Favourites of 2024

 

2024 saw me seeing a whole lot of new movies, including a fair number of good ones. Here's ten from the year in alphabetical order that I really dug and a few words on why.

All of us Strangers - It's a beautiful story of personal connections, about the past and the present interacting and about love and loss and how they intertwine. Enshrined Andrew Scott as an All Timer, made me mad that Jamie Bell is not in more things, made me watch more things with Paul Mescal in them, though not Gladiator 2, cause that film has Wait For Film Group written all over it. (Streaming on Disney Plus, available for purchase on Amazon, itunes, microsoft and Fetch)

Anatomy of a Fall - I'd always been told that the French Inquisitorial system was different to the UK-based  prosecutorial system, but this is a great vigorous demonstration of how it is different and how this approach works on individuals - powerfully performed and put together, tight and tense.(streaming on Stan, available for purchase or rental on Amazon, itunes, microsoft and fetch)

Anora - a rollercoaster that moves from innocent romance to something much more complex, with Mikey Madison's performance launching a force of nature onto the screen with rage and determination - it's a film where I could watch seven different movies about various characters in the film all on their own, but I'm glad to be seeing this one where they're all in it together (in cinemas now). 

A Different Man - A wonderfully twisted film about self-perception and identity - Stan glowers delightfully and Adam Pearson manages to be exactly as charming as the film wants you to think he is. (rentable on itunes, fetch, microsoft and amazon)

Dune Part Two - A rich beautful complex take on a sci-fi classic that dug a little deeper than the conventional heroic narrative, richly cast, visually stunning, an action blockbuster that leaves things to talk about afterwards. (on netflix and Binge, rentable on microsoft, fetch, itunes and amazon)

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - No, it's not as tight as Fury Road, but it's big and broad and entertaining as hell and so deeeply, deeply Australian in all the ugliest ways that make me happy. (buy or rent on microsoft, fetch, amazon and itunes)

Kill - Action overload, with brutal efficiency as our heroes and villians are confined together on a train with nothing to do but take repeated deadly revenge against one another. Has best placemetn of a title card in quite some time. (streams on binge, buy or rent itunes, amazon, microsoft and fetch)

Monkey Man - Combines Indian Myth and History into a violent epic that's as personal as it is epic and badass. (streaming on binge, rent or buy on microsoft, itunes or amazon)

Robot Dreams - A dialogue-less charmer about a dog and a robot, about complex friendships and with the most earwormy use of a 70s pop hit ever in charming and melancholic ways. (streams on Stan, rent or buy on itunes, amazon, or microsoft)

The Wild Robot - Beautifully painterly backgrounds and a deeply humane story up front, with some great voice casting and a glorious sweet power. (still in some cinemas, otherwise rentable or buyable on amazon, itunes or microsoft)

Supplemental films which I also rate highly but don't quite live in my top 10: Bookworm, Challengers, Ghostlight, I Saw the TV glow, Late Night With the Devil, Mad About the boy: The Noel Coward Story, A Real Pain, Strange Darling, The Substance 

Films that do not release in Australia until 2025 so therefore may be under consideration for that year on my list : Babygirl, The Brutalist. Conclave, Emilia Perez,  The Last Showgirl, Maria, Nosferatu, Paddington In Peru, Queer, September 5, We Live in Time  

Film I'm probably going to skip which is going to get Academy Award nominations anyway but based on the advanced hype is not for me: A Complete Unknown. 

Favourite films seen for the first time this year that were made in earlier years: Cool Hand Luke, The Old Dark House, Repo Man. 

Ongoing letterboxd whch tracks these things is at: https://letterboxd.com/simbot/

Complete ranking of everything in Australian cinemas in 2024 is at: https://letterboxd.com/simbot/list/ranking-of-2024-theatrical-releases-in-australia/

Favourite of 2023

Just to note, I only include films that had a theatrical release in Australia during the period (whether or not I saw them in theatrical release). So, for instance, because "Are you there god, it's Me Margaret" did not get a theatrical release (though I saw it on a plane this year and really liked it) it could not be considered in this top 10. Also, films like "The Holdovers", "Anatomy of a Fall", "All of us Strangers" and "May December" don't come out in Australia until 2024 so they can't be considered until then.

