The Best Films of 2024 (So Far)
The year's half over. Time to take stock.
There’s a running theme to 2024’s best films so far, and that theme is the grayer areas of morality. The protagonists of all of these films are all forced to wrestle with big ethical questions, and they often make choices that repel us even as we completely emphasize with the characters’ plight. This feels more than a little reflective of society’s whole vibe right now; hopefully, these films are the prelude to revolution, and not annihilation.
On that happy note, here are 2024’s strongest releases to date (in alphabetical order).
Civil War
From my original review:
The exact circumstances behind the conflict are only alluded to, often in throw-away dialogue like the line about Antifa and the portrayal of the President’s loyalists as jingoistic and violently anti-news media. The details are, in fact, beside the point: Civil War isn’t really about how or why a country turns on itself so much as it’s about the horrors that await the country once it does.
Dune: Part 2
From my original review:
The moral fog that permeates the narrative makes Dune: Part Two a truly epic emotional cataclysm, more akin to The Godfather than Star Wars. This is a fantasy film even people who normally don’t care for fantasy films will appreciate, like Game of Thrones if Game of Thrones had actually nailed the dismount.
Hit Man
From my original review:
Hit Man is, as I believe Oscar Wilde might have put it, charming as fuck.
How to Have Sex
From my original review:
How to Have Sex feels especially real and, thus, especially unsettling.
Hundreds of Beavers
From my original review:
That the filmmakers are able to sustain such a simple premise for 108 gloriously giggle-guaranteeing minutes is a true testament to the power of creativity and the ways in which ingenuity can blossom from restriction.
The Last Stop in Yuma County
From my original review:
What makes Yuma truly sing, however, is writer/director/editor Francis Galluppi’s expertise as a craftsman. With a sniper’s precision, he masterfully constructs a Jenga tower of suspense and cruel twists of fate, gradually stacking problem on top of problem on top of problem; when he starts pulling pieces out from the bottom and placing them on the top, the tension of waiting to see if - or when - it will topple is UNBEARABLE. The Last Stop in Yuma County would make Alfred Hitchcock jealous.
Love Lies Bleeding
From my original review:
Expertly directed by Rose Glass from a screenplay she wrote with Weronika Tofilska, Love Lies Bleeding may remind you of the literature of Jim Thompson (arguably the greatest crime author who ever lived): it traffics in tropes that will be readily-familiar to noir fans, but the devil is in the almost unbearably-brutal details.