To be clear, this is a top 10 of my sentimental favorites of the year. These are not the films that are the most technically superior. And in my humble opinion, unless you have a very very particular set of criteria debase upon a movie to deem it technically superior to all others… You probably shouldn’t base your own top 10 in that way. Anywho…
10. TO A LAND UNKNOWN
I found two films that stuck out to me throughout my AFI fest adventures – one will be in the top five. TO A LAND UNKNOWN is about two Palestinian refugee brothers who do whatever they can to acquire money for passports to get out of the bowels of Athens, Greece, to start a better life. It’s an unflinching look at the destitution of poverty and addiction. Unlike so many other films that deal with the topic, this film makes it a point to show that hope is always there, and sometimes it is your own vices and bad habits that stop you from getting to where you want to go. There are many homages to the great 1969 Best Picture winner, MIDNIGHT COWBOW, and I feel that’s all for the best.
9. DUNE: PART 2
I don’t know how often I have had the question, “Is Timothy Chalamet a real movie star?” conversation before I started to get nauseous at all the banality being spewed my way. This movie shuts all of that conversation up emphatically. In a cast filled with all-star talent, it’s Chalamet that carries large sections of this movie on his own, no matter who he’s sharing the screen with. This movie might have been way higher on the list.. if it wasn’t for that bull**** ending. That notwithstanding, this is one of the more beautiful-looking films of the year. The sandworm riding scene is one of the best scenes you can see in a true IMAX theater, and it’s one of the best tent poles of the year.
8. INSIDE OUT 2
A shining example of what I like to call evil Pixar. Evil Pixar is defined by movies specifically designed to hit you in the gut with real relatable emotions as hard as possible and as many times as possible. It’s really awesome to hear the stories of parents I know who weren’t familiar with the first film, who took their kids to see this film, and ended up being jarred by how universal the movie’s message really is. This is one of the better third acts of any movie in 2024.
7. BOY KILLS WORLD
Earlier in the year, before this film came out, there was a film called MONKEY MAN (number 18 on my top 20, BTW) with a similar storyline. Both films are bloody revenge stories with elaborate fight sequences. What gives this movie so much more of an edge over that one is the narration by one of the demigods of voice acting, H. Jon Benjamin. If you are a fan of the show ARCHER, you will understand how unbelievably gifted a comedic actor he is, and his providing the narration for a deaf character under the circumstances leads to one of the funniest films of the Year, hands down.
6. WICKED: PART 1
If you are like me and have seen the play as well as this film, you will understand how magnificent that stage show is and how much better the film is than the stage show could ever imagine being. There’s just so much more to show with these characters in this world than a 2D stage perspective can give you. Ariana Grande is gliding her way into an Oscar nomination, and I still find myself surprised that people didn’t think she could act (apparently not knowing her history in business). Cynthia Erivo gives a towering performance and should be a front-runner for best actress. Her performance of the song, Defying Gravity in the closing moments of this film, is one of the definitive cinematic moments of 2024.
5. SEPTEMBER 5
I am a sucker for newsroom dramas. Films like ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, SPOTLIGHT, GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, SHE SAID, NIGHTCRAWLER, THE POST, THE INSIDER, etc., etc., etc.. that’s my wheelhouse. Usually, films such as those are filled with really famous names and give very showy performances, and that’s all good. SEPTEMBER 5 does not have that, and it’s all the better for it. It moves much quicker than the films previously mentioned, and it’s in a lot tighter space. The vast majority of it takes place in one room, there’s seamless interweaving of archival news footage of Jim McKay and Peter Jennings from that particular day, and there are Oscar-worthy performances from John Maggiero, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ben Chaplin. A very impactful 90 minutes of film.
4. THE ORDER
Without question, it is the very best film to come out of AFI Fest 2024. The buzz surrounding this film at the festival was that it mirrored a lot of the William Friedkin / Don Siegel type of crime dramas from decades past, and that is not incorrect. The story of a renegade cop going after white supremacist bank robbers in the Pacific Northwest is engrossing from beginning to end. The action sequences and shootouts are done simplistically and extremely well, and Jude Law and Nicholas Holt are giving plus efforts throughout. Sometimes, when you have to use the bathroom during the film, you move a lot faster than you usually would because you don’t want to miss a whole bunch of s***. This was one of those films for me in 2024. Director Justin Curzel is a director who hasn’t made a lot of films that you may know about, but trust me, he is an elite talent who will be a bigger name in the future.
3. THE WILD ROBOT
Talk about overachieving. The wild robot advertised itself to be very routine in the animated family film space. What ended up happening, though, is a film that plays a lot more like a sweeping epic than a traditional family film does. The film’s main protagonist, Roz, is one of the best individual characters of 2024, with a brilliant performance by Lupita Nyong’o playing her. THE WILD ROBOT is ultimately a story about how hard it is to be a good single mom, the emotional turmoil it brings when your child grows up, and how rewarding it truly is to be a beacon of your community while holding down the front as a good parent. That, and it’s funny. And it’s the most visually beautiful animated film to come along in quite some time. It’s nearly flawless in its execution.
2. CONCLAVE
Technically speaking, there’s nothing to complain about. CONCLAVE is one of those movies that has a lot of screensaver kind of shots in every single scene. This is a shoe to win Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards as well. It’s a political thriller that doesn’t advertise itself as one. Above everything that’s relating to Catholicism, and the selection of the Pope and what that may look like, this is practically a Shakespearean tale about how the desire for power makes even the most god-fearing of men into senior citizen versions of the mean girls. Ralph Fines is one of the greatest actors in cinema history, and he quite possibly gave his best career performance. He is surrounded by several Oscar-worthy supporting performances that all kind of orbit around him. In my humble opinion, he should be a no-brainer winner of the Best Actor Academy Award this year. All that, and it has one of the better twist endings of the year.
1. FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA
*Rant on deck** 2024 was such a mediocre year for big-budget action tent poles that it seems the plot has been lost on what great tent poles are supposed to do. As much as spectacle is over-emphasized as being the essential ingredient to having a major tent pole, this is only partially true. The spectacle is a piece of the pie. Not even a majority of that pie. A solid tent pole has memorable characters and an excellent, well-paced story. Most importantly, it builds an immersive world where you can tell your story with excellent characters. It doesn’t sound hard, but my goodness, were there a lot of big-budget action films that had maybe one or two of these elements at most, and none of them had all three. Furiosa is a movie that is aces in all three categories.
As a young Furiosa, Anna Taylor Joy does the original performance by Charlize Theron proud. Chris Hemsworth probably has his career-best performance in this movie, playing a funny and domineering villain. This is the best-looking action film of the year, with at LEAST two of the best action sequences. It serves as a more than worthy sequel to one of the best action films of the past fifteen years (MAD MAX: FURY ROAD), and most importantly… it without question builds a more immersive world around this 45-year-old franchise without insulting any film that came before. To look back on Mad Max as a franchise, you’ll find nothing but good to excellent films – aside from BEYOND THUNDERDOME, which was okay). This had a high bar to meet. And that bar was met.
