Category: 2024

Posted on

2024: Top 20 Movies

(With the understanding that someone might be interested in reading my annual roundup on movies and not the equivalent music piece — or vice versa — and lacking the desire to reiterate what I said last time: If you want to know my thoughts on the state of the world and the state of myself and the state of this website, you can read the essay that opened my musical retrospective here. It still covers just about everything I’m capable of saying right now. Otherwise, please enjoy this year’s Top 20 Movies!)

I’m not wild about 2024 as a year in movies. Yeah, I ultimately filled this list with a handful of contenders to spare, but…I don’t know. I got there in part by cheating, at least by my standards; there are two entries with runtimes so short I’m not sure I’d have qualified them as feature length in a year when I was less desperate for films I’d actually be excited to write about. And even with that rule broken, you have to get a couple entries deep before you start finding movies I’m confident would have made the cut last year.

Part of the problem is that 2024 played as something of a reverse 2023 — it got off to an extremely strong start, then just flatlined for the rest of the year. The top four entries on this list had all been released by April, and that’s quite a high to come down from.

Still, the top tier of this year’s list is pretty, well, top tier. And considering how recently I was sincerely concerned 2024 would not have enough great movies to comfortably fill twenty slots, the fact that I ended up with as much overflow as I did — even if I don’t feel compelled to include any of it as an honorable mention — comes as some relief. There will never be a year with no great movies — and if 2024 could pull it off, there will probably never be a year where this list is a challenge. This isn’t my favorite column since I started doing this — though, for what it’s worth, it also isn’t my least favorite — but in the end I’m content with it.

Let us begin!

20. Evil Does Not Exist

Evil Does Not Exist is the kind of Top 20 entry that’s really only one fatal flaw away from being a Top 10 entry. There’s part of me that even thinks it might be better than the much more culturally impactful Drive My Car — or that most of it is, anyway. It’s typically beautiful work from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, and if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: I make my living as a small-town journalist, I love me a good public meeting, inject your movie about municipal water systems directly into my veins. But what really stands out to me is how skillfully paced it is — slow and deliberate, to be sure, but in this way that allows it to complete every thought before moving on. Hamaguchi establishes a sort of chilly remove that accentuates its depiction of mundane worldly cruelties and provide and stages its surprising sense of humor with appropriate awkwardness. Like I said, it’s the sort of movie that normally would comfortably slot itself in the Top 10 or Top 5 — but for my feeling that it nowhere near sticks the landing, and in fact fails to earn it by such a significant distance that it can cast the faintest pallor over the film preceding it. Not much of one, though — Evil Does Not Exist is extraordinary until it isn’t, and it isn’t only for a short time. I continue to watch Hamaguchi’s career with interest.

19. Look Back

The year’s best cry-like-an-idiot movie. This is one of two entries I feel like I might have disqualified in a year where I found my also-rans more compelling — at only fifty minutes, it’s shorter than a lot of TV shows these days. But the Academy counts that as feature length, so whatever — this year, it’s good enough for me. Look Back is absolute emotional dynamite for weird artsy types who have a difficult, anxious relationship with their work — which is to say me, it’s emotional dynamite for me specifically. It’s also emotional dynamite for people with a tendency to fixate on what-ifs and might-have-beens and who struggle with the transience and impermanence of things, which is to say that, really, this kind of became overkill for me past a certain point. Charming, low-key, and delightful until it’s crushing, then swings from hope to despair and back again until it’s put you the whole way through the wringer. Beautiful, sad, affirming, great.

18. Conclave

Conclave is the kind of movie that reminds me why I frame these lists as “favorites,” not “bests.” Obviously, who am I to decide my own subjective emotional responses ought to be representative of some larger object standard? But it’s more than that, it’s the fact that even my own personal sense of what’s good or bad or better or worse get tangled up in the complexity of telling a story. I can easily think of ways Conclave could have been technically better cinema. And all of those things would have made me like it less. I worry in my discussions over the last several months I’ve overemphasized Conclave as an ironic pleasure; let me be clear now that it truly isn’t. This is a well-made film, it looks great, the cast is phenomenal, it somehow makes behind-the-scenes Vatican politicking the most fascinating thing in the world. It’s super melodramatic and intense, but I have a weakness for that kind of thing. It’s just that when it goes wrong, it goes really wrong — but also swings for the fences so hard that you have to admire it. This would be a “better” movie if it ended twenty minutes earlier, on that final moment of ambiguity — instead of suddenly ratcheting everything up to eleven and piling on twist after twist after twist. But I had a big, stupid smile on my face through the whole ending the first time I watched it, relishing each earth-shattering revelation, doing a spit-take the moment I realized what the final turn was going to be. For me, it’s The Dark Knight Rises of pope movies: great when it’s good and a masterpiece when it isn’t. Loved it.

17. Rap World

The other entry I thought about disqualifying, and it’s even more tempting in this case, not only because it runs a mere fifty minutes but because it’s literally a really long YouTube video and even I have trouble muscling past the stigma associated with that. But Rap World is just too…undeniable. It occupied my thoughts far too long after I watched it to be discarded solely on account of its medium. There really is a level of stupidity that a movie cannot achieve without the people making it secretly being actual geniuses, and I’m struggling to think of anything that better demonstrates what I mean by that than Rap World. It doesn’t just deliver on the jokes — though let me be clear that it is hilarious, and somehow only gets funnier as it goes — it perfectly replicates the experience of hanging out with the stupidest guys you knew in the year 2009. Every inch of every frame reflects an unwavering commitment to the bit — the camera as much the medium as it is an actor portraying a character in the story, every dialogue exchange feeling loose and improvisational despite the fact that it would have to be extremely purposeful in order to convey the necessary information and set up the jokes for the editing room, the cultural references and overall mood having to line up with a historical period that happened too recently to be easily signaled visually. It can only exist as a function of an extraordinary amount of thought going into it. It truly is Moron Citizen Kane. Funny when it’s funny and hilarious when it’s kind of sad.

