MOVIES, MOVIES, MOVIES! What Were Your Best And Worst Movie Picks For 2024?

Do you love movies like I love movies? I've been entranced with them since I was a child, and while I've grown older (ish), I've not grown cynical about their sometimes transformative powers. No, really. I still eagerly hope for the best when the lights dim and the audience's chatter subsides. 

My heart is broken at regular intervals, of course, by lukewarm whiffs or outright duds, but sometimes, when every element clicks - director, script, actor - I'm all but blissed out. As Pauline Kael once noted, movies are the greatest art form because they encompass all art forms, and also, I would add, because their combination of the visual arts with movement is so seductive, creating a trance-like reverie. The best directors know this. 

I try to see everything of even faint interest in a movie theatre with the biggest screen I can locate, and I hope you do, too, because if it's a good movie, rest assured, you'll won't see it on screen ever again. Gone are the days when you could catch a big-screen double-feature at a revival house. 

Years ago in NYC, "The Hollywood Twin," a shabby two-plex in Hell's Kitchen, regularly played can't-miss double-features from Hollywood and abroad, like "Mildred Pierce" paired with "Stella Dallas," or Godard's "Weekend" with "Belle de Jour." On many nights, me and my friends happily abandoned our TV sets and video cassettes for hours in the darkened theatre in order to gasp, giggle or sob with old and new movie favorites on a big screen. Nowadays, when I see something good, I urge everyone I know to see it before it leaves the theatre. Streaming and BluRay simply don't match the experience. 

Did you have any favorite movies this year? There were plenty of good ones if you were willing to look for them. Many, like the animated "Robot Dreams" or "Ghostlight," were scarcely promoted and given blink-and-they're-gone theatrical releases, the lesson being that if you think you might be interested in something, see it as soon as you can. 

In no special order, here are my Top Five Best for 2024: 

1. "The Substance." One of the few offerings this year that's a genuine motion picture - it unfurls like a silent movie, with very little dialogue - this blast of female rage, assorted body parts and splatter violence may have obvious feminist messaging, but the French director, Coralie Fargeat, is a terrific visual maximalist. Demi Moore stars as a woman who takes drastic measures to be young and desirable, and her silent movie star performance, relying almost entirely on expression, gesture and movement, is even better than you've heard.

2. "Queer." Magnificent and heartbreaking. In this sumptuously overwrought, fever-dream of a drama - loosely based on the William S. Burroughs novel and Burroughs' own life - Daniel Craig is an aging heroin addict desperate for the love of the young Drew Starkey, whom he can possess only sexually. Gorgeously directed by Luca Guadagnino, the film includes stellar performances not only from Craig, but Starkey as the shrewdly opaque prostitute and Leslie Manville in a jaw-dropping turn as a near-toothless ayahuasca dealer.

3. "Anora." If Jonathan Demme were reborn, he might be director Sean Baker, whose similarly humanist world-view is on full display in this joyously unstable movie, which ricochets like a pinball from comedy to drama and back again. Charting the plight of a cynical, yet privately hopeful, club dancer portrayed with unblinking clarity by Mikey Madison, the movie is tender without being sentimental. Is it Baker's best? Maybe not, but it is his most charmingly accessible and includes a scene-stealing performance by Yuriy Borisov as a surprisingly compassionate mob underling.

4. "Emilia Perez." A dazzling mix of drama, music and dance, this one-of-a-kind movie follows the exploits of a lawyer who helps a feared Mexican drug lord in his efforts to start a new, incognito life. Nothing in director Jacques Audiard's filmography will prepare you for this visually and sonically unprecedented experience. As for Zoe Saldona, an actor who's left me cool in the past, she seems newly hatched as a galvanizing screen presence. Who knew she had it in her? It's doubtful you'll see a movie this year that takes so many dizzying risks, so many leaps of faith, and nails the landing each and every time.

5. "Nickel Boys." Based on Colson Whitehead's novel, this is that rare instance where a movie sometimes betters its source material, largely due to director RaMell Ross' expressionistic, near tactile imagery, as if conscious and unconscious thoughts were made manifest. Following the journey of two Black youths who endure racial abuse at a reformatory in the 1960s, the movie may be rough going at times, yet it's ultimately hopeful. The performances are uniformly fine - especially Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor - yet this is Ross' show. He's a masterful filmmaker whom I can't wait to see more from.

Just as some movies made my heart soar, many stomped on it, crushed it and left it for dead. Then stomped on it again. In no special order, here are my Top Five Worst for 2024:

1. "Rumours." Howlingly pretentious, this wink-wink, would-be political dark comedy unfolds at the G7 summit where world leaders become embroiled in soapy romantic entanglements and, oh, yes, confront "undead bog bodies" and a giant evil brain in the forest, all of which may make this sound like fun. Rest assured, it's not. Directed by critical darling Guy Madden, an inexplicably beloved Canadian filmmaker, the movie features a starry cast, including Cate Blanchett, but unfurls like a near-insulting amateur slog.

2. "Megalopolis." Director Francis Ford Coppola drives right off a cliff with this garbled lump of a tale about a supposed "visionary," portrayed by Adam Driver, who's determined to create a utopian city. With strained, allegedly fantastical visual flourishes - it tries for the surrealism of Terry Gilliam, but the results are like a schoolboy's try-hard doodles - and moments of genuinely embarrassing dramatics, it's a sad, cringeworthy conclusion to a great career.

3. "Longlegs." If Nicholas Cage weren't giving his freakish best as the namesake serial killer, this tedious, glacially-paced thriller wouldn't even be worth mentioning. The director, Osgood Perkins, the son of Anthony Perkins, favors long, dreary, unmoving shots - as if the movie itself were in a yawning stupor - while the threadbare storyline, cobbled together from much better movies, runs out of gas at the midway point. Unfathomably, it has its critical fans, who I am tempted to ask if they've actually seen a thriller before, or even a movie. 

4. "Anyone But You." That slap to the groin above is just one mangy highlight in this lazily thrown-together romantic-comedy featuring Glenn Powell, this generation's toothy, hairless, utilitarian answer to Charlton Heston. Both have the dulled presence of a concrete slab, and when they smile, you're surprised to discover that cement can move. There's also Sydney Sweeney, an actor who was modestly impressive in this year's "Immaculate," but here, the director and co-writer, Will Gluck, leaves her stranded with humorless boob jokes and ineptly stage slapstick. 

5. "Joker: Folie A Deux." The joke's on all of us who dared to watch even part of this execrable fiasco. The concept has possibilities, a sort of Dennis Potter goes to DC Comics, in which The Joker and Harleen, both losing their minds, intermittently imagine their world in song and dance. But did it have to be so lifeless? The director/writer, Todd Phillips, stages each scene and musical number as if he were conked out. It may be the only movie which anesthetizes both itself and its audience.

What were your favorite movies this past year? And which ones made you scream, "Gimmie my money back, you tacky, talent-free whores!" 

Photo Credits: Bleeker Street Media; Netflix