By Devin Baron
“Survive til ‘25” was the motto for many. And sure, this year wasn’t the auteur abundance of 2023, but that resulted in something a bit more focused rather than lacking. As much as I attempted to time-travel to those hallowed monocultural times for every House of the Dragon Sunday, 2024 inevitably became a year of deepening and prevailing nicheness. Instead of a gratifying mass consensus around those already hailed, this year forced us to decide which ~popular~ things to join the chorus on and which to “thank u, next,” leaving plenty of room for discovering and championing the islanded films that understood us most deeply and most specifically.
It was a year of sleeper horror hits. Curry Barker’s Milk & Serial, Osgood Perkins’s Longlegs, and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance all defied their respective viewership expectations, though it was the big, franchise, prequel horror picture, A Quiet Place: Day One, I found most surprisingly delightful. It was also a pretty freaky movie year in another way. Though, for all the good (or maybe more funny than good in one case) steaminess of Lou & Jackie, Gary & Madison, and Ani & Ivan, it was a leave-it-off-screen that made the most racket.
I began this year with the initiative to watch fewer movies, the reasons boiling down to social goals and adjacent self-improvement. And looking back, it’s hard to decipher whether I’ve elevated or devolved in those areas. Because I think both? Movies have played a funny, confusing role in all that. I ended up watching even more than ever before and writing about my favs was a rewarding introspection. Like every critic, cinephile, and list-making movie-enjoyer, here is some sort of curvilinear reflection of the best films of the year, my idiosyncratic tastes, and where I am on this raucous sandworm ride.
10. The Comeback: 2004 Boston Red Sox – Dir. by Colin Barnicle
Let’s do it. Why not start with some list-making tomfoolery right off the bat? This isn’t a movie. But in this “you can log miniseries on Letterboxd but not other TV shows” age, what is a movie anyway? This is a 3-part docuseries about the charm of Kevin Millar and the depravity of those damn Yankees. I can’t promise everyone will love this if they’re not a Sox fan or if their first memory of life isn’t sitting on their living room floor watching these scrappy idiots win it all. What I can say is this: I’m convinced it’s useful if not important, in this fragmented, multicultural world, to let your interests bleed into each other. These last few years, I’ve become far more engulfed in the wide world of film than I have anything on ESPN, but, as they do for so many, sports remain integral to how I connect, communicate, and understand things. A close friend and I read through and discussed several books of the Bible this year, and at one point, after calling into question the distracted nature of our discussions, he posed, “What is the gospel if it doesn’t affect the way you direct?”
9. Janet Planet – Dir. by Annie Baker
“But even the word ‘bad’…What is that word?” says Janet to her friend, Regina, The scene is half philosophical-rant, half justification of her life story. And that’s what she contemplates, one way or another, throughout this pondering, cricket-chirping, trainwreck-but-in-a-subtle-way story. What is a bad decision? What is a bad mother? What is a bad life? First-time filmmaker, Annie Baker, doesn’t answer those for us or Janet. She instead graciously allows us to sit in on a life for a season, to see the good or bad or both or neither. We see Janet’s life through the eyes of those who probably don’t as much fancy themselves the main character: a disgruntled lover’s, a broken friend’s, a religious leader’s, and most profoundly, her daughter’s. Between this and Evil Does Not Exist, (a movie I loved but ultimately did not find space for on the list,) 2024 gave us two excellent, parent-child final scenes, ripe with healthy ambiguity.
8. Megalopolis – Dir. by Francis Ford Coppola
I’m all for recognizing your best theater-going experiences, (and if not for a messiah moment or two, this would be mine.) This movie’s liberator story is far less complicated and far more made fun of. While I think it deserves every ounce of its TikTok mockery, it also deserves to be experienced, discussed, and dare I say praised, beyond the doomscroll. Come for the laughing ats, stay for the laughing withs. I enjoyed a lot of good, dumb fun this year—The Fall Guy, Twisters, Trap—but while those movies were back at the club, Megalopolis was putting in the work to make this list. If you’re seeing this on here, and you’re gonna keep reading further, uh, thank you. That’s very kind of you.
7. It’s What’s Inside – Dir. by Greg Jardin
If you were disappointed that there are no sex scenes in Challengers…there aren’t that many in this either. But some, I guess. Like the tennis romp, this wedding party thriller doesn’t care about the act itself; it cares about the tension and feelings and human messiness (which, yes, includes horniness.) Amidst a wonderful cast of eight, David Thompson is the discovery, standing out as some sort of Paul Dano-your goofy best friend-Hannibal Lector smoothie. If Anora is the “every act has a distinct energy” movie of the year, it’s Greg Jardin’s feature film debut that’s the “oh, so this is what this movie’s vibe is, oh, interesting” film of the year, effortlessly swapping the type of flick you think it is for another.
