Let’s get it out of the way up front: this has been a terrible year for my movie-watching. The baby, alluded to in my 2024 review of films, proved more and more adept at keeping me from carving out cinema visits as she grew steadily larger (within the prediction of the standardised curves which govern such things). I had a very brief patch of catching up with some Oscar nominees back in February, and since then it has been the slimmest of pickings with seven full calendar months in the year passing by without a single movie in them.
To match this, in a stunning piece of visual metaphor the physical, real world cinema I visit caught fire this year. It was ultimately fine, with only mild water damage that has since been repaired, but talk about a bad omen. The only film I managed to see there over the course of the year was James Gunn’s Superman (of which more later) which I was obliged to see both as a terminal DC super-fan and as a connoisseur of Dog Movies. I’m hoping to make it over there for Avatar: Fire and Ash before the end of the year, which will mean having to edit this list. A similar story with Netflix’s new Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man. (update: I made time for both!)
I’m not going to make any kind of limitation on what gets in here: if I watched it for the first time this year, it’s going in the list.
12. Carry-On
Look I’ll be very honest: I don’t remember this. I had a three-month-old and this was a shit film streaming at Christmas. Die Hard 2 by way of Phone Booth? Or something? I remember the climax hinging on a contrivance about permissible cabin bag sizes, which is great commitment to the part if nothing else. Michael Bluth was in it?
11. Superman
I was amiable enough to this in the cinema, I slated it in review at the time, and now I hold it in contempt. Pablum and shlock, dream bigger. Dream bigger!
10. [This space intentionally left blank.]
I didn’t see a tenth best film this year.
9. The Name of the Rose
Starring Sean Connery and Christian Slater as the only two clean men in Christendom. An enjoyable convention of grotesques in an adaptation that I felt kinda missed the point the book was making by throwing an epic rationalist in among all these superstitious monks: that modernity is an evolution of society, not fire handed down to the apes.
8. F1
The two things a Formula 1 team has never tried: cheating and hiring a superfluous American. Looks great though and brings a bit of that race-day magic to the screen, even if glossing over qualifying should be a capital crime.
7. Wake Up Dead Man
Rian Johnson does atheist G.K. Chesterton pretty well. Daniel Craig is having the time of his silly life. Like the second one, it’s somehow less than the sum of its parts, but this time some of the parts are pretty great.
6. Anora
This was a fun watch, bags of charisma and lots of sympathy for its characters. With hindsight I’m not too sure what it was trying to say, beyond the enjoyable yarn about a woman who sees her chance, grabs it with both hands and holds on for dear life. I just don’t think I’ll remember it? Best picture? Not sure about that, although thank God Emilia Perez didn’t get it.
5. A Real Pain
Sometimes a film is just a great excuse to hang out with two of your favourite on-screen guys, and Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin definitely fall into that category. Eisenberg’s wound way too tight, Culkin is chronically oversharing, they’ve gone on holiday to Poland together to remember their dear departed Gran.
4. Wicked Part One
I don’t think there have been many successful Hollywood movies split into two parts, and I haven’t seen Part Two yet so maybe Wicked will still fluff it, but I can say that this particular split was made for me, the guy who stood up after Defying Gravity at the Apollo theatre in London circa 2008 and started putting on his coat and hat.
People moan about the colour palette as a synecdoche for this era of digital colour but eh, it works here. Movie looks great. As I said in my review at the time, it’s fascinating seeing someone do what Disney keep trying and failing to do in recent years and hitting a home run with it.
3. Avatar: Fire and Ash
It has only taken sixteen years but James Cameron has convinced me. I’m a Na’vi guy now. I’m true blue. I will watch these until the end of time if he keeps making them. I hope every single one ends with a fistfight between Jake Sully and Quaritch.
2. Danger: Diabolik
In a year where I was starved, parched, fully withdrawn from the glory of the movies, I am so glad I managed to pack Danger: Diabolik in. Anarchic glee from the first frame to the last, all centred round the happy, healthy relationship between a man who only leaves the house in full leathers and his beautiful partner who sees things on the news and wants to steal them. Featuring possibly the worst Bond villain trap of all time, a plane with a trap door built in.
1. The Wolf of Wall Street
I’ve accidentally been savouring the Scorcese big hitters so this is a genuine first timer for me, and in terms of craft it’s basically flawless. Funny, infuriating, scandelous, every vignette chosen for maximum effect. Three hours float past like a dream as the guy gets it all and… well, doesn’t lose it all. Loses some of it. And that’s just how it went.
Impressively, I don’t appear to have watched a single film from the docket list at the end of my 2024 review. Whoops!
If you like my writing and want to read more, you can dissuade yourself of that notion by trying out “Step One: You take an onion”, my one-page party game RPG for making your friends all hate you. Otherwise I continue to review films on Letterboxd.