16. Nickel Boys

You know, I always complain about how late I am with these because of how long it can take certain films to screen near me (if they do at all). And yet, I sometimes feel like the extra three or four months I get to do these still isn’t enough. I don’t know how I’d handle throwing a list together at the tail end of December having only seen everything one time and some films only a handful of days prior. Nickel Boys feels like it’s occupying a placeholder slot here. I had no idea where to put it. Because it’s clearly extraordinary, but I’ve also never seen anything like it and I know I didn’t completely get my head around it on the first viewing. I could see repeat viewings moving it to pretty much any position here. The craftsmanship is incomprehensible, how its cinematography can be so beautiful while also being one hundred percent subjective, anchored in the direct point of view of its characters. And it maintains that delicate state without ever breaking kayfabe — it actually feels like you’re looking through a human being’s eyes, it has that fidgety distraction that comes with reacting to changes in your environment, and yet it’s all so deliberately stitched together and graceful. And that’s just the surface, not the rich core of theme and feeling I still don’t completely have in hand. Just an impossible thing, a miracle of a movie.

15. Anora

Another year, another Sean Baker movie that I feel like you guys like way more than I do, and honestly, I’m not even sure Anora is my favorite of his; it lacks that Sean Baker-y texture of everyday oddity that drives the rest of his work. But for the purposes of a list like this, that says a lot more about where you guys are than I am, because Anora is still one of the best — for lack of a better descriptor — “four-quadrant” movies of the year. You know, the sort of movie that’s accessible on a hundred different levels, whether you’re in it for the jokes or the feelings. I like the smallness of its scope, and the inherent hilariousness of its concept. And the performances are across-the-board stellar; I’m actually completely fine with that upset Mikey Madison Best Actress win (and probably would’ve voted for Yura Borisov too, were I a member of the Academy). Weird, layered, doesn’t always take things where you think it’s going to. Good fun.

14. Rebel Ridge

I would like for Netflix to die in the hottest fire it can find for completely burying this. There is absolutely no reason why Rebel Ridge shouldn’t be a monster hit, much less nearly forgotten only a handful of months after its release. Well, if there’s only one person left beating the drum, let it be me — Rebel Ridge is one hell of a bone-crunching thriller (that’s also weirdly humane at the end of the day?). It’s the modern world’s answer to First Blood. It slides gracefully from slow-burn indie intensity to detective procedural and finally to pulse-pounding actioner, never misses a beat. The civil asset forfeiture revenge thriller: just what the doctor ordered.

13. Hit Man

While we’re on the subject of “burn in hell, Netflix,” here’s the other great movie they casually dropped halfway through the year and then pretended never existed. Hit Man is the first Richard Linklater movie I’ve loved since 2016’s Everybody Wants Some!! and possibly his best “fun one” since as far back as School of Rock (depending on how you define “fun one,” anyway). It has a lot of his staples, chiefly its low-key tone and its talky but not overly self-serious philosophical dimensions. But it’s also kind of a departure for him in that it replaces his aching sincerity with biting, red-hot irony. What if you therapy speak’d yourself into becoming a sociopath? What if the best version of yourself is actually kind of terrible? Cheeky, kind of slimy, deliberately leans into its guilty pleasure elements. Super watchable, and also kind of quietly unprecedented.

12. Nosferatu

I’m picking up a vibe like people are starting to get a little sick of Robert Eggers. Not me, though. It’s weird, because I have a long history of being a “story over aesthetics” guy when a movie forces me to make that choice, but Eggers is just such a generational talent behind the camera. He’s one of the best technical craftsmen working, and at this point probably a candidate for the all-time list. He’s going to have to turn in a script that’s actively bad even to get me to drop below my customary four stars, much less to turn me against him. And Nosferatu does not have a bad script! It isn’t flawless, but it’s doing some interesting things, particularly with the strange psychosexual aspects of the story; I strongly disagree with the strain of criticism accusing it of having nothing on its mind. Nosferatu has more than enough beneath the surface to support its staggering visuals. It looks and sounds phenomenal, and it’s interesting to see Eggers attack something a little more visceral — less the slow burn of The Witch and more a proper horror thriller. It’s unsettling as all hell, a horror movie that feels deeply, pervasively evil and buries itself in your gut. A filmmaker at the absolute height of his powers.

11. Hard Truths

Mike Leigh is one of those otherworldly talents to me — I simply cannot comprehend how he manages to do what he does with such consistency. I don’t understand the functions of his work, and never in a million years could I replicate them — constantly creating things that feel like new, unprecedented experiences despite being naturalistic, improvisational dramas about the lives of everyday, average people. How he can wrangle such beauty out of sets that consist largely of living rooms, how he can mine so many layers of complexity out of premises so simple they’re barely even loglines, how he can get those performances out of so many different people over so many years — seriously, I think there’s an argument to be made that no director in the history of the medium has been better with actors. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, just, my god. It’s all so familiar, the characters so much like people you know in real life, their situations so relatable, and yet it’s so complicated, so evocative, a house of cards that would collapse instantly with one wrong move and yet somehow no one ever makes one. And it’s all done with such humility; there isn’t a single moment where the film starts to feel impressed with itself. Just another day at the office. It confounds me in the best possible way.

