My Favorite Films of 2024

     I kept track of the movies I saw in 2024, and listed 24 of them in my Notes app. I didn't go out to the theater often, and would watch movies on streaming, and often watch a lot of older movies to write about and be "new" to me. So I will likely see the prestige movies and underseen gems of last year when they hit streaming, but can write about the new movies I saw of 2024 that I really did like a lot, and with honorable mentions.

    Between the Temples: This is a really lovely and wonderful little movie, directed by Nathan Silver, where Jason Schwartzman plays a middle-aged cantor at a shul and he can't sing anymore, and through chance he reconnects with his old teacher Mrs. Kessler, aka Carla (Carol Kane), who never got to have her bat mitzvah and wants to have it in her 70s. It's this sweet friendship that blossoms into a tentative romance, more so feeling like Harold and Maude if Harold was in his 40s, and Carol Kane is a gem in this movie, one of her best roles in recent years. 

    The Substance: Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, this body horror/dark comedy takes its inspiration from weird, batshit horror films like Basket Case, The Fly, Society, as well as influenced by Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and John Frankenheimer's Seconds. Demi Moore gets a major comeback role (not counting her brief role in the FX miniseries Feud: Capote vs. The Swans) as a former star being pushed out of the fitness industry because she's in her fifties, and going to drastic measures to take a black-market mysterious green substance to reproduce a younger, more conventionally attractive version of herself (Margaret Qualley) out of her body, and they have to switch off every seven days, and the film takes their competition in strange and twisted ways. 

    A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg wrote and directed this road trip/buddy comedy about two cousins David and Benji (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who go on a trip together to Poland to both revisit their recently deceased grandmother's hometown, and to go on a Holocaust tour to honor her as a Holocaust survivor (she had escaped Poland before the Nazi invasion). This movie was both really funny and touching, talking about mental health issues and grief. The cousins contrast with each other a lot, and David does confess to Benji that he wishes he could be more charismatic like him, lighting up a room, but also resents how erratic he is and how he can blow up a room just as easily. Culkin portrays this nervous energy as Benji that is more of a cover for his own anxieties, especially missing his grandmother and how she would snap back at him when she felt he was self-destructing with substance abuse and a lack of direction. The movie is a tight 90 minutes, and it just felt very honest and real to me, and I really liked it a lot.

    Strange Darling: This thriller, directed by JT Mollner, seems more like a sleeper hit than anything bigger, but I did like how it unfolded as a story told out of chronological order, and I liked the subverted expectations of the movie, centering on a serial killer and their victim, stemming from a one-night-stand. Willa Fitzgerald and Kyle Gallner were the stars, and I got invested in their dynamic, especially when they are talking with each other in the car before going into a motel, trying to size each other up and measure the risk of this hookup. The film is soundtracked by a great synth score, and I really enjoyed getting into this unusual horror thriller, albeit with some plot turns that will likely be seen as controversial because of the killer's way to deceive people.

    The Wild Robot: Directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch), this animated film is set in the future where a helper robot (Lupita Nyong'o) lands on an island as a misdelivered package, and immediately wants to be of help to people, but she's on an island full of animals, who find her frightening and attack her as a threat. Roz learns to communicate with the animals and inadvertently becomes a “mother” to an orphaned gosling, befriending a smartass fox (Pedro Pascal) and slowly bonds with the other animals as she gains more intelligence beyond her initial programming. I liked how thoughtful the film felt, how much heart it had, and even if it seemed more formulaic than the Lithuanian animated film Flow, also with animal characters (albeit who do not speak in an anthropomorphic way), I still found it really lovely and interesting, and would highlight it as one of my favorites of last year.

    His Three Daughters: Technically this film is from 2023, but it was released last year on Netflix and in theaters in 2024, so I'm counting it. Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, the film stars Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne as three estranged sisters who come together because their father, Vincent, is in hospice, soon to die any day, and they gather at his rent-controlled apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Rachel (Lyonne) has been living with their father, and the sisters aren't close, are wildly different from each other, and come at their anticipatory grief with varying ways of coping with it. They try to keep a polite front when the hospice staff members visit, but otherwise fight with each other, with a lot of high tension in the air. This is a really great movie, featuring three outstanding actresses, acting more like they are in a play than a film, and I deeply connected to this film, with the sister stresses and arguments, especially with the strained relationship between Katie and Rachel. I do hope this movie gets remembered during the awards season.

