photo above of Fancy Dance

if you struggle to read, you can view this list on letterboxd (and follow me on there!!)

Soooo hi. I watched a few movies last year, 560 to be exact (already on 249 this year but that’s irrelevant). And about 136 of them came out in 2024, so ‘new releases’. Anyways, some of these films I’m about to talk about weren’t in that 136, because I’m going off US Theatrical release date, and not festival release! So that’s worth mentioning as some of these films took 2 years to get distribution.

I tried really hard to finish this before the Oscars, sadly I’m not quite that good at making my mind up - to be honest I could watch more 2024 releases into April and really-really perfect this list but I’d rather just get this list done before I have to start thinking about best of 2025 (currently it’s Eat the Night and Companion, lol).

Speaking of the Oscars, kind of a weird one. The nominations were kind of boring in comparison to last year where a BUNCH of great films were nominated, and the weakest one won (not even mad). This year, Nickel Boys got a best picture nomination, which made me really happy. I liked Anora a lot, Baker is a great filmmaker and it’s nice to see that guy who made Take Out and Starlet win Best Director! (reflecting back on it - Anora is a very special film, and so rich with what it’s attempting to do - blend a ‘light’ American fairytale story with a deeply nihilistic and tragic story (some real ambition! - and for the most part, it works perfectly!!). Hopefully Baker keeps making his distinct brand of ‘outsider’ cinema after his four wins.

Anyways; this isn’t going to be a nice competent Academy-adjacent list - and I promise you that you probably won’t have seen (or maybe even heard of) half of the films on here. Which of course; is emblematic of my perfect (!) taste. (fuck you if you disagree!). Anyway; I really enjoyed watching a lot of great independent and foreign films this year, and it was really-really difficult to get this down to twenty, but I think (personally) I did a good job. But it’s really nice to know that despite how bland some of the major releases are; there are so many filmmakers working outside the dominant systems who keep making films that push the boundaries of the medium, and reflect on the contemporary world in such interesting ways!

I’ve commented on each entry, I don’t particularly have too much to say for each, good art usually speaks for itself! But I’ve really thought about what drew me to put each film where and why so hopefully my little silly comments answer those questions!!!

My Favourite Films of 2024

20. ‘Janet Planet’, dir. Annie Baker

Pulitzer-winning playwright Annie Baker’s debut is a hauntingly morphed version of the classical coming-of-age narrative, layering quiet poignance with a mesmerizing stillness that lingers well after you’ve finished watching. Beautifully shot with compositions from Godland cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff, blended with Baker’s signature unrefined and awkward dialogue, that her theatre has become so known for, leads to a film that in every way manages to move you.

Janet Planet perfectly explores the complexities of mother-daughter relationships through cinema, with a true standout (and Oscar-worthy) performance from Julianne Nicholson. A film which shows that your own actions form your own bitter reality, and it’s just easier to accept the consequences, than fight with your past. ( I had to include at least one Baker on my list :) )

19. ‘Evil Does Not Exist’, dir. Ryūsuke Hamaguchi

The best the eco-thriller genre has to offer, Hamaguchi’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning Drive My Car is a powerful study on the tense urban invasion into the natural world and our relationship to it. All leading to one of the most tortuous endings of the year. Evil Does Not Exist tells its story with such restraint through effective minimalist filmmaking, despite an overwhelming and persistent suspense.

In most ways, the film adopts a Socratic view of morality, where evil is the result of ignorance rather than independent forces. Ignorance is the driving force of the film, ignorance from governments, corporations, parents and communities all lead to the film’s almost sudden ending. The film may be a warning - but I think it’s too late for that, and so does the film; instead it becomes something bleaker - an elegy.

18. ‘Exhibiting Forgiveness’, dir. Titus Kaphar

No other words seemed to have stuck with me last year than the ones of Titus Kaphar in his Sundance meet-the-artist video, specifically when the painter turned filmmaker states that ‘art is a strategy for generational healing’. It’s probably this statement which kept my interest in Exhibiting Forgiveness from January 2024 to when I finally got to watch the film in February 2025.