And now, in alphabetical order come my 10 favourite films from 2023 and the reasons why (plus where you can see them):

"Godzilla Minus One"(still in cinemas) - a giant monster movie that does the human being stuff as well as it does the giant monster stuff - and it does the giant monster stuff damn well indeed. 

"Linoleum" (binge) - This one I saw on a plane and it had me weeping uncontrollably near the end. It starts as a simple and slightly absurd premise, and ends with a lot more depth than you're expecting. Damn powerful stuff. 

"Living" (Prime Video and Binge) - British stiff-upper-lip drama par excellence, with Bill Nighy showing that he's a master of conveying vast depths behind the eyes. 

"Marcel the Shell with Shoes On"(streaming on Netflix and Binge) - Charming and sweet and achieves a vast emotional effect through a simple pull-back-and-reveal. It's cute, silly, and made me grin and weep in about equal amounts.

"The Old Oak" (Still in cinemas) - A Ken Loach that is realistic and powerful without being overwhelmingly depressing or unnecessarily brutalising its characters, thank goodness. About how communities are built and maintained and about how tough it can be to do that. 

"Past Lives" (currently only rentable and buyable) - A film about messy complex emotional situations dealt with in an adult, humane way. 

"Poor Things" (still in cinemas) - Absurd, horny, adventurous, beautiful cinema. Among the various cast members who are all delightful (including Defoe actnig through a huge chunk of putty on his face in a way that still conveys everything, Stone delightfully odd, Ruffalo relishing a chance to play a 19th century cad and Youssef being exceptionally loveable), glorious cinematography and production design, and a script that's witty and insightful about no less a topic than the nature of human development, this is something to behold.

"Saltburn" (Prime Video, also still in cinemas) - Yes, I'm aware that the ending has twists for the sake of twists, and that it's provocative in ways that make some people uncomfortable. But I loved the riff on "Bridehead Revisited" with the homoeroticism and the class-envy turned WAAY up, the stinger at the end and the chilling moment of karaoke in the middle.  

"Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse"(Prime Video and Binge) - Thrilling, beautiful, dense-but-character-focussed-and-knows-how-to-maintain-that-focus-all-the-way-through. It's the kinda film you want to rewatch bits of constantly the second you come out of the cinema. 

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" (currently only rentable and buyable) - Fast-paced and funny, with a smart plot that knows exactly who the real monsters are. 

And the one that had to go to position 11 when I remembered to add "Saltburn" to the list (having seen it at a festival and then not added it to my yearly list on letterboxd when it got a cinema release):

"Broker" (Sbs on demand) - A sweet and heartbreaking story of two guys involved in the black market baby trade and how they end up entwined with the mother of one of the babies and the two cops chasing them. Pure charm. 

If you want to know what I thought of anything else you saw, you can check out my letterboxd here, or ask me in the comments and I'll give you a response. 

Favourite of 2022

Ok, took me til today to watch the 99 films released this year that qualify for my favourite 10 films released this year in Australia. So in alphabetical order ... 

DRIVE MY CAR - A beautiful study of grief, art, love, and creation as a semi-blind director and his driver bond as he directs a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. It's a very gradual film, and on the long side, but this pays off when the emotional floodgates open up and we see what's lying inside our lead characters. It's a great journey with great lead performances from Nisijiama and Watari

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE -Uses everything Michelle Yeoh is capable of and is a free-wheeling creative delight, every bit of apparent absurdity is there for a purpose and it's a film that loves its characters as much as its creative conceits.

GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE - A great acting showcase for the two leads, largely the only characters on screen. McCormack keeps pace with Thompson well, and Brand's script deals with the topic of opening up sexual taboos and finding your own level of honesty with wit and generosity. It's not necessarily particularly surprising, though it's expertly played. It's very much the Emma-Thompson-Hires-A-Sex-worker film you can take your grandma to, carefully not-too-confrontational, and very much a delight to watch.

