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Dec 29, 2024 Web Exclusive By Kaveh Jalinous

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I jotted some thoughts on my favorite films of 2023, discussing how that had been an odd but amazing year for film. If the wild journey we’ve all been on in 2024 has taught us anything, it’s that oddity isn’t going anywhere anytime soon—especially in the film world.

Sure, this year’s slate is relatively more muted than last year’s. After all, there’s been no Barbenheimer-equivalent event (despite certain films’ marketing teams trying to convince you otherwise). The state of awards season is confusing (at best), and it’s been harder and harder to find a film that everyone has loved. Even so, any year in which films grace the silver screen is a good one, in my opinion. And this year, there’s been a lot to admire at the cinema.

Every year, I run into the same difficulties trying to narrow my longlist down to just 10 of my favorite movies of the year. So, as always, I’d like to start with some honorable mentions: Basel Adra’s, Yuval Abraham’s, Rachel Szor’s, and Hamdan Ballal’s No Other Land, Neo Sora’s Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The Settlers, India Donaldson’s Good One, Wang Bing’s Youth (Hard Times), Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot and Azazel Jacobs’ His Three Daughters.

10. Gasoline Rainbow

Throughout their careers, the Ross brothers have toyed with the thin line between reality and fiction in documentaries in boundary-pushing and thought-provoking ways. Their newest documentary, Gasoline Rainbow, which follows a group of recent high school graduates road-tripping to a giant party during the last summer before their lives ‘begin,’ is no exception. It’s an unexpectedly beautiful testament to the freedom of youth and that feeling of fear, hope, and confused excitement that courses through all of us when it’s time for a big change to occur. The film is not for everyone—after all, two hours of teenage slang can be a lot to take in—but the directors’ scope, perspective, and commitment to their subjects make for an always engaging experience.

9. Anora

Anora feels like the next logical step in indie darling Sean Baker’s foray into ‘mainstream cinema.’ After all, winning the Palme d’Or can expedite that process. The Florida Project director’s newest film follows Anora (played by the incredible Mikey Madison), a Brighton Beach-based sex worker who falls into a relationship (of sorts) with the son of a Russian oligarch. Even for those who have kept up with Baker’s career to this point, Anora reinvents and expands on the themes the director has spent his filmography exploring in vivid and unexpected ways. The film is as funny as it is heartbreaking, a true rumination on the cyclic, inherently-false nature of the American Dream and how people with unearned power exploit those without it.

8. I Saw the TV Glow

I’m not sure any other film this year physically disoriented me as much as Jane Schoenbrun’s excellent sophomore feature, I Saw the TV Glow, did. Walking out of the theater with a pit in my stomach, I had no idea what to make of the 100 minutes I’d just sat through. The film is, among many other things, a stunning meditation on the trans experience, a striking weaponization of nostalgia, and a bold outlook on the feeling of moving through your life—de-realized, alienated, and unaware of anything. Schoenbrun’s sophisticated intuition of shot blocking and color contrast create an environment that feels suffocating from start to finish, instantly latching itself onto your memory through its purplish, almost twilight-like hues. The film’s killer soundtrack— Caroline Polachek’s and Sloppy Jane’s contributions are my favorites—perfectly animates the film and makes the experience all the more unforgettable.

7. The Brutalist

Ever since its premiere at this year’s Venice Biennale, Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour American immigrant epic, The Brutalist, has been the only thing any cinephile has been able to talk about. And with good reason. The Vox Lux director’s newest feature is a sprawling epic, shot in stunning VistaVision and almost too expansive to fit on the screen. The film’s first half (a 15-minute intermission is baked into the film) is much faster-paced than the second, exploring the budding relationship between Hungarian immigrant/architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody) and the rich tycoon/faux intellectual Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) who takes a liking to him. The film’s second half is much more complex, testing, and heavy, and is occasionally bogged down by sluggish pacing and slightly underdeveloped character arcs. Yet, it’s a film that is just so maximalist, with shots and narrative beats that will haunt you in their construction alone. There hasn’t been anything quite like The Brutalist in a long time, and there likely won’t be anything like it for a long time to come.

6. All We Imagine as Light

Few films this year have felt more like poetry than Payal Kapadia’s sophomore feature, All We Imagine as Light. The film’s opening almost feels like a visual essay dedicated to the urban harmony and discordance of Mumbai. The rest of the film follows two nurses (and roommates) who both deal with the hardships of love. Prabha (Kani Kusruti) deals with the absence of her husband, who’s working on the other side of the world. Anu (Divya Prabha) deals with a secret relationship, unable to introduce her partner to her family on account of their differing religious beliefs. The film oscillates between perspectives and tones with remarkable ease, always feeling more meditative, free, and airy than chained down to its central narrative—like a freeform poem. Ranabir Das’ cinematography is among the year’s finest, capturing Mumbai and the Indian countryside with attention to detail that could convince you the film was shot on film, even if it wasn’t.