I think Forgiveness is maybe an inherently difficult concept to capture and dramatize (versus something more sinister, like revenge). Forgiveness, particularly in cinema, can feel too open, and resist a closure that it seems to set itself up for. Kaphar’s film, however, depicts forgiveness with such ease that the closure is natural - it’s still a difficult process, but a process you must engage with to break a cycle of neglect for future generations. Besides this, the film offers André Holland’s best performance yet (yes, better his role in Moonlight), showcasing such a sensitivity to his craft. I’m shocked at how underseen this film is, but I’m so glad it exists.

17. ‘Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person’, dir. Ariane Louis-Seize

A delightful genre affair, I don’t think I need to sell this one hard - the very self-descriptive title does that for me. The idea of ‘vampirism’ in the film is low-key, and you might find yourself forgetting that Sasha, the young protagonist, is even a vampire, and her dilemma of strong ethics leads her to a teenage crisis that feels like it could be for anything, which I think creates the true charm of the film.

I say this in the best ways possible - the idea of a vampire as the human ‘outsiders’ is often depicted in such mean-spirited ways, and treats ‘vampires’ as monsters, which often they’re not. I don’t see any sympathy for vampires anymore, a wholly misunderstood subject of the horror genre, about those who ‘make’ everyone ‘else’ live in ‘fear’! The true vampire is a figure of longing, transformation, and rebellion - not of a ‘predatory’ nature. Humanist Vampire understands this, and instead chooses to depict an internal struggle about our own inherited nature and identities, and society's expectations around them.

16. ‘Love Lies Bleeding’, dir. Rose Glass

I wasn’t a big fan of Rose Glass’s debut feature, but her second film throws itself into clear-cut genre territory blending exploitation, thriller and noir - making it easily one of the most entertaining films I’ve ever watched, outrightly descending into the most wild places that any film could go, and even then fully pumped up on steroids.

Grim and dirt fall off the screen in line with the film’s standout technical aspects; engaging cinematography and editing which stayed with me long after I had watched; with maybe even more impressive sound and production design. Pulsating filmmaking from a real talent, maybe I’m being too vague about the film, and I am, but it’s just so much fun to immerse yourself in this world, and my words will never live up to that. Lots of blood, lots of sweat!!

15. ‘Nickel Boys’, dir. RaMell Ross

I was hesitant to watch Nickel Boys - I had heard raves out of festivals and knew it was probably going to get nominated for Oscars, but I wasn’t rushing to watch this one, maybe I was put off by the first-person perspective most of this film takes… I was so wrong to ever doubt this film. It’s practically perfect. RaMell has constructed maybe one of the most troubling depictions of systemic brutality. Institutions designed for ‘reform’ perpetrating American racism. Truly horrifying to watch. Ross and Barnes have written two incredible lead characters who are portrayed by four incredible performers

After watching the film, I was reminded stylistically of one my favourites of last year - Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt - and now, only weeks later I realise that they are both shot by Jomo Fray - who might have been one of the most talented DPs working today - there is such beautiful sensitivity to his images, and his camerawork is cinematic poetry. I’m shocked that a film so thoughtful - and experimental - and important, would even be nominated for Oscars - let alone made for a $20+ million budget.

14. ‘The Beast’, dir. Bertrand Bonello

Bonello’s tale of doomed romance across shifting temporal landscapes is a loosely inspired adaption of Henry James’s novel The Beast in the Jungle. Blending near-future, period, and contemporary aesthetics in a study of our own self-sabotage while interrogating modern anxieties of the existential, reinterpreting James’s themes to fit a world of digital alienation.

The Beast terrifies me, one of the film’s more climatic moments where Seydoux’s ‘Gabrielle’ interacts with a strange online fortune teller in the midst of a possible home-invasion is one of the only times a film has left me truly scared. Compelling - with Léa Seydoux continuing to prove why she’s the greatest actor of this decade (despite her performance not quite living up to her ones in France (2021) and One Fine Morning (2022)).

