Jack Draper is a staff writer for Boston Hassle, where he pens the recurring “Diractors” column. He also co-hosts the popular podcast Exiting Through the 2010s.
Another year is in the books! There’s more anxiety about the box office, FilmTwitter™️ is pretty much a graveyard, and more swan songs have come and gone from our most beloved auteurs. We experienced of the hangover from the 2023 strikes with delayed films, but even with the entire “survive until 2025” sentiment that the real quality films are being shelved until next year, we had ourselves a very good year that made this list hard to put together. Unsure if the mid budget movie is “back,” but the success of Longlegs and Challengers is nice; at the same time, the MCU and comic book movies overall must be on its last breath. Yet 2024 gave us nothing if not variety, no matter what ends up in everyone’s top ten: a reckoning with one’s ambition within America’s past, a self-actualization in one’s identity in the digital age, or how one constructs fiction from reality amid an incredibly lonely year. For fans of cinema that remain tapped into any reason we are failing, I’ll remained optimistic with another fun year of movies.
Before we get to my official list, a quick commemoration of the Diractors (movies directed by actors) of 2024
- Tig Notoro’s Am I Okay? (Forgot about this one, but so did everyone else it seems)
- Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain (Great movie that just misses my top ten, such an easy watch and I think Kieran will win an Oscar for it)
- Zoe Kravitz’ Blink Twice (I think Kravitz has a better movie in her; this one is pretty good until it tries to be about more than what it is)
- Andrew McCarthy’s Brats (didn’t see it, looks annoying)
- Dan Levy’s Good Grief (It’s fine, but again, Levy has a better movie in him I think)
- Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One (Conflicted with this one, I was vague in my review as I don’t know how to think about a half of a movie but love the melancholy of it all)
- Justin Baldoni’s It Ends With Us (Aside from a pretty electric opening meet cute, this thing has nothing to say about anything and never deserved its publicity from the cast drama, hope Baldoni never directs again)
- Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 (Grandpa Clint’s still got it! We should be getting multiple of these a year, Zaslav I hope you step on a Lego with shoes off)
- Dev Patel’s Monkey Man (A bit shaggy, but Patel made an action film I think time will be kind to)
- Julio Torres’ Problemista (So genuine and lovely, Torres is such a singular voice in comedy)
- Conner O’Malley’s Rap World (Laughed so so much. How you’re able to make a movie that seems like kids from my high school would make to something that resembles the Maysles is amazing.)
- David Duchovny’s Reverse the Curse (Doesn’t exist, Duchovny such a bland director)
- Jake Johnson’s Self-Reliance (Extremely funny! One of the best comedies of the year)
- Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (Masterpiece. More thoughts on the list!)
- Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted (I refuse to acknowledge this!)
- Anna Kendrick’s Woman of the Hour (great movie that’s been widely overlooked, Kendrick has another tightly wound thriller in her. Just missed my top ten)
- Ethan Hawke’s Wildcat (Missed this one but I hear it’s fine)
- Kyle Mooney’s Y2K (Has its moments, but not the great comedy it could’ve been)
Top ten of 2024
- SPERMWORLD (dir. Lance Oppenheim)
Since Lance Oppenheim burst onto the scene with Some Kind of Heaven in 2020, he showed an eye for looking directly onto the subjects that are the last to humanized. As little as we wanted to hear from Florida’s Trumpian community in his previous film, Spermworld gives us the sperm donation participants as people Oppenheim is taking great interest in for us. Pretty much every subject feels like a main character and every scene is more fascinating than the last. Either way, probably both, viewers will be Empathizing or annoyed with these guys which is an accomplishment for Oppenheim. To dig as deep as the niche community takes him, Spermworld is just another great doc in how the personal insecurities reveals its universal truths.
- JANET PLANET (dir. Annie Baker)
It’s one of the great achievements that playwright-turned-filmmaker Annie Baker’s Janet Planet can get at the specific ages in someone’s life when you recognize the both of you are at a crossroads. For the lives of mother and daughter Janet and Laci (the GREAT Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler), Baker weaves careful, lived-in details into the discovery of their identity, as they each realize the other still has some growing up to do. The film’s location of Western Massachusetts is remarkably felt as a place for a summer before the new school year with Laci’s simple life. She plays the piano, meets one of her mom’s friends that crashes with them, and reads while the weather is radiant; which comes off as unremarkable to Laci and contentment to Janet.
