Continuing my look at the best movies of 2024, I am now going to make my pick for the best director of 2024. 2024 was an interesting year for film, which made it an interesting year for directors. While there were plenty of established directors who turned out excellent work this year like Denis Villeneuve, Richard Linklater, Luca Guadagnino, Tim Burton, George Miller, and M. Night Shyamalan, I was most impressed by the work from…
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Continuing to look back at the best movies of 2024, I will now be looking at the best movies from each genre. I will be looking at my favorite foreign-language films, comedies, action movies, and a few other genres and categories. And like every year, each category will have five “nominees” (a.k.a my personal top five) with my “winner” (my favorite) in bold, followed by short reasoning as to why I picked it the best….
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The 2024 cinematic year is officially over; now, it is time to look back at the best movies, performances, and achievements of the year. I am going to start by looking at the best technical achievements of 2024. I will be looking at the best screenplays, cinematography, production design, score, and other technical categories. Like every year, each category will have five “nominees” (a.k.a my personal top five) with my “winner” (my favorite) in bold,…
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Kicking off my coverage of the best movies of 2024, I’m starting with something a little different. I made it a goal of mine to watch more movies I had never seen before in 2024, and I want to highlight some of my favorite movies I saw for the first time. This unranked list highlights my ten favorite first-time watches of 2024 and why I liked them so much. Also, no movie from 2024 is…
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A movie like Nickel Boys is hard to write about because I can’t think of any movie I have seen before that is anything it. It is a singular vision from director RaMell Ross and one of the great achievements of 2024. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s book of the same title, Nickel Boys takes place in 1962 Jim Crow-era Florida where Elwood Curtis (Ethan Herisse) appears destined for great things. Having done great in…
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I first saw Brady Corbet’s historical epic The Brutalist back in October at the Chicago International Film Festival and I still haven’t been able to fully wrap my head around what I watched. It’s a stunning miracle of a film whose craft is only matched by its ambition. The Brutalist follows László Tóth (Adrien Brody) a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the United States in 1947. He gets a…
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2024 has been a spectacular year for horror films. There have been a slew of horror films, from hits like Smile 2 and A Quiet Place: Day One to hidden gems like Late Night with the Devil and What You Wish For to surprises like The First Omen and Longlegs. So, it caught me by genuine surprise that the best horror movie of 2024 came at the very end of the year. Robert Egger’s Nosferatu is a stunning achievement that will send shivers down your spine…
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There’s an interesting idea to Babygirl, writer/director Helena Reijn’s latest erotic thriller, about the controlling being controlled. The film follows Romy (Nicole Kidman), a high-power CEO of a tech company who starts having an affair with a recently hired intern (Harris Dickinson) despite being married with children. Kidman’s Romy is always in control, whether with the happenings in her company or her personal life and while she is good at being in control and…
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Watching Emilia Pérez felt like I was watching a movie made by five different directors, all of whom wanted to make something different. It’s part gritty crime drama, part musical, part soap opera, part love story, part social message movie. The result is an audacious yet messy film. Rita (Zoe Saldaña) is an underappreciated lawyer who just won a big case despite it being against her moral conscience. Struggling to stay passionate about her…
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Gladiator II is an epic sequel to the 2000 Best Picture winner that features stunning direction, thrilling action, and one of the best performances of the year only for it to be bogged down by an underwhelming screenplay. Sixteen years after the death of Marcus Aurelius, Rome is a city of corruption. It is now run by two psychotic emperors Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) and the city seems to be on…
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