13. ‘Good One’, dir. India Donaldson

Intimate and tender - with tense undertones that brood and simmer under an innocuous camping trip throughout the film’s short runtime. Old Joy with the presence of a daughter - Reichardt’s sophomore effort is an obvious influence on this one, even with its similar title.

Post-divorce fathers lecturing incoherent monologues that construct a fragile male ego, while Lily Collias gives a brilliant performance of the polar opposite; a young girl coming-to-terms with this world. Beautiful naturalistic dialogue creates a great entry into the modern canon of ‘slow-cinema’, and proves India Donaldson’s talent, right from her first feature. (Something interesting I found out - India Donaldson is the daughter of the director, Roger Donaldson, whose film Smash Palace is about an angry divorced man who kidnaps his daughter into the woods, which is a fascinating point of comparison with this, if you need a double feature).

12. ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig’, dir. Mohammad Rasoulof

‘When there is no way, a way must be made.’ Rasoulof’s film seems to be defined by its opening quote. Shot in secret in Iran, with the footage being smuggled out to Germany for editing, and a 28-day escape, travelling parts on foot, just to leave the country to attend its Cannes premiere. Brooding and sinister, The Seed of the Sacred Fig sets a story of systemic control and patriarchal oppression against the backdrop of an Iran in revolt.

As much as we stayed locked up in an apartment in Tehran for so much of the film’s first half, we see the outside world and it’s revolt through the screen - the mobile phone creates a dissonance with the television, fragmenting families by generational concepts of trust - whoever controls the narrative, controls the people. Slow but suspenseful, gradually building up to one of the most classical uses of Chekhov’s gun - but for this family, it’s not a theatre piece - but their very lives, their home, and their right to live. Heartbreaking and urgent.

11. ‘Red Rooms’, dir. Pascal Plante

The commodification of ‘everything’ through the internet. Assayas’s 2002 cyber-noir Demonlover begins to ask questions - but 22 years later Plante reassesses them through a courtroom drama. Submerged in the modern culture of the ‘internet’ - TOR, data scraping, ‘admin:admin’ usernames and passwords - there is no posing, Red Rooms doesn’t distract you with fake technical spectacle (like most films about the internet do); but uses the real construction of what the internet actual is to critique it.

Filled with deeply interesting commentary on the ‘true-crime’ fandom our culture creates; turning real horrors into spectacles and creating a separation of the person from their actions. Recently I saw images of people waiting outside the courtroom of Luigi Mangione, and it was almost impossible to not think about scenes of Red Rooms (the distributor, Utopia, even retweeted stuff about this), very relevant!

10. ‘It’s Not Me’, dir. Leos Carax

40 years into his career, the ex-Cahiers writer turned French auteur known for his eccentric yet almost poetic filmmaking, has only made six films. So then, it’s strange that his seventh is a forty-minute part self-reflective essay reminiscent of 2010s Godard, and part reflection of his oeuvre. But it begins to make more sense when you realise that this film is only about 40 minutes in length (a minute a year I guess) - at least he’s not being too indulgent in taking up our time with more auteurism. Haunted by the presences of Yekaterina Golubeva, David Bowie and Jean-Luc Godard, Carax weaves glimpses of moments from collective lives together through the image, while investigating the troubled and complicated relationship between cinema and fascism.

Just before the film ends, we repeat one final scene from Carax’s filmography, but distorted, we jump cut through the moment of seeing Golubeva, playing Isabelle, desperately pushing through the crowds in the final moments of his fourth film, Pola X. Maybe one of the most powerful moments in all of cinema - reframed for the fragmented and cut-up world of 2024. Through destroying the original moment, Carax seems to move beyond basic postmodern deconstruction - to something more primal, yet it becomes a self-contradiction through its own intimacy (was also here I started crying). Carax thinks cinema’s become cheap, and not as powerful as it once was (in the 20th century), but despite this, he believes that the image lives on. RIP Yekaterina Golubeva.

9. ‘Pictures of Ghosts’, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho

Filho’s voiceover guides us on a half oral history of Recife and its gentrification, while reflecting on his own filmmaking and the city’s decline of cinemas. It was my first film by Kleber Mendonça Filho, and instantly convinced me to see the rest of his works. The reflections he offers, not only on his own films, but also on the city he’s spent decades portraying on screen, are so astute that they draw you into his glorified self-essay as if you were watching a blockbuster.