LANGUAGE LESSONS - A really likable zoom movie, Natalie Morales gives herself a good vehicle to play a reasonable range of emotions. A sweet explosion of happiness at the ending

MOONAGE DAYDREAM - A triumphant distillation of Bowie, ignoring the normal talking heads approach in favour of using Bowies own interviews to underscore a collage of his work and philosophies. Having spent five decades being deliberately hard to pin down you wouldn't think he would come through as clearly as he does, but the selection of imagery, thoughts, and music is triumphant

THE NORTHMAN - A true Norse epic, brutal and intense, finds some moments of transcendence in among the gloom, while making very little secret of its obvious inspiration and no regrets in breaking out from it when it wants to

RED ROCKET - Only loses half a star because they never show where the kolaches are in the donut shop and as someone who is about two years away from his last visit to a Texas donut shop I needed the visual hit. But otherwise, this is an excellent study of a sociopath, after Sean Baker's last two films spent time with impoverished sex workers in LA and Orlando we get a fast-talking, similarly impoverished sex worker in Texas City Texas, constantly about three seconds away from dooming everyone around him to disaster. Fortunately, this is largely a comedy so the radius of the disaster largely just hits himself, with only one other victim.

RRR - This is simultaneously ridiculous and delightful, swapping genres from high drama to musical frivolity to romantic comedy to engaging action regularly, with two heroes who you get deeply engaged with even as they appear at odds. Even under suboptimal circumstances (on streaming, dubbed into Hindi rather than the original Telegu) this is fun, engaging, and wildly pleasurable.

TURNING RED - A cute coming-of-age romp looking at adolescence through a personal lens that is fun, modern, and very slightly ridiculous. The panda is super adorable, the teen angst is super relatable and the emotions are real and heartfelt.

WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY - A trio of short stories about complicated connections, with a clever set of twists and turns in each.  The short story format with no links beyond thematic should frustrate but instead, it's delightful as all have great stuff for actors to play through a long key conversation in the centre of each

The complete list in a ranked order is on leterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/.../ranking-of-2022-releases-in.../

And my ongoing profile including writeups of all 207 films I saw this year is at https://letterboxd.com/simbot/

Nightmare Alley

A solidly twisty turny noir that does feel a little bit self indulgent both in runtime and in pushing the gore a little. There's some great carnival design and the ending is appropriately nasty but it doesn't quite transfer from interesting to watch to engrossing to watch

Parallel mothers

 An enjoyable Almodovar melodrama with romantic complications, historical implications and a few surprises along with the gorgeous décor and design

Licorice Pizza

 A kinda sorta 70s romance between a 15 year old hustler and a 25 year old woman not quite sure where she's going, this meanders a lot (none of the big three guest stars, Penn, Waits or Cooper are essential to the plot, they're all diversions), and wins a lot of points on the ugliness of Gary's shirts and the capturing of a sense of how relationships between men and women were perceived in its period compared to now. I do wish it had just a little more narrative drive and focus but then it wouldn't be the enjoyable wallow that it is

One Second

 Part Road Runner, part Cinema Paradiso, part Melodrama, this is a surprisingly effective story of two characters drawn together over a reel of film where each have separate stakes in it, and how their relationship plays out is the prime pleasure in the film, along with some gorgeous desert photography and emotional engagement

Belle

 A beautiful emotionally rich anime exploring a virtual world where a shy schoolgirl can become a globally famous singer and become involved with a rageful beast and those who would hunt him. If it's not quite at the level of Summer Wars, the directors previous exploration of virtual universes, it still plays strong as an individual story of heroism and strength

King Richard

 Very much Oscar bait stuff for Will Smith including downplaying tricky elements of the story like the Jehovah's witness faith or the extra children that this film doesn't want to focus on, but it does effectively choose an appropriate place to start and finish, some interesting insight into the overlap between sport and race and an insight into raising children in a hothouse climate

