Best First Watches of 2024

it's been a while...

I’ve neglected to post on here for a little over a year. I have considered finishing a half-written “listicle” or opinionated rant pinned in my notes app dozens of times. Even this article is something I’ve been building in the margins of notebooks and scribbling on post-it notes buried deep in abandoned tote bags for months. I’m sorry. It’s my personal mission to return to occasional posting here, in tandem with working on my articles with an actual digital magazine you can read here if you’re interested.

After spending the better part of the year working at a boutique independent movie theater in SoHo (I’m sure you can guess which one), I somehow only tallied up 139 features on Letterboxd this year. That’s a number I would have scoffed at two years ago, and four years ago could have blown out of the water in just one changing of the seasons. Alas, you will find a summary of the most impactful films I watched in 2024, highlighting specifically those I watched for the first time (so not just new releases, but all new to me). Without further ado, here are my favorite first watches from last year.

1. Janet Planet (2023) dir. Annie Baker

   One of the most snubbed films of this upcoming awards season so far. I’ve barely seen anyone mention Janet Planet, let alone celebrate it’s genius vehicle for coming of age. Lacy (Zoe Ziegler) spends an early 90’s summer in Massachusetts and watches three people get sucked into the orbit of her mother Janet (Julianne Nicholson). The pacing of the movie is split between each of these visitors. As they come and go, Janet and Lacy’s feathers are ruffled by the presence of strangers in their home, and their relationship with each other shifts as the season changes. Lacy’s petulant and childish remarks create wedges between suitors on occasion, but Janet, often to the dismay of these smaller and less significant planets, always chooses her daughter. The remarkable thing about this movie is the cinematography by Maria von Hausswolf, who executes shots from Lacy’s perspective so often during the film you feel eleven and frustrated as well. When Lacy peers up into the mirror above the bathroom sink, her glasses barely in the frame, it reminds us that we’re watching her grow up, feeling unseen and immature. I also appreciated how wide and encompassing the sound felt. There was minimal scoring, mostly just diegetic folk music and ambient nature sounds that left a lot of space for the dialogue. Also, this was the first movie screened on the projector in my room with a box of Mama’s Too pizza on my lap. Nothing short of perfect.

2. Nashville (1975) dir. Robert Altman

   Okay, now do you see what I mean by favorite first watches? The movie-musical knockout of last year for me was not Wicked, but this mid-seventies masterpiece. Arguably more than half of the film has live musical performances; from dingy dive bars with bad singers, to a festival stage where a music legend chokes, a recording studio sardined by a choir, to the historic stage at the Grand Ole Opry. But, Nashville isn’t just for country music lovers. It also weaves in political drama, bashes on a leeching journalist, and follows multiple infidelities as everyone is trying to make it big. It even has a cameo from Altman darling Elliott Gould as himself. Music is just the thing that ties everyone together, duh. Also, Barbara Jean is such a spectacular character with the most hypnotizing and heartbreaking performance that I’m pretty sure “Tapedeck in His Tractor” made it onto my top 100 songs from last year. Thank you, Ronee Blakley.

3. The Substance (2024) dir. Coralie Fargeat

   This “perverted work of absolutely depravity,” according to Vinson Cunningham from Critics at Large, was a total knockout, just like both of it’s stars. Kim Kardashian even said “it was amazing and Demi Moore looked amazing!” if that will persuade you. As camp as Kim’s commentary is, and whether or not she’s being satirical, she’s the exact sort of spectacle this film is criticizing. The contents of the frame swung from disgusting to sexy, and flitted right back to downright filthy. Fargeat is giving people what they want, uprear shots of Sue (Margaret Qualley) in a hot pink and elastic unitard, and then cutting immediately to her groaning while removing a rotten drumstick from her bellybutton. It’s sick and twisted from the opening shot - a Dutch angle of a network executive (Denis Quaid) pissing and blabbing into his cellphone about how ugly the women on the show are. I knew then that I was in for a wild, deplorable ride. The audience is both the critic and the voyeur here. Of course, we want to look at Sue. Of course, we want to lock up the corpse that Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is becoming behind the annexed bathroom wall. Of course, now she’s taken it too far and should be publicly shunned. And, what a lovely new member of the movies set around New Year’s Eve club. (Still not better than Phantom Thread)