    I Saw the TV Glow: Directed by Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going to the World's Fair), about two teenagers, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Brigitte Lundy-Paine) who, in 1996, become obsessed with this supernatural teen TV show called The Pink Opaque, that looks like a Nickelodeon preteen show mixed in with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The teens are both very isolated, both on the queer spectrum (Maddy is a lesbian, Owen might be asexual/ace), and get wrapped up in this show to escape their empty, depressing lives. The show effects them both in greatly different ways, using the media consumption of the show as a substitute for actually living their lives, and using the show to identify themselves rather than anything in their real lives, being obsessed with the TV screen and sitting in the dark with the TV glow. And although I think the film's text about equating their experiences to the trans experience may have gone over my head because I'm cis, I still really liked how creative and unique the film felt, very different from anything else I've seen from the past year. And, by chance, Emma Stone produced this and my other choice, A Real Pain, so I'm glad she's choosing interesting projects to produce and elevating voices like Schoenbrun's, who is now on my radar for anything in the future they will create.

Honorable Mentions:

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Thelma

Anora

My Old Ass

Cuckoo

Nosferatu

Monkey Man

Handling the Undead

Kinds of Kindness

Thoughts on Cairo Station

     On Criterion, I watched the 1958 Egyptian film Cairo Station, directed by Youssef Chahine, co-written by Abdel Hai Adib and Mohamed Abu Youssef, and starring Chahine as Qinawi, a peddler with a limp who works selling newspapers in the train station of Cairo, Egypt, eking out a living while being mocked by everyone for his disability and timid demeanor. He is obsessed with Hanuma (Hind Rostom), an attractive and vivacious woman who sells cold soft drinks with her fellow women in the station, and is brash and outspoken, and often sneaks selling drinks on the trains themselves. She is engaged to Abu Siri (Farid Shawqi), who is a luggage porter and trying to unionize his co-workers for better pay and more rights. He unfortunately is abusive to Hanuma, trying to forbid her to work and beats her when he catches her having a party on a train while selling soft drinks.

    When Qinawi does profess his love to Hanuma, she laughs at him and rejects him because he is poor and cannot support himself, let alone her, and his obsession turns more maniacal, getting ugly in a more misogynistic kind of way. As one Letterboxd review by sydney read, "Once again women are the casualities of the incel vs. markists war." The film takes more of a thriller direction, whereas before it was more about working-class merchants in the train station, and I more preferred the neorealism, slice of life feeling to the film, in seeing a depiction of life in Cairo in the 1950s, then the darker turn that the film went towards in its second half.

    Qinawi is initially depicted as a sympathetic hero, but I couldn't feel bad for him and his obsession with not getting to have the popular woman because too many women have been injured or died due to a man feeling "slighted" by them. I understand that he can be seen as an "antihero," but I, likely more because I am a woman, felt more sympathy for Hanuma and her friends in the station. I do appreciate that the film was tackling tough subjects like unionizing of the underclass, gender-based violence, and combining film noir and neorealism, and it is a standout film that depicted a development of a more modern Egypt following the 1952 overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy.

    Hind Rostom as Hanuma is stunning and a lot of fun to watch in this film. She had this lively sensuality that made her "pop" on the screen, and was compared to screen icons like Marilyn Monroe and Anna Magnani. I liked how modern she felt in talking back to men and being outspoken and funny, and she just commanded the screen. She retired in 1979, passed away in 2011 at age 81, and in 2018, Google honored her with a Google Doodle.

Thoughts on Victims of Sin/Víctimas del pecado

    On Criterion, I watched the 1951 Mexican musical melodrama/crime film Victims of Sin, or Víctimas del pecado, directed by Emilio Fernández, co-written by Fernández and Mauricio Magdaleno, and starring the Cuban-Mexican icon Ninón Sevilla as Violeta, a popular dancer at a nightclub in Mexico City run by the ruthless and maniacal gangster Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta). At the club, Rodolfo refuses to acknowledge paternity of a baby boy by one of the dancers, Rosa (Margarita Ceballos), and forces Rosa to choose him over the baby, pressuring her to put the baby in a trash can. Violeta rescues the baby, and, with the help of neighborhood women and her own fight to survive as she goes from dancing in the club to doing sex work on the street, that she has tenacity and toughness and won't let anyone hurt the baby or break her spirit.