Scream

 A solid follow up in the series that combines teen drama, film criticism and mass murder. If the teen drama feels a little flatter it might be that I'm further from being a teen than i was during the first four films and that the back-to-basics plot line ultimately doesn't really give the newbies much more to be than potential locations for knives to go or suspects, but it's still reasonably solid with a slightly higher taste for gore than the mid range sequels

Ghostbusters: Afterlife

 This doesn't exactly add a lot to the original, it's very much a case of playing the hits, although McKenna Grace gives it every bit of charm it has outside "remember the first movie". The climax does do the criminal job of wasting JK Simmons on a barely-there cameo, as well as going excessively sentimental in the last five minutes in ways that are kinda unnecessary. For all that whining I did kinda enjoy the wallow in nostalgia (not just the original, there's also an overlay of mid 80s Spielberg Amblin House Style in there too).

Red Rocket

Only loses half a star because they never show where the kolaches are in the donut shop and as someone who is about two years away from his last visit to a Texas donut shop I needed the visual hit. But otherwise this is an excellent study of a sociopath, after Sean Baker's last two films spent time with impoverished sex workers in LA and Orlando we get a fast talking, similarly impoverished sex worker in Texas City Texas, constantly about three seconds away from dooming everyone around him to disaster. Fortunately this is largely a comedy so the radius of the disaster largely just hits himself, with only one other victim.  The Trump analogy is never too laboured and remains an undercurrent rather than an overwhelming text, and the tension is maintained well.

Top ten of 2021

A list of ten films I really liked that released in Australia in 2021 in Cinemas and I got a chance to see. Noting there are a couple of films that may be worthy that I didn't see this year due to release dates, and some of the films I'm listing came out overseas in 2020, never the less they count as 2021 releases for my purposes. For what it's worth, I saw 235 films this year, 135 new ones, 100 old ones. I'd rate 199 of them as "good". You can read the full reviews of all of them on letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/simbot/films/reviews/

Another Round - An illustration of four men in midlife crisis attempting to deal with their lost youth through irresponsible behavior, with a great climactic final scene showing off Mads Mikklesen and his amazing legs.

Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra - a really great movie about a family, a culture and a movement - capturing modern dance and fame and its effect on three brothers. It's a really engrossing story with captivating dance footage and a real heart to it. 

Lapsis - A look at the modern gig-culture world through a sci-fi lens that has a specific unique look as it deals with the encroachment of big business on our lives and the increasing mechinisation of human beings.

Malignant - Probably the nuttiest left turn of a film this year, probably only the last third really belongs on this list but the last third was so much fun that it drags the film onto my list despite the somewhat laboured setup. It's one of those "you just have to see it to believe it" kinda films. 

Minari - A sweet family tale of finding a place in the world and holding onto it, as a Korean family moves to a small rural town and tries to establish their place, it's gentle, funny and a great outpouring of soul. 

Pig - Nicholas Cage only occasionally makes great movies - too often he's overacting in films that never really use his talents correctly. But in this case he's happened upon a solid script and has shaped his performance enough to give space to the rest of the performers around him - lifting Adam Arkin and Alex Wolff into strong performers rather than just sidelines to his main attraction. It's a great old-fashioned noir storyline in an unusual setting, and is incredibly pleasurable.

Riders of Justice - A really great look at the "old guy revenge" movie through giving space to the nerdy guys doing the research, thoroughly delightful. Although eventually Mads Mikklesen ends up busting up bad guys, it's not entirely a film in love with retribution so much as finding support structures around you.

Summer of Soul, or when the revolution could not be televised - A great doco about a period that's been visited a lot, from an angle that hasn't been seen much - the late sixties music scene through the eyes of African Americans, and the culture that surrounded them. 

Tick Tick ... Boom! - This is a particularly-me-kinda film - I'm aware the extreme earnestness of a 29 year old white guy declaring "I'm the future of American Theatre" is something that most people are going to find slap-worthy, but ... well, I was 23 and just leaving university when I first heard "Rent" and it kinda captured my heart before my brain had a chance to intervene. And this captured my heart too, particularly with Andrew Garfield's no-shame-whatsoever performance and the great capturing of the location and era. 

