ken Loach is just gonna keep saying it till you all hear it: class.

10. Bird

(breakout performance: Adams)

Andrea Arnold’s prior “weird outlier” film (Wuthering Heights) is my favourite; this one is weirder, and more of an outlier, and feels like a Wim Wenders fever dream of an Andrei Tarkovsky picture. It doesn’t come together perfectly, but the mythic power of the image-making stands out long after the fact.

Further awards, technical awards, other things worth mentioning

More actress nominations would go like this:

• Demi Moore (lead), The Substance
• June Squibb (lead), Thelma
• Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez (for reasons similar to the Wicked scenario, Netflix is campaigning her in Supporting; this is being challenged)
• Adria Arjona (supporting), Hit Man

I guess men can act too:

• Ralph Fiennes (lead), Conclave
• Peter Macon (supporting), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes — this will get absolutely no heat because it’s a digital performance, but, it’s a masterclass
• Richard Roundtree (supporting), Thelma
• Kieran Culkin (supporting), A Real Pain

Some more scripts:

• Drive Away Dolls
• A Real Pain
• Conclave

And some other commendations:

• Best original score and best makeup & practical effects, The Substance
• Best stunts, The Fall Guy
• Best VFX, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
• Best animated short, An Almost Christmas Story
• Best animated feature and best original score, The Wild Robot

Best documentary, Music By John Williams 🥲

And now, some cinema (links)

• I took some time in the past couple weeks to clean up the various storehouses of video that I operate across the internet; one of them — my Vimeo page — has been substantially expanded to house a decent selection of my shorts from roughly 1995-2015. I’m on the fence about putting the whole VCR Decalogue out there; but also, if I don’t, what is it even for? (Vimeo)
• Is there anything more cinematic than a Blurrg?? No. No there is not (Giant Green Space Hand)
• Here’s some great writing about one of the best films of the decade (West Side Story). The writing itself is equally great: breathy, sensuous, committed to cinema as the beautiful thing that it is. (Bright Wall / Dark Room)