Filho captures a true sense of ‘rhythm’ in ‘Pictures of Ghosts’ - the musical editing acts as a sort of urgency for the framing of his chosen topics, and the way he shifts from more formal statements to personal anecdotes is so charming. We experience the sense of the world opening up, beginning in his apartment where he spent his childhood in the first third, before moving to the wider city in the second. The film ends, in a scripted live-action scene, the only one in the film - Filho enters a cab, where the driver reveals to him that he can disappear. In almost every way, the film itself is like a ghost; Filho believes the Recife he remembers (and is captured through images) is still there, just invisible to us, but if you know where to look, you’ll see it.

8. ‘Last Summer’, dir. Catherine Breillat

Breillat somehow has such an extreme reputation as being cinema’s foremost provocateur that I astound myself by saying Last Summer is more ‘friendly’ than her cinema which precedes it (or maybe more ‘accessible’). Of course, anyone who hasn’t watched a Breillat film, probably don’t. I wouldn’t want to ruin someone’s day like that, but if you want some of France’s most challenging cinema then Last Summer seems like a place to start.

Breillat poses Last Summer as sort of a French middle-brow drama, however, this boring and generic aesthetic is slowly peeled back to reveal a distributing emotional conflict underneath, that is just too typical of her filmography - and that made me want to vomit. Suburban conventionality becomes a deliberate decoy for the questions she poses about raw human desire - which is too uncomfortable, but as is important to remember for all works of French extremity - do not confuse fiction for reality.

7. ‘Caught by the Tides’, dir. Jia Zhang-ke

‘The images grow distant as I can feel the times they record slipping away. Good times in the past has become almost dream-like.’ (taken from the director’s statement). Constructed from footage taken since 2001, including some scenes taken straight from Jia Zhang-ke’s previous films, Caught by the Tides offers a moving tale of romance over 20 years in the making in China which is constantly changing.

Zhang-ke’s experiment was originally to begin filming in 2002 and keep going until his retirement when he would edit it all together - sort of like a magnum opus. He decided to cut it short when the pandemic hit and spent the time constructing Caught by the Tides, filming an ending as the pandemic was beginning to slow down. The result is a portrait of both a changing country, but also a deeply beautiful reflection on memory and our impermanence. A simple mediation with tremendous forces behind it - some will call The Brutalist the most ambitious film of the year, but I know it’s this.

6. ‘The Sweet East’, dir. Sean Prince Williams

A dream-like East Coast odyssey and half allusion to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland through the world of modern America, led by Talia Ryder’s electric performance and further guided by Sean Price Williams iconic and exhilarating handheld cinematography, now also directing. With one of the most stacked ensembles of the year (Ayo Edebiri, Simon Rex, Jacob Elordi).

Nick Pinkerton’s screenplay effectively uses post-irony as a formal device to dramatise a clash of the extreme (American) ideologies we are consistently navigating. There’s a frequent sense of disappointment lingers throughout Lillian’s travels that feels all too familiar in a world where the younger generations are constantly being put at a disadvantage for their futures, and are quickly discovering that fact. A very singular and original modern satire that wholly captures the zeitgeist of this very moment.

5. ‘Stress Positions’, dir. Theda Hammel

We meet Terry Goon (funniest name of the year) by watching him roll a large disco ball down the stairs of a NYC brownstone, Sisphyus-style. A fitting opening for a film which proudly proclaims - ‘we live in hell - that's life!’. Hammel’s first feature is a reassured lockdown comedy, which looks at an intersection of tortured identities thrown together in the pandemic experiencing a millennial decline. Performative politics become the basis for a glorified modern screwball comedy.

While it’s reliance on voice-over might frustrate a few, the use of perspective shifts is fascinating - too connected to be hyper-link cinema, the camera evades all boundaries; just as the characters do (specifically ironic in a pandemic) - but becomes even more interesting as we realise we live in a world of surveillance. You are stuck in a life that you want out of - but can’t escape, so all you can do is complain. John Early is a star, hopefully Hammel and he collaborate again, and soon.