Titane - A wild pleasure, bringing us into a character who seems wildly unhinged and a situation that's somewhat absurd, and making us care about them and their choices - it's eventually almost a family bonding story through some very weird methods. 

Near Misses (just outside the top 10) - Luca, Supernova, The lost Daughter

Least Loved - A Call To Spy, Creation Stories; Every Breath You Take; Occupation: Rainfall

New To Me Favourites - Black Book, Black Narcissus, Chunking Express

New To Me Favourites (Insanely Fun but ridiculous edition) - Man's Best Friend. 

Swan Song

A nice small-scale story of the last era of gay men in a small country town, as an unashamedly flamboyant hairdresser sets out on one last mission. It's a bit rambling and sentimental but it's delightful

The Matrix Ressurections

A fun inventive sequel that acknowledges that it's going back to the well but finds rationalisation for why to do that, including playing with the questions of systems of control that the original trilogy did, and progressing the society within the piece to a more complexly intersectional one (the same way the star trek follow ups have, in fact!) Also nice to realise people over 50 can still be damn attractive! 

The Lost Daughter

 A strong film about a woman trying to keep her intellectual integrity after motherhood, almost the anti-Bluey in how nightmarish it makes the continual catering for a child's demands. Also features great daggy Ed Harris dancing (to a music cue semi ruined by featuring in a McDonald's commercial before the movie), and Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman doing a great job of matching accent and character despite never really looking much like one another

Don't Look Up

 The overstuffed with celebrities comedy often suffers from not being all that funny, often due to casting leads that aren't that funny. This has its moments but mostly falls flat, due to a combination of cynicism and rage never really feeling very grounded - Dicaprio is our apparent lead but he's never very endearing. There's a couple of decent moments including a signature weird Mark Rylance performance, Care Blanchett being a botoxed Dorothy Parker type and Challumet being quite endearingly weird, and the pay-off tag is delightful but ultimately the film wants to be directed by Armando Ianucci or Chris Morris

Spiderman: No Way Home

 A big scale epic combining 2 previous Tom Holland movies with elements of the previous cinematic attempts going back to 2002, with side elements of other bits of the MCU, in a slightly sprawling adventure that interrogates superhero morality, provides thrills and spills and spectacle and hits a couple of emotional elements plus has one joke that only I laughed out loud at but I feel good about myself for laughing at it.

Monsterfest 2021 recap

 For obvious pandemic-related reasons I've not been able to go to Fantastic fest for the last two years. So instead I've been substituting with MonsterFest - last year, I did a weekend in Sydney, this year I did the whole damn thing in Melbourne. It's sorta a bit Fantastic Fest's blokier brother - leaning very much on the horror/thriller side of things with a love of splatter, make-your-own-special-effects and backyard creation, but it comes with its own charms. In particular a lot of the films are small scale passion projects, often shot with friends and family, and rely on the virtues of script and performance over effects and flash to achieve their effects. Not all of them have spectacular scripts or performances, some just have eccentric ideas, but all of them have heart and soul to them. 

Weirdly enough for me the highlights were the retro screenings - the other 80's BMX movie, "Rad", which combined on-bicycle-ballet, an underdog-against-big-business storyline, Ray Walston channeling Mr Hand from Fast Times and a lot of pre-Whispering-Jack-John-Farnham for an enjoyable romp; 1970s "Flesh For Frankenstein", a nutty combination of monster creation, necrophilia, incest and special effects organs by the guy who created ET, and "Man's Best Friend", a 90s killer-dog movie that gives us an Ally Sheedy performance that feels carried over from Short Circuit and a lot of goofy surprises. 

Elsewhere, there were a lot of passion projects in there - some small scale and intelligent, like "Hellbinder" or "Apparitions", both simple horror stories told well (though both were somewhat subject to a little bit of logic that fell apart once you thought about the plot a little bit), some somewhat incomprehensible like Phil Tippet's long-brewing "Mad God".  In general it was good to see the heart and soul that went into these pieces, most of which are unlikely to go on to multi-millions and success but which are likely to be remembered with affection and love. 

Encanto

A strong cartoon about magic, family and growing responsibilities