4. La Chimera (2023) dir. Alice Rohrwacher

   I left Lincoln Center close to midnight last spring with a new crush. Josh O’Connor is enchanting as this tortured anthropologist running with a crowd of people who don’t see just how precious the art their looting is. I wrote a semi-lengthy review before about how this felt like a Greek tragedy. That the passion and knowledge Arthur has for these artifacts is directly linked to his unique ability to unearth them, only getting to experience them for a fraction of time before their beauty is tarnished by capitalistic sin. If only he was also yearning for a beautiful woman and swept off his feet by a fiery, morally good, Italian woman- oh wait he is. And her befuddled, mourning mother is none other than Isabella Rossellini. It’s like they manufactured this movie for me in a lab. If you wish Indiana Jones was a little more worried about a girlfriend represented by an unraveling thread, and less about things “belong[ing] in a museum,” La Chimera is for you.

5. Madame Web (2024) dir. S.J. Clarkson

   This was a spectacular moviegoing experience that truthfully hasn’t been replicated by anything I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing. If you know of any other films that will make me feel this way, please let me know. Now, I’ve seen some truly tragic films this year that were so terrible to watch, they landed nowhere near worthy of a Razzie’s nomination (Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies film adaptation comes to mind). What’s so wonderful about this off-beat Marvel/Sony/who knows IP is that it’s magic comes from the fact it was made much to the chagrin of, well, the entire cast. Zosia Mamet booked for what I imagine could only be a singular day of commentary from an office chair behind a hacker-style computer monitor with a high bun that appears to have been done with those hair donuts from Forever21. Obviously, the most indifferent is Dakota Johnson. I’m not a hater of her acting skills. I liked her aloof and affable teen persona in Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, and was surprised by some authentic-seeming tears in last year’s Am I OK? from Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne. What makes Madame Web so-bad-it’s-good is that Johnson’s apathy didn’t start on the press tour, it definitely began on a set they’re trying to pass off as the Amazon rainforest. There’s multiple obvious ADR flubs and dialogue worse than the famed “he was researching spiders in the Amazon with my mom right before she died.” There’s a scene where she’s floating through a hallucination of her mom in therapy, where Cassandra Webb says “but I don’t have a neuromuscular disorder?” which is so strident and far more uncomfortable. I saw this movie when I was sampling the Regal Membership Pass and reserved a seat in an odd three hour window before a friend’s art gallery opening; seeking only to avoid the cold and maybe fall asleep in a dark room, I was met with an onslaught of laughter just shy of two hours. Not to mention how unbothered Webb is about the upcoming murder of Mary Parker and Ben Parker (you know, since the baby shower is obviously for Peter Parker?) as she smiles behind her blind gaze in her wheelchair, looking out at Sydney Sweeney et al. with confidence and love. In short: I need a DVD player, and I hope there is a physical copy of this floating around in a discount bin somewhere by the time I get one.

6. Charade (1963) dir. Stanley Donen

   Caught red-handed watching Ayo Edibiri’s Criterion Closet pick here. Add her to the list of celebrities running laps in their industry and absolutely cooking us so-called cinephiles in their free time (of course I am referring to the total heat on Charli xcx’s leaked Letterboxd account). I never knew how deprived we were of the truly great leading men of old Hollywood until I saw Cary Grant showering in a sweater to make Audrey Hepburn laugh. You’re never quite sure who has the upper hand or who is trustworthy, which has been lost in the mystery movies of today - if we even have any aside from Rian Johnson’s films. The thing that works here is that the mystery isn’t being suspended by comedy or Chris Evans in a sexy, wool sweater, but plain old confusion. The genre is more or less dead. It’s a thriller with whimsy, heart, and purpose. I swooned at the chivalry and then gasped when another body turned up, but never felt overwhelmingly scared.

7. Kneecap (2024) dir. Rich Peppiatt

   I am struggling to find the decorum necessary to write a review of this movie without sounding like a middle school hype-beast. Simply put, these guys rock. They fuck, even. It’s a total event to witness the story of “frighteningly articulate” rap trio Kneecap, but it’s another to do it in a theater full of rowdy Irish people whilst splitting a bottle of wine. These guys are charming, explosive, and radical. Their energy is intoxicatingly honest. To grapple with relationships, a dad who faked his death, a town-wide manhunt, and gang violence, but still come out on the other side ready to put on a memorable show that both uplifts your indigenous culture and makes people want to party? These guys are heroes. Fuck the peelers!