10. The Seed of the Sacred Fig

There’s no doubt it can be hard to separate a movie like The Seed of the Sacred Fig from its circumstances — the fact that its mere existence is an act of extraordinary courage, that multiple members of the cast and crew have been arrested and/or exiled for making it. But the older I get, the more I believe that’s part and parcel of the whole thing — that movies, or any works of art, for that matter, are functions of their real-world foundations as much as what’s actually contained within them. Sometimes the medium really is the message. It’s that bravery that makes The Seed of the Sacred Fig so cutting and urgent, that gives it its vitality. Specificity, once again, is key — what ultimately exposes the universality of the human condition and what ails it. You don’t have to have lived a second of its story for its characters and their increasingly fraught relationship with one another to ring achingly familiar. Edward Albee once said, “Fiction is fact distilled into truth.” The Seed of the Sacred Fig is truth.

9. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

Easily the year’s most pleasant surprise. I gave up on Aardman at some point; the studio hasn’t delivered anything better than OK in a while, and its recent turn toward sequels felt like a desperate last grasp at keeping its doors open. The mediocrity of the new Chicken Run more or less sealed the deal for me. Then lo and behold! They delivered Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, their best feature in twenty years, since its own predecessor — and there’s a small part of me that wonders if I like it even more than that one! It’s exactly what I want out of a Wallace & Gromit movie — simple but inventive, dryly funny, sometimes a riot but not so often it becomes exhausting, replete with the requisite Aardman charm, and it’s also got stronger storytelling than I’m used to even in the studio’s best features. Nothing fancy, of course, but there’s a sense of purpose and drive to it that I don’t think Aardman has tapped into since Chicken Run. It’s just a good time, the perfect family film.

8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

It grew on me! It’s no Fury Road, but I don’t think it matters. This is the Aliens to Fury Road’s Alien — inferior, but different enough as a movie that you stop comparing them. Alien is the best version of itself, Aliens is the best version of itself, and so it goes with Furiosa. It’s less of a slam-bang action flick, more of a sweeping epic — albeit one that’s more honed in on character, more interested in telling a story. Fury Road is fun; Furiosa is bleak. It feels the loss of the old world more profoundly than any other entry in the Mad Max franchise; there’s a weight to it, a sense of grief. Chris Hemsworth has absolutely never been better, and Anya Taylor Joy’s Charlize Theron impression is downright creepy. And through it all, you still get the great set pieces and utterly deranged characters you see these movies for. And it’s an excellent companion piece to its predecessor, the latter of which is something of a tonic for the former’s bleakness. If nothing you do matters, might as well do something right. What else are you going to do?

7. Flow

One thing I’ve found over the years is that I really, really like the idea of movies about animals — actual animals, I mean, not Disney animals with essentially human intelligence — but I struggle to get into them in practice. Even all-timers like Au Hasard Balthazar I respect more than enjoy. They’re animals! There isn’t a whole lot of texture to dig into there. It’s hard to feel anything deep and interesting. That’s why it’s significant that I loved Flow right out of the gate and it never lost me. I don’t know how fair it is to say it’s about actual animals — the concept requires it to take at least a few liberties, like that they figure out how to steer the boat. But in the ways that matter, it feels authentic. I think Flow low-key has some of the best storytelling of any movie this year, or at least the most novel — that it somehow manages to wring character arcs out of its furry cast while still having them feel like animals. It pulls off this cause-and-effect, punishment/reward angle — if I do this, I get food; if I do this, I get hurt, that sort of thing — that feels true to the way animals learn, makes its characters dynamic, and sends them on a journey that’s as much emotional as physical. I think what most stands out to me is how broadly appealing it feels, despite being a little indie movie with a lot of vision — simply because of how skillfully it executes on a ton of different levels. You’ve got cute animals, you’ve got enough concrete storytelling to engage the average audience, and there’s mystery and ambiguity to it — especially its haunted world-building — that leave it feeling like it’s hit upon something important. Truly something special.

6. Sing Sing

Another one that’s grown on me with distance and a second viewing. Sing Sing is good in all the ways you want a movie to be good, the ones that maybe aren’t as fun to write about, but where it goes the extra mile, I think, is how unified it feels in its purpose. How seemingly everyone involved knew what was unique to the story they were telling, what made it special, what made it interesting, and worked to bring that out — not only in writing and filmmaking and performance but in the reality of the production itself. It’s only kind of the real-life John Whitfield’s story, and it’s only kind of a true story in the first place. Really, by drawing the film from his account, then threading in the details of other men he knew over the course of his incarceration, then casting actual former inmates in those roles and letting them incorporate some of their own autobiographies into the story, they created something that’s a perfect approximation of its own subject. It’s theater — the ultimate collaborative art form. And Sing Sing is a very collaborative-feeling movie, a lot of different people bringing their own truth to the experience. So you get this balanced, nuanced movie, as much a hangout flick as a propulsive narrative, and it walks the line gracefully. Never feels thin, never feels overstuffed, there’s always some new layer being peeled back, and sometimes it’s surprising what you find underneath. Despite its heavy subject matter, it’s warm, uplifting, and full of love, and it earns every second.

