While their aesthetic and thematic elements differ, small scale, character-driven drama ties together most of my top ten this year. It’s a mostly international list, with only three of my ten picks from American directors, and majority set beyond US borders. I’m unsure if these commonalities reflect the recent guild strikes, my shifting tastes away from big studio offerings, or just random happenstance of what stood out this year, but it’s a trend I wouldn’t be shocked to see continue into 2025.
My list is in alphabetical order; the wide range of genres and subject matter makes pitting individual choices head to head too challenging. While mood and time available may dictate which among the below I revisit, I’d still highly recommend all of them.
Director Payal Kapadia’s roots in documentary filmmaking shine through in this intimate character study and love letter to Mumbai street culture. Two nurses in a big city, acted movingly by Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha, reflect on their desires, romantic partners, and future. I saw the film’s North American premiere at TIFF, where its understated, minor-key aesthetic stood out from practically everything else I saw at the festival — less tragedy, more melancholy, less reveals, more intimacy.
Sean Baker takes his usual thematic explorations of class and sex through a crowd pleasing romantic comedy. Mikey Madison as the titular Ani is sensational, instantly believable, balancing working class hustle and boisterous humor with quiet moments of vulnerability that slowly shift to the forefront in the film’s final acts. Yura Borisov, as Russian henchman Igor, Ani’s key supporting partner, builds a deeper connection to Ani mostly through glances and other wordless exchanges. While the marriage between Ani and a rich kid Ivan (a funny Mark Eydelshteyn) is the plot’s inciting incident, it’s the Ani-Igor bond that forms the film’s emotional core.
The movie’s comedic midsection runs on a little too long, slightly dulling the impacts of its dramatic, melancholic close. But it’s still a blast, and the easiest recommendation on my list to make to a wide audience.
Few directors capture the under-class quite like Andrea Arnold. Her use of nonprofessional actors, boxy aspect ratios, diegetic music cues, and naturalistic cinematography by frequent DP Robbie Ryan creates an inviting and deeply sympathetic atmosphere.
In her latest feature, Bird, newcomer Nykiya Adams as Bailey has a natural intensity as an impoverished twelve year old forced to navigate a lot of grown up responsibility. The results onscreen can be a tough watch at times, but Adams, backed by recognizable talent in the form of Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, help sell a humanist, ultimately heartwarming tale of standing up for one’s family, however broken and makeshift it may be.
One immigrant story with so much on its mind — America, capitalism, art, xenophobia, sacrifice, the act of filmmaking itself — that its three and a half hour runtime can barely contain its ambition. Brady Corbet’s story feels like the kind of sweeping seventies epic they don’t make anymore, yet simultaneously rooted in 2024 with its steadicam assisted long takes and upfront explorations of sexuality and racism.
On paper, highbrow filmmaking over 215 minutes might sound exhausting. But the acting across the board is strong and highly watchable, which makes most of the runtime fly by. Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in particular deliver career best performances. The overarching one two punch of Lol Crowley’s cinematography — widescreen VistaVision blown up to 70mm — alongside Daniel Blumberg’s score — restless, direct, romantic — help round out the experience.
A blend of fast-paced editing, go-for-broke camera work, and one of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s best scores make for an all-timer of a sports movie. Director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes capture the sprit of competition and rivalry among tennis players alongside a parallel three way love triangle with a light, impressively modernist touch.
Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor put in strong performances, though their character arcs feel secondary to the movie’s mood and texture, as Kuritzkes’ innovative screenplay ping pongs across time and place. The story leads to a final match where all it takes is a glance and gesture to say everything you need to know about where these three characters stand. By the time the movie ends in freeze frame, the score’s ear splitting techno giving way to the synth-pop of “Compress / Repress”, I was practically leaping out of my seat.
A simple parable about the tension between our environment and capitalism, Evil Does Not Exist could have been a slog of an ecological drama if not for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deeply humanist touch. As in his past features, all characters onscreen are sympathetic, even would be antagonists. The world building is also exceptional, capturing the daily life of a small Japanese village for almost a full hour before the plotting kicks in. A gorgeous, yearning score by Eiko Ishibashi helps round out the package.