- HIT MAN (dir. Richard Linklater)
One of two entries on this list that leave you asking, “What more do you want from movies?” Hit Man is so funny and charming that I challenge anyone to dislike it. “Hitmen aren’t real” is a fun way to change up “Fake it until you make it,” giving Glen Powell lots of different hats to try on (literal and figurative) in this well-balanced thriller and romantic comedy. As a massive embodiment of American cinephilia for over thirty years now, Richard Linklater’s light and zippy comedy-thriller is a great reminder he still can stay authentic. What you see is what you get with Rick and Hit Man is him and Glen Powell in perfect conversation in seeking out something new with subverting something that doesn’t exist. Contract killers not existing plays into one of the movie’s main jokes and remains a central idea, just as much as embracing the case of the mistaken identity can be.
- HARD TRUTHS (dir. Mike Leigh)
“A new film from Mike Leigh” is not something we are going to see many more times; the genius filmmaker is getting up there in age, but also is in this weird purgatory where he’s still respected yet not many studios are ready to give him funding. Yet, Hard Truths does see him have more left to say about repression and loneliness in a post pandemic UK. Marianne Jean-Baptiste truly gives the best performance of the year as someone who’s depression is at times as funny as it is deeply worrisome, who has forgotten what contentment feels like even when surrounded by loved ones. A crushing dread that only Mike Leigh is capable of that still feels fresh in 2024.
- STRESS POSITIONS (dir. Theda Hammel)
In what feels like the dying breaths of the New York millennial liberal, the unhinged comedy and debut of Thelda Hammel, Stress Positions, casts a sharp eye. Comedian John Early can make me laugh in just about anything (see Search Party), and for him to carry a movie this chaotic while playing someone this unpleasant is why it’s stuck with me since Sundance. It’s so accurately a movie set in June 2020, when social activism reached its most performative and community exhaustion was just becoming cringe. Everything in the movie is calibrated oh so perfectly as nothing is taken seriously and the effort to find the profundity in Terry Goon’s situation of taking care of his Moroccan nephew really sneaks up on you. Huge representation for annoying and restless people everywhere.
- I SAW THE TV GLOW (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
It took someone as idiosyncratic as Jane Schoenbrun to embody the Gen Z depression, an age group when we haven’t known life without screens or the ease of a parasocial relationship. You’ll see popular Letterboxd lists titled “Zillennial Panic” or “Befriending Lyrical Loneliness”; TV Glow is a summation of any kind of core idea or fresh visuals that can slot into these lists. Characters under 25 are proving to be even more difficult; even though it’s set in the ’90s, TV Glow knows what we are about. Jane brilliantly weaves together the trans subtext and existential nostalgia narrative, as I think this deep sadness is just going to continue to grow with further generations. Memories from childhood become foggy yet the ones spent in front of a screen hold strong. For Jane, maybe its Are You Afraid of the Dark and for me its Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. This one’s for the kids who feel asleep with the TV on.
- A DIFFERENT MAN (dir. Aaron Schimberg)
Speaking of identity insecurities! I’ve been recommending Adam Schimberg’s latest, which recalls the best jokes and moments from Charlie Kaufman’s movies (or even Woody Allen, God willing). As the general underlying anxiety and incredibly dry humor continues to be dialed up, as does the freedom of where the movie can go next. The movie is split into two halves, first about what happens when you live an ambivalent life with a disability like neurofibromatosis, then how you are left feeling incomplete once the physical impairment is removed. All three leads are terrific– maybe the most adaptable performances of the year, their energies perfectly matching wherever the movie went. Where it went was taking Renate Reinsve’s character to narrativize the enhancement of someone’s life but in her own interpretation. It was so funny to see the movie’s events and tiny details then regurgitated that’s a little sweet or a little exploitative.
- CHALLENGERS (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
Speaking of complex trios! The other “What more do you what from movies” entry. It’s complicated to make a movie cool considering the high bar to clear for younger audiences that expect something subversive. Challengers isn’t radical, but it’s refreshing for a film to be this confident in its characters. Despite the memes spawned of two men and a woman asking for three tickets to the movie, the dynamic resonates. Power and control go back and forth as quickly as a tennis match, the connection to eroticism becomes so embraced by the movie that you can’t unsee it after thinking about the sport. The only currency is winning and losing, and along the way we saw some good fucking tennis.