    When Violeta dances at the club, Sevilla is riveting to watch, dancing with a mix of sensuality and athleticism and a lust for life. She knows she is in a patriarchal society that she has to literally fight against, standing up to brute men who demand that women know their place, and takes a huge risk in taking care of the baby, earlier stating that they as poor dancers "don't have the right to have children." Her dancing is stunning to watch, with way more abandon than in a usual Hollywood musical, and the climatic dance is when she finds her way to the nightclub La Maquina Loca, doing an impromptu audition to prove her dancing skills to get out of sex work, and she performs as a rumbera to Cuban music, and she reaches an emotional peak of her character truly having her happy joie de vivre as a dancer, finding power within herself, and doing a fun call-and-response dance with a drummer who joins in on the dance floor. It's a truly spectacular scene to behold.

    The film is a fantastic mix of musical moments, including songs with sexual innuendo sung in a flirty manner, soap opera melodrama, and film noir, with gorgeous black and white cinematography by Gabriel Figueroa, considered one of the greatest cinematographers in Mexican cinema. There is an excellent scene where, when Rodolfo is slapping and hurting Violeta, a whole lineup of fellow sex workers swarm in to protect her by pulling Rodolfo off of her and beating on him, it's glorious to watch.

 I had heard of the film through the YouTube channel Be Kind Rewind, highlighting Sevilla's performances in her annual Twelve Days of Actress video to celebrate female actors' performances in films across genres and cultures, and I'm really happy I took her recommendation to watch this film.

Thoughts on Nightbitch

    On Hulu, I watched the 2024 black comedy written and directed by Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Can You Ever Forgive Me?; A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), based on the 2021 novel by Rachel Yoder. The film stars Amy Adams as a former artist and current stay-at-home mother simply known as "Mother," who is struggling with feeling stifled at home taking care of her toddler son while her husband is busy at work, essentially making her feel like a single parent. 

    She keeps a polite smile when talking to others, while having fantasies about wanting to vent about her frustrations at putting her career on hold for motherhood and feeling like she is losing her sense of self. She goes to a library event for mothers and toddlers, for the kids to listen to a children's music performer play, and is initially resistant when the other moms are trying to bond with her, wanting to have normal conversations with other adults outside of being stay-at-home moms.

    Her husband (Scoot McNairy), just known as Husband (the child is known as Son or Baby) is glaringly oblivious to her struggles, thinking she's having fun being at home and playing with the baby all day, not realizing the toll it's taking on her to be alone with their child all day, with his dependence on her. The child refuses to sleep by himself, and will keep her up when she is trying to read him to bed, and she blames herself for not following a sleep cycle idea for him when he was a baby, thinking she screwed him up.

    The story takes a magical realism turn where Mother finds strange new developments on her body, like a patch of white fur on her back, pulling out a tail through a pustule boil on her lower back, and growing two rows of eight nipples on her torso. And that local dogs are attracted to her, coming up to her in the park and at her front door. She realizes that she is turning into a dog, and at night, she transforms into a dog, racing around her neighborhood, and feeling more free as a dog. As a person, she has heightened senses, bonds with her son more by pretending he is her puppy, and feeling a renewed sense of life with her dog spirit. 

    She learns more by going to the library and checking out books recommended by the librarian (Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Shock Treatment fame), researching cultural myths and of animal spirits and transformations in women to understand the change in her. Harper as the librarian has this mystery to her that makes her feel more understanding of Mother's position in life, and she brings this quiet and eccentric grace to her role.

    The film is interesting when tackling how a woman could feel isolated and lonely as a stay-at-home mom, especially with husbands who only want the fun parts of parenting and don't know the day-to-day routines of childcare. And it has a lot of great needle drops that is influenced by Heller being a Gen-X director, like Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid," songs by the Cocteau Twins and Joanna Newsom. 

