“Survive till ‘25″ has been the mantra of Hollywood this year, with the industry still recuperating from the somewhat self-inflicted wounds of two strikes, one pandemic and countless tectonic shifts in how, why and where audiences watch movies.
At about this time last year, I felt that 2023 would go down as a landmark era for film both domestic and abroad – as rich even as the cinematic bounty delivered in 2019, the Last Great Year before the global movie industry truly and well lost its mind.
I’m afraid that 2024 offers no such historical potential – this was an anxious stretch of recovery, reassessment and retrenchment that not even the desperate portmanteau magic of “Glicked” (that’d be Gladiator II and Wicked) could rescue. But between all the doom and gloom, there were – as there always have been and always will be – masterpieces large and small. Here are the top 10 films of 2024, and how to watch (most of) them right now.
10. and (tie)
I’ll admit that this odd-couple pairing of documentaries is designed to stir. But both films fearlessly speak to the most critical issues of the moment, even if they also both slightly stumble along the way. In set on the front lines of Russia’s repugnant invasion of Ukraine, the filmmaker dares to look the enemy in the eye and ask whether the world prefers their villains as incontrovertibly evil or something more ambiguous. The fact that the film was immediately greeted with outrage – almost exclusively by those who had not even deigned to watch it – says as much about our era’s tunnel vision as the doc itself. Meanwhile, director Josh Greenbaum’s road-trip dramedy , tracing the friendship between former Saturday Night Live colleagues Will Ferrell and Harper Steele as the latter embraces her transition, delivers its own series of societal revelations. I’m not suggesting that you double bill the two films – you’ll be lucky to watch Russians at War at all – but together, they paint essential portraits of the state of non-fiction cinema, the art of staring back at ourselves. (Will & Harper streams on Netflix; the fate of Russians at War is )
9.
As haunting as the was soothing, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film arrives in a starved-for-quality spring movie season as that rarest of artifacts. This is an instant-masterpiece worthy of intense debate in which every side will have a valid point. Split into two halves, Evil Does Not Exist explores the complicated state and perhaps doomed future of a tiny alpine town outside of Tokyo called Mizubiki, and what happens when the cold, hard agents of commerce clash with the equally unforgiving forces of nature. (Streaming on Criterion Channel; on-demand via Apple TV)
8.
Almost entirely shot and set in a frigid and brutalist Winnipeg – or at least an imaginary version of it that feels equal parts Manitoban and Iranian, with Tim Hortons signage in Farsi – the new comedy is inspired by writer-director Matthew Rankin’s life-long fascination with the gentle-touch cinema of such Iranian masters as Abbas Kiarostami. But there is something so distinctly, thoroughly Canadian about the entire absurd affair that it feels both homegrown and global at the same time, perhaps the first truly instance of globalized CanCon, engineered in reverse. A hundred bonus points for the most inventive use of Burton Cummings in any movie, ever. (Opens in select theatres Jan. 24)
7.
In its patience and power, stands as the most searing thriller of the year, all the more remarkable given that has executed a kind of mid-career genre flip. Instead of doubling down on the bodily carnage of his earlier work such as Green Room, in which Neo-Nazis slice and dice rock musicians or cops get mowed down by a possibly possessed war veteran, Saulnier has shifted the pyrotechnics here to dialogue and character. There is plenty of violence this time around, but it is contained to the visceral intensities of stare-downs, shifts in body language and razor-wire-sharp repartee. And thanks to Saulnier and the ferocious energy of his fantastic cast – led by Aaron Pierre in a star-making role – the results are just as incendiary as any firefight. (Streaming on Netflix)
6.
Spanning the champagne lounges of Manhattan’s strip clubs to the high-roller suites of Vegas – with a stopover in the global environs of the oligarch class – supersizes the smaller worlds that writer-director Sean Baker is more familiar with to create something both intimate and towering, heartbreaking and hilarious. One false move and the story about a sex worker who falls into a quick marriage with a millionaire Russian brat can slip into either cliché: the Pretty Woman hooker rescued from her own self-hatred, or the gold-digging opportunist in need of a reality check/cheque. But star Mikey Madison never loses grip on the title character. Together with Baker, the pair craft a whirlwind comic misadventure. (Now playing in theatres)
5. Nickel Boys
Not only the most formally inventive film of the year but one of the most emotionally devastating, director RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel will change your perspective. Shot entirely in first-person POV, with the viewpoint flipping between two characters as the story progresses, is a deeply layered portrait of resilience, chronicling two Black teens as they struggle to survive an abusive reform school in 1960s Florida. While Ross’s approach might seem gimmicky, it only takes a few dramatic beats to lock you in. (Opening in Canadian theatres early 2025)
4.
An evocative and hypnotizing exploration of the adolescent pains that come with figuring out just who you are and who you cannot be, fuses the body-horror of David Cronenberg’s sticky oeuvre with the rerun-addled memories of a tween who has watched far too much television. It is a singular piece of pop-cult art, delivered with the brash confidence of a filmmaker who has either been told “no” too many times or not enough. (Streaming on Crave and Hoopla)
3.
To turn Dune into a workable, digestible piece of big-budget blockbuster cinema is for a director to risk a one-way ticket to movie jail. If not the movie asylum. Yet with the eye-popping and (enjoyably) ear-splitting , proves that there is a radically refined method guiding his madness. Villeneuve’s epic arrives as a big, sincere and essential reminder that film is the home of true push-the-limit visionaries. It is a medium of transformative dreams and immersive nightmares. (Streaming on Crave)
2.
Based on the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program that began at New York’s maximum-security Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in which inmates stage theatre productions for their fellow prisoners, is a captivating experiment in progressive docudrama. As they did on their 2021 film , Bentley and Kwedar blur the borders between documentary and dramatization. And leading the charge is as a prisoner with a gift for storytelling. This is as big, immersive and knock-down-drag-out impressive a vehicle as any leading performer could possibly hope for. And Domingo makes an absolute five-course meal out of it. (Re-releasing in theatres this January)
1. The Brutalist
The new challenge for film critics this December will be trying to describe about a fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect grappling with his post-Second World War existence without resorting to the word “monumental.” (Oh, I guess I just did it now.) But such a challenging film deserves to keep its audiences, critic or otherwise, on their toes. Across 215 relentlessly engineered minutes, Corbet delivers the kind of sweeping, brazen and generation-altering cinema that makes you believe in the pure power of cinematic creativity. In a film filled with moments designed to launch a million cultural essays – including a finale that will ignite the ugliest debate of the awards season – there may be no more haunting an image than when Adrien Brody (playing the brilliant architect Laszlo Toth) and Guy Pearce (as Toth’s brash American benefactor Harrison Lee Van Buren) descend into a maze of Italian marble, only one of their characters confident of the way out. The Brutalist is its own labyrinth – lose yourself in it as soon as you can. (Opening in select theatres Dec. 25)