4. 'Fancy Dance', dir. Erica Tremblay

It’s fascinating that Lily Gladstone is in back-to-back dramas about the disinterest of US law enforcement in investigating missing Indigenous women? While I do love Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, I’d choose Fancy Dance over it in a heartbeat. I’ve had a deep appreciation for Tremblay after watching her short film Little Chief, which tackles the failures of the education system for Indigenous communities, a nice intro for a film like, Fancy Dance, which continues to look at the relationship between Indigenous identity and government failure, but on a much more serious and sensitive level.

Not only does the film feature two of the most moving and wonderful performances of the year (from Lily Gladstone and newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson), but it feels like it holds one of the most relevant social commentaries for 2024. Justice has long been replaced with bureaucracy for anyone who doesn’t fit the ‘norm’ of American (and more generally, Western) society. Fancy Dance’s strong comprehension of such injustice, makes it a vital film for this moment - but its refusal to fall to despair is what gives it such power. In the face of loss, some refuse to disappear.

3. ‘Suspended Time’ dir. Olivier Assayas

Light and fluffy; and like Carax’s It’s Not Me, another self-reflective film from an ex-Cahiers writer turned French auteur. Suspended Time feels like the natural continuation of Assayas’s ongoing conversation around parenthood - Paris Awakens, Cold Water, Clean, Summer Hours, Something in the Air all begin to build a portrait of Assayas own relationship with his parents (three of which films are autobiographical), but unlike the rest, Suspended Time takes the perspective of the parent. Like the rest of this autobiographical films, Suspended Time continues to mention Assayas’s memories, brought out by the setting of his childhood home - mentions of his Hungarian nanny, who ‘never learnt French’, which is the opening scene of Cold Water, or the real office of his father and the quaint almost-rural streets around his house mirroring the prevalent locations of Something in the Air.

Scenes of Vincent Macaigne continuing his Assayas impression from Irma Vep (22) while living in a constant COVID frustration are intercut with scenes of Assayas directly talking about his childhood home - which become the highlight of the film, while the Macaigne scenes remain hilarious and endearing, it’s the director’s own perspective that moves the film from a simple lockdown comedy to something more dear and meaningful. Obviously, to anyone not familiar with Assayas’s work, Suspended Time might come off as too self-indulgent, but to fans of his work, its continuation of discussions from his filmography, will make it a huge delight. Assayas knows the world will long outlive him; and his childhood home will outlive him - and that’s a strange feeling. Suspended Time isn’t as much a reflection on morality as I make it out to be; but Assayas seems to be looking at how the present is created by our own past, but it’s how we reflect on the past that allows us to influence the future. We have to choose what we pass down.

2. 'I Saw The TV Glow', dir. Jane Schoenbrun

I found myself slowly falling apart in Schoenbrun’s moving portrait of dysphoria. Every second felt suffocating - I was watching someone’s life flash past them, living as a glorified shell of what could be a beautiful person, fearful to admit their truth. Schoenbrun wears a range of their influences on their sleeves, from Buffy, to Fire Walk With Me, to Irma Vep, to Elephant, and even Transmorphers (yes, a cheap ripoff of Transformers, shown in a world where life seems to be a cheap rip-off of something more). Ironic for a film built in and around cinematic experience - media is always shaping us, and offers a projection into a better life - where we lose the ‘weight’ of our bodies.

I Saw The TV Glow is ultimately completely hypnotic, it draws you into a narrative so tight, quickly ascending any concepts of classical genre, even a simple ‘Lynchian’ label too disingenuous for what the film is trying to achieve - it’s not just simply a case of reality versus illusion, but how our realities are shaped, or confined, by the memories we construct ourselves on.