Hamaguchi’s slow burn pacing isn’t for everyone, but his embrace here of thorny, real world ambiguity over deeper existential issues confronting the planet for me was an engrossing watch. The film’s shocking ending is noteworthy, recontextualizing much of what came before, interrogating the film’s title, and elevating the film into a haunting puzzle box I’m still mulling over.
I’ve seen many slice-of-life movies, but few as emotionally affecting as Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days. The setup reads like a Criterion parody: Uniqlo billionaire entrepreneur commissions a legendary German director (Wenders) to make a documentary short film on the Tokyo Toilet urban redevelopment project. Wenders proceeds to be so inspired by the setting that he builds a full length feature, starring Koji Yakusho as toilet cleaner Hirayama.
But even decades removed from his masterpieces Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, somehow Wenders assembles everything together here wonderfully. The lensing by Franz Lustig is simple yet gorgeous in showcasing Tokyo’s urban beauty. Yakusho’s acting is stupendously great, giving a largely quiet, wordless performance where Hirayama conveys magnitudes with his eyes and small gestures. It’s also a film of memorable small moments, like the wave of a small boy, two adults playing shadow tag, or one character’s dreams represented as grainy black and white imagery of sunlight piercing through trees.
As the film progresses, it shifts from an arthouse mood piece transitions to a gentle character study. It wraps up with a banger of an ending, Nina Simone on the background, and the camera settling on a simple closeup on Hirayama’s face that conveys magnitudes.
Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name by way of Dali and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even with some baffling, extraneous detours in this movie’s trippy third chapter, a trifecta of Daniel Craig as William Lee, sumptuous Hopper-esque visuals, and a head trip of a coda make this movie sing.
Craig is revelatory as Lee, a louche playboy consumed with self-loathing and loneliness. Nothing in Craig’s stretch as Bond would suggest he could pull off a character this tender and complex, but he never falters. For me his most memorable scene is one of his simplest: Lee shoots up with heroin alone in his apartment. There’s no dialogue, just a slow dolly zoom toward Craig accompanied by New Order’s “Leave Me Alone.” Craig’s subtle acting work are all in the eyes and posture, transitioning from quiet ecstasy to numb, shellshocked solitude.
Jesse Eisenberg’s Hal Ashby inspired tale of mismatched cousins touring Poland is an effective chamber piece character study. Kieran Culkin’s awesome, multi-layered performance as Benji draws you in. I’ve read many complaints that Culkin’s acting is a rehash of his Succession Roman Roy persona — wounded interior mixed with a prickly, gregarious exterior — but I saw differences immediately, and Culkin’s just so great at this kind of character I didn’t mind.
I appreciate how Eisenberg’s writing treats Benji with more maturity and realism than many other lesser dramas would. We see Benji for the flawed, immature mess he is (without a packed in redemptive arc), but also someone who earns our sympathy for his inner turmoil.
Just when you think expect the whole movie to revolve around Culkin, Eisenberg’s patient script and direction teases out memorable performances from the ensemble working around him. Eisenberg, who plays the other cousin David, initially starts the picture as little more than the neurotic straight man that the veteran actor could knock out in his sleep. But Eisenberg’s chemistry with Culkin is palpable, helping to sell a recognizable family push pull dynamic between the two characters. Some key late act dialogue underscores David’s own vulnerability, deepening the thematic draw of the film.
Director Coralie Fargeat’s feature debut Revenge was a well crafted debut, but nothing prepared me for the assured confidence of her follow up The Substance. Fargeat’s heightened reality hellscape of L.A. — sleazy executives barking orders, garish exercise shows that ogle women’s bodies, oversaturated colors, off kilter camera angles — is disorienting and original. Paired with leads Demi Moore’s and Margaret Qualley’s go-for-broke acting, it’s an incredibly hard hitting mixture of body horror and comedy that had me hooked from pretty much the opening frame.
While Fargeat’s satirical messaging on Hollywood and the patriarchy lacks subtlety, the film’s cheeky, over the top outrageousness is kind of the point. It’s also serves as a welcome, maximalist counterpoint to the often somber and deeply reverential tone of many recent “elevated horror” films.