5. The Beast

Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast is the French director’s most approachable film, which—given the nature of the film’s plot—is wild in itself. This story follows a woman in 2044 trying to rid herself of emotions. To aid the process, she must confront her past lives—mainly, relationships she had in 1910 and 1934 with different variations of the same man. To put it simply, Bonello’s film is unlike anything you’ve seen before. The film’s editing (both temporal and spatial) is frenetic, athletic, and genuinely unsettling, and lead performers Léa Seydoux and George MacKay give two of the most complex performances of the year (after all, they have to play three completely different versions of themselves). Like many of Bonello’s films, The Beast plays out absurdly in the moment, but quickly works its way under your skin, unable to leave your consciousness long after the film’s credits (or: a QR code linking to the film’s credits) roll.

4. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell

Released way back when (a.k.a. in January), Phạm Thiên Án’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell largely flew under the radar upon release and was quietly buried by a year of great releases to follow. But, that makes the 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or (Best First Film) winner all the more recommendable. The Vietnamese film—which follows a young man returning home for his sister’s funeral and sinking back into countryside life, questioning what he believes and the point of faith in the process—is the epitome of slow-burn cinema (three hours long; sporadic cutting; character/environment connectivity). An’s imagery won’t be leaving your head anytime soon, capturing rural Vietnam with intensive immersion, vivid hues, and sharp contrasts. It’s pretty clear from the opening 30 minutes alone (the film’s title card doesn’t even appear until that point) that An knows how to fuse form and style in a wholly unique and thought-provoking way.

3. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

The story of how Mohammad Rasoulof made The Seed of the Sacred Fig—which included shooting clandestinely to avoid censorship and arrest, secretly sending cuts to his editor in Germany, and eventually fleeing Iran to avoid facing jail time there—is awe-inspiring in itself. It doesn’t hurt that the director’s newest film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, is excellent in every regard. The nearly three-hour film—which follows a government worker and his family tested by their different beliefs in government power and authority, specifically after the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement kicks off in 2022—feels so specific in its scope, yet so broad in its reach. The director smartly uses the friction between one family’s members as a metaphor for a country as a whole, showing the danger and destruction caused when one assumes absolute power and control over those around them. The film’s final act is one of the year’s most tense, nail-biting sequences, and the director’s clear skill in blocking shots and maneuvering the camera makes it all the more thrilling.

2. Close Your Eyes

Close Your Eyes marks Spanish auteur Víctor Erice’s first narrative feature in 40 years, a fact astonishing in itself. Moreover, the nearly three-hour film is one that consistently reinvents itself. What starts as a story of a director trying to find out what happened to an actor from a project they worked on together years ago patiently transforms into a meditation on the power of cinema and the medium’s ability to both bring people together and help us make sense of our identities. It’s a slow-paced film, but one that never feels boring or bogged down by its expansive, decades-spanning scope. For those interested in the way the cinematic reel and the reel of our memories can feel and play out so similarly, don’t overlook this excellent, truly underrated masterwork.

1. Evil Does Not Exist

It’s always a pleasure to revisit Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist (a film I’ve written about for this magazine multiple times) and sink into the encapsulating, quietly horrifying world the Japanese auteur has crafted. In its basic structure, Evil Does Not Exist follows the residents of a small, rural Japanese town who learn that an industrial glamping company plans to install a camp in their town, threatening the flow of nature, way of life, and (most importantly) the town’s freshwater supply. But, Hamaguchi plays it fast and loose with this story. Events in the film may operate linearly, but they’re refracted through the director’s unsettlingly long takes, almost-too-smooth camera movements, and lengthy stretches where characters don’t speak at all (which is where Eiko Ishibashi’s score, my favorite of the year, particularly shines through). Through its formal excellence, the film becomes a stunning meditation on (among many things) the way humans encroach upon both one another and nature to further their agendas, all with the false hope (or the flagrant lie) of bringing ‘good’ to the world. While the ending may not be for everyone—given the film’s false but successful appearance of being quiet, the final scene is quite intense—it’s a perfect encapsulation of Hamaguchi’s incredible ability to capture conflict and tension to its breaking point and one of the many reasons this film won’t be leaving your mind anytime soon.