8. How to Have Sex (2023) dir. Molly Manning Walker

   I was lucky enough to see Walker’s Q&A at IFC after the screening, and what blew me away was how she was able to secure funding by proving that high schoolers around the UK didn’t understand whether or not the content of the film would be considered sexual assault (it is) and showed that data to investors to prove how necessary the conversation was. It’s a fantastic lesson in consent, but also a peek into the discomfort that comes with coming of age through a raw and tragic lens. It’s a fun enough ride watching Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and her friends navigate this first glimpse of freedom, but watching this so many years away from that kind of experience makes it even more deflating. Whenever I’m watching something that gives me a visceral reaction from my seat, where I want to shake the character out of their obvious trance, I know I’m at the will of a director with a strong understanding of people. I can’t wait to watch more projects from Walker.

9. High and Low (1963) dir. Akira Kurosawa

   Recommendation number two from Edibiri, if you can believe it. I knew this was going to be amazing when this group of businessmen were in complete sincerity arguing over the stakes for a company just called “National Shoes.” For maybe the entire first hour and a half, you don’t leave the living room, and it doesn’t feel claustrophobic or boring for a second. I’m going to sound stupid if I try to give any type of critique on Kurosawa. He’s a genius. This film was thrilling and suspenseful. Go watch it.

10. Hoop Dreams (1994) dir. Steve James

    I’m beyond humiliated to admit that I only recently watched this for the first time. As a film nerd and basketball lover, I’ve wasted years of my life without this movie. Watching William Gates and Arthur Agee grow up with a passion and drive for basketball, but simultaneous dependency on it, is perspective-shifting and inspiring. I watched this after reading Bodies Built For Game, so I was definitely feeling particularly sensitive to the idea that sports are outlets for physicality, but also often times the only opportunity for black people to escape their situations: financially, emotionally, or otherwise. This documentary is unwavering in it’s honesty. Also, these kids can really hoop.

Honorable Mentions:

Conclave (2024) dir. Edward Berger - I don’t watch a lot of reality TV, but if I struggled with that and wanted to step back, I know now that Catholicism can offer me a similar rush.

Will & Harper (2024) dir. Josh Greenbaum - Heartwarming and honest! Not as cheesy as I anticipated. Feels flat to say “necessary” for people to watch, but what’s so lovely is that no matter what side of the political aisle you’re on, this movie will surprise you.

Run Lola Run (1998) dir. Tom Tykwer - Full of thrills and keeps you guessing. Maybe the smallest duration of real time I’ve ever seen a film cover? The whole thing happens over the course of like, fifteen minutes.

Civil War (2024) dir. Alex Garland - Not so much a commentary on American politics (thank god), but rather the ethics of war journalism, which I was eating up. As always, Jesse Plemons and Kirsetn Dunst tore.

Anora (2024) dir. Sean Baker - Best line is when Ani’s dancing at his house while he’s playing Xbox, and he throws the controller to shout “this is genius!”

Challengers (2024) dir. Luca Guadagnino - This brought sexiness and theatrics back so hard I had to dress up as Tashi Duncan for Halloween. I ordered hair bundles online. I had the time of my life. I saw this with a friend who felt so inspired they had a threesome immediately after.

Monkey Man (2024) dir. Dev Patel - I think my Letterboxd review was something along the lines of “John Wick can kick rocks” and I meant that. Dev Patel broke his hand making this, and you all broke my heart by not seeing it. Do better.

Touch (2024) dir. Baltasar Kormákur - A lovely, decades-long romance that actually happens during COVID-19 and doesn’t feel exhausting or annoying to see on screen. I cried a lot more than I anticipated. The dad is weird, though.

Problemista (2023) dir. Julio Torres - I’m deeply infatuated with Julio and everything he touches. This movie had whimsy, charm, and jokes from his old stand up specials I got to watch Tilda Swinton act out.

Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers - Haters will say this is recency bias, but last night I lit a candle in my room and watched the shadow of my hand stretch across the ceiling, and started losing my mind over how fucking cool this movie was.

If I could spare one more sentence of your time, there are more films I adored this year, but I cannot in good faith subject anyone to reading my thoughts further. A rapid fire list of the remaining titles you should venture out to see if you haven’t with decreasing detail: The Fall Guy (2024) (actually great if you love action movies), Hit Man (2023) (Come on, he’s sexy!), Babygirl (2024) (Come on, she’s sexy!), Dìdi (2024) (if you liked mid90s or Eighth Grade), I Saw the TV Glow (2024) (scary sexy).

Notably absent are The Brutalist, Sing Sing, and Kinds of Kindness. I haven’t seen them yet. Cheers!