5. The Brutalist

I’ve said before that if The Brutalist is not quite the best movie of 2024, it’s easily the most American. An immigrant population crawling out of the ashes of generational trauma, while the world continues spinning apathetically around them, funneled into the blood and sweat of the capitalist grind, expected to pick up and carry on somehow. A big world run by even bigger whims, a people with little recourse against them but to live and die by their whims. Even after obtaining prestige and a certain indispensability, it only affords the opportunity to stand silently and watch as self-made wealthy megalomaniacs pass the torch to their failsons who are no less evil than them but lack even the mad vision to build something that lasts; they know and care nothing of the world beyond spreadsheets and the numbers that go up and down on them. And in the end, what you leave behind is bigger than you; what it inspires is out of your hands. Art, commerce, ego. A staggering, ambitious epic that’s all the more impressive for how it stands perpetually on the razor’s edge of collapse without ever tipping in.

4. Hundreds of Beavers

I swear I am just hemorrhaging brain cells, man. Every year I’m alive on this Earth I become measurably stupider. I go through different artistic phases from time to time, where a specific type of thing fascinates me and I get way too into it. Right now, that thing is what I can only describe as “the artfully stupid.” Get me artists at the absolute height of their powers who are devoting all of that talent and perfectionism to the most moronic ideas that ever slithered across their diseased brains. Go to film school, then pool all of your resources into bringing that big Drunk Idea to life. Anyway, if there was a Wikipedia page for “the artfully stupid,” I’d have to insist on the poster for Hundreds of Beavers being at the very top. It has codified the entire concept. Sincerely well designed, possibly the best edited movie of the entire year, lovingly hand-crafted, and you will feel entire sections of your brain sloughing off while you watch it. This isn’t a movie you experience; it’s a movie you lose a fight with. I can identify the exact moment where my dumbfounded silence lapsed into complete hysteria and then never stopped. We’ve done it, ladies and gentlemen. The pinnacle of human achievement. The stupidest movie ever made. I laughed until I was sick. I loved every second of it. I made it my entire personality last year and I do not regret it.

3. I Saw the TV Glow

I have never seen anything like I Saw the TV Glow. That’s pretty much the long and short of it. It’s a rare thing, a movie that feels like it’s discovered some whole new way of communicating, like it’s expanded the known boundaries of what cinema can do. And somehow, it does that despite wearing its influences very explicitly on its sleeve — part of me thinks Jane Schoenbrun has been a little too forthcoming about their influences on the interview circuit, and yet it hasn’t made a dent in the overall novelty of the experience. I Saw the TV Glow keeps its literal and metaphorical elements in perfect balance, sliding from the more traditionally narrative to the downright Lynchian without ever losing you, cheating your emotional investment, or shedding the core of what it is. It always feels of a piece with itself. It achieves thematic clarity on the level of the preachiest morality play you’ve seen, without ever putting its actual subject into the literal text of the story. It’s evocative, it defies genre, it borrows chintzy ‘90s YA visuals and somehow transforms them striking and gorgeous. Blank check for Schoenbrun; I’m there for whatever comes next.

2. Dune: Part 2

I am as God made me, folks. It’s like I said when I put Part 1 in that year’s Top 20: I love science fiction nonsense, I love big worms and laser guns and spaceships, and when you hand those things to a director who knows how to shoot them so that they are not gray, warmed-over filth, I’m a cat chasing a laser pointer. You’ve got me; I’m putty in your hands. Anyway, I still have a handful of minor reservations about Part 1, but those do not recur in Part 2 — it’s the better movie in every conceivable way; it even brought me around on some of the things I didn’t care for the first time around (chiefly that loud loud LOUD score, which now feels like the purest reflection of the duology’s “sinners in the hand of an angry god” ethos). Being alive in a time of prophecy would be as invigorating as it would be terrifying, and that’s the key to how Dune: Part 2 manages to be a rousing epic and a feel-bad indictment of religion and power at the same time. It’s some truly extraordinary big-screen spectacle. Bring on Dune: Messiah, bring on the other sequels, let’s get to the weird stuff, let’s upset some people, let’s set Warner Bros’ money on fire, we’re doing this.

And drumroll…

  1. Challengers

Alternative title: The Most Damning Indictment of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences This Side of Crash! I’m definitely not sore about this, not even a little bit. The kind of movie that makes me want to put on a bad Humphrey Bogart voice and declare “What a picture!” Challengers has reliably gotten better every single time I’ve watched it. With full respect to Call Me By Your Name’s following — it’s a great film, and I have no quarrel with it — this is the best work of Luca Guadagnino’s career, and to be completely honest, I don’t consider it close. Challengers is just plain a movie, man, a good, old-fashioned movie, with electric direction and razor-sharp writing and real, actual movie-star performances from real, actual movie stars. It’s smart and trusts its audience; it’s entertainment made by and for adults. There’s already a part of me that thinks it might be the best sports movie of all time, one that actually manages to synchronize what’s happening on the court with what’s happening off of it. There’s no moment here where a character just Digs Deep; it’s all fully motivated. And somehow it pulls off that feat while navigating as many as three or four simultaneous timelines without confusing its audience or losing its freight-train momentum; every new piece of information is deployed at the exact perfect time. There was a moment in the climax that almost made me leap out of my seat when I realized what was going on. This, right here, is how it’s done, kids. A master class.

Posted on

2025 Oscar predictions

Oscar time! I was going to write a whole thing, but instead I spent my Saturday driving four hours round trip to ensure that I saw all the nominees ahead of the ceremony because I have a brain disease.