1. 'Coma', dir. Bertrand Bonello

Many films have managed to capture the distinctive aesthetics of ‘gen-z’, but virtually none have managed to capture the deep-rooted feeling of this generation’s disillusionment like Bonello’s Coma. Bonello himself described Coma as ‘a young girl on a bed’ - and ‘everything that is in her mind, the only real thing is the young girl, the rest is our dreams, our nightmares, our fears, our joy.’ The final entry in his youth trilogy (alongside the excellent Nocturama and Zombi Child), as well as the second film by him on my list. Coma captures the surrealness of the COVID pandemic and strange experience of growing as a teenager in a world of dreams and virtual spaces. It’s argument seems to take the form that: FaceTime might mimic the experience of meeting someone, but no imitation can ever replace the imitated.

In just 80 minutes, Bonello depicts every feeling of a generation of uncertainty, a narrative told through shots of natural events beyond scale, surveillance cam footage, screens of zoom and facetime calls, YouTube videos, stop-motion, rotoscope animation, POV walking shots through a nightmare forest. There’s no ‘one’ single aesthetic or meaning to Coma, it’s an elliptical collage, it’s what you can make of it. The irony of being lost will forever stay with the film - Coma premiered in 2022, and didn’t get a release until 2024 (in select NYC theatres, lol), but was dropped on MUBI worldwide to coincide with the release of The Beast, but ultimately to be forgotten. If films can be lost in a virtual vacuum, imagine how lost we are - ‘take what you can, I’m giving you all that I can.’

Worst Films of the Year and Good Films that Missed the List

My worst films of the year are as follows (unordered): Emilia Perez, Conclave, Parthenope, Dune Part 2, Grand Theft Hamlet, Night Swim, Salem's Lot and Love Me.

Also films I loved that just didn't make this list (unordered): Anora, The Brutalist, Here, The Girl with the Needle, Maria, Flow, All We Imagine as Light, Memoir of a Snail, Hard Truths, Oh Canada, The Apprentice, Witches, My First Film, Castration Movie Anthology, The End, Cuckoo, Abigail, Dahomey, No Other Land, Chime, ’good luck, final girl’, The Outrun, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World.

Books

I guess also it’s worth mentioning my favourite books from the year as well, which is as follows:

Health and Safety: A Breakdown - Emily Witt (my favourite book of the year, i was balling my eyes out… the title is VERY deceiving!!)

Modern Poetry - Diane Seuss

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities (A Johnathan Rosenbaum Reader) - Jonathan Rosenbaum

The Spirit of Hope - Byung-Chul Han

Shakespeare’s Tragic Art - Rhodri Lewis

The Last Dream - Pedro Almodóvar

I didn’t read as many new books in 2024 (the others aren’t really worth mentioning), as I did catch up on a lot of older works, I especially enjoyed reading works of Giles Delueze, the Kent Jones’ monograph on Olivier Assayas, Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, Masculine Singular by Geneviève Sellier and the Letters of Abelard and Heloise among plenty of others, but they are the highlights.

Best of Century and 2025 Predictions

Also my top picks for films of this century (being halfway through now) are (starting with the best): Showing Up (2023, Reichardt), All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023, Jackson), Irma Vep (2022, Assayas), We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2022, Schoenbrun), France (2021, Dumont), Anatomy of a Fall (2023, Triet) and (maybe) May December (2023, Todd Haynes).

If I had to guess what films that are coming out in 2025 will make this list then it would probably be: The Mastermind (Reichardt), Back to the Family (Bartas), Sorry Baby (Victor), Bunnylovr (Zhu), The Chronology of Water (Stewart).

Anyways, thanks for reading. I’ll probably post some actual writing when I care about something enough to complete an essay on it (I'm 15,000 words deep into an essay about Assayas, lol, which I might finish, edit and post if I like it enough). This shit took me like 2+ weeks to write (fml) which is funny as fuck because it’s March and I’m behind again like last year, but anyways, thanks for reading (again), i appreciate all my awesome friends so much and i hope your having a great 2025 !! I’m going to get back to trying to read Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, which is really good so far!!! HAVE FUN!!

written by me (sydney) over a stupidly long period of time

with special thanks to my friend wiktor for reading some of the entries and affirming my opinion that caught by the tides is more ambitious than the brutalist, lol