6. It Just Takes Time – Dir. by Joel Haver
Filmmaking is widely accessible! Money is no barrier! That is the chant cried by YouTuber-filmmaker-supercreative Joel Haver. Most known for his animated shorts, Haver has been pumping out a short film, some animated and some live-action, every week since April 15th, 2019. That’s until he revealed that he’s an absolute crazy person. This past New Year’s, he announced he would be trading in all that fame and glory (but no, really, he is foregoing much of the YouTube income he could make) to spend this year making twelve feature films in twelve months. Crazy. Person. The challenge has endeavored him an exciting eclectic, but the 5th of the twelve entries, It Just Takes Time, feels like the culmination of all the pre-12-for-12 features. The fireworks and the diegetic music. The palpable grief. The existential but peaceful musings. I’m still deciding whether Timothée Chalamet’s College Gameday appearance or the Bob Dylan conversation in this movie is more entertaining.
5. The Text – Dir. by Joel Haver
Come on. You thought I’d only love one movie from the guy who’s made twelve movies? The Text is challenge meets another challenge meets another challenge. Amidst his 12-for-12, Haver facilitated his annual call for whoever is bold enough to join him in protesting Hollywood’s biggest night by writing, shooting, and editing a feature film within the Oscars ceremony runtime. Oh, and Haver decided his would be a true oner. The ultra-low-budget filmmaking talks at you throughout—the camera shaking, prominently seeing the cameraman’s shadow at one point—but narratively, it’s the film of his that’s most wrapped up in a beautiful resounding bow. The flick works best as a “this is how hilariously dumb and stupid men can be sometimes,” awkward comedy.
4. Challengers – Dir. by Luca Guadagnino
It’s a master letting himself have fun. While Guadagnino’s movie doesn’t enter Babylon levels of “I’m gonna do whatever I want at the end of my movie,” the final sequence camera choices have that energy. It’s amusing that this immediate entry into the all-time best sports movies might deter that group of season ticket holders with its love triangle premise. Not me. It’s a love triangle in the sense that I’m in love with all three performances. And the churros. And the sweat. And the house music. Can I live in the Call Me by Your Name world and this world, please?
3. Hiccups – Dir. by Joel Haver
Don’t look at me like that. I am who I am. “Modern rom-com” has gained some negative connotation in even the die-hardiest rom-com circles, as *cue grouchy voice* “they just don’t make ‘em like they used to with Meg Ryan.” I honestly don’t know who says that. That’s me. I’m the one saying that I guess. But this is a modern rom-com in all the right ways, adeptly updating the rom and the com with a late-millennial/early-gen-z specificity. Haver’s Hiccups might not be as perfect as The Text, for it has a bit of an unlanded third act…but it is the most innovative thing I’ve seen in a long time. I won’t spoil that any further.
2. Dune: Part Two – Dir. by Denis Villeneuve
If they ever invented advanced movie-watching stats like they did with all the baseball metrics, Width of Smile (WoS) would need to be included. Nolan has always been my spectacle filmmaker of choice, as up until this point I enjoyed Villeneuve’s Prisoners sensibilities more than any of the grandness in his picture-making. But uh. That all changed. While we didn’t get a true Barbenheimer in 2024, we did get a true Trinity Test, and as I watched the Muad’Dib mount his destiny, I believe my mouth had to make more teeth to fill all the new space. It’s mostly a joke when I sometimes say that the movie theaters are my cathedral, but I do believe in them, and I do believe that they exist for moments like that one. My life was improved by that experience. And that’s before we even consider a later scene, in which, frankly, I was 100% ready to run out of that IMAX auditorium and go follow Timothée Chalamet into any battle he needed fought. LISAN AL-GAIBBBBBBBBBBBB!!!!!!!!!!!
1. A Real Pain – Dir. by Jesse Eisenberg
Though I eagerly, and sometimes desperately, want to, it’s hard for me to produce tears. It has gotten to the point where, along with a close friend who has the same problem, I have shifted the goalposts. If my throat gets slightly lump-sounding or if my eyes get slightly watery, I’m experiencing the same amount of emotion that someone who can cry a lot is experiencing, and I count it as such. That’s for anything in life, never mind during movies. And I didn’t cry during this movie. But I got pretty darn close. And then I cried later that night. I can’t attribute it all to this Polish-cousins travelogue, but at least enough for it to surpass that sci-fi fanboy excitement you just had to sit through and claim the top spot. Eisenberg and Culkin play versions of their archetypes, with the former’s intellectually and morally dissecting pen giving the blend its flare and depth. It’s the charm of the baggie-shorts and basement-living Benji making people laugh and feel seen but also having his demons. It’s the endearment of the OCD-meds-taking and successful careered David harboring tremendous care and admiration for his loved one but also seeming hopelessly unable to make sense of him. And it’s the inevitability of the heartache in between. Whichever of the two characters you think I relate to, it’s probably the other one.
Honorable Mentions
Dìdì – Dir. by Sean Wang
It joins a recent lineage of heartfelt, youthful Asian-American stories (The Farewell, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Past Lives) that seem to have a grip on me. A lovely coming-of-age story about YouTube, skating, and figuring out how to relationship.
A Complete Unknown – Dir. by James Mangold
Timothée Chalamet continues to be an amazing little weirdo. This was so fun, I guess I’m gonna go listen to Bob Dylan now.
(Disclaimer: I have not seen Babygirl, The Brutalist, Close Your Eyes, La Chimera, Nickel Boys, Sing Sing, and others.)