So whatever. Let’s just get right into it.

Best Picture: A Complete Unknown, Anora, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Brutalist, The Substance, Wicked
Prediction: Anora

Best Actor: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist; Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown; Colman Domingo, Sing Sing; Ralph Fiennes, Conclave; Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice
Prediction: Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Best Actress: Cynthia Erivo, Wicked; Karla Sofia Gascón, Emilia Pérez; Mikey Madison, Anora; Demi Moore, The Substance; Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here
Prediction: Demi Moore, The Substance

Best Supporting Actor: Yura Borisov, Anora; Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain; Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown; Guy Pearce, The Brutalist; Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice
Prediction: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

Best Supporting Actress: Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown; Ariana Grande, Wicked; Felicity Jones, The Brutalist; Isabella Rossellini, Conclave; Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez
Prediction: Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Best Director: Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez; Sean Baker, Anora; Brady Corbet, The Brutalist; Coralie Fargeat, The Substance; James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
Prediction: Sean Baker, Anora

Best Original Screenplay: A Real Pain, Anora, September 5, The Brutalist, The Substance
Prediction: Anora

Best Adapted Screenplay: A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, Nickel Boys, Sing Sing
Prediction: Conclave

Best Cinematography: Emilia Pérez, Dune: Part Two, Maria, Nosferatu, The Brutalist
Prediction: The Brutalist

Best Film Editing: Anora, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked
Prediction: Anora

Best Production Design: Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Nosferatu, The Brutalist, Wicked
Prediction: Wicked

Best Costume Design: A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Gladiator II, Nosferatu, Wicked
Prediction: Wicked

Best Sound: A Complete Unknown, Emilia Pérez, Dune: Part Two, Wicked, The Wild Robot
Prediction: Wicked

Best Makeup/Hairstyling: A Different Man, Emilia Pérez, Nosferatu, The Substance, Wicked
Prediction: The Substance

Best Original Score: Conclave, Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked, The Wild Robot
Prediction: The Brutalist

Best Original Song: Elton John: Never Too Late, “Never Too Late” by Elton John and Andrew Watt; Emilia Pérez, “El Mal” by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard; Emilia Pérez, “Mi Camino” by Clément Ducol and Camille; Sing Sing, “Like a Bird” by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada; The Six Triple Eight, “The Journey” by Diane Warren
Prediction: Emilia Pérez, “El Mal” by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard

Best Visual Effects: Alien: Romulus, Better Man, Dune: Part Two, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Wicked
Prediction: Dune: Part Two

This image released by Antipode Films shows a scene from “No Other Land”. (Antipode Films via AP)

Best Documentary Feature: Black Box Diaries, No Other Land, Porcelain War, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, Sugarcane
Prediction: No Other Land

Best Animated Feature: Flow, Inside Out 2, Memoir of a Snail, The Wild Robot, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Prediction: The Wild Robot

Best Animated Short: Beautiful Men, In the Shadow of the Cypress, Magic Candies, Wander to Wonder, Yuck!
Prediction: Magic Candies

Best Live Action Short: A Lien, Anuja, I’m Not a Robot, The Last Ranger, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent
Prediction: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Best Documentary Short: Death by Numbers; I am Ready, Warden; Incident; Instruments of a Beating Heart; The Only Girl in the Orchestra
Prediction: Death by Numbers

Best International Feature: Emilia Pérez, Flow, I’m Still Here, The Girl with the Needle, The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Prediction: Emilia Pérez

Posted on

2024: Top 10 Albums

So I guess the first thing I want to ask is: Are you OK? I hope you’re OK.

But it’s fine if you’re not. I’m not. It was true what I said in my last post, that I was writing it as much for myself as anyone else. I was in a bad place then. I’m not in a good place now. And that’s normal. It’s scary out there. Dark, bleak. We’re grieving what we’ve lost, and terrified of what’s to come. I don’t believe it’s hopeless, but that’s a tough thing to see sometimes — a tough thing to hold onto. Because it will get worse before it gets better, and some of us — God knows who, could be me, could be you — aren’t going to make it to the sunrise. The light is faint and hard to reach for.

I used to sometimes talk about politics in the year-end retrospectives, on my old site, in th years when I felt like I had no choice. I didn’t like doing it, so I stopped. Just kept these pieces focused on the year in movies, or music, or whatever. It was all so despairing, and I never really knew how to transition from the suffering and hardship into the comparatively inconsequential things I write about.

I almost did the same thing again this year. But I realized I couldn’t, not without turning the circumstances into the elephant in the room — without this little list becoming the kind of too-bright smile you put on when things are desperately wrong and you’re to hide it and you know you’re failing. Also: I think, to an extent, it is on theme.

I want to say two things that have become daily mantras for me — that have done the most to get me into a more functional headspace.

The first I’ve already said, but I really want to ensure I make a point of it — because when it comes to self-care, knowing something academically is not the same thing as internalizing it. You absolutely must know, in your heart, that it is OK not to be OK right now. Lots of us aren’t. You’re anxious, you’re depressed, sad, scared, whatever — and all of those emotions are very understandable responses to what’s happened. It’s worse for some of us than others, and those of us who have medically diagnosed mental health conditions — which I do, for the record — have been triggered very badly. But those feelings are not irrational. They are not a signal that you are broken — nor are they a condition that is now inherent to you. It’s human to feel bad right now — it’s feeling completely fine that would be strange. It’s painful, and it’s going to take time, but know that this is a time when misery has a lot of company. You are not alone in this — very, very far from it.