    I wasn't as interested when the film would try to make it more about female empowerment in a way that felt cliched, or how her resolution with her marital issues felt too pat and like her husband still wasn't going to be emotionally there for her. I liked it more leaning into the dark satire and weirdness, not trying to have a wrapped-up happy ending that felt too "nice" for me. And as this film's plot reminded me a lot of Marianna Palka's 2017 film Bitch, where a similarly-frustrated SAHM starts acting like a dog as a nervous breakdown reaction, I felt Rachel Yoder may have taken some inspiration from that and made the protagonist turn into a literal dog. 

    It's a decent movie at just over 90 minutes, that likely could have gone weirder and darker (though I was annoyed at a scene of implied animal abuse, though nothing was shown graphically), but it's always great to see Amy Adams onscreen, and I liked that Heller took on this film as a comment about motherhood and artistic expression and feminism.

Thoughts on Nosferatu (2024)

 Yesterday I went to see Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu with my friend Chris at the Alamo Drafthouse in Lower Manhattan, and really liked it a lot. It’s moody, atmospheric Victorian Gothic horror, with the psychosexual stuff is more text than subtext, and while I was mixed on Lily-Rose Depp’s performance, picturing Olivia Cooke in her place for a better actor, I still liked how the film was about her childhood trauma being haunted by the vampire, both being repulsed by it while not wanting to admit that a small part of her craves his demon touch. It’s more interesting to play it that way, and I liked how the film could get macabre with squishy gore effects (anyone who saw Robert Eggers’ other films can know what to expect with use of animals as harbingers of doom), while being darkly funny with Willem Dafoe’s occultist character Prof. Albin Eberhart Von Franz, based on Abraham van Helsing.

    I had seen the silent film as a teen, and would make comparisons with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Coppola film version from 1992, like with the Renfield character (renamed Herr Knock, portrayed by Simon McBurney) or Thomas and Ellen as the Jonathan and Mina Harker characters.

    I just saw the film, so it hasn’t marinated in my brain for too long to make a better review, but I did like it as a spooky and layered film, and it was fun seeing Chris and catching up as fellow film nerds.

Thoughts on Requiem

    On YouTube, I watched an upload of a 2006 German film titled Requiem, directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, and starring Sandra Hüller in her feature film debut in a film based on the life of Annaliese Michel, German woman who was allegedly possessed by six or more demons and died in 1976 of malnutrition, abused by her family and priests through forced exorcisms.

    The film centers on Michaela (Hüller) a 21-year old woman in 1970s Germany who wants to study pedagogy in college to become a teacher, but her deeply Catholic mother is against it because Michaela lost a year of schooling due to a health issue. She goes to college anyway, makes a best friend with a finger classmate and has her first boyfriend, but is struggling with mental health issues, and secretly has epilepsy, but doesn’t want her parents to find out. She is caught between confusions with her religious faith, hearing voices in her head, and thinking she is possessed by demons, in part by a young priest planting the idea in her head.

    I like how the film doesn’t play like a thriller or a horror film, but feels more like a quiet character study, and Hüller feels so natural in the part, being 28 at the time but able to play a younger, vulnerable woman caught in between her mother’s possessiveness and her need to be an independent adult. I heard of the film through Be Kind Rewind’s recommendations of notable actress performances, and really liked this film for its documentary-style filmmaking and her performance.

Thoughts on Hale County This Morning, This Evening

    I watched RaMell Ross' 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening, and really liked it. It was Oscar nominated, and it is centered on Black families in Hale County, Alabama. Ross had moved to Alabama in 2009 to coach high school basketball and teach in a youth program, and was already trained as a photographer and filmmaker, and he made a really interesting documentary with no narration, no music soundtrack, with natural interviews that don’t feel like sit-down confessionals, and brief intertitles between scenes. It’s a very intimate and personal film, very much of the time, as a teen boy named his baby son Kyrie, likely after the NBA player Kyrie Irving.

    I had just seen a Criterion Closet video with Ross, as he directed the new film Nickel Boys, adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel, and hasn’t heard of him before. This came up on my weekly newsletter from Le Cinéma Club, which uploads one movie at a time weekly, usually short films. This is 76 minutes long, and can be seen until Friday at https://www.lecinemaclub.com/.../hale-county-this.../