- NICKEL BOYS (dir. RaMell Ross)
Didn’t know you can adapt literature like this! It’s a magic trick that Nickel Boys is successful at showing you can be in conversation with a work of literature without being literal. For some, it’s understandably jarring to feel locked into one character and how cinematic language looks without shot/reverse shot. Yet Ross’ confidence shows us that this kind of new language is the way to weave us into memory, something that’s vivid but acutely includes the little details (thought of Tree of Life a lot). Following Elwood as he navigates his way through Nickel Academy with his companion, Turner, becomes something much more tender within the confines of the loss of innocence. I was also reminded of If Beale Street Could Talk, in how these literary dramas are so tragic with the presumption of guilt and the paradox that society places to prevent true liberation.
- THE BRUTALIST (dir. Brady Corbet)
You’ll feel full by the and of the three-course meal that is Brady Corbet’s totemic The Brutalist. A handsomely made epic feels right this year at the number one spot, as it speaks to cinema’s power and the commodification of creativity. Maybe it’s an entirely separate list but Lászlo Tóth, and the way Adrien Brody embodies him, might be my favorite character of the year. An architect who finds a new life in America after fleeing WW2 Europe, Tóth isn’t one to prove himself. As a professional, it’s then about competence versus wealth (represented by an excellent Guy Pearce), and how this dynamic destroys a family from the inside out (Tóth’s wife is played by a career best Felicity Jones). I’m not even sure if Brady was ready to do this, but was PTA ready for There Will Be Blood? It’s nice to see that he is so fearless here, recapturing what we get from Francis Coppola or George Stevens. The Brutalist knows what it is, and that self-awareness means Brady can shoot for the stars and the 9 million (!!!) budgets gets the money on screen without compromising the crisp look.
Honorable mentions
- Anora (Sean Baker)
- A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)
- The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
- Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
- The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols)
- Carry-On (Jaume Collet-Serra)
- Christmas Eve in Millers Point (Tyler Taormina)
- Didi (Sean Wang)
- Dune 2 (Denis Villeneuve)
- Furiosa (George Miller)
- Girls State (Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss)
- His Three Daughters (Azazel Jacobs)
- How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker)
- Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik)
- Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
- La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
- Longlegs (Oz Perkins)
- Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
- Megalopolis (Fancies Ford Coppola)
- Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)
- Problemista (Julio Torres)
- Rap World (Conner O’Mailey)
- Rebel Ridge (Jeremy Saulnier)
- Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)
- Self-Reliance (Jake Johnson)
- Snack Shack (Adam Rehmeier)
- Trap (M Night Shyamalan)
- The First Omen (Akasha Stevenson)
- The Piano Lesson (Malcolm Washington)
- Woman of the Hour (Anna Kendrick)
Favorite first-time watches of 2024
- A Perfect World (1993) – Clint Eastwood
- Bad Timing (1980) – Nicolas Roeg
- Belly (1998) – Hype Williams
- Bird (1988) – Clint Eastwood
- Claudine (1974) – John Berry
- Ex Libris: New York Public Library (2017) – Frederick Wiseman
- JFK (1991) – Oliver Stone
- Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1982) – Lou Adler
- Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) – Leo McCarey
- Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) – Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Peppermint Candy (2000) – Lee Chang-dong
- Slums of Beverly Hills (1998) – Tamara Jenkins
- Some Kind of Heaven (2020) – Lance Oppenheim
- Splash (1984) – Ron Howard
- State and Main (2000) – David Mamet
- Straight Time (1978) – Ulu Grosbard
- The Brother From Another Planet (1984) – John Sayles
- The Devils (1971) – Ken Russell
- The Hills Have Eyes (1977) – Wes Craven
- The Hitcher (1986) – Robert Harmon
- The Last of Sheila (1973) – Herbert Ross
- The Paper (1994) – Ron Howard
- The Thomas Crown Affair (1999) – John McTiernan
- The Wedding Singer (1998) – Frank Coraci
- The Woman Who Ran (2020) – Hong Sang-soo
- Threads (1984) – Mick Jackson
- Trust (1990) – Hal Hartley
- Tucker: A Man and His Dream (1988) – Francis Ford Coppola
- Waking Life (2001) – Richard Linklater
- What About Bob? (1991) – Frank Oz