The second thing pertains to this whole project, this thing I’m doing right now, writing this, about arts and entertainment when we all have much bigger things on our minds. I’ve been on social media far too much since all this happened; I’ve seen the latest genre of post — the people in replies to the guy telling jokes or sharing pictures of his dog criticizing him for meeting the moment too lightly. I understand where it comes from; believe me, I do. It’s also dead wrong.

It’s been said so much at this point it’s now a cliche: The first rule of fascism is don’t comply in advance. What I’m about to say I can’t claim as my own insight, though my memory fails as to who originated it. At some point over the last weeks, I saw someone respond to the aforementioned criticism with a statement that has stuck with me ever since: Letting them steal your joy is complying in advance.

Right now, we absolutely need people to lead the fight — people with the bandwidth and the talents necessary to dive into the nitty-gritty of all this, report the truth, develop a strategy, spearhead whatever we’re going to have to muster to save each other from this. The people most targeted by this administration, the ones suffering the most immediately and acutely, are going to need that. Do you know what else they’re going to need? A space to be a human being for a while. Somewhere they don’t have to think about how much they’re hurting. They need to talk about movies and music and sports and recenter themselves in the things that make life worth living, that bring them joy.

I know that from experience. Cards on the table: Very shortly after I posted that election-night essay on here, I lapsed into the absolute worst mental health crisis of my entire life. You’re just going to have to take my word for it when I say that bar was not low. I lost months. I was on the edge of a panic attack all day every day for entire weeks in December; January, I was better but felt like I was walking on the edge of a knife all the time, like one little push was all it would take. It was only internalizing what I said earlier — that it’s OK not to be OK — that helped me transition into something that feels more normal. In the midst of all that, with my mind in ruins and my guts on fire, I was glad for the people who were fighting — but it was also sort of difficult to talk to them? Because it dragged all my deepest fears to the forefront of my mind and kept me in that hell. Do you want to know what really helped me get better? What really gave me the strength to get through the day?

Friggin’ improv comedy.

I spent the last two months getting really into improv comedy. Finally got that Dropout subscription I’d been mulling for a while (highly recommended, FYI). At my worst, movies and music didn’t really penetrate, but for whatever reason, that did. It’s almost a ritual now. I wake up, shower, eat breakfast, and then I watch an episode of something on Dropout. It’s the silliest stuff in the world — but it’s ended up meaning a lot to me, and I’m so profoundly grateful it exists and that people continue to make it even though we’re all scared to death right now.

We need this stuff, man, every bit as much as we need to fight. So yeah — I’m doing the music list this year, and I’m going to do the year in movies once I finish up my watchlist; I’ll do the Oscar predictions if I don’t forget (sue me, it happens). I’m going to start writing again once I get my next project sufficiently planned out (thank God I finished the most recent novel in October; that sure would have been a mess). I’m really not much of a fighter, I’m certainly not a leader, it’s going to take me time to figure out what I can do concretely to help, but this, this I can do, and I’m going to keep doing it for as long as I’m able.

Moving right along: music!

I said last year that I’d sort of stopped believing in good years and bad years for music — at this point, it’s such a democratized art form that if I’m not enjoying the current landscape it’s just because I’m not digging deep enough. I realized that, to me, a good year simply meant all the artists I already listened to nailed it and I didn’t have to venture out of my comfort zone to fill the gap.

Of course, now that I’ve learned how to venture out of my comfort zone, at least a little bit, those conditions can now exist simultaneously. Which is to say that if I believed in good and bad years in music, I would consider this year a very good one.

I don’t know, I think I might have hit critical mass in my music nerdery in 2024. In a very short period of time, I went from top ten lists with entries I didn’t even like that much to this, the first year where I actually started to ask myself if I should expand to twenty. I ultimately decided that I’m still not far along to get away with that just yet — but that I even considered it is still a testament. There came a point in the last month or so when I counted out my ten and realized I had just cut The Cure’s new one, and that made me actively afraid for my safety.

The artists that I’m already a fan of mostly killed it this year. The top two albums on this year’s list are both by bands I’ve been trying to get into for years now who finally pulled me into their corner, which is very exciting. There’s also a healthy number of new discoveries — to me, anyway — on here. It’s just a really great balance, and for the first time since I started tracking my campaign to become a music nerd (which I absolutely have not anywhere near pulled off yet) I don’t really have any serious reservations about any of these. Not only that, but there are a few albums I sincerely regret that I couldn’t make room for this year.

So we’ll start with those honorable mentions. In more or less the order they were cut, they are: St. Vincent, “All Born Screaming” (I actually don’t consider it a disappointment; I just don’t think I’m quite as taken with it as everyone else — I love it through “Big Time Nothing,” but then it kind of sputters for me); Soft Play, “Heavy Jelly” (this is right on the edge of being too heavy for me, but a faithful adherent of my firm belief that punk music is best when it’s funny); Kim Deal, “Nobody Loves You More” (Kim Deal went solo and decided she was going to try to make a…Jimmy Buffett album? Anyway, this one’s been growing on me, so put a pin in it, I guess); The Smile, “Cutouts” and “Wall of Eyes” (they’re great, but I kind of want Radiohead back, and also I’m a little bit over bands doing two albums a year, it’s so vanishingly rare that they actually feel like two distinct pieces); and, as previously stated, The Cure, “Songs of a Lost World” (the downside of being a legacy band is that anything you make exists in the shadow of your own work — this is an album to make any other band jealous, and yet I found it also didn’t scratch any itches that “Disintegration” doesn’t already).

Now for the list proper.

10. Los Campesinos!, “All Hell”

New to these guys! Had never heard of them before they started showing up on some best-of lists at the end of the year. This goes without saying, given the caliber of the albums I just listed, but I had a heck of a time deciding what was going to round out this year’s list. My main holdup, I think, may have been that “All Hell” is not exactly reinventing the wheel — if you listened to the pop-punk/emo of the aughts, you won’t really encounter any new ideas here. But there’s an earthiness to the production that combines with a core sincerity and overall intelligence to put a real ache somewhere in the heart of this, and that’s an atmosphere I’ve never really gotten out of music like this. “All Hell” is timely, of its moment, an “album we need right now” kind of thing, and it isn’t impressed with itself for that. If I had to describe it, I would say it’s “if someone had taught the bands I loved in high school how to read,” which is an M.O. I have no trouble getting behind.

9. English Teacher, “This Could Be Texas”

Punk rock attitude in music that is not punk is one of the easiest ways to get me on board with a new band, and honestly, I could probably just end it right there. Part of me wants to, because English Teacher is a “vibes-only” sort of band that I’m also afraid would be cheapened by thinking about it too much. Combining that “too cool for school” sort of personality with composition that’s actually extremely intricate is an extraordinary balancing act and I can only bow my head in respect to anyone with the skill to pull it off effortlessly. It feels like this whole album is rolling its eyes at you, and somehow that ends up being the coolest thing in the universe. Like, we are not worthy.

8. Arooj Aftab, “Night Reign”

Look, man, it’s like I’ve said over and over doing these lists — I have no special expertise in this subject, I’m just some guy, I’m not even qualified to talk about the stupid stuff I put on here, much less a deep core music nerd genre like jazz. You want me to go over this with a fine-toothed comb? I can’t. You want me to tell you that this is beautiful, that Arooj Aftab’s voice is beautiful, and that I somehow know exactly what every single one of these songs is about despite the fact that I don’t speak the language half of them are in? That I can do. That I can do happily.

7. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Wild God”

I like Nick Cave best in two modes — his brutal early career rockers like “Thirsty Dog,” and when he’s in the “Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus” zone. I think the former have been permanently put to bed at this point, but it’s wonderful to hear him drifting back into the latter with “Wild God.” Dark Poet Nick Cave is great, obviously, and that guy is still in here — this feels like a fusion of old and new. I’m also not sure I could’ve taken many more albums of nothing but that, so it comes as some relief to know he can still reach through the stereo and grab you when he wants to. This is a grand epic, in effect if not in length, Cave stepping up to the microphone and taking everyone to church. Now’s the time to place your bets on how many episodes of prestige TV shows are going to head to credits on “Conversion” in 2025. Anyway, he should start making music videos again; he keeps screwing up my aesthetic on here.

6. Kendrick Lamar, “GNX”

I’m mad that this album exists, because I almost made it through the year without feeling like I had to weigh in on the Kendrick Lamar/Drake beef. In general, I’m happiest when I know as little as possible about the personal lives of the people who make the stuff I like, but I don’t mind a good rap beef when it isn’t about something that matters. This one made it about two diss tracks in before it got to sincere allegations of pedophilia and openly hoping one of the participants would literally die. And I get it, Drake is probably not a good dude and definitely has a lot of suspect associations, but I don’t know, man, that’s not an allegation I’m comfortable saddling anybody with when no accusers have come forward? And even if it’s true, I feel like someone being a predator would demand a more serious response than “trying to strike a chord, and it’s probably A Minooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” Even though that line is objectively pretty funny, and a lot of this was objectively pretty funny, and I regret to inform you that despite my misgivings, the sheer overkill of Kendrick’s victory in this fight only becomes funnier the longer it continues (I was just informed that the Super Bowl halftime show is eligible for an Emmy!). Ahem. All this to say, new Kendrick Lamar albums usually have at least a top three spot on this list locked down from the second they drop. The reason “GNX” doesn’t is that I really don’t care about his beefs, and so much of this album is about his beefs. Oh, Lil Wayne didn’t call to congratulate you about the Super Bowl spot? This is definitely an extremely sympathetic problem to me. But of course, Kendrick is this super self-conscious, introspective guy, so even the BS is really interesting in his hands. The sense I get is this: Fame, and being told he’s the greatest rapper of all time a hundred times a day by dozens of very respectable people, has DEFINITELY gone to Kendrick Lamar’s head — but he is that vanishingly rare celebrity who knows it’s gone to his head and doesn’t like that about himself. As usual, “GNX” is much more as a whole-album experience than it is as a series of individual tracks — because you’ll get a savage, danceable takedown of the haters, and then he’ll balance it out with a song where God tells him he needs to sit down and shut up already. And as much as I try to resist, it’s just such a compelling dichotomy — obviously, I wrote more about this album than any of the others on this list. Add to that the fact that the guy is still working with the best producers in the business, and you’ve got another record that somehow turns all of its vices into virtues.

5. Jack White, “No Name”

THANK GOD. Jack White heard the pleas of his people and descended from the mountaintop to answer them. Finally, he’s delivered the sick, face-melting rock n’ roll record for which we have so pitifully beseeched him. And finally, it’s actually really good the whole way through instead of petering out after five tracks. I’m sorry, I’ve actually genuinely liked his last couple albums, but this is like I was stranded in the desert with nothing but a bunch of MRE packets and now I’m being served a gourmet dinner; I had forgotten what I was missing. Anyway, I don’t have much to say about this; very little needs to be said. I even like the songs everyone else hates (“Archbishop Harold Holmes” is a stone-cold banger, Jack White is never better than when he’s in southern televangelist mode, what’s wrong with you people?). Basically the seventh White Stripes album.

4. Mannequin Pussy, “I Got Heaven”

I have this problem where every time I see a really stupid band name I can’t resist checking them out immediately. No one could possibly have foreseen this, but…sometimes that results in a year-end list where it’s difficult for me to at least keep the written portion SFW, as is my wont. The title track is by far my favorite on the album, and one of my favorite songs of 2024 more generally, but that is not the music video I posted above, because even on a list that contains the video for “squabble up” I feel like I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. What can I say, guys? I am a sucker for noisy punk, Missy Dabice is immediately solidified as one of the best caterwaulers in the biz, and the production here is aces. Kids, eat your vegetables.

3. Adrianne Lenker, “Bright Future”

It was a year ending in a number, so at least one member of Big Thief released at least one new album and it managed to end up highly placed on this list even though sheer statistical odds dictate this level of output cannot remain good for this long. Anyway, it’s Adrianne Lenker at the plate once again, and once again she delivers a home run. And here, in particular, she continues establishing herself as one of this generation’s absolute most gifted songwriters. Most of her projects, with and without the band, don’t shy away from tugging on the ol’ heartstrings, but “Bright Future” is just an active assault from beginning to end. There are several songs on this album that leave me in ruins every time I listen to them (one of them is even called “Ruined!”). As a writer, one of my favorite experiences with music is a set of lyrics that just leaves me shellshocked, and Lenker starts delivering those on the very first track on this album. The musicianship is also as keen as ever; she’s another one of those artists who somehow keeps finding whole worlds of ideas in some of the simplest arrangements you’ve ever heard. I said that I no longer really believe in good and bad years for music, but “Bright Future” really puts that to the test because it’s nuts that not only isn’t this number one, I’m not even particularly uncomfortable that it isn’t.

2. Fontaines D.C., “Romance”

Some of you may recall that at the beginning of this, I said the top two entries were both bands I’ve been trying to get into for years but hadn’t been able to until now. And some of you, as a result of that, are now becoming very angry with me! Because “Romance” is the sellout record. It’s the cool post-punk band going full alt-rock. To which I say: “At what point did I ever give any of you the impression I am something other than a giant loser?” Sometimes I like the edgy, dangerous bands, and other times I am a whitebread dork who needs the noise rock outfit to write something with a hook. Sue me! Yeah, for all my love of punk, post-punk has mostly been lost on me over the years. I feel like it exists at a halfway point between punk and alternative, and that’s just not a zone I know what to do with. It’s too mellow to deliver that punk energy and too punk to be pretty or move you. So I was probably always going to love Fontaines D.C. the moment they committed to one end of the spectrum or the other. And here we are. And for the record, as much as personal taste is a factor, this remains a unique and memorable collection of music. Sometimes the band leans into new influences — there’s a little Britpop, they try for a hip hop vibe with “Starburster,” some of it feels like The Smiths, some of it feels like late career Arctic Monkeys — and sometimes they craft something that doesn’t have any meaningful precedent at all. It’s sharp, it’s tight, it’s got hooks for days, the punk attitude is preserved through the sound change, but there’s a heartbeat, too. It’s always a novel experience, and more than anything, that’s what I’m here for.

  1. Waxahatchee, “Tigers Blood”

This dropped on the same day as “Bright Future,” and I’m not going to put myself in the position of saying that’s a “Blonde on Blonde”/“Pet Sounds” situation, but lord. At the very least, alt-country fans sure were eating good that day. And they deserved it, because we are currently living through an era where country music both has never been bigger and has never been worse! Alt-country is kind of funny in general to me because of how much of it is just “country, but good.” One day, someone woke up and thought, “What if country music wasn’t terrible?” And we decided that was so unheard of we needed to invent a whole new genre to describe it. Waxahatchee is a country artist! “Tigers Blood” is a country album! It’s full of country songs! It’s just good! It’s OK to say it! Yeah, this is another album that largely, for me, is solidified through the quality of its songwriting, both lyrics and music. It takes country tropes, restores that earthy production, tackles relatable subjects, and does it all in a way that’s poetic and fresh and specific to itself — will wonders never cease? Like I said, I’ve also been trying to get Waxahatchee for a while, and here it isn’t so much a factor of a change in sound or direction as it’s just their game getting stepped up to the point that I’m finally ready to get on board. I think there are other albums this year that hit higher highs, or are maybe a touch more memorable, but what really earned it 2024’s top slot is just its rock-solid consistency — the fact that I really like every single track, and I outright love most of them. Some years it’s hard, some years it isn’t, most years it’s in the middle; this year, I have no misgivings about the choice I made. “Tigers Blood” is the real deal.

See you next time! It’ll probably be the Oscar predictions — possibly the cinema year in review, assuming the movies I’m still waiting on hit streaming in the very near future (like I said, I live in the middle of nowhere). As a signoff: Trans rights are human rights, no human being is illegal, the truth is true no matter who believes it, and the right thing is the right thing no matter who wants to do it. Stay safe out there.